Sam Harris on Charlottesville

By An Old Friend

Sun, Jun 30, 2019 5:44 p.m.

Below is a comment at a post at PowerLine regarding the attack on Andy Ngo:  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/06/a-fascist-attack-in-portland.php

I am happy to report that just yesterday, I listened to a Sam Harris podcast from just a couple of weeks ago in which he named Antifa as the instigator of the Charlottesville violence and, also, refuted claims that Trump did not denounce white supremacy in his famous press conference.

Harris was speaking with a couple of prominent media voices on the intellectual left, and Harris, himself, despises Trump. Still, it is important to me that Harris insisted on truth in reference to Charlottesville and Antifa and even on what Trump said and did not say in his news conference:

@23:51 In [Trump's] defense there – I rarely come to his defense – if you look at the full video from that press conference where he supposedly said nothing to denounce white supremacy, he does denounce white supremacy. The problem with the left now is that they are so scattershot in their attacks on him. You don't have to lie to paint Trump as a liar or a bigot or a grifter or a con man, because he's undoubtedly all of those things. But, in that case there are a few things muddying the waters. One is that you had Antifa very likely initiating the violence against neo-Nazis, who had a permit to march, right? There was violence coming from both sides…

Harris strongly identifies as a liberal but is perpetually in trouble with libs for calling out the violence endemic in Islam, for defending Charles Murray, for strongly speaking against liberal fascism on campuses, and now he even becomes a "Charlottesville truther"! Many people here would be unable to stomach his seething contempt for Trump and would not enjoy listening to the whole two hours of this podcast. Actually, Harris has many things other than politics on his mind and generally tries to avoid talking about Trump. Whatever he is talking about, he tries hard to tell the truth as best he sees it.

This podcast is #160 on Harris's website SamHarris in the ORG domain