In Charlottesville, the leftists greatly outnumbered the "America First" side. In Laguna Beach last night, the "America First" right wing protesters were outnumbered forty to one. With the total estimated headcount for both the protest and counter protest at 2500, that would mean that the "America First" crew would have been approximately 51 individuals. This seems to be what happens with most of these rally's, with the left swarming violently over the opposition.
Who are these Alt-right groups that the left is most concerned about? According to their signs, they are most concerned with the KKK and NAZI's. Doing research, I found that reliable sources estimate that the KKK has between 5000 to 8000 members nationwide, mostly in southern states. By contrast, The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are 99 Neo-Nazi groups nationwide. The biggest is the National Socialist Movement with approximately 400 members in 32 states. The other 98 groups are mostly local in scope and have less than 20 members each. Doing the math, that would give them a maximum total of somewhere between 2,400 and 3,000 individual members nationwide. Given these numbers, combining both these groups at maximum count would give them a reach with 11,000 members nationwide.
Now let's take a look at some of the most prominent protesters on the Alt-Left side. Antifa is a group that we see at all these rallies, and there is no way to discern their numbers, being that they are so secretive that they even cover their faces in public. What has been reported is that they have chapters in every major city in the USA and their numbers are growing. If nothing else, we can guess that they outnumber the combined numbers of Neo-Nazi's and KKK members by a lot.
The next Alt-Left group that is very visible at these rallies are the BLM, or Black Lives Matter group. Pew Research estimates that 41% of blacks strongly support BLM and it's methods. There are approximately 41 million blacks in the USA, so BLM supporters are approximately 16,810,000 BLM supporters nationwide and growing. That means that there are far more Alt-Left members in the country than Alt-Right members!
So why then is there so much press focusing on the KKK and Nazi's? I wonder if it is simply to take our minds off of the rapidly growing far left side of our politics? Maybe we are actually focusing on the wrong set of people? BLM and Antifa are radical, violent groups that are growing and have numbers easily in the millions. Shouldn't that be our focus? Wouldn't they be the ones most likely to have a destructive effect on our society? Is the Alt-Right simply a straw man?
George I agree with your premise on the numbers but they are based on supposition and won't stand up to the far left leaning groups. More importantly is they are not fact based enough to sway the middle left who actually might b swayed with solid proof os left mayhem. I think if we can find someone at the Virginia rally who can confirm the majority of violence was generated by the left leaning radicals you can move the needle.
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced by photos I've seen but the Police have been quite.
The pertanent thing I saw at the protests was the violence and hate by the left directed at the Peacekeepers, aka, Police.
I agree. This is simply a piece for thought. If you check out facebook, I did post a list of Antifa membership that Anonymous recently posted. Allegedly these names were garnered from social media websites and I'm sure that if legitimate they are not complete, but there is a lot of names. Not verifiable, but interesting to note that even though they allegedly are on the same side, Anonymous does not like Antifa. Awful hard to get hard numbers when these guys don't want to be discovered.....
ReplyDelete