Former San Diego councilman – be brief, letter writers

No empty epistles, thank you

Please do not run anonymous letters, “name withheld”. Your policy invites abuse. If a speaker in a courtroom wishes to be anonymous, he/she needs permission of the judge based on good cause(protective order, vandalism threats). And how about limiting a ‘letter’ to a few hundred words, at most. Our city’s main newspaper puts it at 150.

I found the full-page letter by Niki Roth, “View from the cleanup crew” very interesting but she should have done it as an article, with a photograph. Call it “Op-Ed”. Readers’ attention span as to ‘letters’ is limited. I’ve been writing letters for at least 60 years, and as a councilman and state official listened to testimony from everyone and their brother. I am all for accountability and transparency. Keep up the good work.

• Mike Schaefer
• Bankers Hill

Complaints mislaid

Some letter writers complained that the San Diego Reader’s article “San Diego’s anti-fascists turn fascist” (Cover Stories, February 24) was “blatantly pathetic” or a “very terrible job.” Those terms actually apply better to the letters themselves! One writer was “seriously disgusted” because the article gave “No mention of a Nazi salute” allegedly done by a Trump supporter. But the article DID talk about that. The same writer also complained that the article didn’t mention the man with the George Floyd shirt getting beaten. But yes it did. And the writer even complained about the Reader writing about the counter protestors in the first place.

CNN, MSNBC, and much of the rest of the media worked hard last summer to downplay or ignore left-wing violence. It’s nice to occasionally learn the whole story. Another letter writer attacked the Reader by writing “Nazism and Fascism have no place in our American society.” That’s certainly true but he seems to have missed the main point of the article, that even though we always hear that the right has many Fascists, in reality the left does too. In fact, the left has far more.

The months-long Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots last summer killed dozens of people and burned many buildings to the ground, including two of them in La Mesa. The riots sent hundreds of police officers to the hospital, many of whom had been hit by thrown rocks or bricks.) The article did a fine job of illustrating that the anti-fascists are actually fascists.

• Name withheld
• San Diego

Left to right

I was surprised to see Eric Bartl’s article, “Local Antifascists Turn Fascist” in the San Diego Reader. In the past, I had found the Reader content to be mostly left-wing, as are most printed news magazines and newspapers. So, congratulations to you for pointing out the malevolent force that Antifa has become.

It seems to just be another terrorist organization that uses violence and rioting to squash any non-socialist views in our society. Isn’t that what Germany’s Brownshirts were all about?

• Name withheld
• Pacific Beach

Record broken

I took one look at the cover of your February 25 issue and I knew it was time to part ways with the Reader after I don’t know how many years (probably since your first issue). I guess the publisher has been really rooting for the January 6th rioters and thinking they are “solid” people (code for white) and were just pushed too far by the “steal.” The study of history will tell us that democracy is a fragile thing and usually doesn’t last long due to the mentality of people like you.

• Peter Honan
• Imperial Beach