She visited Minneapolis, went to a restaurant with her mother, and someone threw the contents of a glass of water at her. It’s the kinder, gentler version of Nazi-punching. And now I’m all confused.
Does Tomi Lahren deserve public scorn and opprobrium? Yes. She’s a horrible person profiting off the dissemination of hate and ignorance. I can’t get worked up about somebody dousing her with water…but at the same time, it would also be legit to arrest and fine the water flinger for assault (likewise, the guy who punched Richard Spencer did commit a crime). You take action, you take responsibility for the action.
But also, I recognize my own inconsistency. It’s one thing for someone to punch Richard Spencer, a male Nazi, but I’d be extremely uncomfortable if someone were to punch Tomi Lahren, his female equivalent. Part of it is the unfounded expectation that a man is supposed to be able to defend himself, while a woman is not. Part of it is the optics: it looks bad for anti-Nazis to be punching down on women (but that it’s even “punching down” to hit a woman is problematic). If you watch the video at the link, you’ll also hear someone shouting misogynistic slurs at Lahren — I don’t want that guy on my side, either.
In my perfect world, people who preach hate wouldn’t have a platform or an audience because no one would want to listen to them, and they’d wither away into irrelevance. In this far from perfect world, we have to struggle with appropriate responses to destructive ideas that rise to popularity in imperfect ways.
PZ, I don’t find this consistent. I think the disparity between the potential physical repercussions (in one case, not much potential repercussion, in another a big one) shouldn’t be completely ignored when making judgement on a punch. I’m a small person and if someone attacked me there would probably be significantly less repercussion against them than if they had attacked a 6’4 MMA fighter. When people say “pick on someone your own size,” they are really saying “it’s worse to take assault people over whom you have a physical advantage because they have less power to physically retaliate.” I think I agree with this sentiment.
Spend a month in hell and you’ll come out a demon. Or Neitszche: Whoever fights monsters…
It’s problematic whether you punch a man or a woman. Basically, punching a Nazi is the fastest way to validate their worldview, which is that might makes right.
@alkisvonidas #3
Yeah, World War II was all about “validating Nazis’ worldview” by fighting them.
FFS
This is what happens when you cross that bright line, which might be worded as “don’t physically interfere with people if they do not pose a proximate threat.” And now you’re in a jumbled, blurred mess of trying to justify some things but not other things, while also trying the make the justifications feel consistent despite their being ad hoc.
Speaking of Spencer… “Richard Spencer: The Alt-Right Is Not Pro-Free Speech”:
I mean, obviously. But still it’s funny how much of a doof he is that he’d admit it on the fucking radio.
It’s called “reality”, Holms. Evidently, you two are not acquainted.
“a cup of WATER” qualifies as assault? Technically, yes ; effectively, i disagree. WATER in that quantity is pretty harmless. only damages writings on paper. Cloth uses water as cleanser.
It is so petty, it is amazing that “45” twitted support for LahRun [sic] within hours, compared to 3 wks to support the waffle house hero who disarmed a shooter with bare hands and suffered injuries.
Poor Tomi, bless her heart for getting doused by simply expressing her “views”, expressed on Fux News.
thoughts and prayers, to Tomi. /s
alkisvonidas, #3
You think Nazi punch is meant as a counterargument to tell them they’re incorrect?
The presence of Nazis is a serious threat to the lives of minorities. I don’t think a punch is the ideal response, but I understand it and don’t denounce it as a reaction. It isn’t being done as an alternative to a debate. In a perfect world, a punch shouldn’t be needed because a quick call to the police should bring a cop car or two rushing to the scene to take care of the trash.
@Marshall, #1:
I don’t think that PZ finds this consistent. I think it’s pretty clear in the OP that PZ is searching for reasons why he might feel differently about one assault compared to another. Nor is he satisfied with the reasons he finds. He’s merely being honest about what those reasons were, not advocating that those reasons are “good reasons” or should be used as guiding inputs to help distinguish acceptable vs non-acceptable assaults.
yes, there are such things as acceptable assaults. Yes, there are such things as unacceptable assaults. Yes, PZ uses certain things today to help distinguish them, but no, he’s not satisfied with that status quo.
Or at least that’s how I read what he’s saying. I thought he was pretty clear about that, but maybe I’m wrong.
If Lahren had been punched, it would have been just as commendable and deserved as when Spencer got punched (ie, completely).
No kiddie gloves for deplorables.
I think it’s a mistake to assume a woman, regardless of size, isn’t capable of defending herself, or launching an assault. In a perfect world, punching people wouldn’t be necessary, but we’re far from a perfect world, and Nazis of any type don’t deserve a quiet pass.
I wouldn’t have tossed a glass of water on Nazi Barbie, but it doesn’t much upset me, either. There are consequences to our actions and behaviour in life. When you go around preaching venomous hate, you should probably be prepared for possible consequence.
If the guy who punched Spencer was Jewish, I would find it entirely justifiable.
If I were Jewish, I’d feel very really, existentially threatened by Spencer and his ilk.
IIRC even Gandhi agreed that violence might be a valid recourse against an *existential* threat.
We can discuss of whether it is an effective strategy or not, but the morality is decently clear.
Now, I’m not Jewish and Spencer’s ideology is not inherently an existential threat for me personally.
Would it be justified for me to punch Spencer because the ideology he spouts is an existential threat to others?
Probably, but I don’t have a definite answer.
On the surface a civil society where you don’t use physical violence unless immediately threatened by same sounds great.
The problem is that is precisely what Nazis, fascists, etc are geared to take advantage of. It only works if society’s institutions protect everyone fairly and the Nazis have no chance to vote themselves into power.
But once the Nazis are allowed to gain power that principle quickly becomes “just shut up and let the Nazis murder you without disturbing the rest of us”. Holding to that “bright line” is not so consistent or ethical after all when it’s based on a fantasy version of how society works.
F.O. @#13:
Not just Jewish, but also disabled, LGBT, communists and trade unionists, Roma, Poles, Slavs, Jehova’s Witnesses…
@call me mark
WW2 was about toppling the oppressive Nazi regime and preventing them from committing further crimes. It was a response to real, actual and excessive violence.
What does punching a Nazi accomplish, exactly, except briefly making you feel better about yourself?
@16
In the case of Richard Spencer, it made him be seen as a laughingstock even among his own group for being punched by “an effeminate soyboy leftist”, and made him too afraid of further violence to keep visiting campuses.
alkisvonidas, #16
What does punching someone who has come to your doorstep and made a threat to your face to hurt your children (knowing that this threat is protected by law) accomplish other than briefly making you feel better about yourself?
I wonder why you felt the need to say “excessive”.
Unlike what the Nazis did in Charlotesville, right? So you can only hit Nazis once they’ve started laying the foundations of an extermination camp, right?
What about the heavily armed white supremacists who followed that Muslim woman around? Or the KKK members who threw their leaflets in black people’s yards?
What precisely is it about Nazism that you feel so obligated to protect?
I just don’t see what’s wrong with responding to someone making a very specific physical threat against your family by punching them in the face, particularly when that threat is not illegal and the authorities will look the other way.
The Nazi apologists keep on strawman-ing the issue by talking about debates and free speech.
Saad, #18.
If it has come to the point where such a threat is protected by law (and if the law/police will side with the Nazis, as you seem to be tacitly assuming), then physically defending yourself won’t save you for long. That is what collective action and social movements are for.
Because I was responding to someone who compared WW2 to punching a Nazi in the face.
You really overestimate the effectiveness of hitting as a solution to problems, don’t you? You might want to take a look at the action people took against Nazis in Germany before, during and after their rise in power. You’ll find that it involves frequent, insistent and (no less than punching) fearless argumentation against their lies and BS. They really are good at lies, you see. And in manipulating democracy against you.
Although you cross several lines here, and you really don’t deserve a reply of any kind, I will give you one: there is nothing in Nazism that I am willing to defend. I will, however, acknowledge for individual Nazis the same rights everyone else has in a democracy, so long as they only speak, and don’t act against it. Not because I like them. Not because I like their opinions. But because democracy protects all opinions whether you like them or not, and if we start declaring certain people “fair game” for a good beating, there’s no telling who might be next in line.
@20
Last I saw, none of the chucklefucks openly calling for ethnic cleansing have been arrested for it, so yes, it’s protected.
A fair assumption to make
Indeed, and punching nazis is tangibly a part of that collective action.
It’s a difference of scale, not of kind.
I don’t know, violence seemed to be a pretty effective means of keeping nazis out of power. Last I checked, we invaded Germany and decapitated their government, and that ended the whole “Nazi Germany” thing pretty much instantly.
So speech is a form of collective action when anti-nazis do it, but when nazis speak, it’s suddenly no longer a kind of action? What an interesting double standard.
Porivil Sorrens, #21
Do you know what the word excessive means?
@22
Yes, and I do not think that it is excessive at the person-to-person level.
It’s good and appropriate when individual anti-nazis punch individual nazis, and it’s good when the soldiers of major world powers punch neat little bullet-sized holes in nazi soldiers.
The law protects you when you speak. It also protects Nazis when they speak. But it doesn’t protect you when you hit a Nazi.
Why do you want to give a Nazi reasons to use the law against you?
This isn’t about trying to protect Nazis.
@24
That’s just an argument in favor of making sure they don’t get back up when you punch them.
Yes: organized, coordinated, strategic violence. It’s a good thing Patton wasn’t thinking with his fists.
Incidentally, a few million people died in order to topple Nazi Germany “pretty much instantly”. But since the hubris of such comparisons sails right past you, I’ll stop here.
@26
Omelette, eggs, etc.
@25
Whatever you say, Captain America.
Unless you’re referring to like, the holocaust, in which case you misunderstood what I said. Killing the Nazi leadership ended Nazi Germany in a relatively short amount of time. That we didn’t act early enough to prevent the holocaust – and actively supported it, in the case of the UK and US – is just a bigger argument in favor of keeping Nazis down before they get to power.
@29. I’m all for keeping Nazis down before they get to power. This is my whole point, in fact. I’m just saying beating them up will not accomplish that, and in fact will increase their support from those who are already influenced by their rhetoric.
That it takes physical force to get rid of them once you have to fight them in a war is entirely irrelevant. And in fact, it won’t get rid of Nazism altogether, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
But that clearly didn’t end the whole “Nazi” thing. A world fucking war didn’t do that. Does splashing water on people help? Doesn’t it feel a little strange to make this comparison?
@30
That’s not what I meant at all. We should have been invading Germany the second they pushed into Poland, not trying to appease Hitler or remaining isolationist (even going so far as to send boatfulls of Jewish refugees right on back to the death camps).
@31
Hence the need for people to keep them down with judicious application fists to their face.
Probably not. They probably should have punched her.
@call me mark #15
Indeed. I used being Jewish just as egregious example.
@alkisvonidas #20
Yes and no.
You can make that argument because, I assume, you don’t belong to any of the directly targeted groups.
Some opinions legitimise violence against some people not because of their actions, but because of how they’re born.
When violence is legitimated, it happens more frequently.
People in the targeted groups become unsafe, are harassed and often killed.
It is possible to make a case that by making the Tomi Lahrens of this world feel unsafe when they spout their hatred saves the actual lives within the vulnerable groups they target.
A tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance.
Tolerance is not an absolute right: it is a do ut des. We tolerate you as long as you are willing to tolerate others.
alkisvonidas, #20
People who want to eradicate marginalized people shouldn’t be allowed to congregate about it or talk about it in public. Germany doesn’t seem to give Nazis this right and I’m pretty sure they haven’t slippery sloped their way to Taliban rule yet.
Also, you’re living in fantasy world of your own if you think there’s a nice neat separation between those who want to only speak about hurting my family and those who will actually do it.
And lastly, you still aren’t realizing that Nazi speech is threat. So you’re defending threats when they’re made specifically by Nazis (I’m assuming you wounldn’t defend threats in general).
Speaking against them didn’t stop them either. If punching doesn’t work and speaking doesn’t work and even friggin’ world wars don’t work, then what the hell do we do?
That’s not rhetoric. I’m seriously interested in new ideas, because I’m all out.
No. You’re proposing we should do something that didn’t work the first time. But not even that: not full-scale war but things that would have to be even less effective. You want homeopathic quantities of violence. When it doesn’t work, you think this demonstrates a need for a diluted version. But it does not. That makes no sense.
Why was it right for the allies to fight them? Because violence (by Nazis or by anyone) is bad and should only be used for self-defense. You seem to reject this, that it doesn’t need to be a defensive last resort, that we should simply attack certain types of people. Why should I believe that, first of all? And what gives you the idea that these two extremely different things can be justified in the same way? I mean, if you’re going to admit that they’re not equivalent in that sense, then you shouldn’t be pretending as if WWII somehow supports your arguments.
alkisvonidas,
Yes. That Charlottesville Nazi killing that one woman was excessive.
@36
So does every scientist ever. A single data point that some violence at a fixed point in time was insufficient to keep nazis from rising to power does not mean that violence is always going to fail at keeping nazis from rising to power.
They were espousing support for and participating in the genocide of millions.
I have very little interest in convincing you of anything, because talking to you is about as productive as not-punching nazis.
I disagree about the usefulness in this case of either punching or the throwing of water.
What is called for here is a cream pie.
Oh, and perhaps a group rendition of “Der Fuhrer’s Face”.
We have many data points, throughout history, that wars and violence do not stop hate. You really are like a homeopath … dressed up in a lab coat maybe, but not quite like the real thing.
For the record, I don’t think splashing water on people is very worrisome. But the idea that you are defending yourself from an immediate threat by splashing water on someone? That’s some incredible fucking bullshit. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised anymore. After all, gun nuts say they’re protecting themselves from tyranny by having a handgun. I don’t know why they say it … maybe it’s one of those fanciful stories they just keep repeating over and over, as if somebody is still listening to their drivel.
@ alkisvonidas
43 Group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43_Group
BTW in many countries, many of those alt-right/nazis would be in jail by now.
Tomi Lauren is a horrible person. That being said, for those of you who think what was done to her is okay because you say she is an actual Nazi, who wants to defend “Fuck that bitch”?
In defense of the Water Thrower: It worked in The Wizard of Oz.
Is this joke misogynistic?
@41
Stopping hate is not a goal of mine.
Keeping nazis out of legislative roles is. As of yet, killing them has a pretty good history of working, and the one high-profile example of nazi punching has resulted in changing him from a rising starlet to a laughingstock, so I see quite a bit of historical evidence in its favor.
(That’s also ignoring the fact that you have no control universe where you can show that the violence made things worse rather than preventing things from getting worse.)
3 @alkisvonidas,
For one on one, pretty good. War though is complex, “Vengeance is mine”, . . . Lord North “The lights are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lite again in our time”, profiteering is devastating.
jack16
Porivil Sorrens @44:
So why don’t you advocate killing them?
And Donald Trump is a laughing stock worldwide without even being punched! So, we don’t have to worry about either of them, right?
If I’d known the magical effects of punching earlier in life, I coulda bin a contender!
@46
You’re operating under the assumption that I don’t?
Donald Trump is already in a position of power. Spencer isn’t.
I find myself not being troubled by someone throwing water on Turtle Lurtle.
I am disappointed it wasn’t from Flint though.
#7 KG
Your comment does not in anyway adress my point as reality does not prevent us from having principles, moral lines, whatever you want to call the concept. And really, must you jump straight to snide in your first comment? Jeez.
_______________________________________________________________________
#11 Porivil Sorrens
“Assault is fine if the person is horrible” wow. This speaks to a point Mano has made several times regarding the surprising violence of Buddhists: even groups generally in favour of peace can find justification for aggression.
_______________________________________________________________________
#13 F.O.
I’m 25-50% jewish, and I agree that the issue is morally clear: you don’t get to attack people, horrible or not.
:)
_______________________________________________________________________
#14 John-Henry Beck
Saying that attacking nazis is over the line cannot honestly be construed to mean ‘don’t do anything at all’ against them. Protests, obstructing their rallies, outshouting them are strategies that work.
_______________________________________________________________________
#21 and #32 Porivil Sorrens
The violence was in response to actual – as opposed to potential – violence. A highly germane difference.
_______________________________________________________________________
#25 Porivil Sorrens
Did you just advocate murdering nazis? Or do you have a cartoonishly simple view of unconsciousness, thinking perhaps that it is risk free and they’ll simply wake up with a bump on their head?
_______________________________________________________________________
#38 Porivil again
Are you being obtuse deliberately? Since when is WWII “a single data point that some violence at a fixed point in time”? This is so wildly inaccurate, I refuse to believe you are arguing in good faith.
_______________________________________________________________________
#44 an idiot
Holy shit you’re vile. I guess I no longer need to wait for an answer to the question I posed above, you really are in favour of murdering nazis. I hope I’m not the only one objecting to this. But also, you’re ignorant. Spencer didn’t lose his nerve from a single punch, but rather from having constant protests against virtually everything he did for months. And as far as I have been able to see, his fellow nazis and alt-right fans did not consider him a laughing stock; instead, the punch only fuelled their sense of grievance against the left.
Tactically, the punch failed to do anything positive (in that Spencer was not discouraged by it). The only thing it achieved was a negative: it provided substance, an example to point to, for their common claim that the racial violence and divisiveness comes from the left.
@47:
If you haven’t openly argued in favour of it, it’s not an assumption. Maybe you did, and I missed it?
#48 Tabby
Agreed. For me, the interesting part of PZ’s post is not the event itself so much as PZ’s stated difficulty in coming up with justification for some physical interference with other people, that does not also justify worse.
@49
Can’t say I find myself moved by your outrage, nazi-lover.
@50
Well, for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings, I wholeheartedly support killing nazis. Not as a first resort, but I can’t say that I’d feel bad if I heard someone offed Spencer (or any other nazi).
Porivil Sorrens @52
Do you support someone doing harm to you because you have supported supported song harm to Nazis?
song=doing
Porivil Sorrens @52:
Into the bozo bin you go, sunshine.
#52 Porivil
If you believe my stance against assaulting nazis means I am on their side, then you are not very good at reasoning. As for your stance in favour of murdering them, are you game to do it, or are you just blathering tough sounding drivel? I notice you phrased it as support for someone else doing the dirty work you espouse.
#53 jpam2708
That right there is the clincher. If people advocate violence against a group because of the risk of violence they pose, then the same logic is immediately applicable to those people proposing pre-emptive violence against that group – advocating violence makes them a violence risk. And so we have a logical loop, where both groups ‘pre-emptively defend’ (i.e. attack) each other because each consider violence reasonable.
Anyone taht can’t see that obvious recursion is just not hinking it through.
@39: Cream pie was also my first instinct. It’s physical ridicule rather than actual damage, and I don’t have much trouble with the likes of Bill Kristol being pied. There are probably even better ways of mocking the likes of them in public, but pie is fine by me. However, although this was in a public space, she was not using the space to make a public statement — she was out in private (so to speak) with her mother. So, hmmm, no from me.
Also, I am not at all sure that this person deserves that much attention. She expresses horrible opinions and appears to be both ill-informed and hypocritical, but her tiny fingers are not really on the levers of power. I’d be more sympathetic to the water (or pie) if she were standing at a lectern spouting very public bullshit. Now I have figured out what I think (which is certainly correct, of course, and disagreement will be allowed) I don’t really need to post this. But I am. So pie me.
well all of this about action against nazis seems to forget just how things went down during the high point of the Civil rights movement in the 60’s. The expressed policy and the action taken was civil disobedience, which was only effective when it was a major disruption it shut down businesses among other things. The demonstrators were arrested often violently and went to jail and then to court.
When someone punches or dumps water on a nazi why should we be opposed to arrest and trial? Let the motives be explained in open court put, let the nazi bring a case of assault in a civil suit let them bring all of it into open court.
We do not maintain a country that is governed by the rule of law if we do not use the system. that system grows and flourishes in public in the open court. It is my belief that the nazis can not survive nor flourish in public for very long and yes I do not think there is very much that can be done to change many of those who believe that crap to change their minds.
the demonstration that Gandhi had to use resulted in arrest and even death but in the end he succeeded
uncle frogy
I see it has come yet another day where the people who the Nazis have promised to murder are obliged to lie down and die, lest our ostensible allies have an attack of the vapors and then firmly ally themselves with the poor, maligned Nazis who are, after all, only talking about the ways in which they will murder us… and then acting on it (but that doesn’t count, somehow).
I wonder, how many will Nazis kill this time before even the mildest of self-defense measures will be countenanced by our ‘allies?’ We’re in the double digits for the year already… oh wait, I’m sorry, those were ‘lone wolf’ killings. Just because the lone wolves were practicing what Richard Spencer et al. have been preaching, and just because one particular white supremacist murderer trained with a white supremacist group, doesn’t mean that they were really Nazis doing what Nazis have repeatedly promised to do. No, it means… um… well, it means that violence is never acceptable! (Except when it’s committed by Nazis and their allies, of course.)
But hey, at least when they murder us we can die with our heads held high, secure in the knowledge that we have the moral high ground. And when we finally reach the magic number of murders and other assorted hate crimes, perhaps we’ll finally be allowed to do something besides cower and register timid complaints.
Say, there wouldn’t happen to be a punch-card or something, to help me keep track? Like, for every dozen murders committed by white supremacists I can get a free milkshake that I can pour (gently!) on their boots, or something?
@53
Nope. Thankfully, “wants to do harm to others” is not the sole determining factor pf morality, so there is no contradiction.
Now, if I was openly calling for the slaughter of millions of innocent people for the sole reason of being born woth the wrong ethnic heritage, they might have good cause to do violence to me.
Porivil Sorrens @60
So you don’t want to do Nazis harm by punching them?
@61
I very much do want to do nazis harm. Wanting to do others harm is not the sole moral determinant.
Thankfully, there is no moral equivalence, because as mentioned, I’m not openly working towards the genocide of millionsof innocent people by virtue of them beig born in the wrong ethnicity.
Porivil Sorrens @62
Just because you refuse to see a moral equivalence didn’t mean there isn’t one.
@63
If your system of morality treats gassing hundreds of thousands of people to death and using violence to prevent that outcome as morally equivalent, I reject it wholeheartedly.
Porivil Sorrens @ 64
You have no evidence that you’re actually preventing the perpetration of violence by perpetrating violence against others.
do and let them take it to court, if the police can get away with using lethal force against unarmed people because they were afraid of them I do not see why that would not be a legitimate defense because the nazi’s do advocate extreme violence against others in fact I think what they are advocating is the violent over-through of democracy .
uncle frogy
Maybe somebody just wanted to see if she would melt like a Wicked Witch.
@63
But, there isn’t one. Neither the motivations nor the outcomes are the same. Advocating the murder of Nazis is simply not the same as advocating the extermination of complete classes of people. In fact, the first is being advocated so that the second doesn’t happen. You can think of it as a lesser evil, though to me it isn’t even an evil at all. The goal isn’t to exterminate hate, it is to make Nazis afraid to identify themselves and join together in groups.
@65
Did the nazis continue to control german politics after they were all put to death or forced to flee?
psychomath @ 66
It’s pretty disgusting that you are using “preventing genocide” as a dog leaf for your murder fantasies.
Porivil Sorrens @ 67
So you’re absorbing mass murder, not just assault.
@70
As I’ve said repeatedly, yep. Not as a first resort, but I’m not gonna shed a single tear over dead nazis.
@70
That seems an uncharitable assumption on your part. I didn’t actually advocate anything, since I’m not convinced murdering Nazis is an effective strategy. I was merely arguing against the idea that there was a moral equivalence, which, by the way, you didn’t answer.
Also, go fuck yourself, you sanctimonious ass.
absorbing = advocating
A riddle to illustrate the problem as I see it:
I must kill/punch them because they are trying to kill/punch me.
Who am I?
psychomath @ 72
Sowwy, sweetie!
You’re the one who is trying to maintain a moral non-equivalence so that others can advocate mass murder. That pretty morally repugnant.
@75
So running a death camp and liberating it are morally equivalent? Disgusting. My relatives that died in the holocaust are not morally equivalent to the nazi scum that were killed by the allies.
We are very lucky that no one in a position of power holds your view of ethics.
@jrkrideau #42:
Okay, so if this were funny story, I’d laugh… but it’s not. My response is partially addressed at @Saad as well.
5 years ago, during the second Orbán administration, Richard Spencer wished to hold a conference, allegedly a libertarian one, a bogus claim I myself fell for not knowing then who Spencer was. It wasn’t hard either, when I checked that story, Spencer’s version was the only one in English, but the story was different in the host language. Hold onto your seat, literally. 5 years ago, Hungary had Spencer and 25 others banned for life from Europe in a then already rare concert with other EU members for inciting hatred. Bear in mind a few things: one, the most important, we kind of know that hate speech leads to deaths, without fail and the work camps are there to prove it. Two, before the crisis of the Syrian civil war, to a minimum, Orbán was capable of doing the right thing if it meant punching the local far right in the gut. However, even though laws are strong against denying such scientifically established facts like the Holocaust, they exist only to support identical laws preventing the denial of horrors committed by the Soviets.
Here comes what I wanted to tell you both as I’ve found it as heartbreaking as non-surprising. I don’t have proof, so it’s merely my opinion, but during this week a poster showed up on a busy square in Budapest. It depicts a smiling African. So far so good, right? Well, the poster blatantly uses the N word and purports to be in the name of Antifa and Amnesty International, the local arm of the Pride Parade and three others to underline a vast international conspiracy whereby non-whites and presumably non-Christians would be brought into the country. I’m going out on a limb that the poster is in connection with the Future of Europe conference where Bannon and Milo were keynote speakers. Who it was organized by in a bit later.
You said they would be in jail. This is every legal drama moment ever where you know justice should prevail and yet the all encompassing fatigue and corruption triumphs. There’s a legal loophole called pressing charges against an unsub. It was introduced into law to both dismantle the police state, but also to avoid libel suits, so in most cases there are no arrests. Unless of course it’s about minority than they’re super fast. In short, nobody will go to jail for defamation or denigration. There’s a man who’s been in and out of prison since 1991, when he truly tried to overthrow the government. Ever since, regardless if the govt is liberal or conservative, the man in the eyes of his supporters is a freedom fighter. Imagine if George Wallace had won, the kind of environment I left.
The person who invited both Bannon and Milo is a historian, but by far not a huge expert that would enable to notoriety to hold such events. She suffers from a persecution complex. When she was confronted on why her museum (installed at the same place where Nazis and communists tortured people) has little on events before communism, she claimed the place not being about that. She claims the West has no free press (that’s why journalists critical of Bannon and Milo couldn’t attend, allegedly because of overbooking, except photographic evidence on Twitter shows empty rows after starting) and that Trump is a victim.
There is however one thing. Spencer’s ban isn’t lifted, because at least he’s honest in his hatred. Unlike the cloak and dagger of euroskeptics who can’t spit it out that they actually wish to drive away other Europeans who aren’t white and/or Christian, Orbán has a secondary goal, which has a few similarities with the economic policies of Idi Amin. Ban foreigners, take over their businesses and claim everyone else is out to get you. Locals should not fear smiling black doctors, rather stepping outside the culture. They should stay, make a family there. See, unlike Trump and unemployment, they have the opposite issue, not enough qualified ones.
Which is where I answer one of your questions, Saad, what about those who followed the Muslim woman. Legal migration, partly from India would solve the problem, except buffed dudes in tight black shirts follow them everywhere and that’s not illegal. Why the hypocrisy? Because the menacing ones look like locals and the guest workers aren’t, pure tribalism. I’ve recently thought about yet another “it’s so mighty white of you” in my life, regarding fake news. Mr. Orbán (presumably for his support for the US embassy’s relocation to Jerusalem) has achieved with the Jewish World Congress that they thanked him for protecting Jews from antisemitism, allegedly peddled by Mr. Soros by way of refugees. Bear in mind, it’s the country which neglects acknowledging responsibility for the Holocaust. Minorities had as everyday life their rights violated and repeatedly told that it’s their fault. So, if the emergence of untruthful things bother someone in their everyday life and it’s new, either one was in a coma, a parallel Earth or white, ’cause that’s not new to anyone else.
#76
No one suggested that they were. And, we are luckier still that no one in a position of power holds your view, namely that we get to murder people we find repugnant.
…Actually, I think we’ve seen several of those people in power over the years. And you agree with them.
Porivil Sorrens @ 77
You have said you would support physically harming and/or killing people for advocating genocide. Your example involves the people you are tacitly killing people (Nazis) who were killing people (camp prisoners).
The actions in the former situation are not commensurate; whereas, the actions in the latter situation are commensurate. You are being intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt when you claim the moral equivalence of killing people for advocating genocide and killing people for killing other people.
I respectfully suggest that we don’t punch nazis, except when one punch captured beautifully on video can do such psychological damage to the whole lot of them. No point stirring up the softy lefties more than absolutely necessary.
@79
The party officers that signed off on the holocaust and the loyal germans who supported the nazi party were just as guilty as the ones actually running the gas chambers. The fact that they were merely ~advocating genocide~ does not remove their moral culpability for the millions killed in the holocaust.
Killing nazis is a small price to pay for avoiding another holocaust, and I’m not going to take anyone’s opinion seriously if they value nazi lives the same as the people they killed.
You are not going to convince me that a person who advocates for genocide has equal worth to the people he wants to genocide, end of story.
@78
Yeah, thank goodness that people were willing to ~mass murder the innocent nazis~ running death camps, and thank goodness people were willing to ~persecute the poor nazi officers~ in nuremburg.
@ Lofty, #80
That’s a fine suggestion, and that is indeed where a literal Nazi punching is most useful. I also like the example of when, the day after Heather Heyer was murdered by a Nazi, the organizer of the Nazi rally was chased off by an outraged mob when he tried to blame the victims of the attack for the attack, in full of TV news cameras. Subsequent attempts at rallies drew far smaller crowds of white supremacists.
When the cowards who make the majority of Nazi rallies see their leaders assaulted and literally chased out of the public eye, they tend to stay home. They see that, in fact, the ‘silent majority’ does not support them after all, and that most people despise them. Merely debating them, or mocking them, or using strong language is not nearly so effective without a physical example of the loathing we feel for them. Nazis need to know they will not be tolerated at all.
@Porivil Sorrens
If you had not done so, you should watch the BBC TV movie The Eichmann Trial. In part it’s about the importance of survivors, who have been silenced in Israel, branded as weak, complicit or collaborating.
The world is, thankfully or not, it’s up to debate, a way more complex place than life being black and white. This is why Otto von Skorzeny worked for the Mossad. This is why the Eichmann trial has validated to a broader audience what happened in the camps. This is why sadists of undesirable origin have helped the Nazi killing machine. Why Göring’s brother was a humanist, as was John Rabe, saving Chinese people. This is why the Japanese have conducted official investigations into the Nazi claims of Jews being super rich and and in power everywhere, and coming up empty. Yet, the yeshiva of Kraków survived because the Shanghai Ghetto survived, and the otherwise very brutal Japanese refused to hand them over.
This is why stalag porn was a thing in Israel of all places. Because we humans are just f*cked up enough to crave sex as survivors and to couple it with Nazi sexploitation.
A mere year after the start of Nuremberg, the trial at Tokyo almost didn’t even happen. Some judges, like the one from the Philippines, from the Netherlands and India dissented to the death penalty, and called the trial itself into question. This is me saying people with way cooler demeanor couldn’t agree on a right course of action. For a while there was an idea to recreate the Leipzig trial of 1922 (I’m very tired, it might have been 1924) where the Germans themselves held tribunal over their own, resulting in acquittals (a practice mirrored by post-Yugoslavian tribunals).
As a humanist, I’m 99.8% of the time against the death penalty. It’s not retributional, and terrorists, like the Canadian incel and Breivik see only bravery in getting executed to achieve martyrdom. In February of 1945, for a short period the Nazis managed to recapture land from Soviet advancement, and as a rare occasion, Goebbels spoke the truth on the horror of the enemy (just like with the sinking of a refugee ship leaving East Prussia). Yet, dangerous, incorrigible mass murderers need be removed from society. At times it’s only doable through the death penalty, but that’s the end of the road.
I loathe the crazy argument that if you all had guns this doesn’t happen. It’s false because it builds on the idea of a strong and supportive community. Lahren is blond and blue eyed. If you truly wish to hurt Nazis, go no further than speaking the truth: no nation of Germanic origin with plenty of blond blue eyed people liked them. Talk about how why the “they should immigrate here” Norwegians sabotaged the Nazi nuke. Talk about how Danes sent Jews to Swedish safety. How the Dutch resistance was a very strong one. Nazis peddle monopoly on pristine whiteness, something they never had. They edited the Russian Mein Kampf and the Japanese one to gain and retain allies.
Lastly, one more round about Shanghai and by extension, France and Austria. The second way to discredit Nazis is to point out the lunacy behind global conspiracies. Regardless how broad a culture is (like the Anglophile), it’s still hemispherical. Jews in Asia could survive because they were always small in number so they never reached any level of perceived threat. Especially not how Nazis described them. The same can be said for the Chinese. Very briefly, Qing policies have forced Chinese to emigrate, and in places it was seen as invasive. So deep in fact that outside China, the Japanese did not collaborate with them, and killed a lot of them. Except everywhere else they never stepped foot in, so it was easy to hide them in European countries.
The Indian judge supported preemptive war, no doubt in part to justify an armed independence against the Brits. To this day, he’s a hero in Japan, especially on the alt right, and India celebrates both Gandhi and Bose who collaborated with Japan and Germany. His view conflicted with the Pinoy judge (who participated in the Bataan Death March) as he felt casualty numbers were played up by colonizers to minimize their own implicitness. Yet he wasn’t a fascist, just a nationalist conflicted by a colonial rule, and trapped in that sphere, he viewed Japanese interests the same way.
Instead of death, the love of life is the one thing Nazis fear the most. We shan’t let other non-Nazis giving up loving life and fearmongers wither away.
#80 Lofty
May your backyard be filled with a startling number of territorial magpies this coming spring.
________________________________________________________
You are not comparing like with like. How many times has this been pointed out to you? Nazi Germany was met with violence because they committed actual, not potential, violence. An in-kind response. You on the other hand are advocating preemptive murder for people that have talked about, but not committed murder. Murder in response to verbal threats, a punishment not even remotely in line with the offense.
And perhaps most pathetic of all is that no one here is fooled to the extent that we believe you would actually follow through on what you say. You are a violence-fetishising blowhard. Either put your kill-boner away, or join the ranks of those you most closely resemble – the nazis.
@84
Oh no! The Nazi lover thinks I’m a blowhard! At least I’m not in bed with the new Hitler youth.
Maybe you’re content to let the nazis worm their way into power and get on back to gassing us, but I’m not. I’m apparently not alone either – hence the whole “masses of ski-mask wearing activists attacking nazis at their events” phenomenon.
I hope for your sake we win – Quislings like you never end up getting the happy ending you think you will.
#86
“Nazi lover” “in bed with Hitler youth” etc etc. Dishonest shit confirmed.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a glass of water is with a good guy with a glass of water. Why didn’t all the other patrons with glasses of water stop the bad guy with the glass of water by throwing their glasses of water at the bad guy with the glass of water?
@87
Defending nazis is defending nazis is defending nazis. I hope they keep your stalwart defense of their rights in mind when they start lining people up for the camps.
@ jpam2708, everywhere
@90
Whoops, sorry for the accidental post. It was just a string of insults anyway. I’ll stick with my original insult. It covers everything jpam2708 said or is likely to say.
I was going to make a comment about how hypocrite righties interpret a random punch in the street as uncharitably as the left’s ploy to end all freedom and go as far as claiming moral equivalency between a punch-throwing leftist and Mao’s China, yet jump to provide intellectual cover and demand sympathy for a mentally disturbed murderer who they think possibly comes from their “base”.
Seeing the ignorant nonsense Porivil Sorrens has spouted in this thread tells me again that the left has its fair share of fools (and blowhard fools, at that).
spoing
Porivil Sorrens
I’m sorry, but you really have a shaky grasp on German history.
Yes, for parts they fucking did. Do you seriously believe that “the Nazis” were the top 5000 dudes who had some sort of repercussions? The judges, the teachers, the clerks, the military guys, most of them got to go on in Western Germany. We had fucking presidents, chancellors and ministers with a Nazi past.
Ever heard of a “Persilschein”? Washes off your Nazi past and leaves you totally in the white…
@92 #raaak:
There’s a conspiracy theory on the Israeli right wing that left leaning non Israelis disseminate antisemitism as a weapon, endorsed and funded by George Soros (because of course he does). In other words, while yes, true, of course there are fanatic zealots on the left too (and I’ve just recently learned the center in the prefrontal cortex responsible for faith is the same as the one responsible for doubt), never take for granted that a Nazi hater is left leaning.
The US embassy could move to Jerusalem because ardent Orthodox Jews from America (“disillusioned” with separation of church and state being a thing) in cohorts with resettlers from Russia have started to move to contested territories way before that, stirring up life for Israelis who were born and bred. You know, people who operate the joint Palestinian-Israeli hotline for people to call anonymously when they’re fed up with the constant fighting.
People like Netanyahu come and stay in power because he sells the idea that we non Jewish people still wish to round up and kill them and the only way to act is through violence. That resonated well with Russian Jews who have only known pogroms, so there’s no blame there. I love to knock down Neo Marxists by pointing out the actually racist policies of East Germans against African guest workers (it was basically Jim Crow) and the “modernized” pogroms of the USSR and Poland that led to aaliyah in the ’60s.
That being said… there’s still a massive lack on the right. Isolationist conservatives created the circumstances for Hitler and even today, the bulk of opposition to the alt left and right in actions, not just in words, come from the left. I don’t kid myself that a generic GOP voter, laser focused on personal tax benefits will look past trampling on human rights which will then be shrugged of with “lack of personal responsibility”. My all time favorite is crying socialism and nanny state, when part of the wages goes to support families through what men make, despite there being no economic sense for a company doing the opposite of what she actually wants, paying less as possible. From the second a company acts as a humanist, taking the needs of non-owners into consideration, that’s socialism.
So, I have no personal dislike toward you, but until the right doesn’t step up to the plate and demands respect for every fallen soldier and civilian who died protecting freedom, respect earned will have to wait.
@Holms #50
It’s not “horrible” people. It’s people advocating violence against you.
Again, I’m not in an obvious target group. Not yet. I don’t get to tell people who are how to respond to existential threats they are facing.
@jpam2708 #54
Jesus fucking Christ.
Again this bullshit argument?
Really you can’t see the difference?
Ideologies that advocate violence against people because of what they are rather than what they do pose an existential threat to the safety of these people.
THERE IS NOTHING THESE PEOPLE CAN DO TO AVOID BEING TARGETED.
Since these ideologies do directly cause violence, contrasting them is a matter of immediate self-defense, which means that violence is on the table as an answer.
Want to avoid being targeted? STOP LOUDLY SUPPORTING YOUR IDEOLOGY.
This is the difference.
Nazis can still be part of society as I see it, and can be safe, as long as they keep their hatred for themselves.
COMPLIANCE AND SAFETY CAN BE OBTAINED BY CHANGING BEHAVIOR.
This is not arbitrary: this is the very minimum to ensure everyone else feels safe.
In a society as Nazis see it, many, many people would never be compliant no matter what they DO, they could never change their behaviour in such a way that they would feel safe, because the society inherently does not want them.
@94
Must’ve only left the real shit Nazis with no ability to actually bring Germany back to invading neighboring countries and setting up death camps, then.
I’ll count that as a win for violence against Nazis.
Yeah, I mean, why give a shit about the people who were never rehabilitated because the same Nazi judges were still in power, or those who were locked up again by the same Nazi judges.
Seriously, when corrected on a historical fact, maybe don’t double down.
@98
“I think its a victory that the camps were shut down and Germany stopped invading its neighbors” doesn’t preclude giving a shit about the people hurt by the lingering vestiges of Nazi leadership. Caring about shit isn’t a zero sum game.
@F.O. #96:
I’m not entirely sure as to who you do disservice aside for yourself. At the time America faced the Nazis, they followed the old Anglo Saxon model where in contrast with the Nazis, they shunned people they deemed undesirable. The Deep South was horrible, no mistake about that, but a smudge less bad. The Nazis believed Taigetos to be an effective child policy, so way before industrialized killings of minorities in wars, they started to rid their oh so perfect nation from “imperfections”. I’ve read just recently that even Dr. Asperger has only researched the autism spectrum to screen for “defective Aryans” and quite accordingly he sent them to their deaths.
In other words, you expect a crocodile to not bite you. Wearing a swastika is a conscious choice, it says, “I’m way more worth than anybody else and they shall die”. Totalitarian ideas are picked up by psychopaths, there’s no way of a peaceful coexistence. That does not equal to hunting them, of course. What they want is attention until they get enough and rob everyone else of it.
You’ve said you don’t belong to the target group, except yes, you do. Anybody not starstruck by being lead by mass murderers is an enemy to them. I won’t lie, we got effing lucky the DNA was discovered after they came to power, and lost it, otherwise they would have introduced a whole new level of horrible human experimentation.
From every depiction where they aren’t actual Nazis, the one most closest is the Borg Collective. Befittingly, the Dominion is like the Soviets. No sane person would join them either.
The global crisis of ’29-33 did not even end when Hitler managed to convince the Germans, and some still believe that, that there are no economic downturns, but a communist-Freemason-Jewish cabal and having the world rid of them we always live in prosperity.
This is where many conservatives are wrong, and some liberals too. This isn’t left or right, ecologic or wasteful, it’s about the perception of one’s existence. Totalitarians like the Nazis and communists took a page from the church’s book on selling ready made life plans, to cancel out uncertainty in life. Violence is the symptom, not the cause. Neo Nazis peddle the idea that primordial instinctive actions are how humans should exist toward their enemies. Ever since Bush the older was a VP under Reagan, they came up with a plan to transform democratic institutions into legacy based ones, something the Clintons are equally guilty of. This is the process that steered the Tea Party into the fold, and why quite naturally the alt right took over, they hijacked an existing narrative. Examples on the left: Maduro, Chávez, Fico.
Why should the alt right give up anything when in lack of a rivaling superpower (and with financing from Moscow) they took over the future of conservatism. Especially in a country where white people fled cities, driven by a hubris of superiority. People like Lahren are the norm, not the outlier.
There is an irony that had not the Nazis taken power in Germany and invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland, causing the Western democracies to eventually go to war with them and create an anti-Nazi mythos, the Western democracies might have continued along with eugenics and explicitly racialist policies for far longer than they did. The US, UK, Scandinavia, and other nations instituted eugenicist policies — they sterilized people with disabilities and experimented on minorities, for example, even after WWII.
@psychomath #101: As did communists too, but, again, there was a difference. Western democracies (though barring people from voting isn’t what I’d call a democracy, looking at you, Jim Crow) have viewed sexual and racial minorities as people to be ostracized, not killed.
Germany has derived herself from decades of absolutism and isolation and while they did gave us great thinkers, without the Enlightenment, it was more sonatas and librettos, not steam machines. You can see it on the collusion of former West German Neo Nazis with former East German communists that they still have the pre-WWII hatred for minorities and look forward to destroying them. The rise of totalitarianism was inevitable.
One has to be familiar with the fact, that the British colonial empire lasted as long as she did because divide and conquer and colony administrations never being far from each other. In contrast, Germany scraped up the leftovers and they were too distant from each other. Where Westerners could look down on non-White people without the urge of exterminating them, i.e. working from the outside toward within, the Germans did the opposite. Nobody could hold the candle to their uniqueness in their own belief, thus why genocide was logical.
What WWII brought about was the realization that economic reforms back home where put on hold to keep the empire alive, and that self focus has brought on decolonization. You can see it today that supporters of lost empires aren’t ones who profited from it, they still have businesses, rather people who lose low education jobs to immigrants.
unclefrogy @59
Despite all the lip service given it, your country isn’t governed by the rule of law and your justice system appears to be irreparably broken. Why would people be expected to trust the courts when the courts fuck people over every single day?
#89 Porovil
“Defending nazis is defending nazis is defending nazis.”
===> “I am incapable of complex thinking.”
Yob @ 75
I dunno, a cop? Needs more information.
@104
Pretending that there’s any nuance to defending the civil rights of genocidal nazis is classic Quisling talk.
Somehow, I doubt they’ll thank you for it when they have you up against the wall.
@unclefrogy #59:
To follow up Tabby, I’d mention something else too. You should look up court cases during the Weimar Republic Era. Right out of the gate, I commend your socialization to a mostly democratic system, which is also why you may erroneously believe Nazis did not game the system.
There’s one fatal flaw in that, you do not account for what happened Reagan. While most remember him as a president who deescalated the Cold War, he was of course also tied to off the book operations, carried out by far right sympathizers. They were designated as non state players to carry out missions the US couldn’t, among them dissemination of far right propaganda, that took off massively after the Zundel Trial. A mention should go to misusing the English libel law, when Irving put the Holocaust on trial. If you cared deeper, you’d know that after Zundel was extradited to Germany, his legal team was comprised of Neo Nazis.
Dylan Roof idolized the fascist American mercenaries who fought in Rhodesia. His generation and plenty like him are not the joke Nazis from the Blues Brothers. Ironically as much they claim to despise globalization, they operate on a global scale.
I know it sucks to hear that, but the civil rights laws were thought to be temporary to appease America’s racial and sexual minorities so they don’t get tempted by commies. It’s naive to think there’s no connection between gerrymandering, the closure of voting places, the misuse of arrests and convictions for voter disenfranchisement in nonviolent crimes, where white offenders rarely get arraigned and convicted, to the peddling of the American Dream.
There was a relative small window for 2 decades after the war where the world needed loans and products from countries unaffected by the war, which powered the economy. Once they regained footing, the dream of picket fences where a woman doesn’t need to work, because a man’s salary covers a family of five started to burst. Ever since, administrations come and go and everybody wants to win on the platform that it returns. Nazis offer the explanation that a global conspiracy took away jobs. For the first in a very long time, in industries that are slower to reform, like mining, white people lose jobs in droves. They become susceptible to the idea that the change in economy isn’t because they’re no longer needed, but diversity and women. The wolf was let in a long time ago, and we only talk about its sharpest teeth.
#96 F.O.
I don’t think we are likely to reach any agreement, after reading that. Your position is that support of – or promises to themselves engage in – violence against a certain race (or another demographic of birth) voids their personal autonomy over their own bodies, and possibly also their right to protection under the law, reasoning that doing so is pre-emptive self defense. In doing so, you are becoming more like them, because you both follow the same basic logic. You are only quibbling over a relative side issue: the specific grounds under which people lose that right.
He who fights monsters etc. etc..
#106
Hush now, adults are talking.
I think we should all stop for a moment and ask ourselves, “what would John Brown do?”
Brown v. Board is 60 years old and schools are still segregated. Rule of Law is a fable.
@ Holms, #108
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I never claimed to be anything else. What irks me is that you seem to think your finger-wagging constitutes a principled, moral stance, but from where I sit your hands are no less bloody than mine. That I might be willing to occasionally engage in direct violence, rather than being content to allow state and corporation to do what they will in my name, doesn’t change the nature of the sea we’re swimming in. There’s no water here; only blood.
What do we know about Nazis? Pretty much everything. We know what Nazis are about- the extermination of ‘untermenschen,’ meaning essentially everybody but themselves and the slaves that they’ll work to death. They’ll employ euphemisms when it suits their needs, but among their own they tend not to be so circumspect. We know they mean it. We know there’s a linear progression that starts with a few Nazis making their nasty little speeches and ends with a whole lot of people dead. Lastly, we know Nazis are made, not born, and (in the first generation of empowered Nazis) their ranks consist of people who have voluntarily chosen to become Nazis.
Why is it wrong to attempt to interrupt, using a full spectrum of effective tactics (while still maintaining some lines which may never be crossed for any reason), the ascent of Nazis before we get to the ‘whole lot of people dead’ part?
I mean, I look at it this way:
Every time we have an election, I’m told I must vote for the lesser evil to keep the greater evil from winning. Fine; I can buy that logic. I’ll vote for the person who will murder fewer people. That’s why I voted straight-ticket Democrat in the 2016 election. I briefly considered not doing early on in early 2016, and upon mentioning as much here I was promptly torn a new asshole. The arguments were convincing, so I voted Clinton (and everyone else with a D after their names). I don’t regret it, but I won’t claim it wasn’t an evil act, either.
But now we have posters telling us that we mustn’t commit ever a lesser evil, even to prevent a greater evil. Why is it ok to hire a mass murderer to kill in our name, but beyond the pale to do violence to a Nazi (until they’ve killed a few million people)?
@Holms #108: the only difference between my position and yours is that I consider them an immediate threat, while you are happy to sacrifice the vulnerable people that they kill.
@vucodlak @#111:
I also don’t form a claim to speak on the behalf of others, so what I’m saying is my opinion based on facts available plus life experience. At the beginning I thought I’d only need talk about once why and how I chose my nick. In essence, I’m not a born Westerner, living together with people of different ethnicities with the entitled right of equal opinion and its equally valid option to exercise it is something I needed myself be eased to. There are still some learning curves, like the moral quandary on the ACLU defending Unite the Right to protest where they wish without police protection.
I lived decades of my life under Roman law, which, until recently, propagated that power of violence is sole prerogative of the state. Take note that it hasn’t changed despite there being a police state. I have seen friends, colleagues and acquaintances transform during and after the financial crisis. It’s almost as if I lived in the Twilight Zone, that particular episode where everyone wants to change the face only to reveal the others have pig faces.
Enlightenment was a pretty big deal, but it wasn’t universal. Empires without colonies feared their own peasantry so they closed themselves in, and that progression led to weak traditions in democracy. Imagine as if it were a fast food franchise which plateaus and decides to minimize operations. Today, my old home is a direct authoritarian democracy, the kind I had supported as a teenager.
What you’re saying is based on conditions before life turns to sh*t and people vote them into power. Unfortunately we’re past that. Punch a Nazi, and you punch the hero of the destitute. I have to reiterate again, especially for gun nuts, protections in a society are not unlike herd immunity. You can have your gun, you can have your fists, once the virus took hold, you’re the disease.
Before Robert Faurisson (who was defended by Noam Chomsky, a decision I’d never forgive him for), intellectuals did not take stand on the side of Nazis. Neo Nazis were unsuccessful in catching attention because they went straight for full blown Nazism and did not lie about wanting and actually killing people.
Which is also why it’s baffling that nobody cares about the Future of Europe conference. Almost a decade ago Aayan Hirsi Ali got into hot water for praising Ahmedinijad’s conference on the Holocaust on the alleged account that she did not know it was a Holocaust denier sausage fest. I’m not gonna lie, I loathe Bannon and Milo but I do follow in the news what they’re doing and where. Their speaking in a country that openly demonstrates a wish to create a purely white and Christian society should have sounded the alarm bells. It’s a volatile mixture with the clear goal of destabilizing the EU from within.
So, one could ask, why should I care? Bannon got richer on manipulating people with the Brexit and the 2016 elections. Should they succeed in imploding the EU, the world’s third biggest market and fifth economic power goes along with it. That in turn makes America more vulnerable and opens the floodgates to a Trump dynasty in the White House.
The one thing you neglected to mention about Nazis can be summed up with the historical picture when they occupied Luxembourg. They practically lifted the pike and let them in because by that time, after Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, Germans became the all knowing and all loving daddy.
Sociopaths, the actual ones, not the literary depictions have only feelings for themselves and are quite perceptive to pain. Since they physically lack compassion, killing Untermenschen always comes after killing what makes us uniquely human, some call it a soul.
I’d really like to know too. My gut reaction is this:
Punching a Nazi is completely ineffective as a means of stopping that particular Nazi, or other Nazis, from harming people, via a standard self-defense analysis. This should be obvious. We’re not killing or incapacitating the Nazi, and so we’re not stopping the Nazi from doing harm.
I assume no one here is going down the train of thought where vigilantes should kill Nazis.
It seems that some people here are saying that we should throw Nazis in jail, where we identify Nazis by their own professed words.
Maybe punching a Nazi is effective in a hypothetical context where enough people punch Nazis to create a deterrence effect, whereby Nazis fear for their physical safety if they say Nazi stuff. I’m strongly tempted to say that this sort of vigilante tactic at large is not a good idea. I fear the rule of law would suffer too much, and it wouldn’t be worth it. I also think that it wouldn’t create enough of a deterrence effect to matter with the current breakdown of political leanings of the American population.
Maybe punching a Nazi is effective political speech. Instead of saying “Nazis are evil”, punching a Nazi could communicate the same idea to the audience. I don’t think that there’s any additional value w.r.t. the political speech interpretation.
Maybe punching a Nazi and getting it broadcasted to a large audience is an effective recruiting tactic to get more anti-Nazis involved in politics. I don’t think this is true, but I’m mentioning it.
I’m really struggling to see any good that is accomplishing by individuals punching Nazis. I won’t condemn them, and I don’t know what I would do if I was on the jury in the assault-and-battery case – I might jury nullify – I don’t know. Except for the plan that involves changing the law to jail Nazis, I don’t know offhand how else one might argue punching a Nazi does any good. I’m trying to think of all of the ways that punching a Nazi would do good, and that’s all I can think of.
Worse, I think I have to be against an official policy of jailing people who say Nazi stuff, because of my usual commitment to free speech, in large part because I fear that such a power would be perverted by those in power and misused more than it would be used for good.
Then there’s the very real concern of possible political and social backlash by punching Nazis. It’s an unfortunate reality where there would exist anyone who would be offended by someone else punching a Nazi, but I live in the realpolitik world where some people might be allies in our fight who might also be off-put by seeing our side punch Nazis.
As LykeX wrote in the quote in this post, I don’t know what to do, and I’d really like to know what to do to be effective at combating Nazism, because while I have some ideas, I don’t like the odds of success of my ideas.
I realize I wasn’t entirely clear. Let me say it like this: I’m not opposed to punching Nazis, but I’d like it explained to me how punching Nazis actually helps those who would be hurt by Nazis. I’m also concerned that it might be counterproductive realpolitik.
I think Loft in 80 and vucodlak in 83 make some good points in the direction of justifying punching Nazis.
PS:
Quoting Porivil Sorrens
I think this sort of sentiment is actually really scary. This is the sort of sentiment that led to the United States to torture people in Gitmo, because they were viewed as less-than-human, with no civil rights, etc. There needs to be nuance. Even if we were in a shooting war with Nazis like World War 2, the police shouldn’t shoot someone on the mere accusation that someone is a Nazi. There needs to be some kind of due process. Obviously so. Patently so. What you wrote is really, really scary.
This has obvious parallels to typical witchcraft prosecutions as well, i.e. the Salem witch trials. Many other witch trials are instigated not based on honest beliefs that the person is a witch, but instead for other reasons, like revenge, taking of land, etc.
You know who said that violence would stop Nazis? Adolf Hitler. He said:
Furthermore, since the end of World War II, when Nazis of various stripes have attempted to take over public spaces — as they did with the punk scene back in the late ’70s — the only tactic which has been successful at removing them has been violence. If they get shouted down, they just return with more backup the next time. But hey, it’s not like we should pattern our response after things which actually work, let’s keep wagging our fingers at them as they gain more influence, as the nitwit centrists on this thread want to do. I’m sure that will start taking effect any day now.
@EnlightenmentLiberal, #116:
You are seriously equating Gitmo, where people were yanked at random off the street en masse in a foreign country regardless of identity and tortured for years, and were not even released when we admitted that we actually had no reason to suspect them, with fighting against people who by their own admission support killing people based on their heredity. You see no difference whatsoever between violence against people who have chosen to make themselves a problem and apparently can’t be stopped any other way, and violence against people selected at random. You are a fool. You are, on behalf of the Nazis and white nationalists, a useful idiot.
Reading this thread and watching all the handwringing on the part of self-proclaimed Liberals on behalf of Nazis has certainly been an eye-opener, or at least it would have been if the 2016 election hadn’t demonstrated that self-proclaimed Liberals are perfectly happy to support right-wing policy. People like you side with the status quo and insist that the victims shut up and have their throats slit without any trouble. “Quisling” is not, perhaps, an accurate title for you, because unlike Quisling you’re willing to trade your morality in for nothing at all — at least Quisling got nominal control over his country for betraying humanity.
ThreeArrows (youtube) recently did a video in response to Jordan Peterson’s (of all people) characterization of the Nazis. I really find it enlightening. So go watch that video.
As this thread shows, a lot of people are under the illusion that Nazis are some kind of unfathomable evil that can’t be really made sense of rationally. Peterson is one of this people. For example, Peterson goes as far as comparing Hitler to Cain.
While certainly amusing, this form of fantastical thinking about Nazism is actually detrimental to the cause of freedom and social justice because it prevents cool-headed rational analysis. Nazis were not this mystical evil people from another planet. They were very mundane charlatans and con artists defrauding the people (and later murdering them) to stay in power. The whole Nazi rule was a for-profit scheme for those in power. By demonizing a minority, they managed to create a slave labor force which greatly profited the leaders and the elite in power.
Only rule of law, an enlightened populace, and strong civil society protect a society against Nazism, just as they protect against other forms of authoritarianism.
Stop thinking of Nazis as characters in “Return to Castle Wolfenstein”!
The Vicar @117: Well, since you’re obviously not one of us “handwringing” liberals, I take it you’ll be following Hitler’s advice. Grab a baseball bat, go out and beat some Nazis to death. Or maybe you’re just another bold internet commenter who approves of other people doing the dirty work.
raaak
How old are you?
To The Vicar
No. I am not doing any such equivocation. In my post, I included a quote, and I was specifically responding to that quote, and I was not responded to some other point that you imagined. The quote that I provided clearly implied that Nazis should have zero civil rights, and that includes no sort of due process, trial, etc., which entails that police can just shoot Nazis in the street. That’s obviously wrong. There should be some nuance regarding the civil rights of Nazis. I encourage you to learn some patience and reading skills.
@raaak #118:
Your penultimate paragraph is the only one that makes sense to me in that reply. That only does because you include the rule of law an an enlightened society as valid prerequisites.
Unfortunately it also shows in lack thereof you don’t seem to analyze why people do what they do. Mundane charlatans? Not the ones in power on the higher echelons. I have to reach back to my previous statement of steam engines versus librettos, a metaphor for progress and lack thereof. Nazis coming into power was a cumulation of centuries of isolation and rejection of outside norms.
You’re right, it’s not mystical, but largely science. People like Streicher, Goebbels and Hitler modeled their propaganda after philosophers like Gustave LeBon, who published books on group behavior and mass psychology. You cannot bring Enlightenment to places where requirements are not met. In other words, to match your Wolfenstein example, this is me giving a Civ5 one. Thinkers and philosophers wishing to follow Rousseau et al have been indexed, banned or executed. It was an extension of religious infighting (many of the enlightened were Protestant, where opposers were Catholics).
Everything, and I mean everything came decades late. For example, take the potato famine, which helped the Irish populate Australia, New Zealand and America. At the same time, even more progressed people went to California for gold. Meanwhile revolutions went on in Europe. They gave birth to conservatism, liberalism, feminism, anarchy, nationalism and communism. Except for countries which later joined the Axis. They fought for mere independence.
Not for everyone, of course. Most failed and put the blame on their neighbors. If you ever wanted to know how Hitler has roped countries into attacking the Russians after the Vienna Accords, it’s because of 1848’s legacy. A legacy for which people still hate each other. Neo Confederates don’t look so silly now, eh?
Enlightenment brings transformation. No transformation means there was no enlightenment. The place where I grew up in categorically refuses to sign a multinational agreement aimed at protecting women and children, because it’s allegedly not family centric. I genuinely laud you for never having to live somewhere, where the opposite of the norm is the norm.
You have also said it was a for profit scheme. That’s partly true. Until Schacht led finances, that was true. My grandparents were in the army as a supply officer and a nurse when the Germans forced everyone for a long march toward Bavaria. Where sane people would have abandoned economically unsound and time wasting moves like the mass killing of forced workers, the Nazis did exactly that. I’m not saying the war should have been longer, but a mentally sound army would have won 2 or 3 weeks by keeping people alive who are supposed to work for them.
One of the problems with punching Nazis is determining whether the person you are punching is a Nazi. It’s fairly easy to conclude that Richard Spencer is a Nazi, while Tomi Lahren, as far as I know, has not advocated killing groups of people nor has she taken or participated in the kind of actions that Spencer has. If you think that she is equivalent to a Nazi what makes her so?
@121
Nah. Nazis didn’t give my family any mercy or a fair trial when they gassed them, they don’t deserve any mercy from us.
The only right a nazi deserves is the right to be beaten or executed, depending on who’s doling out the punishment.
To Porivil Sorrens
As I wrote to you in two posts above, what happens from a false “that person is a Nazi” accusation? Surely we shouldn’t just shoot people on the mere accusation that someone is a Nazi. Otherwise, assholes could just call the police, and say someone is a Nazi, and use the police as an instrument of murder. Again, very much like historical and modern witch-hunts, and also like the modern phenomenon known as SWATing.
On one perspective, civil rights and due process are not there to protect the guilty. They’re there to protect the innocent.
@125
I’d be perfectly fine with limiting it to people who are demonstrably found to openly identify as a nazi, espouse nazi rhetoric, or belong to nazi groups.
Might lose out on some cryptonazis but you’ll end enough to get the point accross.
To Porivil Sorrens
And where I come from, that is giving some civil rights and due process to (suspected) Nazis. Please stop this very dangerous talk that we should not give Nazis any due process or civil rights at all.
@127
Okay, for the purposes of practicality I’d ammend it to “Open nazis, people who espouse nazi rhetoric, and members of nazi groups should not be given civil rights and should be beaten/executed when found”
If you think that she is equivalent to a Nazi what makes her so?
Same thing that makes throwing water equivalent to landing a face punch, perhaps?
To Porivil Sorrens
Better.
Concerning my post 114 and 115, may I ask for your response? In short, what are the mechanisms by which beating and killing Nazis will help those who would be hurt by Nazis? I just want to be clear. It seems as though you’re endorsing a vigilante approach whereby you endorse and promote people in their individual capacity to kill persons who espouse clearly Nazi rhetoric. This has several obvious mechanisms. Reducing the number of Nazis reduces the opportunity for Nazis to do harm. Reducing their number also makes it unlikely that Nazis will earn political victories. Also, killing many Nazis with vigilante justice like this will create a deterrence effect whereby other Nazis will keep their Nazi beliefs hidden, which will also benefit society.
Again, I just want to make sure that I understand you correctly. Do I accurately understand your position? Is there anything that you would like to amend?
@quill #123: Okay, so, again. Tomi Lahren is the typical American who has probably not met a non-white, non-Christian person before leaving the state for college. In everything she says every non-white person’s problems are always their own goddamn fault, everything is super duper, and liberals are always lying. She’s also pro Trump, and he never revoked calling Nazis good people.
If you openly agree with someone who is calling for Nazi methods, that is sharing the guilt. Lahren’s status would only change if she rebuked anyone who supports totalitarian ideas, but that’s not very likely.
Also, I get it, I’m a white dude. Curling and golf are genuinely my favorite sports. Having said that, if, for the sake of argument, I check my privilege with my coat in a figure of speech, it’s hard not to see how things are connected. Spencer is undesirable because he openly calls for a white America, to be achieved by labor camps, mass deportations or genocide. The thing is, much like in the ’30s, the rest of society likes more financially destitute people in need of taking on menial jobs they don’t want to do.
The things Lahren continues to advocate for is the white illusion. The economical myth, that the emergence of the US happened from within, and not because the rest of the world went into war. Sure, America did too, but as a mostly free country (if you take Japanese occupied unincorporated lands as America). There was never a secondary plan to establish an economy independent from the export production. The second the world rebuilt itself, the wonder faded and died with the end of the Cold War. Putting down women and minorities is but trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Gun independence is mostly about protection from non-white people, where the police should rule them with an iron fist.
That’s racist, and not much better than being a Nazi. Bear in mind, that the swath of Klansmen enjoyed more fighting in the Pacific then to engage the Nazis. Bottom line, she deserves to be reminded in the offline world on the fact, that she doesn’t speak on behalf of all Americans.
@ EnlightenmentLiberal, #114-115
To further clarify my point at #83:
Nazi leaders must be seen as strong, and they must cultivate the idea that the “silent majority” feels the way they do. Punching them, or otherwise showing that they are neither supermen nor secretly beloved by most, is one tactic of many. I don’t think anyone here believes the battle begins or ends with sporadic acts of violence against Nazis, but I firmly believe that an opposition who says ‘violence is completely off the table unless and until Nazis have killed/maimed/tortured some magic number of people’ is one that virtually guarantees Nazis will again rise to positions of power.
And again, I don’t think it’s acceptable to answer just any group you disagree with using violence, but Nazi ideology, and indeed all white-supremacist ideology, is inherently a form of eliminationism. It is violence, in and of itself, regardless of whether they’ve gotten around to building camps again or not. Because they will, if they’re allowed the opportunity.
@ raaak, #118
I don’t see anyone seriously claiming Nazis are evil space aliens or devils from the pits of Hell in this thread. I’ve certainly never forgotten that they’re human beings, and indeed it is because they are human that I loathe them so much. They’re quite capable of understanding that what they do is wrong, but they choose to do it anyway. Until and unless they make different choices, they are the enemies of everyone and everything I hold dear.
Ok, that’s utter nonsense. Authoritarianism is based on “the rule of law” and “strong civil society.” Authoritarians are obsessed with ‘strength and law.’ Compassion, empathy, and mercy are the keys to resisting Nazism and other authoritarians, and somehow I don’t think that’s what you meant by “enlightened.” But if I’m wrong, please do let me know.
@ quill, #123
It’s actually not all that hard, most of the time. However, you never take extreme measures unless you’re certain.
@ Porivil Sorrens, #124
Mercy is never deserved or earned; it must be given freely and without qualification, or it’s not really mercy. And we must always be merciful, or we really do risk becoming just like our enemies.
Mercy isn’t a weakness. Being merciful doesn’t mean laying down and baring our throats to Nazis; it simply means that we don’t cross certain lines, and that we exercise judgement and restraint rather than always striking for maximum damage. It means allowing for the possibilities of repentance, redemption, and rehabilitation.
Even putting aside moral necessity of mercy, it’s also sound tactics. Winning the war against Nazis is as much about winning hearts and minds as it is about fighting.
We also need to strive to create a society where marching in the streets preaching extermination of human beings gets Nazis arrested and tried, and rehabilitated. I’d prefer such a system to what we have now.
@130
I endorse vigilante violence against nazis only as long as the state isn’t willing to do the same. Ideally, there’d be no need for individual citizens to do so because the government would openly recognize and address the threat nazis pose and turn its resources towards eliminating them.
That aside, you’re pretty much on the number.
To vucodlak
Sounds IMO acceptable. I’m pretty sure I’m against Porivil’s plan of spontaneous acts of vigilante killing. However, simply punching the leaders to achieve this sort of political speech effect, such as what you describe, I might lukewarmly endorse it. At least, I won’t condemn it.
@132:
When you talk about a bunch of people as if they have some special political status that makes them eligible for being subjected to blind violence, the next question is “why?” What is so special about these people? Are you afraid of them? Or is it that their ideology is so strong and appealing that violence is the only refuge you find to fight their ideas? What other groups do you think are eligible of “being punched”? Are Stalinists eligible? How about those who believe in Shinto the way in was practiced in the 30’s and 40’s?
Note that you are not defending that guy who got angry in the moment and punched a Nazi because he lost control. We all understand that people can lose control in the heat of the moment. That is not what you and your idiot friend (Porivil) here are advocating.
Right! Because while “rule of law” and “civil society” are code words for racism and authoritarianism in your book, politicians can never turn the holy words compassion and mercy on their heads! Have you ever read a single word these people have been saying? Nazis had a lot of compassion alright – for the white race!
Let’s forget about history (about which you obviously know very little). Why do you think authoritarian-leaning politicians named an anti-immigrant bill “Kate’s law”? Per you, they should have named it: “civil society and rule of law bill”!
@135
Uh, yes? They kinda massacred 17 million people and conquered a singificant chunk of Europe when they got into power. Several branches of my family tree got trimmed by them, so like, no fucking shit I’m afraid of them.
Show me a modern Stalinist movement calling for widespread ethnic cleansing and genocide with an influence in modern politics, and I’ll definitely support getting rid of them too.
Nazis did NOT come to power by calling for genocide. Their “message” was about economics and stuff that ordinary people care about. Even then, they failed to obtain an overwhelming majority and had to ally themselves with other parties to obtain a majority to change the constitution in their favor.
They also did NOT rise to power through street fights. They tried that tactic and failed miserably. I wonder why.
To answer your question, it doesn’t matter that such movements exist or not. You are advocating random acts of violence against people because of the ideas they spouse and you seem to have remained impervious to numerous moral, political, and practical problems and pitfalls others have tried to make you understand in more than a 100 comments. I can’t add anything new here.
@ raaak, #135
No one here has said anything remotely like ‘go attack some people on the off chance that one or more might be a Nazi.’ If violence is to be used, one must be absolutely certain of their target. That’s been made abundantly clear.
I’m sorry, are you seriously asking me why people don’t want Nazis running things? If you are, I’m not sure I or anyone else can help you.
But fine, I’ll play along:
They want to kill me and everybody I care about. They say it over and over, and every time they get a little power they attempt to practice what they preach.
The only people who aren’t afraid of Nazis are fools and Nazis. I may or may not be a fool, but I’m no more a Nazi than I am a tick (of which I’m also afraid).
As I said in my last comment, violence is one part of the overall anti-Nazi strategy. Education and compassion are every bit as vital. But there’s a wide spectrum of things I’m willing to do and/or permit, as necessary, to prevent atrocities large and small. And Nazis have nothing but atrocities to offer.
The KKK comes to mind. Any group that advocates for the extermination of human beings based on innate characteristics or harmless lifestyle choices.
I’ve never even heard of a Stalinist in my country (the US) in my lifetime, but if neo-Stalinists were going around calling for purges and harming those who refused to conform, then yes, violence would be a part of the strategy for dealing with them.
I’m supposed to be defending people with poor impulse control and a tendency to lash out violently (according to you; I know nothing about the puncher or their reasons) now? I thought I was supposed to be for rational, well thought out actions. I was under the impression that you wanted reason, not *clutches pearls* emotion reactions.
You find me a fascist or racist politician who doesn’t go on and on about “law and order” and I might consider revising my statement.
Here I think I begin to understand your problem. See, there’s a difference between using a word, and taking an action.
You know how the Republicans say they have compassion for the poor, then do everything in their power to make the lives of the poor worse? Now, the charitable interpretation would be that Republicans don’t understand what compassion means. The actual explanation is that they’re lying sacks of shit who don’t understand what compassion means, but are willing to use the term to accomplish their goals.
Compassion is an action. I’m not impressed by people who only talk about compassion. They have to actually demonstrate compassion for it to mean anything. So yes, a politician may talk about compassion, but still do terrible things. That doesn’t mean that they’re really compassionate, it just means that they’re a liar.
Nazis have no concept of compassion or mercy. That’s what makes them such abominable fucking schmucks, and why they’re so intolerably dangerous. But hey, they loved their laws!
Because villains rarely wear black hats and twirl their mustaches? They’d much rather cloak themselves in the authority and legitimacy afforded to them by acting as agents of civic order, so that gullible saps like you will eat it up and sing starry-eyed paeans to the high-and-holy Purity of Law.
I mean seriously, referencing a law written and passed with evil intent is a huge own-goal. Laws are tools, and in the hands of evil people they will be used for evil purposes. That’s my whole fucking point. You cannot turn actual compassion to evil. You can drag the word through the muck, but acts speak for themselves, and the consistent performance of such acts will bind a civilization together in a way that no system of laws ever could.
I think the same way! Except that my line that I will not cross is someone else’s bodily autonomy.
As for the rest of the post, I have already addressed it. You are making the same old argument, that someone’s adulation of prior violence – and/or threats to do the same themselves – amounts to a proximate threat akin to a guy cocking his fist to take a swing at you, and should be reacted to similarly, i.e. beating him up. But this is all just hyperbolic nonsense. Declaring that mouthing off about jews and bemoaning that Hitler failed to wipe them out is the same thing as a guy going around physically attacking jews is just idiotic. You may as well be saying that dogs are the same thing as cats, or that blue is the same thing as green, for all the sense that makes. ‘Related’ is not ‘identical.’
This is an intentional misrepresentation of my position. I’m not interested in dishonest shits.
Not a single person in this thread has stated that we do nothing in opposition to nazis. At least, not that I have seen; if I am wrong on that, please point out the comment in which you saw this. Or are have you simply forgotten that there are options in between ‘do nothing’ and ‘assault’?
But after reading your last paragraph in particular to EL, I see you too are not interested in arguing in good faith.
#129 Kip
I too would stop short of calling her a nazi; this converstation is more a response to PZ’s stated difficulty in justifying A but not B with a rationale that is internally consistent. My solution to this was to suggest an apparently revolutionary new idea: don’t attack people. Zany, but there it is.
To repeat and then expand slightly on one thing I said above:
#129 Kip
I too would stop short of calling her a nazi; this converstation is more a response to PZ’s stated difficulty in justifying A but not B with a rationale that is internally consistent. My solution to this was to suggest an apparently revolutionary new idea: don’t attack people. Zany, but there it is. However, for some reason, people have consistently interpreted ‘don’t attack’ as ‘don’t do a fucking thing against nazis at all, maybe even welcome them’. I just… can’t even begin to discuss something with people that so badly misunderstand what they read.
@138:
You are talking about “violence as strategy”. Care to enlighten us about what that strategy entails? Do I need to explain to you that as a tactic, punching people is a terrible tactic that will eventually land you in prison regardless of everything else? And as a strategy, well, I don’t even know what that means!
And forgive me for not understanding this whole “compassion is action” philosophy of yours. You are showing how a 1984-style doublespeak is done, except you are not doing it nearly as good. Compassion means violence… and war is peace, I suppose.
Besides, I really don’t see why you create these binaries. I can only tell you that they only exist in your own mind. Compassion is not the opposite of the rule of law. Mercy does not prevent having a civil society. I suspect if I had written the right way to protect the society against Nazism is by having cats, you would still object to that using the same arguments.
Please think about what you really believe in before starting a pointless debate with someone.
raaak
How old are you?
I am 63.
@Vucodlak:
Sounds a lot to me like Florida’s “stand your ground” law. When an actual threat to physical safety is present, one need not wait for the threatening person to manifest violence first.
Ugh. I find that too pessimistic. I’ll not punch any Nazis, thank you, and I will continue to condemn violence that I do not perceive to be self-defense. I understand the impulse, I’m sympathetic to the reasoning, but I can’t go there.
@Enlightenment Liberal:
I find it interesting that you wouldn’t condemn this and that you’re willing to consider a lukewarm endorsement when you don’t seem willing (IIRC) to consider Canadian-style criminalization of hate speech. While criminalization can go to far, and one might reasonably worry about a slippery slope, private persons punching Nazis can go to far as well, and I’m far more worried a slippery slope of seemingly random violence than I am about the current state of Canada’s criminalization of hate speech.
I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything, just that it strikes me as … odd.
To Crip Dyke
I think I’ve always been in favor of civil disobedience. I consider punching a Nazi as a form of civil disobedience. But, as I’m sure you know, civil disobedience generally entails accepting that the act is illegal, and accepting your punishment from the courts.
Finally, as I said up-thread, I don’t know what I would do on a jury for a battery case of punching a Nazi. I might jury nullify. I don’t know.
I don’t think this is inconsistent with my beliefs that 1- hate speech laws are generally ineffective and 2- hate speech laws are more frequently misused to harm minorities compared to how often they are “correctly” applied. Is it inconsistent? I think they’re separate questions – concern about a particular governmental power, vs supporting some acts of battery in the context of civil disobedience.
To Crip Dyke
I should add, I share some of your concern about the slippery slope nature of punching a Nazi. I’m pretty sure I mentioned else-thread the rule of law problems associated with this sort of approach. However, I think that in the context of civil disobedience, the rule of law concern is addressed, and I don’t think that there is a slippery slope problem.
If someone feels so strongly to break the law to do a sit-in, or punch someone, well they can, physically, and the courts will handle them, and if the cause is particularly righteous, like punching a Nazi or protesting racial segregation, I could even applaud it.
I don’t have any real moral concerns about punching someone who clearly says Nazi stuff. I think my primary concern is the possibility that this approach will hurt us in the court of public opinion. Others here have argued that it will help us in the court of public opinion – I don’t know. I should obviously – we should not take actions that are counterproductive to our goals. Above all else, I try to think of myself as the ultimate pragmatist in this regard. It just so happens that I think holding to strong principles is the pragmatic course of action in many many situations. Most people just don’t properly appreciate IMAO the damage that might be done to rule of law for short term gains, and my commitment to my principles is often based on concern for the rule of law.
Yeah, that’s not how civil disobedience works.
What you and your friends in this thread are talking about is more in line with street gangs turf wars. There is nothing new or interesting about it. It has been tried time and again in history. Labeling it as “punching Nazis” doesn’t make it suddenly a novel addition to human thought. Even actual Nazis have tried this tactic. It is called Beer Hall Putsch. It didn’t last long. Cops came and ended their little revolution, then threw them in jail.
Punching people as a political statement is guaranteed to lead to jail in due time. That is ignoring all the moral problems which none of you have addressed in the slightest.
@raaak #141:
I tend to lose my sh*t when people start to appropriate things. 1984, really? I can take it that all of you ignore intake from people who actually lived in dictatorships, but there’s a limit. You are as far as making comparisons to doublespeak than I am from becoming eligible for taking a trip to Titan.
Even at its lowest, during the Nixon administration, when illegal surveillance was expanded to the counterculture (aka everyone else who’s white, but disagrees) and America resembled a police state, it was a system from the top down. Counterculture was hunted and persecuted, but not executed.
Radios and TVs weren’t jammed, there were legal options to gain access to differing opinions on paper, without condemning yourself and your offspring to being marginalized for decades.
I learned to read newspapers from the last page, because it was an open secret, the censored and controlled media lies and obfuscates. The less desperate have even deduced, sporadic and selected Western reports are also misleading. It’s not a surprise Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon gets invited to talk on the future of white Europe if you know they talk to people already accustomed meeting only those who the powers that be choose to speak on the behalf of foreigners. The same thing happened with Angela Davis when she toured Eastern Europe.
I’m less concerned for the Anglosphere, and not because of Enlightenment. Australian treatment of Aboriginals and refugees is miserable. It’s because having a common language means ideas confront each other way more freely. Try one that doesn’t belong to any major language family. Now that’s literal doublespeak, you can translate and interpret any which way you wish. You can also trap people without a single gunshot so long you convince them,nobody’s culture can mingle with yours. This is also why authoritarianism flourishes.
Actual dictatorships never just rely on technology, they need an army of trusted lackeys keeping surveillance on people. One radical from the violent minority of the alt left is waaaaaaaay off from 1984. These things deserve due weight.
To raaak
Please explain to me the moral difference between punching someone who says truly evil things, vs forcibly taking over (for a short period of time) someone’s private business and negatively affecting their income, aka a sit-in ala MLK Jr. If you’re going to die on the hill of “bodily integrity is a line that must never be crossed”, you will find that this is not a value that I share.
I view both as illegal actions. That’s what civil disobedience is – illegal action as a form of protest.
I could go deeper, and say that civil disobedience is frequently disobeying laws you believe to be unjust. For example, sitting-in at a restaurant that is segregated, or whites only, as a black person, is violating a law that is unjust. It’s violating segregation law. I think I’m very sympathetic to an analogous view – that a law that protects Nazis saying Nazi stuff is unjust in some way. I’m not a defender of legal Nazi speech because I like Nazis, or because I think that there’s anything that can be learned from listening to Nazis. I still currently defend free speech only because I don’t think that there’s way to legislate the difference and penalize Nazis while leaving unaffected other undeserving speakers. Still, I’m quite sympathetic to the notion that it should be illegal to say Nazi stuff, to call for the death of whole swathes of people by religion, race, sexual preferences, physical handicaps, etc.
I think I’m prepared to say the following: The reason why there should be a law against punching Nazis is not to protect Nazis. Punching someone for saying Nazi shit seems like a perfectly reasonable and moral reaction. The reason why there should be a law against punching Nazis is to protect people other than Nazis. It’s to protect innocent people, not Nazis. It’s to protect other people from being punched for saying other things which some people find offensive. And I believe that you cannot cut the difference as a matter of law; I believe you cannot create a police system, a criminal justice system, that can adequately get the Nazi speakers but leave alone other speakers who should be protected.
To secondtofirstworld
Nit: I think that today’s police state is quite frightening, and worse than the Nixon era, in terms of police abuse of force, lessening protections of our civil liberties against arbitrary exercises of police power (i.e. lessening warrant requirements), and it’s also ludicrously worse in terms of information gathering. Where is your concern about the CIA / NSA whatever gathering up practically every email and conversation in a massive database? How can you possibly say that the Nixon level infiltration of civil rights groups is worse than today’s police state surveillance? I am beyond words.
This sort of police state surveillance does not protect us from criminals or terrorists. It serves only one purpose – to grant the ability to the government to embarrass, harass, arrest, and persecute targets who are already known to the government through conventional means. This capability of mass surveillance is practically useless at finding new targets, at finding criminals that the government did not know about already. The primary capability of this tool is to enable tyranny and oppression. This capability should not exist. Marcus Ranum covers a lot of this on his blog here, and Richard Stallman also covers a lot of this as well.
#StallmanWasRight
@146
I addressed it, insofar as I reject that there is a moral problem. Removing a nazi from the face of the earth is a morally commendable action, no matter who does it.
@EnlightenmentLiberal
Please try and make your comments shorter.
To state the obvious, the first one causes direct bodily harm. Can lead to death or severe injury of a human being. It is not a trivial thing. It also opens the door to all kinds of horrendous acts that are in the family of bodily harm. A fellow Nazi puncher might argue that raping a Nazi woman is more ethical than punching her, and it would be hard to argue with them based on the kind of ethics you are espousing in this thread.
@raaak, #151:
I would fail this thread So. Hard.
@Enlightenment Liberal #149:
I think there’s a need for an explanation. My lack of concern for big data comes from two simple reasons. One, AI isn’t and probably never will be on a level, where it will correctly discern a metaphor or alliteration from something exactly meaning what it says on the tin. See, where I grew up, we had the 3 D system: Deny, Deescalate and Derive. For example, the East Germans had whole departments on their payroll aimed at confiscating anything Western, even if it’s garbage, whereas we had some. We could tell jokes about the system, the Germans collected the jokesters. The fine balance was met at not rousing the elite too much. This was Derive (from Western import) and Deescalate (using humor). Denial however was very strong. It did have a silver lining, we never got to see crappy movies of A list actors. Then again, compare Ishtar to a Soviet tank battle movie, it still comes off as Oscar material.
These three could only work because approximately every tenth citizen worked for the secret arm of the state. This is because technology changes, human nature doesn’t. Radicals who can only envision existence as one of power, ruled with jackboots, will never rely exclusively on technology. Yes, data collection to this magnitude is scary, but the human apparatus behind is what red tape would be if it’s a person. The DHS was supposedly created to circumvent inter-agency rivalry (but we all know it was done to spy domestically on citizens), and yet, even though workplace and school shooters are very active on social media, they’re rarely caught. In other words the system isn’t used to survey everyone with wanton intention.
Even more important, unlike McCarthy and Hoover, today’s head honchos don’t use human extensions to spy on everyone. Of course I’m not naive they don’t discard using it because they’re humanists… it’s the figurative swamp, they wish to plan long term and since in DC almost everybody is a double crosser, it’s mutually assured destruction to not have such a system in place. Unlike the Russians who just love them some kompromat. The working theory is that a large swath of the fringe who isn’t in it for the money, like Bannon, has some dirt collected on them by Moscow.
The majority of citizens lead boring lives, except when they have sex, it’s when the NSA has it’s own Pornhub. In contrast, in my birth country they invented a machine that opened every(!) letter that was ever posted, and when the agents finished, a closing section resealed it. If this sounds familiar to how prisoner mail is being handled, it’s not a coincidence. In that open air prison, the panem et circenses was provided for us so that we don’t rise up again and they have to fear us less.
This is why I’m plenty mad with today’s society and their unfounded fears of black people. Anyone who ever lived in social housing in an English city or in the projects in America has an idea what a blockhouse is. What is racially less desirable for one is politically unwanted for the other. Thus being mistrusted by cops is also not news, but of course I have to stress, without the racial element, there’s a huge difference between getting beaten by them or shot for having a phone mistaken for a gun. When it comes to the rest of America not lucky enough to leave cities for the suburbs, Big Brother isn’t that active. If there were a central theme, riots would be preempted by surveying social media, but what the powers that be truly wants is shiny new militaristic toys for crowd control.
During the Cold War, lower level KGB agents were more easily smoked out than today. They got made either because they couldn’t shake the koolaid that communism makes everyone equal and they stood out by being too human to non-whites, or the opposite, they couldn’t shake their homegrown superiority and couldn’t copy the local hypocrisy. Similarly, agents in the intelligence community are how they were formed before joining. For decades, the Americans and the British couldn’t recruit authentic agents for deep operations as they were first and foremost men, whose living quarters and clothes were prepared by the help or their wives, something ordinary Russian citizens did not have. The thought never occurred to them, adapting to the environment is key.
So the NSA doesn’t have a digital on sight army for communities where minorities live, even though they are the first to be oppressed brutally in a dictatorship (actual internment camps). It won’t change either because Americans, and I don’t blame them for it, don’t want to do low paying menial jobs. Immigrants are a necessity. This affluence of success is what makes such countries different from ones like Nazi Germany. Even if there had not been a war (though that’s impossible, both of Hitler’s books is based on it) Germans did not invest into home robotics but had clear plans to exterminate undesirables. Only an idiot doesn’t see that accustoming your people to servants only to have them killed leads to workforce shortages. That’s the kind of stupid arrogance that’s to be feared, not the rise of machines, which can’t even understand what potato, potato means.
It’s very much morality-by-gut-reaction stuff, isn’t it. I share the same visceral response to those fuckheads, but we can attempt to be better than such reflexive thinking.
Legally speaking, yes they are both pretty similar: the law says NO. But morally speaking, I draw the line at people’s bodies, as I consider that to be inviolate unless they appear to be about to cross that line themselves. And I mean in the immediate future, not the ridiculous justification of “well lots of people that make threats go on to be violent” crap.
(Note that threatening, intimidating behaviour is itself a wrong, just not one that automatically warrants a physical response.)
To Crip Dyke, and others
This is basically my sentiment too, except I’m not quite so sure of myself on this point (and I’m not saying it’s wrong that you are). I won’t be punching Nazis any time soon, but I cannot quite completely shake the feeling that we’re losing, and so I’m trying to be just a little more open-minded.
Argue this Natsee punchers:
@ Holms, #139
My (relevant) lines are: Never use/permit torture or rape under any circumstances. Do not kill if any better option exists.
I have great respect for bodily autonomy, too, but I don’t buy for an instant that you “will not cross… someone else’s bodily autonomy.” Is there no circumstance in which you would call the police? None in which you, personally, would lay hands on someone who doesn’t want to be touched by you? Absolutely no reason for which you would take another’s life? All of those would entail you infringing upon another person’s bodily autonomy.
I suspect there are times when you would cross that line, because to refuse to do so would be the greater evil. If there aren’t, then we have nothing more to say to each other.
Yes, because when someone tells me they are going to kill me and/or people I care about, I take them at their word unless I have a compelling reason to think they’re either engaging in hyperbole or incapable of making good on their threat. But it’s true that I’m making the same argument that I’ve made many times before. It’s pointless to keep having this argument, as it’s plain you’re never going to understand unless and until it’s too late.
The original Nazis were just mouthing off, until they weren’t. You’re arguing there’s no connection between the sparks and the inferno that follows, which is absolutely ludicrous.
From your #154:
I find it very bizarre that you can look at the thousands of words I and others have written in these comments over the past couple of years and come to the conclusion that we’re arguing “morality-by-gut-reaction.” But then, I suppose I don’t have much room to talk- I find your pacifism utterly alien and incomprehensible.
Interesting thought. I do make a distinction between me personally “crossing someone else’s bodily autonomy” and calling police who may/will cross someone’s bodily autonomy.
Maybe i shouldn’t, but I do.
That’s not to say that i don’t consider calling the cops to be an escalation that requires careful ethical thought in order to justify. But i still consider calling police who may/will cross a boundary to be different than crossing the same boundary myself.
@ raaak, #141
I shouldn’t do your research for you, but here’s a place to start: An article from The Intercept about antifa’s anti-Nazi tactics, which include violence
I’m not, I stress, affiliated in any way with antifa, but I do approve of the work they’re doing.
Also, I did not say violence is the strategy. I said (from my #138):
One. Part. Not the end-all, be-all, not even the most important part. One. Part. Just because it’s necessary to the whole does not make it the whole. If I say “my liver is a vital organ” I am not saying “I am a liver.” I really don’t know how to be any clearer about that. If you want to know about the whole strategy, then do some fucking research.
Oh look, more things I didn’t say and don’t believe. I didn’t “create these binaries.” No, compassion is not the opposite of the rule of law. I never said it was. You said (#118):
One of the first things every fascist dictator does is turn the law against the people. How hard is that to comprehend? Saying the rule of law will save us from fascism is like saying ‘the fact that some firearms have safeties will prevent mass shootings.’ It’s ridiculous. That’s not how these things work.
The only one of those things that might protect against authoritarianism is “an enlightened populace.” And you know what you need to have an enlightened populace? Compassion. Law without compassion is tyranny.
FFS, do you not pay the slightest bit of attention to world events? Strongmen in Turkey, the Phillipines, Venezuela, Russia, and the United States are doing just dandy, and those aren’t exactly anarchies. They’re all nations of laws. Laws that do fuck-all to prevent dictators from rising to power, and fuck-all to remove them.
I’m not claiming compassion is some magic bullet, either, but a compassionate populace is less likely to be swayed by the hateful rhetoric of the Erdogan’s and Duterte’s of the world. A compassionate populace can also elect a compassionate government, which can pass compassionate laws that actually help everyone, instead of just the people in power. Of course, if the people in power are not compassionate people, then they can use to law to do more-or-less whatever they want, which is the situation in the US.
Finally, RE your #156:
Watching your video would require me to mute The Machine in the Garden, and… I just don’t care enough to do that.
@ Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden, # 143
I see it as a kind of guarded optimism, in that I still think it’s not too late to avoid worse bloodshed.
RE your #158:
I too consider calling the police different than, for example, punching someone, but I can’t really interpret either as anything other than an act of violence. Especially in the US. Which is worse is something I can’t really say for sure, but I’d lean toward calling the police being the more violent act.
It’s possible to kill someone with a single punch, of course, but the police don’t need to rely on fists- they’ve got a whole arsenal of more lethal weapons. Then again, a punch that doesn’t incapacitate can easily turn into a brawl… but the police can essentially shoot someone to death with little fear of serious repercussions.
Then there’s the matter of responsibility. I am solely responsible if I punch someone. If I call the cops, I bear a measure of responsibility for anything they do to that person, even if I’m not being held legally responsible, but I have less control over the outcome.
There’s also my opposition to torture and dehumanization to consider. If I call the cops on someone, they’re likely to go to jail, which pretty guarantees that they will be subjected dehumanizing processes, and virtually guarantees that they will be tortured. As I said in another comment, that’s a line I will not cross. If I call the cops, I’m crossing it.
Ultimately, I look at calling the cops in much the same way I would look at pointing a loaded gun at someone (I don’t have a gun, nor do I want one). I’ve never called the police, and I’m not sure that I could.
I like the Intercept in general. But that article was a load of baloney.
OK. It is part of the plan. What are the details of this part? I guess there are none. At its best, Natse punching is cheering for the guy who beat the bully in the schoolyard and at its worst, it is total madness!
And they use people’s compassion and sympathies to get those laws passed. What is your point here? I mentioned rule of law, because unlike compassion, it is measurable. Countries in which rule of law is non-existent or eroded, have more authoritarian regimes. My list was not meant to be exhaustive in any case.
It is not my video. It is Contrapoint’s video. They are a left-leaning youtube channel with very interesting videos. I found them through this very blog. Watch the video later. It is good and to the point and actually shows one of the biggest problems about this debate: it is a useless debate which only serves to waste of time and energy.
@161
I can certainly agree there. Nothing anyone here (or Contra, being a milquetoast pseudoleftist at best) could ever say would sway me away from advocating for punching/killing nazis, so the debate is literally pointless. Protesters will continue attacking them whenever they try to get a platform, and I’ll continue supporting them.
@vucodlak #159:
Fortunately you’re wrong, turning the law on the citizens is the last thing, not the first one. http://ucmc.org.ua/hybrid/ They’re an NGO who monitor how Europe is being presented in the Russian media, and to translate it to American terms, it’s an Infowars wet dream.
If a dictator would abuse the law before they would control the populace, it would rise up. Since such regimes need a constant enemy, their presentation needs to keep pressing that the individual is weak against decadent propaganda, but if they rely on the state and its ever wise and foresighted direction, they will be eternally saved. Every inhuman action the regime makes is just a clever preemptive strike against the creeping evil.
The problem is, you basically ignore how and why fascists and communists gained power. On the one hand, they managed to amplify any bigotry that’s independent of them, and couple that economic turmoil. If it’s economic soaring, convince the populace that fat cats trim the profit so much they rob you. For example, before actually taking over, the Soviets really did redistribute land and really did expand voting rights. Yes, it was for show, but from the view of people not having either for centuries, they were the saviors. Not to mention, it was simply changing faith in god for the faith in party.
On the other hand, you ignore that violence actually feeds them. You disregard that foot soldiers and simple sympathizers of radicals come into supporting these ideas by already having a victim/persecution complex. One might spend one spare thought on why many don’t support Antifa or other radical violence. What you need to kill is attention. Liberals of the 1930s have come under the influence of both Soviet propaganda, but also with domestic issues.
One could call this asymmetric or hybrid warfare, but the far right won’t stop until every nation does not become isolationist, an end toward which they employ every tool globalism has to offer (and so does the far left, hypocrisy ftw). Having a right to free speech doesn’t mean one is also entitled to uninterrupted listening or financial gain. Deny radicals both and they show their true colors. Punch them, and you do them a favor.
@ raaak, #161
That was discussed in the article I linked. You know: the one you dismissed out of hand because it didn’t agree with your conclusion? I’m not giving you anything more. I’ve already told you I’m not doing your research for you.
You can keep saying that, if that’s what it takes to make you believe it. People are quite capable of cold, calculating acts of violence. They do it every day.
Doing evil with the people’s consent requires playing on ignorance and fear, not their compassion. That those people, yourself clearly among them, can persist in believing in the righteousness of the law and themselves while excusing the vilest of sins speaks to humanity’s capacity for self-delusion and cognitive dissonance, not compassion.
When congress creates something like ‘Kate’s Law,’ compassion has no part in any of the process. They slap a name and a face on it so that people can see themselves as potential victims, and so that they can feel good about themselves. ‘It’s justice’ supporters will say, while having no conception of what justice actually is. Hint: punishing (potentially millions of) other people for another person’s crime is pretty fucking far from just. That’s setting aside the question of whether punishment itself is just.
And, of course, the crafters of the bill themselves don’t give a fuck about Kate Steinle. It’s a cynical ploy to garner support.
It’s cowardice and bloodlust that drives support for bills like that. Compassion’s only role is in the opposition.
OFFS. I know whose video it is. The only Youtube videos I watch are music videos, and I’m not going to break that practice for you. If you have an actual argument, then make it.
@vucodlak:
This was always at the core of what made Peterson’s “enforced monogamy” proposal immoral. It’s weird how Peterson fans wanted to keep the focus on how the “punishment” of enforced monogamy for the non-violent wasn’t really a *bad* punishment, as punishments go. No government-compelled marriages. No one-for-one doling out of women to men against their will. Just using social norms and everyday coercions to change the world so that the men who today declare themselves to be unfuckable get fucked.
But even if the punishment is minor, even if the punishment is tiny, the fact remains that it is an immoral system to inflict any punishment at all on the innocent for the violent acts of the guilty.
@ secondtofirstworld, #163
And what you don’t seem to understand is that those people who will “suddenly” align themselves with Nazis when they see a Nazi leader get punched on TV were always Nazi supporters. They were just looking for some flimsy pretext, some little thing to hang a lampshade on so that they can convince themselves that they’re really good people despite supporting multiple genocides. They will find that pretext no matter what the actual opposition does.
You’re right- they do have a persecution complex, and they’re gonna feed that complex no matter what the opposition does. If we stop punching Nazis, they’ll shift their focus to disruptive protests. If we stop disruptive protests, they’ll shift focus to the fact that we say “mean things” about them. If we stop every bit of active resistance, they’ll just go with their basic premise that we’re all “thugs and criminals,” and they will make things up… which they’re already doing to justify the horrible acts they will commit.
Random crimes will be attributed to organized action by despised groups. Politicians will pull lies about those groups out of their asses, and their adoring fans will swallow them whole. And if you’re trying to say that people will see through obvious propagandizing, then I have to ask what planet you’re living on. Because the people who can be fooled always are. Hell, 60 million people voted for Donald Trump based on pure, obvious lies.
This is why I get so angry during these discussions- when you claim that ‘punching Nazis only helps Nazis,’ you’re giving the Nazis exactly what they want. They want you to believe that everything you do to oppose them, especially the most effective tactics, only makes them stronger. Because then you’ll stop.
Ever since the Nazis got run out of Charlottesville they’ve been trying to get big rallies together, and every time they can only get a handful of diehards to show up. Their milquetoast “centrist” allies, the ones who bawl the loudest about violence and silencing only helping the Nazis, are afraid to show their faces in public because they faced actual fucking consequences. Not just the violence- many lost jobs and were outed to their families as despicable Nazis.
They’ll go back underground, same as they always do. And lest you think that somehow makes them more of a threat, keep in mind that they don’t have thousands of heavily armed police standing guard over them in the shadows.
But you’re fine with assault, so I’m not certain that you have all that much respect for bodily autonomy.
Also, you need to stop implying (or misinterpreting?) that I am against self defense. My stance is against attacking people, and I suppose I am also against bad arguments that try to recast attacking as defending. If the other person makes no physical move, there is not a need to defend yourself physically from them. Responding to talk with physical violence is an escalation, and makes you the aggressor and they the victim of your aggression even if their talk was the usual nazi shit.
Drawing a weapon, putting their hands up in a stance, balling fists and approaching (especially if approaching rapidly), revving an engine while you are in the vehicle’s path… these are indications that they are about to escalate to violence, and thus represent a proximate threat which would warrant self defense. But talk alone does not rise to this level.
The ‘compelling reason’ to assume that a person is engaging in hyperbole, is that the overwhelming majority of threatening words turn out to be hyperbole. Otherwise, you are giving yourself permission to assault a wild variety of people, a far larger population than just those that espouse nazi shit.
Are you deliberately being a disengenuous, passive aggressive shit? You are implying that the only reason I disagree with you is that I don’t get your argument, and that if I understood your point I would immediately agree with you. Don’t play that game. You need to bear in mind the possibility that a person can understand your argument and yet disagree with you.
Oh for fuck sake. Disapproval of physically assaulting nazis is not disapproval of all opposition to them.
I find it very bizarre that you can look at the thousands of words I and others have written in these comments over the past couple of years and come to the conclusion that we’re arguing “morality-by-gut-reaction.” But then, I suppose I don’t have much room to talk- I find your pacifism utterly alien and incomprehensible.
That’s because you have consistenyl misunderstood me to be against all opposition against nazis. Again: disapproval of physically assaulting nazis is not disapproval of all opposition to them.
Ugh, always preview. Redoing the last section, with a small addition:
That’s because you have consistently misunderstood me to be against all opposition against nazis, and even self defense. Again: disapproval of physically assaulting nazis is not disapproval of all opposition to them.
@vucodlak #166:
Your argument is that they were always Nazi supporters, mine is that it’s way more complex than that. Let’s take the most interesting example to our eyes, Russia. The 2 decades old Putin regime has been always hybrid, getting support from its far right from the beginning. To compress a century in a nutshell, the Soviets have never followed the mission statement on spreading power to the populace. Ever since Ivan the Great and the conquest of Siberia, they wished to join Europe in devouring others. As they lacked opposing ideals to approach other nations in a friendly manner, Soviet socialism has de facto become a colonizing one. So when you see bald Russians with Nazi imagery, despite Hitler viewing them as extermination worthy Untermenschen, it is but a manifestation on how they view nationalism and superiority.
In other words, what predates the far right and far left is interpretation of superiority. From your point of view, Nazism is a clear cut ideology, where only group has superiority. Where nationalism could never run its course in a meritocratic fashion, it is but a mere tool. There’s an anecdote shortly from after the war about 2 authors sitting on a café balcony looking down on a pro-communist rally, so one asks the other “Isn’t that your barber whom I’ve seen last week rallying for bringing Nazism back? Yes, he is, but you see, as ours is a small country, we can only afford one angry mob”. It’s played for laughs, but is nonetheless true. For a developing nation, a sort of newborn voter, while radical, isn’t committed to one specific radical ideology.
This is why you don’t see swaths of Nazi voters past the war, they didn’t reform (well, they did over time) they just channeled into something equally powerful. Also, this is why you do see former communist soldiers turning into fascistic “prophets”. Radicalism of the left isn’t the answer to that because, as I said before, this isn’t left and right, but people wishing a ready made script steering their lives versus those who don’t. I’m distrusting of far left radicals for the simple reason that they equate capitalism with democracy and thus everyone in a consumer society is a sheep in need of saving. Change that to false idols and you have the Bible.
Nazis, unsurprisingly, lie. They claim to protect and love white people for which they’re loved in return. They also claim only left leaning people hate them, and neither is true. It’s very easy to prove otherwise, but punching takes even less thought.
@ Holms, #167
Where do you get this crap? How much experience with serious violence do you actually have? Genuinely dangerous people are rarely telegraph their intent by “assuming a stance” or “balling fists.” It’s been my experience that, 9 times out of 10, anyone who does those things either A.) doesn’t know how/doesn’t really want to fight and is hoping to intimidate you or B.) learned all they know about fighting from action movies, and isn’t a serious threat without a weapon.
People who mean you real harm (who actually know what they’re doing) aren’t going to be that nice. They’re just going to attack, probably while your guard is down. If they have a weapon, and the will to use it, they’ll attack with it the moment they draw it. They’re not going to tell you they intend to shoot or stab you. They’re just going to do their damnedest to kill you before you even know what’s happening.
The big exception to the “no warning” thing is when someone tells you they’re going to harm you. A certain type of macho asshole loves to brag. No, not everyone who says they’re going to hurt you will try to hurt you, but you get a feeling for who is and who isn’t dangerous after a while.
It’s not my argument that you misunderstand, it’s the reality of threat Nazis represent. Fucking hell- even by your own lax standards Nazis crossed the line into open threat last summer in Charlottesville, but you still insist that must only use our words, that even though they march in the streets with weapons drawn we must wait until… what, exactly? Until Nazis come crashing through our doors, guns blazing, the force of the law fully behind them?
You’ve dismissed some of the visible signs of imminent attack I mentioned, and ignored the others. You’ve dismissed the fact that most threats are hot air. You’re admitting the only criterion you use when deciding who’s rights you get to breach… is a ‘feeling.’ You give yourself carte blanche to attack people when you think it judicious to do so.
What a worthless criterion. Have you anything better than that?
There’s that lie again. I’ve told you multiple times, including in the post you just quoted, that my opposition to assaulting nazis does NOT mean I disapprove of other methods of opposition. I even gave a brief mention of strategies that work better than assaulting them elsewhere in this thread, and longer mentions in the previous time this conversation has popped up. You’ve done this multiple times, thus you’ve gone beyond what I can believe to be a simple misunderstanding in a good-faith effort to understand my position. You are lying against me.
@Holms #171:
You’re, unfortunately, tragically wrong about one thing, threats being hot air, even if mostly, unless you meant threats by anyone ever. There was a lethal attack yesterday, where the perp went through the same things that also creates a Nazi. It doesn’t matter that he was radicalized religiously because the people who radicalized him offered faith as a shield.
What is to be understood here, and vucodlak is not wrong about that, is that Nazis have been violent from the get go without ideology. We’re hard pressed to find actually solitary people as even the biggest loners require belonging to somewhere. For a Nazi to make a threat is akin to make a battle cry, I’m here, hear me roar. Their need to follow through is innate.
In the very same fashion, this repeat violent offender was convinced by fellow inmates that his antisocial behavior is the norm and society suppresses it from becoming something they see as useful. They’re a huge problem, but society being complacent is a bigger one. Ramil Safarov, the Azeri axe murderer who killed people in their sleep (how noble and graceful of a soldier) was not only not put in jail once released back home, but promoted, awarded backpay and given a wife.
One of my biggest beefs with America is giving permanent 18th century answers to 21st century problems. I’m not saying the ideas derived from classical philosophers don’t stand time, rather that changes in group dynamic changes interpretation. I admit of being biased those liberals who recognize American values in reality work until they don’t need be shared aka equal circumstances for people of all creed. This is why Nazis are on the rise. It might not be direct racism per se, but the picket fence dream has been synonymous with being white, and sharing it makes them less comfortable. On the other hand, all the more tribal.
#172
Vucodlak was asking for a compelling reason to not assume all threats from nazis were guaranteed to result in violence. I gave him one: only a minority of threats result in violence. That observation alone means he cannot assume a threat is more likely to be violent than not, let alone the near-guarantee he seems to assume.
@Holms #174:
Again, that’s only true for threats made by every people ever, not a subset of people whose “academic curriculum” comes from the prison yard where they find themselves after an assault/rape/murder conviction. Threats from violent radicals are never hot air.
I’m with you on not responding to that violently from us civilians, but the police is a different issue. We’re talking about criminals here who’re not prone to listen to reason. Charlottesville couldn’t happen in Europe, because based on past experiences, cops and politicians expect the Neo Nazis to provoke violence, be violent, and to have violent anti-protestors. To that end, Neo Nazis always need to march surrounded by cops. It has to be said here they too show restraint as violent radicals never shied away from killing cops either.
One great danger of philosophical debates is to ignore accumulation. Who puts up a swastika or a red star, does not do so to chat about chances of an afternoon precipitation. They know such symbols are tied to mass murder, which is their unspoken way of communicating agreement. Expecting such people to never be violent would be plenty naive.
@Crip Dyke, #10:
That was a typo, I meant to say “I don’t find this inconsistent.” Kind of made my whole post confusing, oops!
#174
Are you under the assumption that most nazi / white supremacy supporters attentind Charlottesvill were ex-cons? They weren’t, nor is Richard Spencer, the guy that started the whole ‘punch nazis’ debate by getting punched.
@Holms #174: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/4/jason-kessler-unite-right-organizer-charged-felony/ https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2018/5/02/charlottesville-white-supremacist-convicted-felony-beating-black-man https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-supremacist-seen-in-vice-documentary-arrested-on-felony-charges/
It would be a disservice to insult our intelligence by assuming they’re upstanding citizens. The definition you’re looking for is not yet convicted or charges not brought forth. Again, symbols of totalitarianism are inseparable from mass murder and people wearing them don’t do so because they saw it in an article in Cosmo about how to lose weight with 12 fabulous cupcakes.
The rule of law states that previous convictions (both in the sense of prison sentences and as a tool to build character) do not factor in contemporary crimes, but they do map out a human condition, especially if they pose a public threat. The OG Nazis have been in and out of prison for various violent crimes until the party made it the norm. Today’s followers also learn these things in prison. Sure, you can “learn” how to hate others, but when it comes to planned aggravated assault and murder, that’s gang territory. I don’t think you mean to say the tiki torch wielders were bronies who have accountant jobs during the day. People who see the world black and white, aka radicals are defining themselves by what they’re, so it’s not profiling, it’s ex post facto.
I’m not sure why you expect the result being any different every time they return (Einstein and his take on insanity comes to mind). I mean I genuinely empathize with judging human action by high ideals, except ideals come from us. They will never have a two car, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 3 kids and a dog lifestyle, they hate that life is free for most. I’m not an American, but were I one, I’d take the Pledge of Allegiance seriously. When it talks about enemies domestic, it’s local radicals, and plenty of cases have been in FBI and DHS history where the fringe right and left tried to depose the government.
@ Holms, #167
Because, in my experience, that’s not how the real world works. Actual violent people don’t typically go around making put ‘em up gestures- they just attack. Certainly neither I nor any of my compatriots ever telegraphed our intent by “taking a stance” when we engaged in real violence- life is not a Kung Fu movie. You go around balling your fists or making like you’re Bruce Lee and you’re just going to get your ass handed to you by someone who has a clue.
Yeah, I ignored the one about the car. No one’s ever tried to run me over, and no one I ever hung out with tried to run anyone over while I was with them. If they had, however, I doubt they’d have warned their target by revving the engine. People are a lot more maneuverable than cars, and a person warned is a person who can probably get out of the way.
As for drawing a weapon, again, experience tells me that a person brandishing a weapon isn’t necessarily going to use it. If they don’t start blasting/trying to stab you the moment they draw it, then you might be able to talk your way out of the situation. I did it a couple of times- most people aren’t keen on murdering someone, and if you offer them a better option (or can convincingly threaten sufficiently dire consequences) they’ll usually back off. Really though, most of what I said about hands-on violence in my first paragraph applies here. A person who goes around waving weapons at people is just going to get themselves killed.
Yes, I can be wrong. I have been very wrong in reading situations before (I once believed Nazis were full of hot air, for example). But that doesn’t change the fact that I have a fair bit of experience with violence, and your description what “imminent attack” looks like does not ring true.
It’s called using my judgement. Yes, I will attack people if I think it’s necessary. You sneer at my reactions, you try to dismiss them as “gut-reaction” or “a ‘feeling,’” ignoring all the text I’ve spent trying to explain to you that it’s a fuck-ton more than that. I have known slimebag neo-Nazis, and while it’s certainly true that I despise them, that’s not why I’m willing to endorse the use of certain strategies against them. I have given the matter a great deal of thought. Hell, I hate obnoxious sportsball fans too, but I don’t think it’s alright to go around punching them.
No, I haven’t. You think peaceful protests, debating, and education are sufficient to stop Nazis from rising to power. This ignores that the latter two are almost entirely ineffective at reaching the angry young men who make up the core recruits for the movement (you have to reach them before they join up), and that Nazis look at the first and see a target, but I don’t believe that you are against all opposition.
Nor do I believe you are against self-defense. I do not, however, see any reason to trust your ability to recognize the nature of, and danger posed by, certain threats. Certainly your statements in this thread have given me reason to doubt that ability.
See, this (from your #173) –
-is based in the false assumption that Nazis are all somehow entirely separate (potential) threats, instead one big threat. A Nazi behaving like a Nazi is part of the same shitstorm that started back in 1930’s. The Nazis of today are not fundamentally different from the original generation. The only thing they lack right now are numbers, but the fact remains that to be a Nazi is to be an existential threat to the rest of us.
You believe that Richard Spencer was assaulted without justification. I believe it was entirely justified, and that every Nazi should expect the same any time they go outside, for so long as they are Nazis.
@vucodlak #178:
To address your penultimate paragraph, Nazism is also accumulative and did not started as a noticeable behavior only in the 1930s.
The truth is, Europe’s northern, eastern, southern and western quadrants never moved at the same speed, when it comes to progress. On rare occasions this meant a good thing, like the Black Death largely avoiding Eastern Europe due to lack of trade routes and volume. Lack is the key word here.
Much like today’s populist politicians, Hitler has peddled the idea domestically that never having been part of a progress (debatable as it was built on colonies) is actually a good thing as they gained some wonderful and uncorrupted insight others can’t. It’s very risqué, but I’d venture a try into establishing the idea that likening prewar Hitler to contemporaries is not Godwin’s law.
Anyhow, the Nazis were destined to exist in the sense that decision makers were always on the wrong side of history. They chose regression and isolation at crucial points when they should have progressed and the economy of lack amplified hate. Prerequisites for such behavior and said behavior itself also exist today. Sometimes we take a product of hate in without realizing we do so. For example, the creatures inhabiting forests in Tales of the Grimm Brothers are stand-ins for Jews banned there by local overlords. Nobody should ever forget that genocide in WWII Europe happened as a propagated punishment for killing Jesus. It was the broth of centuries in the making.
I had a colleague once who was a far right sympathizer, and when I confronted him with the fact that the Vatican has concluded in 1965 that Jewish people are not responsible, despite hating communism, he flat out defended it by claiming it did not apply to countries under Soviet occupation.
A similar schizophrenia is going down in America. An obviously visible actress gets Barred from TV for good reason, and yet many Americans shrug off the fact that elevating white Catholics and non-Western European immigrants into white society as equals to counter non-whites came with its baggage. The formerly shunned had and still have some very bigoted ideas of their own, many of which were confronted in Europe and failed. As such, the marriage of convenience between WASP officials and other white groups paved the way for the TEA Party to become right wing radical, get under the skirt of the GOP and give birth to Nazis.
The elitist WASP ideals have taken a backseat to enjoy a few rounds fought between Irish/Italian people and people of color, to the point they lost leadership. The factors leading to socioeconomic oppression need be lessened to lessen appeal to Nazism. As long as cops can and will get acquitted for planting weapons on innocent people, a new Dylan Roof is born who takes that as the norm.
secondtofirstworld, you sure you aren’t conflating Nazism with Fascism?
@John Morales #180:
Nazism is the totalitarian, militaristic (or, if not in power, para-militaristic) form of white supremacy, whereas fascism can be, and has been exercised on all continents by different kinds of people. Other than resorting to genocide, the tactics aren’t very different.
Plus, especially past the 1960s, there hasn’t been many fascistic regimes who didn’t work closely and/or harbored Nazis, so in reality any sort of conflation started with them.
That aside, it would be good if you could elaborate your question to know more specifically which part exactly is I need to expand and/or explain.
I didn’t say that even once, so you’re attacking a strawman here.
More importantly though, your examples do not help your case. Remember, you’re trying to make the case that a nazi, simply by being a nazi, can be attacked at any time without needing to wait for them to make any indication of imminent violence due to being so violence-prone that we can always assume they are about to attack someone. You’ve shown me that three nazi shitheads went on to do something felonious (one of which was a non-violent charge), but this in no way makes the case that we can simply flip the presumption of guilt on them.
You also bring up the tiki idiots, and make an inane point that was not in dispute – that they are not likely to be gentle people with respectable jobs. Yes, and? How many of them went on to do something violent? It had better be damn close to 100% to warrant the presumption that they are about to attack at any moment, and can thus be attacked themselves at any moment. I’ll wait.
Recall what vucodlak said earlier: he believes there is a need for compelling evidence that a nazi is not about to attack someone; he thinks we need a compelling reason to not attack them. I gave such a reason earlier, and you have failed to overturn my point: the majority of nazis don’t follow through on their rhetoric of violence, and even if they did, defense is only warranted when an attack is occurring or is imminent. That an attack might occur in some distant time is not sufficient.
A more important reason is that all people have the right to personal bodily autonomy, meaning their bodies should not be interfered without compelling, proximate need. It is thus incumbent on you two to make the case that this basic human right should be flipped, rather than it being on me to argue that it should be unflipped. Silly me for not insisting on that earlier.
So far you have pointed out that they are nasty – which was never in dispute – but have failed to make the case that you get to attack them.
INB4 vucodlak tells me that nasty is insufficient a word – they are nazis! who attack people!! remember WWII!!! i.e. the same shit as in every post.
#178
That’s nice. The upshot of this is that you have nothing to complain about if they think the same of you and attack you, as the reasoning you employ here is of the same low standard as their own: you both believe you get to attack certain people due to the threat they pose, which recasts attack as pre-emptive defense. You’re just quibbling over whose reasons are better.
Also, I’ve stated before – if not in this thread then definitely in previous threads – that I am in favour of almost all of what antifa does… excepting only their willingness to king hit people (and by extension, the willingness of supposed liberals to set aside their liberal ideals in justification of this).
@Holms #182:
There seem to be a cardinal misunderstanding. My point isn’t that because people who wear totalitarian symbols out of genuine sentiment are violent radicals (which is a fact) therefore the sole course of action is counter-violence. My exact point was the only way in dealing with them, and with any violent radicals is by shunning them and expose their lie that they represent us. That is, after you accept the fact that there’s no such thing you not being a target. Anyone not sharing their ideal is the enemy, especially if they’re perceived sheeple.
You ask me, a non-law enforcement official to back up what the police takes as a rightful course in dealing with radicals. There’s a reason no G8 summit goes by without separating attendees from protestors who do riot every time. 2 months before Unite the Right, cops in South Carolina needed to wear ski masks to protect their identity while removing Confederate statues due to threats made by white supremacists. This should be your baseline upon which arguments are built. I don’t even wish to explore the misguided reason behind even assuming spiritual successors of mass murderers can be innocent.
An attack might occur? Which one? The roadside bomber in Austin? The pizzagate gunman? The naked gunman? Two of which happened last month. I’d love to live in your selective dimension, where violent ideas have no past, despite analysis of violent ideas is done exactly by examining its past.
And again, the populace needs protection from violent radicals. Therefore riot cops are stationed to avoid or minimize bodily harm and property damage. Take note, that after the Philly had won, hooligans did more damage than it was in Ferguson, yet the response wasn’t the same. This “How could I know they’ll be violent?” is malicious at best, racist at worst.
I’m refuting the positive outcome of lashing out against radicals, that’s just a ruse to justify usually preemptive violence. The kind right wing governments exercise in Israel, notwithstanding the fact that Hamas isn’t innocent either. There’s one thing I can tell you though. I liken my brethren to the Deep South for several similarities, including the narrative of the past. I’m not saying I’d ever support Neo Confederates (that’s de facto sedition), but I do get where they come from. It’s perpetually inoculated into people that the other side was the aggressor in a valiant attempt at self determination, and this side can never do wrong, when it does, it’s justified. That appealed to my teenage self to become radical. Granted, I was never a violent one, but I was also a minority.
John Morales asked me if I don’t conflate fascism with Nazism. Any formerly viable democracy falling for the trappings of evil may become fascist, but if such conditions are not met, that fascism evolves into Nazism. I get very real for a second, when there was a state like Mississippi, that has only ascended the amendment for women to vote in 1981 to their state constitution, can you truly believe that such states treat civil rights as unalienable? Nobody has challenged their selective narrative, and way before the crisis of ’08, they became the first to exchange the klan for the swastika. Within such a culture, the power of force is respected most, thus why such supporters are innately violent. That doesn’t mean we have to be.
secondtofirstworld:
Nazism is an ideological racialist version of Fascism, which is the political belief that the State should be nationalistic, totalitarian, and militaristic and all elements of society should serve the State.
I agree that, given the USA’s racialist history, it’s fair to worry about a swing towards totalitarianism.
(cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francoist_Spain#Francoism )
@ Holms, #182
I’ve already been ‘attacked’ by neo-Nazis, for the crime of being a… what’re the terms they used? Oh yes- ‘f****t’ and ‘race traitor.’
I was out with a friend, you see, who was an openly gay Latino man. We were on our way to a party, when R (my friend) stopped to get gas in one of the countless little bump-in-the-road towns where I grew up. I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, not really paying attention. I heard hostile voices, including R. I look up, and he’s surrounded by Nazis. I got out of the car.
I made a mistake then. I didn’t believe they could be as bad as what their rhetoric and reputations suggested. I did not, thus, fight as hard as I should have. I thought maybe I could talk our way out of it. I tried. R knew better; he fought very hard, but like I said, he fought mostly alone. I remember I actually told him to chill out, or he was going to get us killed. They had the guns, after all, but surely they didn’t mean to kill us?
No, they didn’t. Not right away. They took us off to a trailer just down the road from the gas station, at gunpoint. Mostly I was the one at gunpoint; R was pretty out of it. The trailer was a meth lab, and presumably home for at least one of the Nazis. They tortured us.
I’m not proud to admit that I insisted I wasn’t gay, as though what they were doing to me would have been ok if I were, but then, I said a lot of things that night I’m not proud of. Whatever it took to make them stop… which turned out to be our friends busting down their door and sticking guns in the fuckers’ faces. No way the Nazi scum would have let us live otherwise. Not after the things they did to us, not when we had seen their faces. I’d already figured that out, of course. In fact, I begged them to do it. Whatever it took to make them stop.
As I said, I made a mistake back then. We both paid, but R got the worst of it by far, and ultimately he couldn’t live with the pain and the memories. I’m still alive, though, and I will not make that mistake ever again.
I’m so fucking sick of sharing that experience, and I’m sick of this discussion. Call me monster to your heart’s content and pat yourself on the back for your superior morality. I would never do to them anything remotely like what they did to R and me, but if you want to keep claiming I’m no different than the Nazis, go ahead. I won’t complain about it.
secondtofirstworld:
There’s no need to assume they’re innocent. Assuming that a person is guilty (of a crime or of anything else), this is still not a good justification for attacking that person.
Protest what they’re saying/doing, resist in whatever peaceful ways you like, try to reason with them (over and over, if need be, as in this thread), remove yourself from the threatening situation, try to get help from law enforcement if possible, defend yourself if it comes to that … those are all decent responses. Attacking people, guilty or not, isn’t. That is what Holms and co. have been going on about. It’s pretty fucking easy to understand. What precisely you’ve been trying to say with all your rambling is harder to figure out.
@consciousness razor @186:
Parts where Holms do say that, I agree with him… until he also says most threats by Nazis are hot air. Violently radical sympathizers and protestors aren’t guilty because of association (which was already outlawed by the UN, exactly to prevent genocides) but because violent ideologies are the justification to their already violent existence. On that individual level, they’re guilty, and they don’t differ from gang initiations, perhaps only the skin color does, but that’s superficial. For example, the Zetas love to sew people’s faces onto soccer balls to deliver a point which just shows how well we can reason with such violence.
I also oppose the “same requirements, different outcome” ideal when it comes to radicalism. What the 18th century did not know, but the 20th has answered is that symbols matter. America is crippled by a half hearted approach to crime. Where NGOs advise people that radical groups are also hate groups, where the FBI, DHS, ATF has them on the Terror Watch List, every other agency is like “let’s wait out and see, perhaps this time they just say it in peace and leave”.
The Blues Brothers Nazis were played for laughs, for two reasons: one, the then younger audience, exposed to the Eichmann Trial learned about the scope of what they did to civilians and two, no generation has been yet raised in civil rights. Newt Gingrich is massively responsible for opening the floodgates with allowing Limbaugh to spew stupid sh*t. He started to peddle the idea that the white man in need of competition is unnatural, everyone has a designated place.
It’s a small wonder America doesn’t have more Nazis. The massive hypocrisy in race relations is a perpetual justification to be a bigot. The key question here, for everyone of European origin: Is it really self explanatory that inalienable rights provide the freedoms we each should protect? You won’t believe this, but the discussion here is civilized compared to ones I’m used to. This kind of civilized comes from acknowledging the disagreements are between arguments, and aren’t meant as personal attacks between people. That’s something radicals hate.
I’m glad you summarised your point in your very first paragraph, because it means I can deal with it here and ignore the rest of the fluff. And, your point falls apart immediately. A person is violent, or not, based solely on whether they act violently. Attacking someone is violence. Ranting about jewish conspiracies, or about how Hitler was misunderstood, or that the holocaust is exaggerated, or [insert vile nazi talking point], is not violence. Attacking is violence. Defending against an attacker is violence too, but it is justified by the threat posed by the attacker.
You’ve spent many many many paragraphs, mostly off topic, not addressing this distinction convincingly, but all I see are the same old canards repeaated ad nauseum. Yes, choosing to wear a swastika is an action, a choice made by that individual… but it is not a violent one. Yes, talking about violent reprisals against jews/gays/blacks/etc is an action… but not a violent one. Yes, nazism espouses violence… but a person talking about violence is still only talking. Talking and embracing imagery are not physical violence, and physical violence remains the pre-requisite for physical self defense.
And you said right fucking there, paragraph one: “the only way in dealing with them […] is by shunning them and exposing their lie that they represent us.” Yes, agreed! And also by protesting them, obstructing their rallies, revealing their views to their employers, so on and so forth. Not by punching them in the face in the absence of violence.
Oh and “That is, after you accept the fact that there’s no such thing you not being a target.” Every time this conversation crops up, people tell me something along the lines of ‘you might think you’re safe from them, but you aren’t!’ or ‘it must be nice, not being an immediate target of their, but not all of us share your privilege!’ How many fucking times must I say it: either one or two of my grandparents were jewish. I am therefore up to 50% jewish. I only exist because those grandparents fled in time. Don’t patronise me with this privilege bullshit.
#185 vucodlak
None of what you write here serves the purpose you think it does. That some of them are violent is not in dispute; I am looking for justification for popping random nazis in the face in the absence of violence.
And no, don’t bore me again about how being a nazi is itself violence. Don’t cheapen real violence with that drivel.
I see I’m not the only one that got a distinct Abe Simpson vibe from him.
@ Holms, #188
Oh? Earlier you were claiming that “taking a stance” or “drawing a weapon” was sufficient justification. Now they actually have to do physical violence first. We’re back to the part where I ask for numbers, then. How many people have to lie down and die so that you can pretend your hands are clean, hmm?
Don’t bother answering that one. I already know what your
answerevasion will be, because……YOU are not making the argument you believe you’re making. You think you’re the great beacon of civilization explaining that “violence is evil” to the unenlightened savages, and the poor brutes are just too thick to get it.
Well, guess what? We know violence is evil. Sure, it’s wrong to go around hitting people, whatever the reason! This is not a difficult concept, and you (and raaak, and Consciousness Razor) are not the brave voices of hidden truth. Yes, it’s evil- but there are lesser and greater evils.
You ignored the question I asked at the end of #111, but now I’m going to bring it in again: I voted for Clinton in 2016, even though I knew she would do terrible things, because the alternatives ALL ultimately supported Trump, who was much, much worse. I chose to commit a lesser evil in hopes of preventing a greater evil, even knowing that such an act would make me complicit in terrible things.
I could have refused to vote against my ideals, refused complicity in the war crimes, the surveillance, the police state. When Trump won, I could have shut my eyes and clapped my hands over my ears and pretended that I’d done all I could do without sacrificing the purity of my morals, and that I couldn’t be blamed for anything Trump did. I’d done no evil, and therefore my hands are clean.
My hands aren’t clean, and neither are yours. Whether you vote for the lesser evil, embrace the greater evil, or abstain altogether; you can’t wash your hands of this. Yes, you support some methods of resistance. Bravo on making it to the polling place! Boo for leaving some important spots blank, because ‘purity.’ But hey, that’s your problem, and I don’t actually give a fuck about the cleanliness of your hands.
What I do care about is when you demand that everyone else sacrifice themselves on the altar of your simplistic morality. I don’t want to do evil, I don’t like doing evil, but if it looks like the means of keeping someone like Trump out of the White House or keeping Nazis from rising to power, I am willing to get my hands a little bloody. Because, whether I like it or not, somebody’s blood is going to end up on my hands, even if all I do is shake my finger at everybody else.
If I didn’t have such an aversion to all things Christian I’d post that Bible verse about planks and specks, but in closing I’ll just say: don’t bother to scold me for my bloody hands when you won’t even take yours out of your bloody pockets. Come what may, I own my guilt, but you ain’t innocent either.
@Holms @188:
Sorry, but your whole dichotomy is false. Among every antisemite who spew anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, not all of them are violent, this much I agree to. Except, when it comes to people, who glorify mass murderers, most of whom, separately from a Nazi idolatry have been to prison for violent acts, such a criteria is nothing short of imaginary.
It’d be so nice if you could accept one simple fact: whether or not I can defend it, social scientists, historiographers and law enforcement have long established on principle which in turn was based on experience, that sympathizers of totalitarian ideals are violent or support violence without repercussions.
The idealistic it can never happen in America because people love freedom was hypocritical while alive, and has been dead for at least a decade. Either you don’t want to understand how conditions for oppression are born or willfully ignore it. You’re basically saying something parallel to the Lost Cause, namely that beside a few apples, most of them were honorable and effectively harmless. It’s like saying only people in hoods supported Jim Crow.
Take a look at other places how such marches are being held. They aren’t outlawed, but there’s also not many who claim they’re harmless. For starters, these are people who torch municipal and community buildings just to prevent a humanitarian action provided for people fleeing war torn areas. They kill cops, like Beate Zschäpe, heroine of the AfD. You’d be hard pressed to find a violent radical of any political affiliation who would condemn such actions.
That’s because such people are ones who see the world in black and white where change can only be swift and violent. In the 1930s, liberals and conservatives were convinced Hitler will never be a threat because Mussolini will stop him, and when that failed they claimed together they will stop Stalin without making good on their threat of confiscating private property.
The world is not a Petri dish, hymns of violence, people chanting them and its past are never separate. If America were as humane as say, Germany or Sweden, you’d see Spencer et al violently attacking refugee colonies. The lack of that happening isn’t because they’re gentlemen, rather because ICE is all to eager to deport en masse. Which, again, brings up that Spencer and his ilk are not the kind of people who envision a purely white society simply by voting until somebody does it.
Only because I oppose level headed people to react with violence it doesn’t mean I automatically agree to the rejection of decades of law enforcement experience, and push a libertarian approach of the misleading “if we could know how it will turn out”. We do. It’s way more important to protect our civilian lives than to whitewash a group of people who, in a more well oiled justice system come and go in and out of prison. They can protest, they can march, and they need to pay the cops being there to protect them, but mainly to protect us from them.
#189 vucodlak
Dear fucking god. Here, let me address your concerns:
“Talking and embracing imagery are not physical violence, and physical violence (or the imminent threat of such) remains the pre-requisite for physical self defense.”
Fixed. Perhaps I took a shorter phrasing that time I made the point, because I figured I’d made it in full so often in this threat, no one could possibly think I was backing down from it just because I didn’t burden the sentence with caveats that I thought had not only been made, but also had been understood.
That’s actually not the point I (we?) have been making. Namely: speech, even vile speech, does not rise to the level that warrants a physical reprisal against the speaker. Violence against speech is not justified. And no, this is not an invitation to play the usual word game that usually starts here-ish; don’t bother telling me that this is not merely vile speech, this is nazi rhetoric!!! I already know. It is still speech.
And, of course I ignored the question about voting, because it is a distraction from the issue at hand, and I don’t find it very analogous to the question of assaulting people. I answered the first, and most relevant part of your #111: I agreed that we should oppose nazism, and agreed that there are some lines we should not cross… mine being violence as a reprisal against speech.
#190 second
You’ve just agreed that they are not all violent, that the potential violence is not necessarily going to become actual violence. You gave the point away in your second sentence.
When that potential violence becomes (or appears it is about to become (see how heavily larded the prose becomes when I add caveats to every single mention of this? This is why I don’t always do so, for the sake of brevity, sheesh)) actual, then they have escalated from word to action. That is the moment where they violate the rights of another person, not before, as ugly as their rhetoric is. Therefore that is the moment where a decent person can justifiably intevene physically.
@ Holms, #191
I understood and rejected them, because reality doesn’t work that way. One last time: If you wait until your enemy is sticking a gun in your face, you’re already dead. Violent acts do not occur in a vacuum. They exist on a continuum, and what someone says is a very good predictor of what that someone will do.
I’m not discussing this any further. May you live a long, happy life and never understand just how fucking wrong you are, because at this point the only thing that might get through your thick skull is actual experience, which is something I don’t wish on anybody.
No, it’s exactly the issue at hand, but I’m not surprised that you don’t see that. Your self-image depends on not seeing that connection. You believe that if, personally, aren’t the one who commits an act of violence, then you bear no responsibility for acts of violence, whether they are committed in your name by duly elected representatives, or because you didn’t do everything in your power to stop them when you had the chance.
You’ve made it clear that it’s irrelevant to you whether punching Nazis is effective- you won’t do it because it’s wrong. Even if it means preventing them from gaining power, even if Nazis gaining power means another Shoah; the most important thing here is that you get to believe your hands are clean. And, of course, that you get to lecture the rest of us about how dirty our hands are.
You’re making the same arguments the Berniebros make. While I have some sympathy for their ‘I don’t want to do evil at all’ position, I ultimately find their actions both hypocritical and repugnant. They may think they’re “decent” people, but they’re not. They’re cowards who’d rather other people suffer than entertain the possibility of compromising their shallow morals.
And just to head this off-
I will not use, or condone/permit the use of, torture or rape because I put those on the tier of ‘ultimate evil,’ for lack of a better term. There is never, ever any acceptable justification for their use, and to support those acts would make me every bit as bad as those who I oppose. Nor am I willing to kill without a damn good reason, and I don’t think we’re quite to the point where killing is necessary.
Violence, though? We crossed that line a long time ago.
vucodlak:
A cop shoots a criminal. What type of situation would it have to be, in order for the cop’s action to be morally justified? That’s the sort of generic and obvious question that you’re not addressing with any of your crap.
Maybe you actually do think it must always be justified, so long as they are believed to be an “enemy,” perhaps due to the words they’ve spoken. Or some such preposterous horseshit. But if the claim is supposed to be anything more respectable than that, there’s no indication of what you think it ought to be.
This is only your assumption. I don’t see any evidence of someone expressing a belief that they would lack moral responsibility for such things.
Such as punching a person or splashing water on them, for instance? Get a fucking grip. They don’t do that. You (and others) have shown little or no regard for how effective such acts are. But the rest of us? They clearly don’t accomplish anything like that, not in the real fucking world. And that’s with the assumption that this would suffice as a justification (i.e., assuming its effectiveness in this regard is relevant).
You’ve been lecturing yourself, and you do seem to think that you’ve reached a good, correct, reasonable moral position. There is nothing wrong with believing we’re right and you’re wrong, then explaining to you why that is what we think.
You, on the other hand, don’t give coherent reasons or evidence to back up your claims, and there is something wrong with that. You just express your supposed righteousness or moral superiority with a lot of fist-pounding and story-telling, which doesn’t convince me of anything. This may work for Nazis and their ilk. (Maybe it’s the only way they can find to spread their vile shit around amongst themselves: some arbitrary concoction of myths, baseless assumptions, blatant falsehoods and sheer aggressiveness.) But I think we ought to demand better than that. Shouldn’t we all be taking away the same lessons from the truly horrible example they’ve provided?
Your claim here is that violence is necessary. So explain why I need to be violent. Explain why my grandmother needs to be violent. Explain why everybody needs to be violent (with perhaps the exception of Nazis or Nazi sympathizers). Explain anything in the neighborhood of that, if you think you can.
Then, describe the circumstances various people can be in, when you believe it is necessary, assuming you believe there are any circumstances when it’s not (although you haven’t said so yet). If it’s always necessary, then the explaining part by itself will have to do.
A cop is justified in shooting a criminal if that criminal makes a threat against someone’s life and has obvious, immediate means to carry out that threat. Nazis and fascists in America have those means: the whole system, which is rigged in their favor, and the majority of the white populace who either doesn’t care or is only willing to make token efforts to fight racism. All a light-skinned person needs to say is “I feared for my life!” or the like and most of the time they can get away with doing whatever they want to people a few more shades darker, while “progressives” like you clutch their pearls.
I forgot to direct my post #194 @consciousness razor #193. I’m just getting really frustrated with all these endless debates that don’t go anywhere, and each day I’m more convinced that there’s no way out of this mess.
@195
There’s an easy way out of this mess – punch nazis and ignore the handwringing of milquetoast liberals.
You should probably do the latter half in any situation, truth be told.
@Holms #191:
I don’t know why, but you’re deliberately misleading. I have only agreed to the fact that not all antisemite crap spewing people are violent. That has nothing to do with among them all Nazis being violent.
Your potential violence is also crap as it denies decades of violence perpetrated by violent radicals. You imagine Nazis, communists, anarchists and fascists showing restraint. One might ask Neville Chamberlain where he went wrong with that approach. I do cherish the high ideals we human, but dog gone, we’re effing humans. Don’t expect everyone to hold the same standards. A mere day after that obvious terrorist mowed down people with his car, Facebook saw an uptake in All lives splatter banners, agreeing with and calling for similar violence. Your excuse is that well, they just talk about it. No upstanding person cheers when somebody dies violently, regardless what they’ve believed.
The law knows a little concept called criminal intent. A wise person doesn’t expect people showing up in face masks/bandanas and other countermeasures to tear grenades and facial recognition, armed with Molotov cocktails and rocks to simply come and enjoy the view. That’s categorized as intent to do harm, which beats out your let’s wait and see which one of them throws the first punch approach. That’s intent to commit a criminal act in concert or intent to commit such an act in conspiracy.
I’ll also help telling you why that is. In real life, especially in great crowds, most people don’t know each other, so they’d individually claim not being a part of it as they knew nobody there who acted violently. Whether it’s a spur of the moment or intentionally planned, that venomous fang has been taken out in the ’90s. Southern merchants tried and failed in the ’60s to ban Klansmen by banning anyone making a purchase in hoods. It failed because they simply took them off. This is the same group of people whose ancestors hanged an elephant in 1919 after she injured a spectator.
To your libertarian mindset, criminal forethought doesn’t exist, only actions count. Marchers of Unite the Right needed not to obscure their faces (falsely though, as some got canned from their jobs) as they felt Trump being president automatically equals to Kristallnacht every day. Speaking of which, this is rarely mentioned, but after Kristallnacht, Jews were ordered to compensate the state for the damage. The guy who was featured in the Vice documentary and later in news footage was charged with illegal transportation of firearms. Something he knew in advance would be a crime, and yet you still think they represent character and restraint.
Not to mention that the law enforcement is at best biased. If arrests, arraignments and conviction wouldn’t depend on skin color, you wouldn’t have a Nazi problem at all. When it comes to African Americans, everyone is guilty by association, but when they’re white, let’s wait and find out. When it comes to the white majority, domestic abuse should play no part in exercising rights, nor should prior convictions. The shooter’s dad in Tennessee is in hot water as he violated the arrangement with law enforcement of keeping and guarding the guns, even though the law enforcement should also not encourage a practice of letting such dangerous tools with close relatives.
This is why libertarianism is a failed ideology, much like Nazis and communists, it needs to create a new human adjusted to the ideology, and not patching up the idea to changing human conditions. It’s not Cold War America anymore, white conservatives have dropped the pretense of being compassionate, they only look out for number one. For 3 short years through Occupy Wall Street it seemed the alt left could gain hold, but it didn’t. The alt right did, not in the least thanks to the South not learning anything from why the lost the war. Nazis are a natural extension of white hegemony, which is challenged by workplace and school competition and free trade. Naturally the liberals are at fault too, true compassion requires actual mingling from all sides.
#191 vucodlak
Excellent! This means I’ll not have to knock down your repetitive inanity any more. Honestly, you have simply filled this thread with the same point repeated however many times you’ve posted here. You refuse to admit that you have no evidence that every single nazi will inevitably “stick a gun in [someone’s] face, which is what you use to claim that their speech is equivalent to violence. Since their speech is not equivalent to violence, assaulting them is a violation of their rights to no purpose.
Your other claim has been that the ends justifies the means – that eliminating nazism is a worthy enough goal that assaulting them will ultimately be worthwhile. But there, you run into another problem: you have no evidence that slugging a nazi will ‘knock the nazism out’ or anything similar.
You’re just a guy that wants to attack people.
#194 Kreator
Yes, how quaint of us to cling to antiquated notions of ‘rights’ and ‘morality;’ true progressives – i.e. you – should be fine with assaulting people, provided we agree beforehand that they are sufficiently bad. Me and my principles, I just can’t bring myself to endorse mob rule – how regressive of me!
#197 second
This statement is quite obviously based on the idea that nazis are the subset of all anti-semitic arseholes that go on to commit violence. This makes your claim that all nazis are inevitably violent true, but only trivially so, because it is true purely due to your definition of nazi.
Which explains so much about your posts here: garbage in, garbage out as they say.
@Holms:
I don’t take morality advice from a trans antagonistic piece of shit like you who is also completely unwilling to understand the nuances of racism. Make no mistake, Holms: you’re a white supremacist whether you accept it or not, and you belong in the Slymepit, not Pharyngula.
^ In which an idiot drools on the thread and calls it reasoning.
@Holms #198:
Just the other day, a prominent figure of Alternative für Deutschland has called Hitler and his Nazis Fliegscheisse on the millennia old history of Germany. Those bozos make the same weak attempt, like I’m seeing here from you, an attempt at re-branding drivel by distancing oneself from its most vile practitioner.
I really don’t care that you think you can knock down arguments and facts by claiming “but that’s your opinion, man”. Criminal statistics and historical record corroborate that people idolizing totalitarian imagery are violent, because, guess what, they’re violent in the first place. To them, Nazism, communism are the ideal free passes to act out and dole out their kind of “justice”.
You’re deliberately misleading by twisting aspects until bones shatter figuratively and it fits your worldview. You’re basically claiming that, say, being open about idolizing American mercenaries who fought for an antiquated regime in Rhodesia, a white supremacist one, bears no correlation to shooting up a church full of black people. Fortunately the law disagrees with you and thus Roof’s ass stays in jail. Your premise would only stick if possible always equals probable.
By the way, because you seem to be unaware of this, a far right guy really did sue Trump. That is if you care to recall his remark about knock protestors down and he will foot the legal bills. This guy took part in throwing out that black protestor in 2016, got arrested for assault, and surprise, he wasn’t helped. You claim Nazis are just like Trump, they just talk and rarely, if ever, does one of them take action. ‘Cause that’s what they’re known for.
From one white person to another, you’re blinded by a hyperreality, as long as they don’t attack you, they are not violent. The line of thinking that saves white people from being arraigned while others have to plead guilty without trial. The one thing I’m thankful to you is, we get to see it in real time what it took for the Western allies to cave in in 1936 : the hubris that violent radicals can either be used or be made insignificant, and should they attack, they’ll knocked down easily. Problem is, Nazis, largely thanks to Canaris, spent time and money to domestically destabilize regions until they don’t see what happens outside, invasion.
In true conservative fashion, you’re looking for any excuse to exonerate a white felon by playing mental gymnastics around their motivations. I get why the NRA does that, if the fact would be accepted that volatile temper kills people, one would have to admit a need for control. Sorry, take two: volatile temper of white people, only non-whites are gangbangers. The FBI never had records of Neo Nazis selling crystal meth to finance gun purchases which puts them on the terror watch list and the ATF never raided them for said guns either. Maybe I should call Oxford, because you live in a pocket universe.
Almost none of what you write is relevant, and plenty of it is dishonest. The dishonesty in particular means I have no interest in being respectful to you any more.
This has no bearing in the slightest to the point I have consistently raised here; namely: talking about racial violence, of jewish conspiracies and why they need to be killed, praise of Hitler’s campaign, etc. etc…. None of these are physical violence, hence none of them rise to the level that requires physical self defense.
This is a total mischaracterisation of my rebuttals to you. I have never dismissed your posts as mere anecdata or similar. I have instead pointed out flaws in your reasoning.
In that paragraph for example, you cite their inclination towards violence, trying to shore up the case that nazis are inherently punchable by implying that the simple presence of a nazi is enough to fulfil the requirement for self defense. Yet you elide the fact that their inclination towards violence is not a guarantee, nor even a particularly high chance of violence in any given encounter, and hence you cannot simply assume that they are on the verge of attacking in the absence of any cues of such, no more than you can for an encounter with anyone else.
This is an example of your more egregious dishonesty. Roof stays in jail, and you’re saying this is because the law disagrees with me. So you’re openly claiming that I think he should be free? Fuck you. My entire point here has been to delineate between potential vioolence, actual, and whether espousing violent views rises to the latter. How have you so totally misunderstood that this is the distinction I am trying to argue, except by deliberate dishonesty?
And you have the nerve to claim that I am the one being misleading!
Another example of your characteristic segue into total irrelevency. Not only that, but your example doesn’t even help your case. You cite one guy escalating from potential violence to actual… get back to me when you get remotely close to 100%, then we can start talking about how likely it is for a nazi to enact violence in a given encounter.
Perhaps you overlooked my post earlier in the threat, where I mention that one side of my family is jewish. I’m not faulting you for overlooking it, but it does falsify your claim, that I am being complacent because I am not a target.
And the rest of that paragraph was another trademark ramble.
Wow. Disagreeing with mob rule makes me a conservative. An amazing claim in itself, but also, this sort of drivel is why conservatives think liberlism is some sort of cult, requiring us all to march in lockstep. And by placing me outside ‘team progressive’ for holding a different opinion to you on this issue, you are agreeing with them.
And then the rest of the paragraph is a tour of the chaotic hellscape that is your thought process. Jesus, what a mess…
I never claimed a person should be exempt from felony charges should they do something that warrants such; rather, I have consistently disputed that espousing nazi politics makes a person inherently punchable, delineating between potential and actual violence throughout this interminable thread. And it should be pointed out that even if we assume nazis are 100% likely to be felons, you still don’t get to attack them. Because even if a person is a felon, you don’t get to beat them up you fucking idiot.
Interestingly, in implying that we can beat people up if they are felons, you are taking a page straight out of Joe Arpaio’s book. Turns out, even convicted inmates have the right to be safe from whimsical physical reprisal.
And then some shit about FBI terror lists, crystal meth, guns and ATF raids. Whatever, mate. Get help.
@Holms #202:
Jared Kushner. Ben Carson. Caitlyn Jenner. All minorities, all apologists for white supremacy and facism. Your family should disown you and spit on your face.
No, but conservatives really like that dog whistle.
How about disagreeing with what amounts to a domestic version of the Bush Doctrine, as some kind of rationalization for vigilante justice? That’s a conservative thing?
Conservatives often do have elitist preferences against “mob rule,” when that’s taken to be a terribly misleading description of (more-or-less direct) democracy. They think themselves our betters and want to run the place, for their own benefit and with no regard for ours.
But when people really are supposed to be picturing this so-called “mob” doing the equivalent of wielding actual pitchforks to get their way, not peaceful political activities like participating in elections, that’s definitely another story, at least for those in the reality-based community. Indeed, people who are adamantly opposed to fascism have all of the perfectly obvious reasons why they should reject fascist fucking tactics like that.
I would’ve thought that hardly needs to be said. But whatever. You can keep bullshitting day and night, trying to twist that into support for fascism somehow, and there’s no chance it will ever make any sense, no matter how many times it’s repeated.
@Holms #202:
To address your first paragraph in summation : if such speech is present as part of totalitarian imagery, may that be Nazi or communist, it is categorized as hate speech, because it does nothing else but incite violence. Again, you present such words in a vacuum, except in real life it speaks mostly to people who are football hooligans, people who crack open sidewalks for stones they can throw. Also again, such people aren’t guilty by being associated to Nazis, rather because they’re violent first, susceptible second.
My rebuttal to your second paragraph is still that I don’t support punching radicals. Not because of a moral high ground, we are humans capable to act in a spur of moment. It has more to do with that giving them the satisfaction of lowering oneself to their level, making them a martyr. What is to be done instead is, and it is being done, let them march surrounded by cops, so that they can’t be attacked. See, the thing is, they want a different guy to throw the first punch, so they can claim curb stomping someone to death as self defense. In the case of Charlottesville, apologists claimed and still claim the guy just tried to pass through, except… by that time the march was revoked 3 hours prior, the section where it happened was a promenade, i.e. never to be used by cars, and finally, police reports have flowed in from the previous night of Neo Nazis attacking black people unprovoked.
To touch on your third paragraph… per chance you shouldn’t be blind to your repeated instances of “potential violence”. It’s not potential. You’re not wrong, among the entirety of bigots, not all of them are violent. That’s not equal to people who wear paraphernalia associated with mass murder. They’re violent, and not just potentially. When Zündel was extradited to Germany, all 3 of his lawyers were rabid Neo Nazis, thrown out of representation for being in contempt of court (for things like demanding proof judges are not of Jewish ancestry). My issue is that you treat criminal intent as nonexistent. To that comes the fact that Neo Nazis of today are less violent in America today then they were during the Cold War, not because they’re tamer, but because other, rich people fear change in social shift support policies that targets minorities harshly. They think the cops are on their side, as they shoot blacks and let them go.
Two things about Judaism. For one, it has Arabic, Asian and African members, so it’s not a homogeneous ethnic group, and two, plenty of people of Jewish descent are white. You got one thing right though, I really equated that to your assertion of not being a target. Which is a false one. Again, anyone not being on board with genocide is their enemy. You could hate my guts, and we still would be targets. I’m an ethnic German who loves jazz, that alone makes me a degenerate in their eyes. Actually I need to correct myself. Though rightfully so, we still identify Nazis by genocide first. It should be held as important, that purity was paramount. If they could have had succeeded with ridding Europe of “Untermenschen”, the next step would have been destruction of every culture deemed undesirable. It’s not even fiction, the Vienna based racial supreme command had concrete plans for killing all non-Germans, including then allies. Kind of makes you think why, in 1943, instead of turning the tide back, they were more busy making plans killing their own allies.
Funny that you didn’t get the thing about law enforcement being right. Your premise is highly hypothetical and ignores a lot. For starters, it ignores America’s changed political landscape. The so called Southern Strategy was an extension of making backward logic nationwide and marrying it to religious figures. In the center of it all it’s fueled by the unfounded fears of white Anglo Saxon Protestants, that nonbelievers and non-whites will do the same thing to them as they did to minorities. In contrast with pre-civil rights America, plenty of new ideas brought forth in the ’70s were created to stall and reverse civil rights. My issue with your stance isn’t that you’re conservative. My beef is that like a libertarian you match humans to high ideals. Seems nice until you remember, those high brow philosophers lived under the whims of the person operating the guillotine, led by a mob mentality.
Even though Jacobites had the same access to those books as Franklin and Jefferson, they chose to rile people up and hold them in terror. So even then it would have been futile to argue that mere words can’t rile people up. That’s not how humans work. I disagree with vucodlak on punching such people, but that doesn’t mean I throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s on the public record that a majority of militias in America are far right leaning. Like the Oathkeepers who rose to infamy with “protecting” Kim Davis. Those guys are on the FBI’s radar too. The Terror Watch List contained, to the last of my knowledge, 200 thousand names, and people like Trump don’t like talking about it, but most of them are not Muslim fanatics. They’re far left and far right.
The more AI and cheaper labor can replace domestic American workforce especially in jobs they don’t want to do in the first place, the more the far right grows. You might not like it, but the civil rights given in 1964 were a compromise to prevent people from becoming communist sympathizers. The second it ended, the GOP began its hard work to openly end the practice. In other words, the high ideal that it doesn’t matter from where you came as long we share the same values has been dead for a quarter of a century. It gave birth to the Tea Party’s far right wing and in turn they nurtured people like Spencer. As long as law enforcement can and will be used for “crowd control”, it’s a useful tool for the fringe. You already have white Americans in love with Eastern Europe, as that region has everything, mostly only white, aversion to act compassionate, proclaimed supremacy and calls for protection of territory and xenophobia.
@consciousness razor #204:
That’s what gets me too. It shouldn’t be a generational thing, that totalitarian ideas need violence to a) justify their own existence b) as a way to exist and c) show future generations that only animalistic power is the only way we can evolve.
I’m not a big fan of Churchill, but it’s true that he recognized the potential of appeasement being dangerous before the first shot. I’m even less of a fan of Bush, but even he avoided stepping on landmines Trump constantly activates. Said landmines are fringe people who seriously hurt a long lasting legacy. A wise conservative, if for nothing else, opposes any form of authoritarian rule as that kills the option of representatives being recalled.
Franz von Papen believed Hitler can be a weak chancellor, Chamberlain believed simply appeasing him and making him important will stop him. There’s no befriending tomorrow be damned people. Expecting that their followers aren’t like them is naive. Like, lethally naive. I’ve always known that Edward VIII was a douche nozzle, but until today I wasn’t aware just how much of a traitor he was. Not only was he aware of genocidal intentions, he actively helped the Axis cause in exchange for the title of emperor. Had he succeeded, Churchill’s notion of the colonies freeing Britain, comes worse to worst, wouldn’t have happened, he’d have practically given them away.
There’s no scenario outside a fictional setting, where wearing a red star or swastika is not an affiliation for violence. Only because it’s physically possible to be worn by anyone, it’s not very probable. At the end of the day, humans are social animals, wishing to belong. The 1% of us (no, not the super rich) who got to wear that were psychopaths. If a balanced person is capable to accept the premise that today’s wearers of such insignia are perfectly aware who wore them last, they can accept that it’s not very likely it’s there by accident.
#203 Kreator
Have you ever heard slymepitters describe this blog network to be a hivemind that doesn’t permit free thought? People like you and your eagerness to declare me conservative are why they think that.
You are not worth further response.
#205 second
Jesus christ, you’re hopeless. All these thousands of words against my objections to assaulting nazis had given me the impression that you were disagreeing with me, and hence that you were a nazi-punch enthusiast like many others here. But now, only just now, you’re saying that you were not disagreeing with me at all? Holy shit. How much time did you waste disputing my arguments against assaulting nazis, despite agreeing with them? What a waste.
So then we’re agreed: don’t assault nazis.
A slight clarification to the closing paragraph:
How much time did you waste disputing my arguments against assaulting nazis, despite agreeing with the conclusion? What a waste.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Thanks Giliel, though I don’t see the relevance. Have you perhaps overlooked the yawning chasm that lies between ‘don’t assault nazis’ and ’embrace nazis’? Hell, let’s fisk the entire thing. Please point out to me where anyone has called for any of those line items; in particular, has anyone in this thread called for zero protest against nazis? A clear reference to the specific post that made such a call would be nice. Thanks in advance!
How odd, no response.
Because you’ve said nothing new for exty-ex posts?
Huh, so that’s what two weeks of milquetoast liberal hand-wringing looks like.
Meanwhile, a black man trying to defend himself and another person from Nazis in Charlotesville is sentenced to 20 days in jail and 100 hours of community service. Some good it does in America, protesting white supremacy peacefully (yes, he used a makeshift flamethrower, but his would-be assaulters were threatening him with actual guns, the police was doing nothing against them, and I find no reason to believe that the man was being violent beforehand.)
#212 Lofty
Even if true, a) the same could be said of the pro-punching team, and b) I put a specific question to her, regarding her new addition to the conversation. Answering this is not prevented by the conversation being lengthy and repetitive.
#214 Kreator
Speaking of which, the conversation wouldn’t be quite as long as it is if people like Kreator didn’t bring in material that is unrelated to the question of whether we get to assault people.