It also nicely derails the topic which was a pacifist stating that he was grateful for the people prepared to use violence in his defence and stating that people who are not prepared to put their pacifist principles into practice by letting themselves be beaten up by fascists shouldn’t criticise people who fight back against fascists.
Nothing about initiating violence against fascists.
Well that’s what I get for making coffee before finishing the post. Do I still get to say “jinx” if it’s a half hour late?
I suppose if we are going to say this is a free speech issue, then we need to discuss which forms of speech are protected. We don’t allow libel, we don’t allow “actual threats” (as opposed to poetic language that sounds like a threat), so do we allow espousing genocide?
I’d say anyone who adheres to Nazi or Klan ideology, knowing the history of the groups, is essentially making an “actual threat” (and the fact that these guys were online talking about ways to act as a catalyst for violence, so they could claim self-defense and bust some heads, backs that up.)
Is Germany wrong to ban Nazi symbols and literature, including Holocaust denials? I have a hard time arguing against that. I believe they define Nazis as “anti-constitutional”, and this is a bulwark against slippery slope arguments that it will lead to other groups or speech being banned.
No, we do not.
Aside from being immoral and inhumane, it seems like that should fall under ‘criminal solicitation’, at the very least.
Consider that Charles Manson never actually murdered anyone himself… he simply espoused the belief that certain people should be murdered and then convinced others to act on that belief.
I don’t think I’ll have any regrets to share with my grandchildren about what I did or didn’t do to oppose violent extremism in my day. Even my day job is something I’m proud of in that regard.
But “I helped start the war” won’t be one of those conversations.
You?
That’s nice.
Meanwhile the fascists are very open about wanting to exterminate people like me, as well as people from other groups that they view as subhuman. They feel empowered enough to do it too. The murder of Heather Heyer was not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention, they attempted to kill someone at the Seattle protest the same day as Trump’s inauguration.
How many more have to be injured or killed before you realise that appeasement isn’t going to work on those with murder in their hearts and thoughts? If my desire to carry on living means I help start a war then so be it, but a far right bloodless revolution will not stay bloodless for long.
I do not even remotely equate your political views with theirs, but I notice that I could simply swap a handful of nouns in your post and it would fit right in on some extremely far right blogs.
Does that bother you?
It would be a disingenuous one if you did, considering that this “war” started long before any of us were even born.
The same game of semantics swapping could be played out in any number of statements, but herein lies the difference:
Like myself, the borderer isn’t seeking to start the violence - they’re merely stating that if someone comes for them with nefarious intent, they won’t just stand there passively turning the other cheek.
Our right to exist is not up for debate, and shame on anyone who believes that we are obliged to entertain such conversations, or that we do not have the right to defend ourselves from harm.
OK, how about this.
Between 30th September 2003 and September 26 2004 I experienced being targeted for abuse by fascists. I was spat on, I had death threats put though my door, I had stones and bricks thrown at my windows. In June 2004 I was beaten up by fascists close to a major road, I still have PTSD from that day. The police were useless. The pacifist in me died that day but I survived.
I don’t know how many times I attempted suicide that year. In the end I had to leave the city I had grown up in fearing for my life. I was homeless for six months. Friends have attempted to take me back to see my family, but I start having flashbacks within hours of arriving.
If you think that there is a peaceful solution to that situation, then please tell us what it is because it is happening all over the world. If you don’t then your words are worthless.
Which nouns? The fascists may whinge about leftists and African-Americans wanting to exterminate them, but there’s no evidence that a programme of “white genocide” exists outside their fevered imaginations. The fascists’ preference for eliminationist policies, on the other hand, is not a secret. I also don’t see a fascist counterpart to Heather Heyer or the Seattle shooting victim (not even a murdered pimp elevated to martyr status as Horst Wessel was).
I understand your preference for civil order. Based on history, one of the things I worry about in general in these kinds of toxic political environments is running far-right vs far-left street battles – that kind of chaos only accelerates the march toward authoritarianism.
However, I don’t see this being the case in the U.S. because of the nature of the American left. Yes, there is a very small subset of violence-prone people in the antifa movement, but they’re the kind of anarkiddies who are more interested in starting fights to draw attention to themselves personally than to promote their ideology (about which they’re often ignorant). The majority of antifa are peaceful counter-demonstrators willing to fight in self-defence but are not looking to start fights. The American antifa movement is nothing like the Weimar-era Red Front, an entire organisation of left-wing ideological thugs (some of whom later switched sides to become “beefsteak” Nazis) with a viable Communist party behind them.
The American fascists, in contrast, are very analogous to the Nazi street brawlers of Weimar Germany: thugs one and all, more than willing to initiate violence to pursue their ends, and with a major political party making excuses for them.
tldr; it’s a false equivalency to say that the antifa and the fascists have been equally menacing and violent in these demonstrations, and it’s an error of historical analysis to conclude that what’s going on now is close to the horrific street battles of Weimar Germany.
That’s more than a little disingenuous since that’s exactly what you then proceed to do.
Someone who responds to a threat is not just as bad as someone who makes threats.
That sounds terrifying and horrible, and I hope you never have to experience anything close to that again.
I don’t share your conclusion, but I respect that it has been hard earned.
I’m not speaking metaphorically.
Nope, not political views. Social actions, yes. More bluntly, you can be a violent extremist on the left or the right.
The disingenuous part is your argument that both sides are equally guilty regardless of motive.
I appreciate the thoughtful response and you raise a number of excellent points that I should think more about.
My short response though: I don’t think that fascists and antifascists have been equally violent or that the broad civil threat from each is equivalent. However, a policy of violence only in response to violence from others is fundamentally unstable; there is always a prior wrong that can be used to justify the current round of hurt.
What is disingenuous about that? I sincerely believe that threats, assault, and murder deserve the same response regardless of political motive.
See above. I don’t claim that the lists of wrongs from these two sides is anywhere near equal, but that their list of wrongs isn’t going to justify yours.
And all I’ve said is that someone who acts in self-defense is not just as guilty as someone who attacks. Your claim that they’re equally culpable only holds if you ignore the circumstances.
I don’t know that @Melz2 really is, either. See, I am lucky: I don’t have first-hand experience in knowing that just because I have a certain colour skin, I stand a better chance of being sent to prison or shot by police (on account of being dangerous). Unlike some people (who have shared their first-hand experience in this very thread), I haven’t faced constant violence just by daring to exist. I am one of the lucky ones has never had people cross the street when they see me coming, or guard their valuables more closely if they have to ride with me on the bus. I am not being arrested because I need to take a pee. My people’s churches are not being burned down, vandalised or shot up. I am not running the risk of being sent to a country that I have never known, simply for trusting my own government and thinking that it would protect me.
But all of those things have happened and continue to happen, to this day. Even the “War on Drugs” is documented as a war on POC from day one: state-sponsored, militarised violence. DACA is being repealed, Border Patrol and ICE are staking out fucking hurricane shelters and using kids as bait to trap parents. If you can’t see those actions as part of a purge, then you are blind. I have yet to see pictures and stories of round-ups of White people, yet they form a larger contingent of “illegal immigrants” to the US than most people believe.
So when someone like @Melz2 or @the_borderer say there is a war on and it’s real, I tend to treat them as not being metaphoric or hyperbolic, but as people who have been forced onto the front lines and are reporting back. I tend to defer to their judgements because (I repeat) it’s not my life at as immediate stake, so I don’t have all the necessary information to say “you shouldn’t do that”. Instead, I use my eyes and ears and realise that there are too many reports from those front lines. Reports from both sides, even, that confirm we are well past the point of gentle rhetoric or “ignore them and they will go away” (which, as a bullying target, I can assure you never works) and have been for some time.
Second round of cleanups.
To be clear, so we don’t have more of this going on:
