Your reference to Angela Nye felt like an Appeal to Authority, not like a true logical argument. Nor did I assume you were with Trump, merely that your argument to be tolerant of those spreading hate speech has been beaten to death and a distraction. If anything, I accept the premise that you are as much against authoritarian populism. I shall assume you did not mean to make a strawman argument.
And yeah, Auschwitz is worse than Dachau, no argument. Dachau was opened in 1932, and was used for political prisoners and as a work camp, with a large SS barracks. The gas chamber in Dachau was only used for training, but it was still a horrific place. The tenor of Dachau is that it was sadistic bullying and intimidation taken to its extreme. It was designed to break the will of any opponent, both by how it treated the prisoners and by letting just enough information leak to cow the populace.
You see, that’s the thing: the views are not law-abiding, except in the strictest sense. Their “views” are incitement to violence and a claim that they have the right to oppress others. The only variance is who those others are. Their only goal is to harm others — it’s the common thread between Franco, Mussolini, Hitler their modern followers.
They are not law abiding.
They are scofflaws who abuse the law and patriotism.
The thing that gets me about the whole “state’s rights,” argument is the fact that the South was steadfastly AGAINST the right of states to make slavery a nullity within their borders. Instead, they insisted that Virginia’s insistence that a person was property was active and enforceable in Illinois. And in the Dred Scott decision, they got the Supreme Court to agree. Indeed those in the North who didn’t want a society dominated by a small number of large land and slave owners were worried about the expansion of slavery, rather than it’s elimination in the South.
My point is that Robert E. Lee would have been facing at least an exile if that was an European war. Would this make any difference in the long run is another matter.
I agree, although media IS giving some of these people voices. I’ve seen a couple videos
I have been calling out people on FB who equate removing CSA monuments to removing history. I have talking points on a note pad file. I’ve repeatedly pointed out that the world isn’t black and white and I can disagree with removing Jefferson and Washington memorials, while condoning relegating CSA statues of leaders to museums.
But the political climate is beyond the point where people are thinking rationally about anything. Its fucking insane people of the “party of Lincoln” is upset over CSA participation trophies erected by Democrats.
Incitement to violence is a crime and properly punishable by law - however, it needs to be explicit and direct.
For example, reading aloud from “Mein Kampf” is not incitement to violence. Shouting “That store across the square is owned by Jews! Let’s go burn it!” would be.
Edit
Don’t like this construction very much!! Either laws are broken, or they are not.
Confederate apologists hate it when I explain to them that:
There was a Federal law called the Fugitive Slave Act which obliged all non-slave states to assist in the return of escaped slaves to their self-styled “owners”.
Some northern states, disagreeing with that law, chose to exercise their states’ rights by not enforcing it.
The south, angry that the northern states were not submitting to the will of the federal government, seceded to form their own federal government, under which its states were not free to make their own laws regarding slavery.
So yes, the war was fought over states’ rights. It’s just that the north was the states’ rights side.
(Having said that - I have great respect for the guts and tenacity of the individual Confederate soldier and do not curse his memory.)
The definition of “tolerate” in my CD edition of the OED is:
“To allow to exist or to be done or practised without authoritative interference or molestation; also gen. to allow, permit.”
and I use the word in just that sense.
In recent years the word “tolerance” has acquired connotations of “support”, “affirmation”,“respect” which I don’t think it should have. I tolerate a lot of things that I personally can’t stand.
(Edit: It’s also important that when we talk about Nazis, we mean real Nazis. Anyone who has previously likened Bush to Hitler, or called Mitt Romney a Nazi, has redefined “Nazi” as “someone I disagree with” and is thus out of the conversation as far as I am concerned.
If it were so simple, then we wouldn’t need as many lawyers. Especially when threats are indirectly made, with smug and insincere claims that it wasn’t threats. Thus the wording, as I mean “only in the most strict interpretation of the letter and not the spirit.”
Well if we’re going into strict definitions, then there are no ‘real’ Nazis anymore.
I can get behind your definition of tolerate - it’s just that whenever people talk about tolerating the KKK or neo-Nazis, it always seems to be in the context of telling people who want to oppose them that they shouldn’t.
Somehow the “It’s their right to free speech” people only seem to really come out when people oppose the racists.
Your ‘toleration’ does not need to go as far as telling other people not to say nasty things about the poor racists or try to stop them marching.
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
Or to put it more succinctly, intolerance of intolerance is not intolerance.
That’s a nobel position to take. Just try to keep in mind that it was not the pacifists who stopped Hitler and his Nazis. While many pacifists and anti-violence groups working against the Nazi regime saved thousands from the death camps, they did not close them. The work of the pacifist is important and needed just as the work of those willing to return the violence of racism back upon the racists. Both should recognize the need for the other in order to effect the change needed to end the violence.
