They are too busy harassing (and sometimes killing) black people and planting drugs to take care of the nazis.
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Ever think that maybe not everyone here is liberal?
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It’s not about bravery; it’s about stopping normalisation.
People look at a guy in a suit explaining charismatically that no, he’s not a Nazi (that’s just crazy talk, you guys!), but maybe we would all be happier if we just considered the idea of living separately on racial lines. I mean, you only need to look at how inner cities compare to white suburbs to realise this is just commo-
BAM. PUNCH IN THE FACE. SUDDENLY EVERYONE IS LAUGHING AT “THE NAZI WHO GOT PUNCHED.”
Violence can be a powerful tool to make people realise that “this guy who looks just like me and says some things that kinda make some sense” is actually “one of those guys in the war movies with the skulls on their uniforms and the ethnic cleansing.”
The reason is worked against Mosley, it worked against the NF and the BNP, and it will also work against people like Spencer is that the very act of violence can make people wonder “well, what happened there?” far, far better than a panel show with a Nazi and a liberal attempting to debate. Liberals will try to engage, Nazis will shout “LALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING. By the way, did the Zionists put you up to saying these hurtful things about us?”
Punching a Nazi (and make no mistake, he’s a dyed in the wool neo Nazi) shatters their image of strength and respectability, and that is the only way to expose them for the scum they are.
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I don’t think white supremacy is being “normalized.” If Spencer hadn’t been kicked out of the CPAC, you might have a case. Even so, it’s a terrible tactic.
Tell me, since anti-vaccination has demonstrably been harmful to many people, do you think vocal opponents of vaccination should be punched so that their ideas aren’t normalized?
Since the police have terrible policies of engagement which have cost many innocent lives and protect their own even in the face of corruption, should vocal supporters of the status quo for police be punched so that their ideas aren’t normalized?
Which ideas, specifically, merit being violently attacked so that those ideas won’t be normalized? And who decides which ideas are worthy of violence?
So sucker-punching somebody shows that the person getting sucker-punched is scum? How does that work?
I’d understand it more if the puncher had given him warning and then kicked his ass in a fair fight. But neo-Nazis watching that video think, justifiably, that the puncher is a pussy who’s afraid of a fair fight. It’s not exposing the victim of the violence in this case to anything other than ridicule by the people who already hate him. Fun videos of the attack put to music and memes popular among anti-fascists is not the same thing as progress.
And what gets normalized is the very non-liberal idea that we should sucker-punch people who believe terrible things. That is the opposite of progress.
Why not ask if the people who are the primary targets of white supremacy believe that?
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Because it’s irrelevant as to whether or not white supremacy is being normalized.
If I say that rates of violent crime have been trending down for twenty years, a reasonable response to that fact isn’t, “Why not ask if the people who have been victims of violent crime believe that?”
I have nothing but sympathy for the victims of any crime, but their opinions on the rates of crime aren’t relevant to the reality of the rates of crime.
No. It’s not. They are the people best suited to know when it’s being normalized, because they are effected by it. They are in the best position to know when things are getting worse and when they are getting better with regards to it, since they are the primary victims of it. Targets of white supremacy are not the same as those who are victims in violent crimes.
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Bannon is in the White House, in case you hadn’t realised. Spencer was a little too vocal for the CPAC to tolerate but anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia are home to roost in the current GOP. Have you ever read Breitbart or read an early interview with Bannon? Just because Nazis put on suits and tell you they’re not really Nazis doesn’t mean they are telling you the truth.[quote=“aikimo, post:106, topic:96998”]
Tell me, since anti-vaccination has demonstrably been harmful to many people, do you think vocal opponents of vaccination should be punched so that their ideas aren’t normalized?
Since the police have terrible policies of engagement which have cost many innocent lives and protect their own even in the face of corruption, should vocal supporters of the status quo for police be punched so that their ideas aren’t normalized?
[/quote]
Excellent strawmen, all of them. But none of the groups that you tried to compare actual neo Nazis to are advocating violence to other people, nor are they trying to make acceptable a worldview in which ethnic cleansing (please don’t forget that Spencer has repeatedly, on record, called for this) is OK.[quote=“aikimo, post:106, topic:96998”]
And what gets normalized is the very non-liberal idea that we should sucker-punch people who believe terrible things. That is the opposite of progress.
[/quote]
Nope. What gets normalised is the idea that if you are an honest-to-god Nazi, you can expect the people who you are advocating violence against (and all those who sympathise with them) to fight back. Sure, you can call for ethnic cleansing as much as you like, but you can also expect the people you are talking about and the people who are allied with them to fight you, physically, every step of the way. If that makes expressing your genocidal opinions a little bit more scary, I’m completely OK with that.
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I’m sorry, but that’s like saying a victim of cancer is best suited to know the degree to which rates of cancer are rising, which types, and where, etc. If I want to know about rates of cancer and the efficacy of the latest treatments, I’m going to ask a research scientist before I ask a victim of cancer.
Of course, no two victims are the same. But being a victim does not give one immediate insight as to the national climate. That comes with research and facts finding.
Stop with the false equivalences, will you? Understanding cancer, a complicated disease which takes years of medical training to understand is not the same thing as white supremacy.
You mean like this?
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[quote=“Cynical, post:110, topic:96998”]
Bannon is in the White House, in case you hadn’t realised. Spencer was a little too vocal for the CPAC to tolerate but anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia are home to roost in the current GOP. Have you ever read Breitbart or read an early interview with Bannon? [/quote]
Sure, terrible people, all. It doesn’t mean that more people are warming to the idea that white people are inherently superior to non-white people.
Police advocate violence to other people whenever they approve of shooting unarmed citizens. You’re arguing that bad ideas need to be met with violence. All I’m asking is which bad ideas? Religious fundamentalists call for the deaths of people all the time. Should they be sucker punched?
The son of the founder of Stormfront was a neo-nazi. And if your ideas about how to deal with him had been put into action, he’d still be one, today. But instead, a Jewish young man decided to engage with him. So, now, instead of making podcasts to influence other young people to hate non-whites, he’s trying to talk his family members out of their hate.
I actually think that cancer is less complicated than race-hatred. And I think we’ll have cured cancer long before we’ve eliminated bigotry. But that’s just because I think the human mind is the most complex thing in the known universe. And I digress…
I honestly don’t know what that has to do with whether or not more people are believing that white people are superior to non-white people.
Well, I guess the discriminated against will just have to suck it up, huh? God forbid we try to better ourselves and our society.
It has to do with your point about research and fact finding - evidence of white supremacy through analysis. He’s just the popular edge of such scholarship. The research and fact finding on white supremacy has been done for literally centuries now. It’s out there, if you care to look it up and take it seriously.
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Great, engage where engagement is due. There is more than enough room for that approach, too.
When an actual neo Nazi is trying to explain why being a not-really-a-nazi-just-being-sensible is OK on live TV, punch him in the face.
Read the links I posted originally. I remember when skinheads were a common sight in London; now, on the off chance you meet one, they are scared to admit what they believe, because a couple of decades of anti-Nazi violence made people reject them wholesale. When I was younger, being a “skin” was a source of pride. Now, they are scared and disorganised and that is a direct result of the violence of people like the Anti Nazi League.
Giving Nazis a spot on Fox and then providing a counterpoint on CNN is not going to resolve this problem. Bullies attack people they think are weak, and are followed by cowards who want to bask in their strength. If you show that they are the ones who are weak, if you rob them of their appeal, if you show through whatever means you can (yes, violence is one of those means) that a lot of people find their platform abhorrent, they lose their power.
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Punching is mild compared to what I want to do to my fellow ‘adults’ who are antivax morons. So yes.
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It definitely means that a lot of them that thought that way before have been emboldened to crawl out from under their rocks and participate in the country’s political life on that basis. Once that starts (and it has), the idea that white people are inherently superior to non-white people becomes increasingly normalised as part of the political discourse. That’s when you get more people warming to the idea.
Once fascists get into positions of power and authority, the question of punching Nazi thugs quickly becomes less a question of “if” than “when” (and “by whom?”). Sooner or later, they’ll come for you, too, if you dissent from their programme. Timing is everything, but as long as it doesn’t become the norm I have no problem with someone jumping the gun on punching Spencer.
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Only to the extent that cancer doesn’t discriminate, although, to my mind, that actually makes cancer more complicated.
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Talk to one of the mud-people?!?
#sarcasm #punchupnotdown #punchnazis
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I’d suggest a big ass /s on your sentence there… for those here who don’t know you as well as some of us do! 
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How do you read “bigotry is complex” as “we shouldn’t fight bigotry?” Weird.
Right, so I read that essay when it came out. It’s a passionate, beautifully written (as usual from Coates) argument for reparations, based mostly on the past, and the author’s viewpoints on the present. But there’s no data in that article that demonstrates that white supremacist ideas are growing in popularity or becoming normalized. An argument about how past racist policies justify reparations to the descendants of the victims of the those policies isn’t evidence that race hatred by whites is growing in popularity. If you have evidence that it is, please link to it.
