LOLOLOLOL
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Many, many countries in the world enjoy democracy and constitutions. Some of them much better than America’s, some worse. American history is a palimpsest of corruption, racism and abuses of power. And it’s far from alone in that.
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We can actually wait 'til you get to the part in your movie where you realize you’d make a pretty good Dread Pirate Roberts.
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What part of “We want to kill and enslave every other human being that is not part of our explicit in-group as we’ve defined it” are the actions of a “kind, gentle soul”?
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When it comes to fighting back against violence a non violent approach is time sensitive. Gandhi had he tried his non violent approach say 50 years earlier would have been put to death by the UK no questions asked. He was only able to accomplish what he did because after 2 world wars England was no longer a major power and didn’t have the will or resources to subjugate India any longer.( The same can be said for all other European colonial powers)
DR King much the same, in an age of television news it’s a lot harder to commit violence and then pretend it never happened.
This also also applies to non violent resistance to white supremacist hate groups today…the pendulum has swung back to having a government that tacitly condones violence against the other, that has law enforcement actively colluding with supremacist groups and using the state to criminalize victims.
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Better yet was not an active nambla member therefore…
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No, it isn’t. My entire point is that we can tell the difference between different things. Punching Nazis is not the same as punching members of a arbitrarily selected political movement. You think it’s okay to use knives to cut vegetables and not to cut other humans beings. You probably think it’s okay for people to use explosives as part of a controlled dig but not to use them to blow up the top of a mountain for the hell of it. Different things are different and we can tell the difference. If not, then none of this matters or makes any sense.
If we want to talk about our responsibility writ large, then yes, I’m responsible for those nazis getting punched and but when it ends up meaning that Nazis decide to stop doing public tours because they don’t want to get punched I don’t feel comfortable taking credit for it because I’m not the one who put my personal safety on the line to protect everyone else for nazis.
I think my responsibility is to try to make sure we exist in a society where there isn’t space for white supremacists to take over. And I certainly think my responsibility is to support the people who take up the actual hard work of beating them back into the shadows because the rest of us failed to run an actual civilized society.
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And some of those people are right, where others are wrong.
Humans beings who can’t tolerate the behaviour of other humans beings sometimes shoot them. That behaviour might include:
- Cheating in a romantic relationship
- Showing insufficient respect
- Eating another person’s face off in a bath-salts-induced psychotic state
When it comes to using deadly force against other people, we are able to make categories in our heads and say, “Deadly force is bad, but clearly there are situations terrible enough that it is justified.” We’re able to draw a line between when it is justified and when it isn’t (of course there are blurry cases near the line).
The argument that silencing nazis is another example of the same phenomenon as silencing some other randomly selected political movement is necessarily the argument that there isn’t a sufficient difference in kind between advocating genocide and not-advocating-genocide for us to draw a line between them.
Let’s put the damage done by saying things on a scale of 1 to 5. Three or less we agree everyone should be able to say (wishing someone a happy birthday, saying you shouldn’t vote for a political candidate because they want to make drugs legal). Five is illegal and we all agree (death threats, offering cash to people who commit crimes). That leaves fours as a wishy-washy grey area that we end up haggling about.
The problem with this debate is that a lot of us see promotion of genocide as a five. We see recruiting youth into radical ideologies that lead to terrorism as a five. We aren’t haggling about where the line is, we are baffled that other people can’t see how bad these things are and seem to want to say they are no different than shouting “Meat is murder!” or “Ice in February? What happened to climate change?”.
People saying “but if we stop nazis from speaking won’t we stop the green party from speaking?” actually sound like the are saying, “but if we shoot that guy who is eating someone’s face in a drug-induced psychosis, won’t we start shooting people just because we don’t like how they look?” Like, how is it possible to not understand how dangerous nazi ideology is?
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OK, because you need to hear it, Nazis and assorted white supremacists suck, they are dispicable people who’s views are deplorable and must be condemned loudly and in the strongest terms.
So, where is your criticism of those who would further their agenda by violent means? Or is it only violence in furtherence of opinions you don’t like that is objectionable?
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Because the “bullies” with mask and clubs are against the nazis.
Try to keep up.
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This exactly. I don’t like some of the tactics adopted by the “far left” (for want of a better term), but that’s a second so distant you’d need a fucking huge telescope to see it behind the fact that their ideology isn’t “hail the glorious white race”.
Neither side is perfect, but only one of them is evil.
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Please explain the peaceful and non-genocidal manner in which a white ethno-state happens in America.
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[citation needed]
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Non-violence in India and the US worked not just because of non-violence, but because of other factors that you’re ignoring. Decolonization was on tap not just because of Gandhi’s work, but because it was unsustainable to maintain empire after the second world war. And let’s not forget what happened there as the subcontinent was being decolonized, with a massive war after partition. IN the US, Civil Rights succeeded for many reasons, including tactics. They also effectively used the mass media to drum up popular support - the footage from Selma and the Children’s march were particularly impactful for people in the north watching on TV. Plus, SCLC had other organizations to compare itself to (NOI for one). And, although King, pulling from Bayard Rustin, didn’t employ violence, he was perfectly willing to put black children’s bodies on the line when was perfectly aware that they would be met with violence. King was wildly unpopular across the country. You’re also ignoring that events such as the riots were also important in shaping policy going forward, it wasn’t just King and SCLC who did the only work that led to change. And the full extent of the Holocaust was being understood and talked about in public, especially after the arrest of Eichmann, and anti-racism was a strong international discussion happening in the 1950s and 1960s. Let’s not forget that the Soviets used American racism against the US quite effectively, especially in gaining allies in Africa during the period of decolonization.
Although non-violence CAN be an effective tactic, it doesn’t always work, especially right now. There is such a fractured national and international media landscape that it’s hard to get a message of non-violence out. The effectiveness of non-violence primarily rests in its ability to garner mainstream backing. If you can’t get that, then it’s not nearly as effective and people just end up being killed.
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We do it because our team won the championship… obviously.
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Or lost. YMMV.
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Which team is that?
