No, you were lumping all anarchism as a violent movement by saying, “[a]narchists have been blowing things up for over a century.” Anarchism is not a monolithic world view, and much anarchist doctrine explicitly rejects violence. See also: “small l” libertarians versus “Libertarians”, or for a less nuanced example KKK and Christianity.
To put it in simpler terms: anarchism != anarchy, and anarchy != violence.
There’s really no such nuance to Nazism as it is a doctrine that is completely incompatible with non-violence to meet its goals.
I don’t find physical violence personally acceptable, but I’m not going to wring my hands over Spencer getting punched on-camera as a dire threat to liberal democracy, either. This is because I’m what the late Steve Gilliard called a “fighting liberal” – a privileged white male one, but also one also has an academic background in 20th century history and whose earlier career in journalism co-incided with the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. This means I understand that ethnic cleansing enthusiasts (this should be the standard way of identifying Spencer) ultimately only understand main force and are better shut down sooner rather than later.
I further understand that, as long as Spencer insists on making public appearances, people who are directly threatened by his movement’s agenda (racial minorities, Jews, LGBTQ folks, etc.) might lose their tempers and choose to engage him in ways other than offering him him a soapbox (especially when a media outlet or university is doing just that).
Spencer is certainly welcome to avail himself of the law and press assault charges against people who smack him, but he knows better than to do so lest his repulsive agenda undergo even more public scrutiny and get categorised as “fighting words.”
Now, some questions for you and the other “concerned” folks here:
Is Spencer an ethnic cleansing enthusiast?
Is ethnic cleansing ever a peaceful and co-operative process?
Is there any value in a media outlet or university offering an ethnic cleansing enthusiast the opportunity to speak unchallenged?
Can ethnic cleansing enthusiasts be reasoned with through verbal debate alone?
Are ethnic cleansing enthusiasts terrorists or supporters of terrorism?
In a situation where someone uttering threats against a group results in a member of that group responding with violence, is your first concern for the ethnic cleansing enthusiast or the lamentable state of public discourse that doesn’t allow him to make threats without any consequence?
If you are concerned about violence in public discourse, why is your priority a handful of antifa protestors (as opposed to the vast majority of liberals and progressives) instead a movement explicitly predicated on violence that is enabled to one extent or another by the media, the police, and the current resident of the Oval Office?
[nb: I have not called Spencer a Nazi, since you seem to take him at his word that he isn’t one despite the Hitler salutes, the Hitlerjugend haircut, the anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric, the calls for a pure Aryan homeland, etc.]
I swore I was done with this thread, but you seem to want to engage reasonably. Your comments actually align well with why speech laws are made the way they are. Before we discuss it, however, please keep in mind that what we are really discussing is whether we should be able to violently assault people we label “evil.”
That distinction will make more sense by the end.
No. It very clear that these are much worse. They might be a four on your scale. The reason they don’t rise the to level of five is that we have very narrowly defined five for things like incitement, libel, imminent threat, fighting words, etc. They have to be very restrictive and content-neutral to prevent people who think burning a flag or being a muslin or a communist should be a five. Remember, you are not the one who gets to decide. It’s our elected officials.
Why does the law work this way? Becuase there are many groups that believe other groups are evil and out to hurt them. All of these groups think they have mountains of evidence proving their case. Society simply can’t function if various groups are allowed to assault people they label as evil. So we give the state a monopoly on violence, we present our evidence to an impartial judge and he determines if any laws have been broken and what to do about it. Naturally, this is resented by those who wish to do violence.
Back to my point at the top that this is really about whether we should be able to violently assault people we label “evil.” and not something that would be restricted to Nazis.
When I pointed out that in fact, Specer is not a Nazi, that he was not was not calling for genocide when he was punched, and that there doesn’t seem to be a quote from him ever calling for genocide. Was the result a lot of rational people saying “Oh, I guess he doesn’t meet the criteria after all. He should not be assaulted?”
Of course not, it was a doubling down of labeling he was a Nazi or saying that the original criteria are relevant because the man could still be labeled as a Nazi .
A society where we get to assault people because we find what they believe to be offensive, will not remain free for long.
It’s not a question of which groups are deserving of this kind of violence. None of them are.
Once again, Spencer’s views on ethnic cleansing is clear. And if you think that’s going to happen in the US, without making Yugoslavia looking like a slap fight, you’re really not paying attention. Remember, that all the Serbs and Croats wanted to do was to Ethnically Cleanse Bosnian muslims from certain parts of Bosnia. Just because spencer is clever enough to avoid the red flags of calling for a genocide, doesn’t mean he isn’t a major problem in American political discourse.
As for the law, as I said to @strokeybeard, American law enforcement is at best blind to racism and often complicity in it - southern cops made up the rank and file of the KKK in the 50s and 60s, and not too few white LEO sympathize with fasicists/authoritarian aims. And the American justice system is in no way fair and evenly distributed towards anything resembling true justice right now.
People have to right to self-defense.
I’ve also seen no one here argue for people who punch nazis not getting assault charges.
Then how aobut white supremacists stop infiltrating law enforcement and shooting black people?
Incorrect. I am not equating the two and have clearly said that the Nazis are worse. My point is that the relative degree of evil is irrelevant. A red herring. It is unacceptable to assault someone simply for being a member of a group.
That’s what the original Nazi party is known for now, and that’s why it’s so easy to see how despicable self-declared neo-nazis are, because they choose to identify with that.
However, if the original Nazi party’s goals had been that simple or that clearly stated, things would have been a lot easier, i.e. genocide might have even been avoided. Austria was full of Nazis who thought it was just about Making The German Reich Great Again, and who were genuinely shocked when they found out about the genocide at the end of the war. And for the rest of their lives (the last of them are in their late 90s now), many of them regretted that their great and pure ideology was “perverted by a mass-murdering criminal” who abused their naive “youthful idealism”.
Side note: Reading this discussion, I am experiencing a bit of a culture shock at how utterly discredited the word “pacifist” seems to have become in English-language society. One side is accusing “pacifists” of being part of the problem by refusing to punch Nazis, and the other side opposes Nazi-punching but would like to assure everyone that they aren’t pacifists, because pacifists are just idiots. Or evil. Or evil idiots.
I’m still thinking of the original meaning of the word “pacifism”, which means an opposition to war as such and striving to find alternate means to resolve international conflict, and thus I keep expecting every decent person to self-identify as a pacifist. Pacifism didn’t always mean “if someone hits your brother, turn his other cheek”.
No one really has a problem with people not wanting to punch Nazis. I have a problem with relatively comfortable people arguing that marginalized folk, and the folks who are standing with them are in the wrong for defending themselves.
Pure and simple.
I abhor violence. I’ve been up close and personal to a damaging degree with it. I know what it costs, and how little can be gained from it. It is a negative transaction, always- even when it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. I hope to never go through all that shit again- terrified, really. But that’s only one fuckin nth of the fear my non-pale male friends live with every day. So when they ask me to get their back, I’m swallowing that fear, let’s fuckin ride.
Enough with the false equivalencies and slippery slope fallacies.
Let those who are against violence stand aside, unless violence seeks them out directly (in that instance my advice remains the same; defend yourselves.)
As someone else so poignantly put it, I’m gettin’ real tired of hearing the same repetitive rhetoric from people who have no need to fight fascism (because they aren’t active targets) but are trying to discourage others from fighting it.
We don’t need your approval, no one is asking for your consent, and generally, we’re willing to deal with the consequences that inherently come with resistance.
