I think JonS’s “then they came for me” qualifies rather nicely. There’s violence, or there’s doing nothing. A false dichotomy beloved of espousers of violence of any stripe.
And I do like the GIF. Thank you.
Wait, are you claiming moral superiority because you refuse to acknowledge how many people your supported policies hurt? Or are you claiming moral superiority because your supported policies are the first in the existence of man to hurt no-one?
If you have no idea how many people you’re “throwing under the bus”, think harder. Otherwise your philosophy is more about making oneself feel superior than it is about helping others.
Um, this is veering into the same arguments as the pro-gun activists. i.e. the government is no longer capable of protecting its citizenry, and thus their self-protection must be taken into private hands.
It may be true, but the cost of the privatization of violence is so high (and my expectation that people’s support of violence from the normally non-violent has an out-sized social impact), that the bar is quite high.
Now, as JonS points out, I’m not the target of such crimes. But as we have seen countless times in history, violence can spiral beyond the expectations of its initial supporters. I personally don’t find the (small) risk of unexpected or uncontrolled massive violence worth such alleviation of misery as discouraging Spencer has allowed. If others come to a different opinion, I understand that.
Again, it’s the acknowledgement of the cost that I hope for, not that they come to the same decision as me.
A splendid example of unintended consequences is shown in the NPR program about the roots of the NRA and how some of the genesis of the modern NRA has roots in Black Panther self-protection politics. It doesn’t mean that blacks weren’t victimized. Nor does it even mean that the current NRA isn’t an acceptable cost for people pursuing the right for self-protection they did not get from the government. But it does mean support can morph in very odd directions.
I think our responsibility is to take our evaluation of such risks into account when weighing costs. If in doing so, you come to a different decision from me, that’s great.
I would just ignore the provocateur but I think you can go too far in your use your right of free speech and someone will punch you out. I’m no legal expert but I think sufficient verbal provocation is a valid defense in assault cases.
Sorry, I missed this.
I am not American. I have no great love for the American’s First Amendent, and as a Canadian, I am perfectly willing to accept the criminalization of certain speech. But I feel that criminalization, and the violence that goes with it, should remain the preserve of the government, rather than be privatized.
And yes, JonS, I acknowledge the real risk that the government’s right to censor may well be used to censor speech of those who I feel are the “good guys”. I’m willing to risk “throwing them under the bus” too, because I think the risk is worth the benefit. Broken record time: Every policy has a cost. Know what those cost are.
You know, using that term in German does immediately conjure up this picture:
The Nazis made extensive use of the term Heimatfront in their propaganda, so everyone in German-language speaking areas immediately associates this with the Lingua Teritii Imperii.
Even though this is an English-language forum, the use makes me deeply uncomfortable.
We can discuss discourse ethics some other time, and if you side with Popper or with Habermas does matter in the end. But we are in a situation, now, where discourse is actively avoided. We had this before, and last time history repeated itself as a tragedy. Which does not mean this farce is also ending with laughter.
@Trogdor, nice try, but have you heard about Rosa Luxemburg? Carl von Ossietzky and Kurt Tucholsky? Willi Graf? Sophie and Hans Scholl? I could name more, but they don’t have nice tank pics. No offence, the allied forces freed us and the world from the Nazi regime. But the first anti-fascists? LOL.
Also, Marina Ginestà, representing.
Again, I prefer the government to take care of Nazis. But, unfortunately, and how it was seen is Charlottesville, frequently the local, state, and federal governments abdicate their duty to uphold the law and allow, for example, armed demonstrators to march under the flags of enemies of the United States. That is not what either the First or the Second Amendment are about. In those types of situations, I have some sympathy for citizens taking care of what their government doesn’t seem to be willing to deal with.
Oh! I will attempt to avoid it here. As a note, it is also widely used in England and Canada (and I assumed US). We’ve books, TV shows, and museum exhibits that use the term which is of course where I picked it up from (although in googling about, it appears the term is “homefront” with no space.)
Anyway, happy to accommodate.
As do I. I understand the choice, even if it doesn’t match my own preferences, just as I understand the minorities who are anti-gun control, even if that doesn’t match my preference either.
Yea, my far right Republican aunt tried the ‘both sides’ ‘you must equally condemn all for whatever immediate violence those vaguely associated with them have done’. I was all ‘no, the Nazis ideology is enough to condemn them, they don’t have to actually lift a finger’. Amazingly this seemed to actually sink in. I think it’s almost the only thing that ever has.
Yep. You are no legal expert.
If the Nazis and fascists weren’t there Antifa wouldn’t be there either. They are a response to a problem.
Anyone thinking this is purposely ignoring the side with the greater violence (hint: it’s not antifa who have shot several people, had a member murder someone with their car, and had several mass shooters and terrorists tied to their supporting factions).
Under what circumstances would you anticipate such expansion?
I quite like the idea of punching Nazi’s myself and oddly enough I don’t think violence is a good response for most situations or persons. Call it a quirk and fuck a Nazi. I’ve made peace with some of my flaws.
I’ve never punched anyone other than my oldest brother, and then not since I was eight or nine. You don’t have to punch people to prove you aren’t racist. You also don’t have to think the punching people is a good policy.
But i won’t accept this “we can’t tell the difference” thing. We all use our judgment to tell the difference between acceptable and unacceptable things all day. I back people who punch Nazis and that does not make me responsible for something who decides to punch, say, a member of the Green party.
We have criminal laws against forcible confinement and if you break them we deem the appropriate punishment be that you are forcibly confined. There’s no irony in that, no one is confused, and nothing bleeds over. We simply distinguish between different reasons for doing the same thing.
I had an old tube type radio that played well for the most part but sometimes just wouldn’t do a damn thing when I turned it on. Usually a good firm smack would make it start up and babble away like it should. A friend who messes with electronics quite a bit said smacking it probably grounded it. I think the same might be said for knocking a Nazi up the side of the head. Sometimes shit just needs to be grounded better and the solution is right at hand.
See, this would have been a good place to stop.
Perhaps here we are overestimating the significance of our personal opinions?
I thought we might be debating the sort of hippie who is against all violence, which in this case would be tedious to discuss but otherwise generally fine. Sure, whatever, let’s sit in a circle and sing folk songs. But then
As @LutherBlisset points out, this is the language of imperialism. This is saying that all the shit we blow up in foreign countries is no big deal but we should wring our hands about one rich white asshole getting punched on TV.
And here we seem to have no problem with violence of all sorts as long as the perpetrators are wearing uniforms. Fascists have lots of experience exploiting this authoritarian impulse.
