Excellent, nuanced reply. Thank you for the info! Much more to think about.
Then you agree that brutalization of people to silence them is okay, as long as they differ with you. That while you differ with their ideology, you do not differ with their methods.
If you can’t see how eerily familiar that sort of statement is, given all this discussion touches upon, there’s not a lot I can do for you.
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They will use the oppression argument either way because they aren’t arguing in good faith. Consider a spectrum of possible ways to oppose Nazis, with violent executions on one end and a gentle sigh of reproach at the other. They will always argue they are being oppressed for anything that isn’t all the way to the mild end. They made the arguments when they aren’t given access to private forums, aren’t allowed to impose their will by force on others, and yes when they are met with physical resistance. Punching them no more enables that argument than any opposition does, because they will always argue they are oppressed. Hitler committed a violent act to overthrow the state and the Nazis were still putting out propaganda that he was being silenced.
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AS OPPOSED TO NAZIS?
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You know how dangerous intellectuals are. Just ask those peaceful nazis! /s
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Why is this hard to understand? Why? Why is this – THIS VIEW – the controversial and bad view?
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Using hyperbole and animal metaphors to dehumanize, instill fear, and incite violence (extermination?) isn’t a new thing either, especially in the scope of this discussion. Every evil cause did the same against the targets of their ire. When you have to do that to justify an act; resort to making a rabid, cartoonish caricature to make it seem warranted to use violence, maybe what you really desperately want is the violence. I see an idiot spouting idiocy, not an alien trying to inseminate someone.
Here’s the facts. People look for excuses to be violent. Then they pretend their excuses incited the violence, but really, if it wasn’t an idiot nazi, it probably would have been someone who cut him off in traffic. Let’s be real. How many people commenting here would have punched the guy? I tend to think few, if any.
Yeah, I think I am solidly recorded as being opposed to them doing it too. Nor have I advocated not defending one’s self against physical violence. I just tend to believe that behaving like Nazis doesn’t further the cause against Nazism.
Yet it’s those of us who oppose nazis who are the real problem?
Dude, the man in questions was harassing everyone in sight while wearing a nazi arm band. He would have continued to do so, and would have beaten the shit out of someone in a dark alley had he had the chance and the people to do it (because these fucks rarely go on the offensive unless they are in larger numbers). The man was showing himself to be a public threat. People whod threaten others and walk around with a symbol of genocide on their arms in public, aren’t quietly minding their own business.
Not a single person is here talking about going around in larger groups attacking random people with white supremacist leanings, when their sitting at home watching Alex Jones or some shit. We’re talking about making the public sphere uncomfortable for these sorts of views, precisely because there is a history of nazis and neo-nazis acting in violent ways that are not only dangerous for the targets of their aggression, they are dangerous to society. I grew up in the rural south and am well-acquainted with how this functions and operates IN REAL LIFE. This is not an intellectual exercise, this is reality.
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If you honestly want to get into the weeds of unequal enforcement you need to look at the whole picture. Liberals are actually more likely than conservatives to be terminated for their speech https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/political-correctness-free-speech-liberal-data-georgetown And state legislatures are passing laws to protect speakers over counter-demonstrators https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/us/politics/campus-speech-protests.html If you want to see an imbalance in how pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi actions are handled by law enforcement look no further than the recent incidents in Berkeley and Portland. Riot tactics were used on counter demonstrators, possibly because the Portland PD is fine with Nazis https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/07/portland_police_capt_mark_krug.html Berkely decided to post names and pictures of the people they arrested for having prohibited weapons, including flags. https://twitter.com/berkeleypolice?lang=en
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But for what it’s worth, the nonviolent actions of Jesus, MLK, Gandhi, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (to name but a few) weren’t legal, either. I don’t think your (initial) premise was that breaking the law is wrong but that’s what I think you’re implying here. If breaking the law is ok depending on the circumstances, then personally I am going to let nazi-punching slide (at least until I pull the plank from my own eye).
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I tend to think that situation isn’t even an issue of punching. If people are threatening your life, throwing bricks through your windows, they would probably love for you to go out into the yard for fisticuffs. They’d love it more if you brought a gun. They’d be more than happy to lure you into the street and then “stand their ground.” If you did punch them somehow and won the moment, do you really think it ends there?
It’s what they do, you have entered their field of play, their “No Country for Old Men”. Instigating open, violent conflict is their standard operating procedure. People keep quoting the fact that this guy was inciting fights, without acknowledging the fact that the guy who hit him gave him just that. The nazi lost, sure, but if he is truly a nazi, he is thinking in terms of the long game anyway. You think they aren’t scrambling to post the name and address of the puncher on their bbs?
I never said it wasn’t okay to defend yourself against actual violence, but pragmatically one would hope the response you choose would somehow produce a result that bettered your situation. It’s easy to look at a couple of videos where the Nazi is alone, and is the loser, and think justice was served, but he’s not going home thinking “wow, that guy might just be right about me!”
He is going home thinking it might be better to bring a few friends next time, and making himself a martyr in his social group. He will probably just use the assault to further his own misguided hyperbolic arguments that the sort of people who punched them are dangerous and must be dealt with, too. Thus the cyclical nature I described in my original post.
Suggesting that well-intentioned people go around punching Nazis as if a single knockout punch will end their part of the conflict is ignoring the nature of the beast far more than I am.
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Never forget; this is what Nazis and fascists do when left unchecked:
History repeats itself if we do not learn from it.
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There, i fixed it for you.
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It’s weird how the people defending Nazis on this thread seem to keep glossing right over that part of the equation.
Believing in or advocating genocide is NOT merely having a different opinion.
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The disavowal tactic is an old one in Nazi circles. They tell people not to go to the march so that they can deflect anything that goes wrong. If someone is killed they have built a legal defense “hey we said not to go”. If the turnout is low they can claim it wasn’t their event. The Proud Boys seem particularly fond of this method.
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to both yours and @Auld_Lang_Syne 's posts…
I cannot even get how anyone has the mindset of “Oh, we just have differing opinions” This is NOT a debate on if it is ok to have pineapple on pizza. If I chow down on my delicious Hawaiian slice while you may be grossed out by it, you are not … ya know … shoved into a concentration camp and exterminated.
The person above specifically said: Using hyperbole and animal metaphors to dehumanize, instill fear, and incite violence (extermination?) YES BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT NAZI’S BELIEVE TO BE THE SOLUTION! THEY EXTERMINATED PEOPLE.
This is not about disagreeing on what restaurant is best in your area.
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Instead of legitimizing the “Alt Right” as a political force, the Charlotteville march backfired spectacularly, invoking near universal condemnation from pretty much everyone (except 45, his closet enablers, and hard-core bigots, of course.)
IMO, this latest demonstration attempt came out of a sense of sheer childish spite; “You can’t tell us what to do!” and was very poorly thought out, from the choice of venue to the organizing.
DC is a much more populous area than Charlotteville with more cameras and law enforcement, and a more intense political focus, where people are very concerned about maintaining their careers after said ‘march’ is over and done with.
Again, PRIVILEGE is one helluva narcotic, apparently. People tend to feel quite differently when they have some actual ‘skin in the game,’ and “the target” is on their own backs.
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Yeah, it’s from the old “lone wolf” playbook they’ve been going by since the 70s or 80s… stir up the rank and file in private (via various forms of pop culture especially) and set them lose, but deny all knowledge, while hiding behind the first amendment.
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