Can we maybe not blame black people for the pathology of whiteness?
17 Likes
Can you not say I blamed someone when I went out of my way to say he tried to avoid antagonizing them.
1 Like
Our current president IS committing genocide of 3 million American citizens right now through complete and utter sloth and indifference
8 Likes
So far they can’t even hold a rally without someone getting killed or attempting to kill someone.
10 Likes
This was such a common theme, that electing a black president was going to lead to a race war. It’s nonsense.
And he did bend over backwards trying to appease the racists, which he shouldn’t have done. It gave them even more legitimacy.
13 Likes
I think there is a difference in the radicalization potential of a punch in the face vs. murdering people’s children. One of the two elicits a much stronger devote-the-rest-of-my-life-to-revenge reaction.
It’s also very hard to draw that parallel unless American white supremacists are doing significant overseas fundraising from people who genuinely identify with the victims. Middle-east-based terror groups can fundraise off a civilian massacre because that really could have been anyone’s wedding. American white supremacist groups don’t really have a similar argument - are they going to go to people and say, “Hey, someone might accidentally punch you thinking you are a Nazi, donate to the KKK today”?
If someone said they were going to go kill Richard Spencer’s family to deter American Nazis, I would say: 1) That’s probably going to have the opposite effect you want it to; 2) Holy shit! Don’t murder people!
There’s honestly a difference between killing people en masse and punching someone in the face.
This is not about me wanting to be a tough guy. I am not a tough guy. I can’t even imagine getting into a physical fight, it would probably take someone physically attacking my children for me to do that. That’s all the more reason for me to be thankful that there are people out there who are willing to put themselves in harms way to protect other people from Nazis.
That should never be necessary. The police should be the ones protecting people from Nazis. Because they often won’t, we end up relying on very angry people to defend us from Nazis, people so angry that they aren’t necessarily going to use good judgement and who may be itching for a fight.
The cure for vigilanteism is a society is just enough that people don’t feel like they need to take matters into their own hands. I have no interest in tut-tutting people punching Nazis.
12 Likes
They didn’t start that way. The “Final Solution” was the culmination of a campaign of hatred that started with words and meetings and books, escalated to street fights (with disreputable Communist thugs backed by the Soviets, which is not what the vast majority of modern antifa are), moved on to election campaigns and rallies, followed by law and, ghettos. The genocides started in earnest after they had also started an horrific war, but the intent was there from the beginning.
During the Weimar period, Hitler and the Nazis were lampooned as a fringe group of clowns not to be taken seriously or were regarded as easily controlled by the conservative establishment of the time. Nothing like this movement had been seen before the late 1920s, so they can be forgiven for downplaying the potential damage fascists could do and not being prepared for the startling velocity at which they can metastasise in a country’s body politic. Given the lessons of history, we have no such excuse.
13 Likes
The tactic and philosophy is the same: The strong use violence and intimidation to rule the weak, a.k.a. might is right.
Wow, that’s some profound table turning nonsense right there.
Your premise is that individuals who identify with a group which promotes the lumping together of individuals for poor treatment based on arbitrary metrics should not be lumped together by individuals for poor treatment based on arbitrary metrics?
Ever heard of paying it forward? Notzees do, and they get punched.
Being a notzee means you want to be punched. They’re linked. The wanting to be punched precedes it, but being a notzee is an increasingly popular way to act out ones willingness to be a target for a punch.
3 Likes
I don’t think you could have possibly meant to say something as monstrous as “the lives of millions of people massacred by authoritarian regimes are worth the same as the stinging cheek of Richard Spencer.” So I’m kind of struggling. Someone thought, “Fuck this, I’m going to punch Richard Spencer.” Punching Spencer was his tactic. Someone else (a whole lot of someone elses) have thought, “We’re going to kill everyone of a certain heritage with guns/machetes/gas chambers.” Guns, machetes and gas chambers were their tactics. Those are not the same.
Nor do I think you can say the philosophy of “We’re going to kill everyone who has a certain heritage” and “We’re going to hurt everyone who takes a certain action” are the same philosophy - no matter what the action in question is. There’s an element of might makes right in both, but there’s an element of might makes right in giving a murderer a fair trial and them imprisoning them after a guilty verdict (unless they concur that the sentence is fair and agree to carry it out). There was a very strong element of might makes right when I grabbed my two-year-old’s wrist to stop them from running onto the street. Am I the same as a Nazi for doing that?
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Is an angry person punching someone they hate and a group of people coldly conspiring to murder en masse the same now? Is there some way we can each hold our positions on Nazi punching while recognizing those are two different things?
11 Likes
I apologize if this has already been addressed (as a wallflower in this discussion, I’ve lost track of the arguments in this thread), but what about violence as a matter of self-defense?
4 Likes
Easy answer:
I’ve stated many times that I don’t advocate starting the violence, but neither do I fault anyone who finishes it, especially if left with no other recourse.
12 Likes
That and there are certain martial arts where self-defense amounts to turning your opponent’s momentum against them and generally being productively evasive in a way that it looks like you’re helping them kick their own ass.
6 Likes
Now comes the time when I insert a barely-related Stevie Nicks pic because it makes me smile, rather than having to seriously continue pondering how many of my fellow countrymen would just turn a blind eye if they saw me being accosted by fascists (because that’s what these threads end up doing; making me doubt the core values of others.)
9 Likes
That’s…actually bumming me out to read that. I’ve been a little more doubtful of the good of humanity lately and as someone whose trust has always been others’ to lose, it’s goddamned depressing.
5 Likes
Sorry; as much of a cynic as I am, I had genuinely thought better of most US citizens… until the orange clusterfuck of 2016 happened.
And my ‘faith’ has been steadily shrinking ever since…
8 Likes
12 Likes
Wait, what? Bad things will only happen if an extremely right wing group become radicalised?
5 Likes
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
