Prescott retaliated when someone hit him at close range. Personally I’d have chinned the fucker that did that to me too. Funnily enough the support from his own party was underwhelming: Prescott was an old school politician in the labour mould who worked his way up (from the ships from memory) and got an education. A person with real life experience rather than a cossetted heir and trust fund beneficiary (usually now going into internships and think tanks on the way up) and not the kind of person NEW Labour wanted about.
Prescott didn’t tell a mob to assault egg throwers. Self defence isn’t a crime. Assaulting people because they think they might attack you is a crime, as is telling other people to do the dirty work for you.
I guess the distinction isn’t necessarily one that carries much weight in the US which, as a country, decides to invade other countries for “self defence” because they would attack the US if they could/if they thought they’d get away with it / or might deep down in their hearts want to attack the US. Or something.
Of all the problems I had with John Prescott, his reaction to that protestor wasn’t one of them. Neither was his background. His politics on the other hand… (Cumbria should have been part of the North East region, not the north west. Prescott was pretty authoritarian over that issue.)
I went to the same college as John Prescott for a short while (I didn’t finish my course because of ill health), but it felt like its radical history had been replaced by New Labour ideas when I was there.
But I do wonder, and only following from the other side of the pond, if Trump or his voters will get the point ‘In the Flesh’ makes. I can really imagine somebody saying: " Whats wrong with this? I see only people cheering at the/there leader, happy to see him, and getting rid of some party poopers. Nice sign he’s making btw, shall we copy?"
Stopping someone from committing assault using reasonable force is not wrong.
I have no idea what the neutral perspective of American legal tradition is on this, but in some other places anything beyond wrestling a tomato-thrower to the ground and depriving him of his tomato is a criminal act of violence in itself.
“Knocking the crap out of someone” is not “within the bounds of reasonable force”. What kind of reasoning would make that level of violence reasonably necessary to prevent the assault?
Now if somebody threatened to shoot you (or somebody else, for that matter) and you proceeded to knock the crap out of them (rather than just the gun out of the shooter’s hands), then any reasonable judge would conclude that being threatened with death had reasonably put you in an unreasonable state of mind and therefore cut you some slack.
But wouldn’t the crime need to be more concrete? As in, if there is no protester to have the crap beaten out of, it’s all hypothetical. Likewise, all the people who say “if someone insulted me, I’d knock the crap out of him” don’t get into any legal trouble. However, saying “if you insult me, I’ll knock the crap out of you” can get you in trouble for making threats.
So, if someone did throw a tomato or got beaten for a similar reason after Trump said that, he’d definitely be going down.
Now that’s harsh. Punishments should be directed against the perpetrators, not against their grandchildren. I know we Austrians inflicted Hitler on the world, but isn’t it a little late to punish us by electing Trump?
Good. Hope the rest of the country follows suit. Not that I have any love for the carpetbagging Canuck, but at least he’s not a wannabe fascist dictator.
If I were Trump, I’d plant a loyal tomato thrower in the audience, and when I gave the pre-arranged signal (probably some specific horrible fascist utterance) he’d throw it at me, and I effortlessly catch it, then take a big juicy bite out of it, and crush it in my hand. I’d then exclaim something about the blood of my enemies. C’mon T, it’s like you’re not even trying.
“incitement of the people”, which is a serious crime in Germany for reasons.
The irony being, of course, that Germany has one of the very few societies that doesn’t think it’s somehow magically immune to authoritarian mania.
I don’t think that censoring Trump would help, but I would really love to grab his supporters and say “please, point to where you think there’s any difference at all between you and a Nazi supporter in the thirties”. It’s like… if you get on board the evil train, you probably aren’t going to get off that train once it leaves the station.
I know what late stage capitalism means, but I have no idea whether I should take “early stage capitalism” as a personal insult, as a contradiction or as an agreement to my comment.
While I have meanwhile taken to smiling whenever I hear any reference to any specific stage of capitalism, I must admit that I am totally clueless as to what you mean.
