Twitter users hunt down Seattle Nazi and knock him out

[Wanderfound]

This is turning into quite a good history thread.

[L0ki]

I simply didn’t know where to start with that post.

Everyone of the things listed involved significant violence.

[SheiffFatman]

That was kind of the point.

[L0ki]

Sorry - I was unclear. I didn’t mean the things you listed. I meant the things they had listed. India, Africa, European nations.

[anotherone]

@M_Dub

You’re the one using quotes out of context

Out of context? You mean the context of the book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
By Jeanne Theoharis on page 202 where Rosa Parks was speaking about the criticism toward Dr King from other civil rights activist? Where she was explaining how many people left the King movement due to lack of results? You mean the context where she was explaining that Dr King ultimately failed due to the white establishment not responding in kind to non-violence? You mean the context where she further went to speak about the rise of black militancy due to the violence from the white supremacists?

Tell me again, how quoting Rosa Parks on the failures of Dr Kings approach in response to you quoting Dr Kings admonishment of violence in a discussion on the relative merits of non-violent vs violent action in the face of oppression is taking it out of context?

@M_Dub

while simultaneously denouncing and justifying violence

Yes, I denounce the violence of the intolerant white supremacy movement and support the protectionist violence of removing said cancer from our society. But hey, you chat with them and ask them to stop. Good luck with that.

[SheiffFatman]

Apologies! I know we had an (amicable) disagreement earlier over the role of violence in the fall of fascism in Spain, Greece and Portugal, and I was worried you thought I was making a similar argument w/r/t India (where I’m on firmer ground).

[L0ki]

No, no your point was quite clear! My post really was unclear.

[some_guy]

I think we can all agree: if WW2 taught us anything, it’s that at some point it is necessary to “punch” Nazis.

We’re just debating where/when that point is.

[Wanderfound]

Premature Anti-Fascist

I first heard the remarkable phrase that serves as my title in 1946 when, fresh out of the US Army, I went up to New Haven, Connecticut for an interview with the chairman of the Yale Classics Department, to which, taking advantage of the generous provisions of what was popularly known as the GI Bill, I had applied for admission to the graduate program for the Ph.D. in Classics.

I had submitted a copy of my certificate of the BA I had received from St. Johns College, Cambridge in 1936. I did not make any mention of the fact that I had made rather a mediocre showing in the final part of the Tripos, ending up with a second class (at least, I comforted myself, I did better than Auden, who got a third, and Housman, who failed completely).

To jazz my application up a bit, I had included my record in the US Army, private to captain 1942-45. The Professor, who had himself served in the US Army in 1917-18, was very interested, and remarked on the fact that, in addition to the usual battle-stars for service in the European Theatre, I had been awarded a Croix de Guerre a l’Ordre de l’Armée, the highest category for that decoration.

Asked how I got it, I explained that, in July 1944, I had parachuted, in uniform, behind the Allied lines in Brittany to arm and organize French Resistance forces and hold them ready for action at the moment most useful for the Allied advance. “Why were you selected for that operation?” he asked, and I told him that I was one of the few people in the US Army who could speak fluent, idiomatic, and (if necessary) pungently coarse French.

When he asked me where I had learned it, I told him that I had fought in 1936 on the northwest sector of the Madrid front in the French Battalion of the XIth International Brigade. “Oh,” he said, “You were a premature anti-Fascist.”

I was taken aback by the expression. How, I wondered, could anyone be a premature anti-Fascist? Could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? A premature antiseptic? A premature antitoxin? A premature anti-racist? If you were not premature, what sort of anti-Fascist were you supposed to be? A punctual anti-Fascist? A timely one?

In fact, in the '30s, as the European situation moved inexorably toward war, the British and French governments (the French often under pressure from the British) passed up one timely opportunity after another to become anti-Fascist. They did nothing when Adolf Hitler took Germany out of the League of Nations and began a massive rearmament program (except that the British government negotiated an Anglo-German Naval Treaty that gave Hitler the right to build the U-boats that, in the early '40s, came close to starving Britain into surrender).

No action was taken when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, demolishing the buffer against an invasion of France created by the Versailles Treaty. They allowed Hitler and Mussolini to supply Franco with planes, tanks, guns and troops, while enforcing a so-called Non-Intervention Agreement that cut off supplies to the Government.

They remained silent while Mussolini conquered Abyssinia and Hitler annexed Austria. And in 1938, they sold down the river for a ludicrous illusion of Peace in Our Time the only strong, democratic state in Eastern Europe that might have been a deterrent to Hitler’s plans for expansion, the Czechoslovak Republic.

You couldn’t call Chamberlain, Daladier and Laval ‘timely anti-Fascists’. They declared war on Hitler in 1939 as he invaded Poland, a declaration that gave no help to the Poles, who were crushed between the armies of Hitler from one side and Stalin from the other.

So what kind of anti-Fascists were they? My French maquisards had a phrase for the Frenchmen who, in 1944, as the Allied armies broke out of the Normandy pocket and raced across France in pursuit of the retreating Wehrmacht, finally tried to join the Resistance. Resistants de la dernière heure was their contemptuous name for them - ‘last-minute anti-Fascists’. It is a perfect description of Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax.

But in 1939, last-minute was too late. Too late to save the millions who died in the death camps; too late to save the soldiers and sailors who died in the campaigns in Russia, the Middle East, North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, at Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Okinawa and many other places Americans had never heard of; too late to save the civilians who, like the inhabitants of Guernica, died under the bombs in Rotterdam, London, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and Hiroshima.

It would have been better to be premature.

From http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/knox.htm

[MalevolentPixy]

Thank you. I can only speak for Canada, so I was hoping someone else could show the fallacy of the other claims.

[MalevolentPixy]

Right, so statues to guys like Cornwallis celebrating him as a founder aren’t glorifying violence. We need a Missing Women and Children inquiry that is still ongoing because we’re having such a great conversation and dealing with our violent past so well.

If you think Rest of Canada is suffering for what it did to the Natives, you’re not paying attention to who still suffers in this country. Lip service is not recognition.

And if you still want to call that “horrible things” so you don’t have to look too hard at what our founders did to other people, go ask a Quebeçois about the non-violent founding of Canada… I recommend you do it on Jean Baptiste Day for extra fun.

[anon34697667]

@Melizmatic

there are people essentially arguing that fighting back equates to being as bad as the people who started all the shit in the first place.

Cite, please? Punching someone to shut them up or because you don’t like what they say or wear is not “fighting back”/self-defense.

Punching someone to shut them up or because you don’t like what they say or wear is the definition of the behavior you’ve been denouncing.

[anotherone]

@M_Dub

Punching someone to shut them up or because you don’t like what they say or wear is not “fighting back”/self-defense.

Another excellent example of a straw man. No one is punching Nazis to shut them up or because they don’t like what Nazis say. People punch Nazi’s because allowing intolerant people to persist in a tolerant society will ultimately destroy said society. People punch Nazis to protect society.

@M_Dub

Cite, please?

I refer you to this entire discussion.

@M_Dub

Punching someone to shut them up or because you don’t like what they say or wear is the definition of the behavior you’ve been denouncing.

So the definition of White Supremacy, Nazism, and White Nationalism is punching people for what they say or wear? Yeah… no.

[anon34697667]

@anotherone

No one is punching Nazis to shut them up or because they don’t like what Nazis say.

Uh, hello? That’s exactly why Nazis (armband guy, Richard Spencer, et al) are getting punched.

People punch Nazi’s because allowing intolerant people to persist in a tolerant society will ultimately destroy said society.

Wrong. The United States has a long history of allowing intolerant, despicable assholes to preach their odious bullshit. We’ve survived, and we’ll continue to survive, because we’re not afraid of words.

People punch Nazis to protect society.

We don’t need or want that kind of protection. “Protecting society” is exactly what the Nazis claim they’re doing.

[anotherone]

@M_Dub

Uh, hello? That’s exactly why Nazis (armband guy, Richard Spencer, et al) are getting punched.

My apologies. I was unaware of your psychic abilities and your intimate knowledge of the mindset of everyone who has ever punched a Nazi.

@M_Dub

The United States has a long history of allowing intolerant, despicable assholes to preach their odious bullshit.

Indeed. We also have a pretty solid history of killing Nazis.

@M_Dub

We don’t need or want that kind of protection

So you speak for everyone now. Wow, psychic and the voice of the people. You are an impressive beast aren’t you?

For me, the real gem is this

@Melizmatic

my mind is still boggled that there are people essentially arguing that fighting back equates to being as bad as the people who started all the shit in the first place.

@M_Dub

Cite, please?

@M_Dub

“Protecting society” is exactly what the Nazis claim they’re doing.

[Mindysan33]

[Footface]

I appreciate the Popper tolerating-intolerance argument. But is not believing in street violence the same thing as tolerating Nazis?

If you’re not beating someone up, you’re “tolerating” them? Are those our only choices?

[Melz2]

@M_Dub

Cite, please?

In the context of the actual topic;

The Nazi in question was harassing people in public; rather than call an internet lynch mob, someone should have done something right then, in the moment.

At no point have I ever said it’s ‘okay’ to punch someone to ‘shut them up’; but if someone threatens others violence and gets met with violence, then no tears will be wasted on them.

I don’t start the bullshit or throw the first punch in general; but if someone swings at me, then we’re just gonna be some fighting muthafuckas.

[Mindysan33]

@aluchko

unified by the East India Company

I think you misspelled the Mughal empire there.

[ChuckV]

He’s posted four times in three years.