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It's pretty scary how the article goes from killing Nazis is fantastic, to anybody at my right is a Nazi and it's morally ok to punch them. >Too often, when we

• deleted 9y ago
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• glibgil 9y ago
  > It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason and truth than with violence Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
  • doctorless 9y ago
    Are you advocating violent suppression of views you dislike? Do you not see an irony there?
    • danharaj 9y ago
      It's grossly dishonest to reduce white supremacy to "views one dislikes". Yes, if you remove all of the content of views and just focus on the act of liking or disliking them, you can make any disagreement look unreasonable.
      • elefanten 9y ago
        The problem with that is that, especially when emotions run high, it becomes very difficult to tell where the line is for sufficiently "dangerous" views that deserve punching. If you look around today's blogosphere and social media, for example, you'll see a significant variance in what gets labeled "racist" or "white supremacy" (to use the most germane example). If someone is declared a white supremacist for touching a black person's hair and the standard is "it's ok to punch white supremacists because they are violent and dangerous"... it will become a mess fast. Which is one reason why it's generally a good decision-rule to not employ violence (as a citizen) unless violence is imminently being used against you.
        • tptacek 9y ago
          See now you've introduced a third debate. If this was simply an attempt to deal with whether it's a good idea to punch Nazis (again, I think: no), we'd be much more careful. But now we're asked to debate whether touching a black person's hair (also: huh?) is "white supremacist".
        • eridius 9y ago
          Neo-nazis and their ideology directly threatens the very lives of a lot of people, and it's basically impossible to argue against them because they already understand these ir position and just don't care about any of the myriad reasons why they're wrong. This is where the "punch a nazi" thing comes from. They're a very real personal threat to people, and they can't be convinced to change their mind, so all you can really do is get them to shut up and go away, and the way you do that is by punching them. If you can make them afraid to express their neo-nazi ideas, then that's a win.
          • tptacek 9y ago
            This logic ends nowhere good for anyone. If you can punch away evil, so can the people who believe abortion clinics are murder factories --- in fact, their arguments are even better than ours.
            • ZeroGravitas 9y ago
              Not if they don't support factual sex education and easy availability of contraception. If they don't then they're probably just fascists using emotive subjects to gain power (see the blood libel against the Jews) or suckers falling for the fascist propaganda. It's great that Godwin can't be applied to this thread.
              • tptacek 9y ago
                Sorry, but that's an orthogonal argument. Pro-life activists believe abortion is murder. Nothing you can say about contraception refutes that argument. The fact that I find the pro-life argument so personally repellant is why I think it's a reasonably good example in discussions like these: it's a system of practical beliefs directly contrary to my own that is held by a great many people. Whatever ethics about speech suppression I would apply to others, I have to make work for these as well.
    • tptacek 9y ago
      Careful. Whether it's OK to retaliate violently against odious views is one question (personally, I think: no). Whether Nazism is simply a "view one dislikes", like a particular ice cream flavor, is another.
    • peteretep 9y ago
      Yes...? I advocate violent suppression of those who think genocide is appropriate. I don't advocate violent suppression of people talking loudly on cellphones. Can't you see a difference?
    • glibgil 9y ago
      Do the view present an existential threat? I would fight an existential threat
  • aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Gandhi and King. Violence just leads to more violence and hatred.
    • anigbrowl 9y ago
      OK. Serious question: have you, personally, ever been assaulted for your identity or been in a physical fight for your life?
      • deleted 9y ago
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    • WaxProlix 9y ago
      American textbook whitewashed versions of King and Gandhi, perhaps. It's convenient for the ruling class to have peaceful (and ineffectual) forms of 'resistance' lauded over other means. http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/riot-language-unheard-9-mlk-quotes-mainstream-media-wont-cite http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/riot-language-unhear... https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mahatmagan100677.html https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mahatmagan100677... http://www.naturalnews.com/038372_Gandhi_nonviolence_right_to_bear_arms.html http://www.naturalnews.com/038372_Gandhi_nonviolence_right_t... etc
  • pheldagryph 9y ago
    One of the most chilling comments I've ever read on this site. How does one provide evidence of the content of their heart?
    • anigbrowl 9y ago
      Nobody's asking for validation of the contents of a persons heart. But people are saying that certain speech acts deserve unyielding opposition because they consist of exhortations to violence. Why conflate two different things?
      • deleted 9y ago
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      • pheldagryph 9y ago
        I'm not following your suggestion of conflation. The correct way to read my comment is as a criticism of the clear rhetorical support for violence in its parent. I am full of controversial opinions, I know...
        • anigbrowl 9y ago
          The contents of a persons heart are known only to them and fundamentally unknowable by anyone else barring some scientific breakthrough, so they cannot and should not be subject to sanction. The words that come out of their mouth, on the other hand, are discernable. You say the correct way to read your comment is as a criticism of the rhetorical support for violence in the parent, but the parent comment in question treats of violent opposition to Nazism, an inherently violent ideology, which you seem to be overlooking. Allow me to illustrate how this looks from where I'm sitting: Abel: Nazism is good! I support putting [people I dislike] into camps and killing them. Baker: I find Abel's views repugnant and threatening to me, and if he expresses them in my presence I will punch him. Charlie: Baker is terribly violent! Please explain to me why you find the idea of violent opposition to Nazism 'chilling' but don't have anything to say about Nazism itself. It seems like a strange double standard.
• EliRivers 9y ago
  I believe you are misrepresenting the article. It does not say that punching nazis is ok. The closest it comes to that is "To be clear, sometimes the only way to win against a Nazi is to punch them." The article is clearly advocating coherent argument over violence, dialogue over silencing. I believe you have significantly misunderstood. It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason and truth than with violence. You mean as advocated in the article, where it states: "... we also need to understand and be ready to explain the reasons why racism, genocide and white nationalism are bad"?
• olewhalehunter 9y ago
  >anybody at my right is a Nazi and it's morally ok to punch them. ironically enough the Sturmabteilung, precursors to the SS, were originally formed to protect meetings from leftist street violence
  • WalterGR 9y ago
    That's some pretty sickening white-washing. I'll assume good faith and that it was unintentional. Their primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Red Front Fighters League (Rotfrontkämpferbund) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists, and Jews – for instance, during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung Perhaps you point out that "originally formed" and "primary purpose" aren't necessarily the same. Fair enough. So: Some 70 people attended, and a second such meeting was advertised for 13 November in the Eberlbrau beer hall. Some 130 people attended; there were hecklers, but Hitler's military friends promptly ejected them by force, and the agitators "flew down the stairs with gashed heads." The next year, on 24 February, he announced the party's Twenty-Five Point program at a mass meeting of some 2000 people at the Hofbräuhaus. Protesters tried to shout Hitler down, but his former army companions, armed with rubber truncheons, ejected the dissenters. The basis for the SA had been formed. ibid.
• thinkfurther 9y ago
  Even from what you quote I noticed you took it as an endorsement of what it criticizes, but it goes on: > To be clear, sometimes the only way to win against a Nazi is to punch them. But we also need to understand and be ready to explain the reasons why racism, genocide and white nationalism are bad. This may seem simplistic and rudimentary, it may even make you angry, but we must be ready to explain to young people why these ideas are so poisonous. It is no longer enough to just point at the history and say “because.” or, as you said: > Kind of like "It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech" Ironically, disallowing speech and interpreting it as the opposite of what it very clearly says are both closer together than they are to free speech. What's the point of being able to say something when you then feel free to turn it on its head? That's shifting the point of breakage. And is it some kind of joke that EliRivers got downvoted for stating what you should have realized, much less other readers; without even a response?
• anigbrowl 9y ago
  So if you see somebody waving a flag, you punch them? If they're carrying a battle flag (a specific design you can look up) then they're literally signalling that they're there for purposes of conquest. It's perfectly OK to oppose that. I don't like the "punch them" rhetoric. It's not compatible with free speech. It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason and truth than with violence. The second option makes you look like the Gestapo or the NKVD But the 'racial purity' ideology is not always expressed in terms of their personal life choices about who they start a family with. Rather, it frequently comes paired with the assertion that the Other must be conquered, driven away, or eliminated. 'More speech' sounds really nice in principle, but I'm guessing you're not a member of any group that is threatened by eliminationist rhetoric, and people who are under threat are not obliged to serve as martyrs for you to use as moral exemplars in polite debate. Thus, the 'unlimited free speech' argument is a very privileged one, because speech is only free if it can be engaged in without existential anxiety. Consider Jeremy Christian, the guy who killed two people and injured a third in Portland just weeks ago. He was yelling abuse at two female passengers on the train and people intervened to ask him to stop, and he attacked them with a knife. Those people took your 'more speech' approach and they're dead, are they not? No more speech of any kind for them, and no speech of yours can possibly restore them to their families. Why, exactly, should people have to subject themselves to injury or death at the hands of bad actors before they're allowed to take any other action in your value schema? By feitishizing 'free speech' without regard to the consequences, you're giving extremists a license to engage in criminal threats but insisting that the people who are the subject of such threats do nothing to safeguard their own persons. If your approach is so great, how does authoritarianism get off the ground anywhere? Why isn't it just talked out of existence by people armed only with reason and truth? What good are reason and truth when confronted with anti-rationalist ideologies that ignore logic and rely on atavistic emotional appeals, and which are demonstrably successful in activating people to commit violence against innocent people and populations?
  • tptacek 9y ago
    You moved the goal posts. Virtually all of us "oppose" Nazism. That doesn't make it OK to physically attack them. Once again: if it's OK for us to punch Nazis, it must also be OK for anti-abortion activists to violently attack abortion clinics. Their argument that abortion clinics are murder factories --- and argument I vehemently disagree with --- is on firmer ground than our argument that white supremacist speech is somehow intrinsically violent.
• colanderman 9y ago
  I think you are grossly misinterpreting the sentence you quoted. It isn't advocating anything; it is making an observation. "We punch them" is indicative mood, not subjunctive as you seem to have taken it ("we should punch them").