9 ms·

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.
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        People could have said the same about Nazism. Personally I put the anti-abortionists (who directly cause more abortions) in the same category as the guy who turned up at a pizza parlor with a rifle and many low level Nazis. Confused by propaganda into making the situation worse.
        tptacek 9y ago
        All you're saying is that you disagree with them. I do too. What's your point? There are tens of millions of them. To be actively racist is (thank Christ) to marginalize yourself in modern society. But to be pro-life? Sorry, it may not seem that way on a message board, but there's not a lot of stigma to opposing abortion. Meanwhile, there's no evading it. You simply must stipulate that opponents of abortion believe, in good faith, that abortion is the unjust taking of human life. If you believe you have the right to punch Nazis, I don't see how you escape conceding that pro-lifers have the right to punch women walking into abortion clinics. We neatly avoid all of this simply by allowing that while it's important to suppress Nazism (and white supremacy and all that stuff), we're not entitled to use physical violence to do it. Obviously, I have company in that perspective with the ACLU.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    There will always be unreasonable people, in fact everyone's idea of what is unreasonable will be different. It's ok though because we're a social species whose individuals like to share their thoughts and values and refine them together. The fact that people will disagree about what warrants violence is not a refutation of the idea that it is possible to justify violence. It is not a justification for refusing to ever analyze the merits of a particular justification for a particular act of violence. Instead of discussing the merits of whether it is justified to violently oppose the ideology of white supremacy, whose latest form includes doublespeak like "peaceful ethnic cleansing" (Richard Spencer), you've shifted the topic to abstract considerations where the implicit demand is an argument that decides for all instances of violence whether or not they are justified. I can justify punching Richard Spencer, for example, without considering the rather absurd claim that someone who touches black hair (I presume you mean without consent) should be considered a white supremacist and therefore worthy of violence. Just because a problem is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth examining. The fact that one cannot analytically decide a priori when violence is justified or not is just one of the many messy facts of the world that necessitate politics and taking conflict seriously.
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

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.
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        People could have said the same about Nazism. Personally I put the anti-abortionists (who directly cause more abortions) in the same category as the guy who turned up at a pizza parlor with a rifle and many low level Nazis. Confused by propaganda into making the situation worse.
        tptacek 9y ago
        All you're saying is that you disagree with them. I do too. What's your point? There are tens of millions of them. To be actively racist is (thank Christ) to marginalize yourself in modern society. But to be pro-life? Sorry, it may not seem that way on a message board, but there's not a lot of stigma to opposing abortion. Meanwhile, there's no evading it. You simply must stipulate that opponents of abortion believe, in good faith, that abortion is the unjust taking of human life. If you believe you have the right to punch Nazis, I don't see how you escape conceding that pro-lifers have the right to punch women walking into abortion clinics. We neatly avoid all of this simply by allowing that while it's important to suppress Nazism (and white supremacy and all that stuff), we're not entitled to use physical violence to do it. Obviously, I have company in that perspective with the ACLU.
- danharaj 9y ago
  There will always be unreasonable people, in fact everyone's idea of what is unreasonable will be different. It's ok though because we're a social species whose individuals like to share their thoughts and values and refine them together. The fact that people will disagree about what warrants violence is not a refutation of the idea that it is possible to justify violence. It is not a justification for refusing to ever analyze the merits of a particular justification for a particular act of violence. Instead of discussing the merits of whether it is justified to violently oppose the ideology of white supremacy, whose latest form includes doublespeak like "peaceful ethnic cleansing" (Richard Spencer), you've shifted the topic to abstract considerations where the implicit demand is an argument that decides for all instances of violence whether or not they are justified. I can justify punching Richard Spencer, for example, without considering the rather absurd claim that someone who touches black hair (I presume you mean without consent) should be considered a white supremacist and therefore worthy of violence. Just because a problem is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth examining. The fact that one cannot analytically decide a priori when violence is justified or not is just one of the many messy facts of the world that necessitate politics and taking conflict seriously.

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