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Can’t upvote enough. Antifa make themselves much more like their opposition than they think by resorting to violence. It’s a whole lot more fun to think of your

Can’t upvote enough. Antifa make themselves much more like their opposition than they think by resorting to violence. It’s a whole lot more fun to think of yourself on this grandoise crusade-battle. The irony.

Avshalom 9y ago
Shooting, shooting, Nazis is one of the things that Americans spent 60 years lionizing, bragging about, celebrating, etc. How did punching a Nazi once in a while stop being great?
- Spivak 9y ago
  * Because we're not in a theater of war and they're not enemy combatants. * Because we're no better than them if we inflict wanton violence on people we would rather not have around. * Because it's taking the bait. The whole point in kindling all this anger is bring out the worst in everyone and show the world 'the intolerant left' and stupid 'punch a Nazi' bullshit only proves their point. The more these people are silenced, attacked and marginalized by 'leftists' in power the more they're able to show just how much power 'the left' wields. The more you fight them the stronger they get.
  - jackmott 9y ago
    being tolerant of Nazis is absurd.
    - harpiaharpyja 9y ago
      Yet they are also people too, regardless of how disgusting their beliefs. Edit: I should've probably known better than to reply to an obvious straw man. Arguing that responding to nazis with violence isn't necessarily the best thing is hardly advocating "tolerance"
    - abiox 9y ago
      i suppose it helps that nazi party was abolished in 1945...
- skybrian 9y ago
  Maybe when bar fights went out of style? For many of us, all fighting is bad, other than in the military or maybe a boxing ring. I wonder how much of this debate about "punching a Nazi" boils down to attitudes about fighting in general? Here's a interesting essay about the reality of bar fights: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2014/01/21/lessons-from-bar-fight-litigation/ http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2014/01/21/lessons-from-bar-fi...
- abiox 9y ago
  this is equivocation. nazis were a german political group. they were a member of the axis forces which fought and lost against the allied forces in ww2. that group doesn't exist anymore. so-called "nazis" that people refer to today are largely just people subjected to lazy labeling.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    "subjected to"? They're the ones calling themselves Nazis. We're if anything humoring them.
    - abiox 9y ago
      who is 'they'? i can imagine that there is a nonzero number of people who might label themselves that way, but for any given label you can probably find at least one person who might use it on themselves. what i mean is that 'nazi' is a term used to lazily and reductively describe a disparate swath of individuals. it's manner of use is as a thought-terminating cliche and cheap emotional appeal. perhaps ironically, thuggish violence against actual nazis in their nascent days (not to say they didn't engage in their own) drove some amount of public sympathy and attracted support. bad ideas need good ideas, not fists and yelling.
      - foldr 9y ago
        In the recent news, "Nazi" has been used primarily with reference to people who self-identify as Nazis.
        abiox 9y ago
        and the vast majority of 'punched nazis' have not been nazis.
  - simonh 9y ago
    Would you say that someone who believes in the Communist Manifesto, is convinced by the arguments in Das Capital, who’s heroes are Lenin and Trotsky, joins a Union, tries to organise labour industrial action, writes articles for newspapers and magazines promoting communism, tries to persuade people of communist goals and values is not a communist because they are not a member of any particular formal communist party? I believe Trotsky died without being a member of a communist party. Was he not a communist? Was Goering not a Nazi when he died, and all the former members of the communist party stop being Nazis with the end of the war? I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but why do you think that approach is useful? What does it offer us that the more straightforward approach of judging people by their convictions, statements and actions does not?
- ballenf 9y ago
  My grandfather suffered a lifetime of PTSD after having to shoot Nazis during WWII. I went to a few of his unit's reunions and have met a number of other veterans of that war. One thing I've never heard from a single one of them was bragging about shooting a Nazi. They suffered years and years of nightmares for having to shoot persons. They were looking through their guns sites and saw people -- young men who looked just like themselves or their brothers. Maybe there were some who came home and bragged, but to highlight those stories does an incredible disservice to the vast majority of the others. There were things they bragged about, but shooting humans wasn't a common reason for pride.
- __s 9y ago
  My sister's grandfather was a Nazi soldier. He became a PoW, ending up a Canadian. Eventually married someone who had had to flee Germany. He didn't need to be shot, he'd been a kid put to serve his country Read some Vonnegut
  - simonh 9y ago
    Was he really a Nazi? He could be a German soldier in World War Two without being a Nazi, just as a Russian could have fought in WW2 against the Germans without being a Communist.
    - __s 9y ago
      Kind of the point. War paints a wide brush of the opposing side. Being a Nazi isn't a binary thing
    - int_19h 9y ago
      Indeed. But that goes to show that Americans weren't "shooting at Nazis" in WW2. They were shooting at German soldiers, because that's what you do in a war.
- lin_lin 9y ago
  > How did punching a Nazi once in a while stop being great? Maybe when the people doing it reserve the right to decide who is a "Nazi" and who is not.

Avshalom 9y ago

Shooting, shooting, Nazis is one of the things that Americans spent 60 years lionizing, bragging about, celebrating, etc. How did punching a Nazi once in a while stop being great?

Spivak 9y ago
* Because we're not in a theater of war and they're not enemy combatants. * Because we're no better than them if we inflict wanton violence on people we would rather not have around. * Because it's taking the bait. The whole point in kindling all this anger is bring out the worst in everyone and show the world 'the intolerant left' and stupid 'punch a Nazi' bullshit only proves their point. The more these people are silenced, attacked and marginalized by 'leftists' in power the more they're able to show just how much power 'the left' wields. The more you fight them the stronger they get.
- jackmott 9y ago
  being tolerant of Nazis is absurd.
  - harpiaharpyja 9y ago
    Yet they are also people too, regardless of how disgusting their beliefs. Edit: I should've probably known better than to reply to an obvious straw man. Arguing that responding to nazis with violence isn't necessarily the best thing is hardly advocating "tolerance"
  - abiox 9y ago
    i suppose it helps that nazi party was abolished in 1945...
skybrian 9y ago
Maybe when bar fights went out of style? For many of us, all fighting is bad, other than in the military or maybe a boxing ring. I wonder how much of this debate about "punching a Nazi" boils down to attitudes about fighting in general? Here's a interesting essay about the reality of bar fights: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2014/01/21/lessons-from-bar-fight-litigation/ http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2014/01/21/lessons-from-bar-fi...
abiox 9y ago
this is equivocation. nazis were a german political group. they were a member of the axis forces which fought and lost against the allied forces in ww2. that group doesn't exist anymore. so-called "nazis" that people refer to today are largely just people subjected to lazy labeling.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  "subjected to"? They're the ones calling themselves Nazis. We're if anything humoring them.
  - abiox 9y ago
    who is 'they'? i can imagine that there is a nonzero number of people who might label themselves that way, but for any given label you can probably find at least one person who might use it on themselves. what i mean is that 'nazi' is a term used to lazily and reductively describe a disparate swath of individuals. it's manner of use is as a thought-terminating cliche and cheap emotional appeal. perhaps ironically, thuggish violence against actual nazis in their nascent days (not to say they didn't engage in their own) drove some amount of public sympathy and attracted support. bad ideas need good ideas, not fists and yelling.
    - foldr 9y ago
      In the recent news, "Nazi" has been used primarily with reference to people who self-identify as Nazis.
      - abiox 9y ago
        and the vast majority of 'punched nazis' have not been nazis.
- simonh 9y ago
  Would you say that someone who believes in the Communist Manifesto, is convinced by the arguments in Das Capital, who’s heroes are Lenin and Trotsky, joins a Union, tries to organise labour industrial action, writes articles for newspapers and magazines promoting communism, tries to persuade people of communist goals and values is not a communist because they are not a member of any particular formal communist party? I believe Trotsky died without being a member of a communist party. Was he not a communist? Was Goering not a Nazi when he died, and all the former members of the communist party stop being Nazis with the end of the war? I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but why do you think that approach is useful? What does it offer us that the more straightforward approach of judging people by their convictions, statements and actions does not?
ballenf 9y ago
My grandfather suffered a lifetime of PTSD after having to shoot Nazis during WWII. I went to a few of his unit's reunions and have met a number of other veterans of that war. One thing I've never heard from a single one of them was bragging about shooting a Nazi. They suffered years and years of nightmares for having to shoot persons. They were looking through their guns sites and saw people -- young men who looked just like themselves or their brothers. Maybe there were some who came home and bragged, but to highlight those stories does an incredible disservice to the vast majority of the others. There were things they bragged about, but shooting humans wasn't a common reason for pride.
__s 9y ago
My sister's grandfather was a Nazi soldier. He became a PoW, ending up a Canadian. Eventually married someone who had had to flee Germany. He didn't need to be shot, he'd been a kid put to serve his country Read some Vonnegut
- simonh 9y ago
  Was he really a Nazi? He could be a German soldier in World War Two without being a Nazi, just as a Russian could have fought in WW2 against the Germans without being a Communist.
  - __s 9y ago
    Kind of the point. War paints a wide brush of the opposing side. Being a Nazi isn't a binary thing
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Indeed. But that goes to show that Americans weren't "shooting at Nazis" in WW2. They were shooting at German soldiers, because that's what you do in a war.
lin_lin 9y ago
> How did punching a Nazi once in a while stop being great? Maybe when the people doing it reserve the right to decide who is a "Nazi" and who is not.