Too late?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As do I.

[Dave_LF]

It might be interesting to ask when the punching should have begun vs. the actual Nazis, based on the information that different people had at different times.

[Frelga]

Sometimes Tumblr has good words.

brainstatic:

Stop saying “this is what they want” when people act violently against nazis. What they want is a debate. They want genocide to be something polite society can agree or disagree with. They want to be elevated to the general public discourse by having their ideas argued with. Violence is the exact opposite of what they want. Richard Spencer didn’t want to get punched in the face, he wanted good people to keep quiet, to respect his rights and let him calmly discuss white nationalism. Violence throws a wrench in all their plans. It shows them their carefully planned tactics to infiltrate mainstream discussion are utterly failing. Punching a nazi will get you in legal trouble but don’t let people tell you it’s what they want.

Non-violent resistance works against an oppressor who has moral qualms about violently suppressing discontent. Once you get Nazis in power, non-violent resistance stops being a viable option. As that Tumblr conversation points out, if they had moral centre to appeal to they wouldn’t be Nazis.

The legal standard for intervening based on speech is whether or not it will incite imminent lawless action. This:

"I believe that groups of human beings X and Y and Z are inferior and should be killed or subjugated, I invite and encourage people to join my cause (and I will use lies and manipulation to get them), also I am promising you and telling you now that I will physically enact this belief as soon as I have the means"

Is not likely to incite imminent lawless action. It is disgusting, but it is, and should be, protected.

This is wrong, not just morally but factually. That kind of "sppech" is not only "likely" to incite lawless action, it has and it is, right now. That is the kind of "speech" that inspired Benjamin McDowell to buy a gun with the stated purpose of committing a mass murder at a synagogue (http://www.salon.com/2017/02/17/white-s ... st-attack/), following in the footsteps of Dylann Roof who murdered nine people at the black Church.

I suppose I can't afford to be as laid back and theoretical about this when it could be my synagogue some dude walks into next.

I don't know, should I punch people who advocate for violence?

If I say yes, do I have to punch myself?

Do you advocate for violence based on racial hatred and your belief in your inherent superiority as a (sufficiently) white male? If yes, then punching yourself merits consideration.

Or do you consider taking up the fight, physically if necessary, in defense of those who can't defend themselves? If that's the case, you are good in my book.

[Nin]

Non-violent resistance works against an oppressor who has moral qualms about violently suppressing discontent. Once you get Nazis in power, non-violent resistance stops being a viable option. As that Tumblr conversation points out, if they had moral centre to appeal to they wouldn’t be Nazis.

Interesting enough ,even against the Nazis, non violent resistance has worked on some incidents. The best known is certainly the Rosenstrasse protest:
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.ph ... d=10008064
Now, you can hold against that that those men were not the primary target for deportation anyway and that it would have been only a question of time, had the Nazis won the war that those persons would have been deported. Still, the women protested in a non-violent manner and their husbands lived...

On the other hand, there are numerous proofs that soldiers on the eastern front refusing to take part in massacres did not get punished - the just got assigned to another sector of the front or the western or african front. But even though, most obeyed.

Anyway, this is just because of the Nazis in the title. I spent a huge part of my youth trying to understand how the country I was living in could have turned into a murderous group. And one of the main reason is certainly that most people somehow accepted to be passive bystanders as long as they were not personally threatened.

Sometimes, against violence, only violence works. I am huge advocate of non-violent actions. But thoughts and words can be as violent and as dangerous as punching.

A few years ago, in the spa were we go in Leukerbad, a heavily tattooed couple showed up, both of them covered in Neonazis tattoos. The man had a Hitler portrait on his back, written above it "No remorssse" with the double s styled in SS writing. It was sickening. They had their little daughter with them who could not be older than seven. How would you have reacted? Should they be allowed to the pool, especially knowing that regularly orthodox jewish families come to the same place (I have heard that it is because the water comes from deep under the earth so it counts like a ritual mikwe)? Luckily, there were not there at this season. But then: how to react? Those persons were obviously Nazis and showing it off, yet they were peaceful and their little daughter was with them - how about punching them? This really happened to me... what should I have done and what would you have done? I was also with my kids who were then around 10 and 12...

[Túrin Turambar]

Sometimes Tumblr has good words.

brainstatic:

Stop saying “this is what they want” when people act violently against nazis. What they want is a debate. They want genocide to be something polite society can agree or disagree with. They want to be elevated to the general public discourse by having their ideas argued with. Violence is the exact opposite of what they want. Richard Spencer didn’t want to get punched in the face, he wanted good people to keep quiet, to respect his rights and let him calmly discuss white nationalism. Violence throws a wrench in all their plans. It shows them their carefully planned tactics to infiltrate mainstream discussion are utterly failing. Punching a nazi will get you in legal trouble but don’t let people tell you it’s what they want.

Non-violent resistance works against an oppressor who has moral qualms about violently suppressing discontent. Once you get Nazis in power, non-violent resistance stops being a viable option. As that Tumblr conversation points out, if they had moral centre to appeal to they wouldn’t be Nazis.

I went to the local shops a couple of weeks ago, and while I was leaving I passed a man who looked a lot like Musa Cerantonio. Cerantonio is an Islamic extremist who lives in the same suburb I do, so it could have very well have been him. Let’s assume for the sake of this example that it was.

Cerantonio is, unlike Richard Spender, a clear-cut example of someone who has expressly repudiated the democratic process in favour of violence. He is not active now, but in the past he has given speeches encouraging young Australian Muslim men to travel to Syria and join ISIS, rejected the legitimacy of parliamentary democracy, and promoted acts of violence against the armed forces and civilians of this country and those of its allies. He is a religious extremist who cannot be persuaded in debate.

Even here, I think punching him would be pointless and counter-productive. Punching him will not make others any less-likely to listen to his views. If anything, it would give him more publicity and more grounds to claim he is standing up for the oppressed against the powerful and violent.

And if punching isn’t justified in this pretty extreme example, I cannot see how it’s justified for the much milder examples of the likes of Spender.

The legal standard for intervening based on speech is whether or not it will incite imminent lawless action. This:

"I believe that groups of human beings X and Y and Z are inferior and should be killed or subjugated, I invite and encourage people to join my cause (and I will use lies and manipulation to get them), also I am promising you and telling you now that I will physically enact this belief as soon as I have the means"

Is not likely to incite imminent lawless action. It is disgusting, but it is, and should be, protected.

This is wrong, not just morally but factually. That kind of "sppech" is not only "likely" to incite lawless action, it has and it is, right now. That is the kind of "speech" that inspired Benjamin McDowell to buy a gun with the stated purpose of committing a mass murder at a synagogue (http://www.salon.com/2017/02/17/white-s ... st-attack/), following in the footsteps of Dylann Roof who murdered nine people at the black Church.

The problem with this position is that you basically throw it open for everyone to resort to violence if they believe their opponents’ position is sufficiently reprehensible. For example – people who advocate for legalised abortion are advocating infanticide, and therefore must be opposed with violence.

It’s a valid position to take from a purely philosophical perspective, but it makes maintaining a civil society impossible.

It might be interesting to ask when the punching should have begun vs. the actual Nazis, based on the information that different people had at different times.

This is a good question and I think it’s a shame it passed without answer. My view would be violence was justified against the Nazis once removing them through non-violent means had become impossible. IOW, once they dismantled the democratic process.

[axordil]

My view would be violence was justified against the Nazis once removing them through non-violent means had become impossible. IOW, once they dismantled the democratic process.

Of course, at that point they've, you know, dismantled the democratic process, so it's too late to do anything else. It would be nice if there were a way of ramping up the pressure before that point, such that it was impossible to use the system to destroy itself, which is the stated goal of Bannon and his ilk.

The underlying issue here is that, while one overarching set of rules and ethics and moral guidelines is nice in theory, any system tends to have problems at the edges. Depending on your point of view, on could state this as "bad cases make bad law," or as Wm. Blake did: one law for the lion and the lamb is oppression. It's very difficult to protect people who deserve it without also protecting people who don't.

I recall a conversation with a father of one of my son's classmates, who was cranky about the number of inspections the city was doing on a house addition he was working on. His logic was that he wouldn't build something to live in that was unsafe. I pointed out most contracting was done by third parties, whose interest in safety is less immediate, and that included fly-by-night people who would only be constrained by the threat of law. Laws aren't generally made to constrain the law-abiding sort, but to protect them from those who aren't.

This is sort of the logical converse of that--a situation where the law protects the enemies of law from those whose instinct is to protect it by any means.

I view Nazi-punching as an immune system reaction of the body politic to the presence of pathogens. Like any immune system response, it can get ugly. Fevers can run out of control. Inflammation can immobilize. Bad things can happen for good reasons... but sometimes they end up being necessary.

Of course, one could claim the same thing about the left, but in the U.S., a country designed by revolutionary conservatives to protect their status quo, that assertion is laughable on its face. FDR and LBJ, the most left-wing of our Presidents, would be moderate center-left folks by the standards of the developed world. Historically in the U.S., it's ALWAYS been okay to punch hippies. Or shoot student protesters. Or lynch blacks. Or beat gays to death. Etc. Swap the violence and the target around for variety if you like.

So spare me the outrage over some overdue payback, or concern about playing into their hands, or whatever. Anything we do "plays into the hands" of those who will fabricate stories to control their flock anyway--doing nothing most of all.

[anthriel]

The problem with this position is that you basically throw it open for everyone to resort to violence if they believe their opponents’ position is sufficiently reprehensible. For example – people who advocate for legalised abortion are advocating infanticide, and therefore must be opposed with violence.

This. And that is a great example.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yup!

[Primula Baggins]

The same "rationale" is I am sure shared by the people who believe it's an urgent public safety issue to murder Muslims--or any person who's brown and speaks with an accent and therefore might be Muslim. Can't be too careful!

[Frelga]

And being an example of tolerance and forbearance to them has historically worked so well.

[Primula Baggins]

??? I was talking about the Sikh man who was shot in Seattle on Friday. And the man in Kansas who shot two Indian men in a bar last month, killing one, because he thought they were Muslim. Went to another bar and bragged about it, and the bartender called the police.

[Frelga]

That's what I'm talking about, too. Those murders are direct proof that the quote yov posted earlier, about how speech calling for violence against specific groups of people is not likely to incite imminent lawless action, is wrong. And we can't stop people spouting calls for race and religion driven violence by being tolerant at them.

[Primula Baggins]

Ah, I understand. And agree. Those calls are intolerable, and we're already seeing the cost of normalizing the current atmosphere by accepting it as somehow unavoidable, something we all just have to put up with.

[yovargas]

Re-reading the quote I posted....yes, I do agree. I would imagine that one already crosses the line of legally protected speech (though I could be wrong?) since it does specifically call for violence. If it had stopped at "groups of human beings X and Y and Z are inferior", without the call for violence, that would be a different matter.

[Primula Baggins]

Though that is comparable to "groups of human beings X, Y, and Z are a threat." Which can lead to violence without any call to violence.

[yovargas]

Not necessarily. I can think that dogs are inferior to humans without wishing dogs any harm. I vaguely recall reading about those kinds of "compassionate racists" from during the pre-abolitionist days IIRC, who would make the argument that the white man should protect the black man precisely because they believed he was inferior. Still a loathsome line of thought but not one "likely to incite imminent lawless action".

[Primula Baggins]

I meant the "they are a threat" statement, which can lead to harm without a specific call for it. It does even happen with dogs—summary executions by neighbors or even passersby of dogs simply because of their breed.

[Frelga]

I still owe Nin a response. It's a tough post to write because the situation she described is not entirely hypothetical to my experience. So I'll think a bit more.

In the meantime.

[Nin]

I still owe Nin a response. It's a tough post to write because the situation she described is not entirely hypothetical to my experience. So I'll think a bit more.

Thank you, Frelga. It is not at all hypothetical to me.

[Maria]

Punching seems wrong to me. You'd just get yourself hit with an assault charge.

Either go with lethal measures or stick to legal means. Punching is ineffective.