> 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?
Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nobody can ask the fetus whether it is OK or even agree on whether it has the capacity to experience suffering given that most abortions take place prior to fetal brain development. A fetus, therefore, has no legal agency of its own.
By contrast, someone who advocates punching Nazis does have legal agency, and may be wishing to exercise it on their own behalf rather than on behalf of some third party. This is a fundamentally different situation.
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.
It sounds awfully like you're abrogating people's right of self-defense. How is this 'suppression' to take place when Nazis have a demonstrable track record of being willing to use violence but you deny that option to their opponents under any circumstances? I'm having trouble following your reasoning here.
You seem to be arguing that the mere presence of a Nazi marching under a Nazi flag in the public square justifies physical violence. What did the ACLU get wrong about that when they defended the Nazis in Skokie?
The 1st amendment does protect private parties from government interference with their political expression. It says nothing about whether other private parties should passively accept political expressions that are specifically aimed at intimidating them. Had the march gone ahead and the citizens of Skokie set about the Nazis with baseball bats, I would not consider the Nazis' first amendment rights to have been inhibited in the least bit.
Similarly, in that same set of circumstances, if I say something that offends the activist and he hits me to shut me up and the police officer doesn't arrest him, the police officer has also violated the First Amendment.
So, no, I don't think you can flee into definitions of "private parties" versus the "government" to avoid the ACLU's logic here.
https://www.policeone.com/police-jobs-and-careers/articles/4...
I'd like some case law support for your claim that failure to arrest/act by a police officer equates to a violation of the first amendment.
In the meantime, I'd also like you to consider that it's not hard to find examples of collusion between police and members of right-wing militias, as in this one from just a few weeks ago, which provoked questions from the mayor of Portland: https://theintercept.com/2017/06/08/portland-alt-right-milit...
In this document, the police chief replied to the mayor's inquiries and admitted (Q5/page 5) preemptively detaining and photographing left-wing activists on the basis that they might later engage in violence against right-wing activists, based on observations of earlier altercations between the two groups. Oddly, no such preemptive behavior was carried on with respect to the right-wing group. I might point out that the ACLU also finds this problematic.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3873511-Marshman-Res...
Individual anecdotes like this are not dispositive, but there is at least some evidence for believing that the police do not reliably maintain a politically neutral position as referees of fair play and good behavior, notwithstanding the belief that they should.
For the previous point, read Scalia in Castle Rock v. Gonzales:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-278.ZO.html
Note how the weird particulars of how Colorado police were not required to enforce this person's restraining order in effect define where there are requirements, in particular, from anything intrinsically stemming from the Constitution.
Quite a lot of the people who are willing to punch Nazis are, by contrast, people who feel their own persons are threatened, as opposed to being outsiders choosing to insert themselves into a private dispute.
I seriously do not see a distinction between the two perspectives, other than that the anti-abortion activists would be employing violence to actually stop what they believe to be real, immediate, kinetic violence.
Again, it's not like my argument here is novel. It's the ACLU's argument, from National Socialists of America v. Skokie.
Anti-Nazi protesters are declaring their own selves to feel threatened by Nazism, rather than claiming to be intervening in the defense of someone else.
I don't really care about the ACLU's argument. Things have moved on since 1976 and the scope and intensity of violence perpetrated by white nationalists and similar far-right groups has increased considerably. Also, consider the fact that the ACLU was founded in 1920, but it was not the ACLU that defeated the Nazis in World War 2.
These aren't academic discussions with imaginary Nazis. The people killed by Dylann Roof or Jeremy Christian were real people who really died at the hands of people who really profess support for white supremacist ideologies, to name but two examples.
The mini-riots and street battled in Berkeley might seem comical from afar but having been at several of them I can tell you for a fact that there are people there who show up shouting nazi and white nationalist slogans and threatening or engaging people with weapons.
https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-ku-klux-klan-were-memel...
White nationalism is not some tiny radical fringe. I'd remind you that people like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller occupy senior roles in the administration of the executive branch and there's abundant evidence of their extremist views.
The First Amendment wasn't repealed when Steve Bannon accepted his role as Trump's chief strategist.
Why do these discussions always end up with liberals wringing their hands over whether any Nazis are going to get punched, but the opposition to the eliminationist rhetoric of fascists themselves is so muted? Yes, yes, of course everyone agrees that they're bad and that their ideology is bad.
But the reflexive agreement that Nazism is bad doesn't translate into action to do anything about it. Donating to the ACLU or the SPLC is great, but it does nothing to make the streets safer for vulnerable people. Surely it has not escaped your attention that many vulnerable populations are distrustful of the police precisely because of this legacy of injustice you mention, which has often taken place with the tacit agreement of the authorities. .
Muslims, jews, black people, latino people, queer people and so on are not enthused about being the designated victims for yet another round of The Oppression Show. Simply put, there are a lot of people who don't feel safe exercising their rights in the USA and are getting really pissed off about it.
So: I'm not so concerned about the welfare of the Nazis that are getting punched.
What I'm concerned about is that normalizing political violence will have the effect not just of normalizing Nazi punching, but normalizing punching of all sorts of people.
Does this mean that vulnerable people should be left to fend for themselves on the streets with Nazis throwing bottles at them or beating them? No, of course not. Beat the shit out of those people (call 9-1-1, too).
But those same vulnerable people are going to need to employ something other than violence to deal with offensive flags and racial slurs, no matter how unsafe they (legitimately!) feel when confronted with them.
I'm currently homeless and I try to explain to people why I don't agree with their position and it kind of boils down to the fact that no matter what I do, I seem unable to get meaningful traction on solutions and, very often, people are content to argue with me about "well, we need the right answers" and ignore the fact that they could do something for me right here, right now.
I am probably not saying this very well, but I just run into an awful lot of people online who imagine themselves to be good people who claim they desire to live in a better world and see zero contradiction between that and crapping all over me personally in conversation while doing nothing whatsoever to help me solve my financial problems in any kind of meaningful way.
I am somewhat sympathetic to your side. I get a lot of flak from women who act like my efforts to empower them are simply another form of blaming the victim. But I increasingly feel that it is both irresponsible and disingenuous to argue the side you are arguing without giving concrete solutions in the here and now to the problems people are actually having. Without that, these arguments merely serve to say "We need to respect Nazis (or other horrible people) and we don't need to respect you and we don't actually care about your problem at all."
FWIW and all that.
By way of example: the deference Hacker News gives to racism and misogyny in the name of tolerance is deeply problematic for me, and, I think, an enormous mistake.
Where Ed and I disagree is that I do not think it's OK to physically assault someone simply for carrying an offensive flag. That is probably the entire extent of our disagreement.
I don't know the solution. I really don't. But in order to defend yourself from horrible, predatory people in the world today, you basically need to be some kind of kung fu wizard and diplomatic genius combined or you will be railroaded by the laws that, in theory, are supposed to protect good people.
As a victim of childhood sexual abuse who was clear I would murder anyone in cold blood if they raped my small children -- and then go to jail for a very long time because I would not have at all made a sympathetic defendant -- this is a problem space I have contemplated a great deal. Fortunately, I am hellaciously talented and was able to make sure no one raped my children. But there is something very wrong in a world where we worry more about protecting the rights of heinous people like child rapists than we do about their victims, which is essentially what is going on here.
But the idea that you can physically attack someone for carrying an offensive flag can't possibly be defensible.
I understand how the flags and racial slurs and such create strong emotions and I offer you all the rhetorical space in the world to talk about how you personally would beat the everloving crap out of someone who tried to burn a cross in your field of vision. I'm not condemning either you or Ed for having strong feelings about Nazis.
But it remains a simple fact that you can't use coercive physical force to stop people from talking.
Legally speaking this may not rise to the standard of criminality for evaluating criminal threats. But a lot of people are increasingly losing confidence in the legal system to protect their civil rights or fairly balance their interests with those of other people in society. In relation to both this and your exhortation to call 911, it's worth referencing the recent controversy over the acquittal of the police officer in the death of Philando Castile. However you feel about the legal aspects of that verdict, there's no getting away from the fact that many people of color and other groups do not feel safe around police officers.
You keep saying of course we must use available within-the-law means to suppress Nazism, but that presupposes the law is morally neutral (highly questionable), fairly enforced (likewise), and that this job should really be left to law enforcement and prosecutors rather than being the subject of any kind of private or collective action. I suggest to you that that's an easy attitude to have when you are not a member of a vulnerable population, but a potentially fatal error of judgment for someone in a more marginal position.
The difference is the nazi ideology directly threatens the very livelihood of people, and allowing nazis to spread their ideology is really dangerous to these people. The very ideas they're espousing are threatening, because they lead to bigotry and racism and disenfranchisement and violence and death. You can't just argue against them, because your argument isn't going to convince 100% of listeners to reject the nazi ideology. The only way to actually be safe is to stop the spread of nazi ideology, and the way to do that is to make nazis shut up, and the way to do that is to make them afraid to open their mouths.
Yeah it really sucks that this is what it's come to, but the other systems in this country that are supposed to deal with this lawfully aren't working.
Neo-nazis and white supremacists are espousing a viewpoint that takes away rights from other people, and in many cases threatens their very lives.
That's what anti-abortionist people do too, in fact. They're trying to take rights away from women (specifically, the right to control their own body), and in many cases threatens their very lives (abortion can be used as a medical intervention to save the life of the mother).
The only real difference I can see is that anti-abortionists are more likely to be able to be reasoned with.
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.
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?
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!
That is one HECK of an uncharitable assumption. My original comment speaks for itself. You are coming uncomfortably close to calling me a Nazi sympathizer. I don't appreciate that.
In case the ancestors get edited:
>>> 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?
> One of the most chilling comments I've ever read on this site. How does one provide evidence of the content of their heart?
It would certainly be nice to rely on reason and truth if those strategies are indeed reliable. But the extant question is what if they're not?
The historical record suggests that appeals to reason, truth, and morality actually have a really terrible record as practical responses to autocracy. As we've been talking about Nazis, it's an easily verifiable fact that there was abundant intellectual, political, and religious opposition to their ideology and that none of these proved especially effective.
Once the nazis got comfortable and installed their people in key administrative positions, they just started arresting people whose public behavior was politically inconvenient for them. I don't want to start drawing parallels with individual current events which is more likely to confuse than to inform, but they're not hard to imagine.
I realize you think your original comment speaks for itself, but I'm telling you that I'm finding it vague and confusing.
> "We must love one another or die."
This is good enough for me, but going further... The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Ahimsa are persuasive for many.
EDIT: just had a shower, and remembered this paper that supports the idea that violence is an inter-generational disease:
https://pascual.scripts.mit.edu/research/03/paper3.pdf
Pascual Restrepo, May 2014
Abstract
> I study the role of the monopoly of force in shaping cultural traits associated with violence and their persistence. I do so in the context of the settlement of the Canadian Prairies from 1890 to 1920. I find that places with a weaker monopoly of force by the Canadian state during the settlement – as measured by their distance to the early Mounties’ fort – were and are still more violent despite the later consolidation of the Canadian state. My interpretation is that counties with a weak monopoly of force during the settlement developed a persistent culture of violence. Consistent with my view, I find that hockey players born in these places behave more violently even when observed in a common environment: the same team in the National Hockey League. Besides the persistence of culture via inter-generational transmission and socialization, I find that culture favors complementary institutions and political views, creating an additional channel of persistence. Finally, I show that the monopoly of force during the settlement crowds out pre-existing cultures of violence brought by immigrants. Despite the persistence of culture and its dependence on past circumstances, the right institutional conditions can change it
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/riot-language-unhear...
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mahatmagan100677...
http://www.naturalnews.com/038372_Gandhi_nonviolence_right_t...
etc