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Comment by grasshopperpurp | Hacker News Reader

When you're defending white supremacists, it's time to take a step back and reevaluate your perspective.

When you're defending any form of offensive violence, it's time to take a step back and reevaluate your perspective.

This all comes back to the whole "punch a Nazi" trope that was thrown around during the Berkeley riots. Assaulting someone for their political views is reprehensible, no matter what their views are. If a white supremacist is attacked at a protest, that is just as much of an issue as when a counter-protester is attacked.

If you use that card against the white supremacists, what are you going to if the pendulum swings? If you're okay with using violence against your political opponents, you don't have a leg to stand on when they retaliate and use violence against you.

My family comes from a country that was ruled by a communist dictatorship, and the very concept of "violence is justified against your opponents" is disgusting to me. We saw enough of that bullshit before we left. It's sad that discourse has devolved to this level.

All of that being said, discussion of "violence on all sides" is contingent on there actually being violence on all sides in the particular event. As I said in GP, I am not entirely aware of all of the relevant evidence.

This is exactly the way the white supremacists want you to think. They want you to normalize them and say, 'All violence is bad - from either side.'

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/060.html

All authoritarian, violent actors want you to think that violence (especially of the preemptive variety) is justified for their particular set of ideals. The viewpoint discussed in that MLK quote is not my viewpoint, he talks about people who are against violence even in the instance of retaliation.

I am all for equivalent response when it comes to a conflict, but "punch a Nazi" et al was about preemptively escalating a political discourse to physical violence. That's what my whole disagreement was with. As you can see in my original comment, I effectively said that if it's the case that the violence was initiated by the white supremacist protesters (which the initial evidence appeared to indicate) then counter-protester violence was justified.

That's fair enough, and I understand that you're trying to be an even, measured person, and I applaud you for that. When dealing with Nazis and white supremacists, though, we have to understand that their very existence is violence. For anyone with any decency within them, there is no middle ground to reach with a white supremacist. Think about it. What would the middle ground look like? OK, you can't lynch or kick out all minorities, but we'll let you have half? A third? It's ridiculous to even consider. The only answer is to snuff them out, and it will likely require a great deal of violence. MLK knew it; Malcolm X knew it; and every black person in America with half a pulse knows it.

Remember Ferguson? Remember how the Oath Keepers marched through black neighborhoods with machine guns? Can you imagine if black people marched through white suburbs with machine guns? If you can't, look at why California has strict gun laws - the Black Panthers. Or, why were only a few people arrested in Virginia? And, why were they treated with more decency than people protesting police brutality or the Dakota Pipeline? It's white supremacy in action.

You say you're from a communist country, and you may not be aware of America's history with white supremacy, but it runs deep. People who make false equivocations between groups like BLM and the KKK are no better than the white supremacists themselves, and they're the ones that allow this sort of thing to continue - in 2017 FFS.

This sums it up well:

https://scontent.ftpa1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/20800151_163...

Law and order bring us the closest to justice. This "negative peace" is just the absence of perfect justice.

That's an MLK quote. You don't like it?

Let's just say after the fatiguing year of outrages we've had, I'm tired of everyone's justice.

Forgive me if I've misunderstood you, but this seems pretty apathetic.

It's just the word itself. I've been straying from the substance and rigour of HN to the rabble rousing of FB and twitter.

Let's stop ignoring violence when it suits our own political agenda and start condemning it wherever it occurs. Racism has no place in our society and violent acts only fuel it. Pointing that out doesn't imply someone is "defending white supremacists".

Of course someone who responds to violence by white supremacists by saying, 'But what about those lefties,' is implicitly defending white supremacists.

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