We’ve already been over this. You are presenting a false equivalence.
Ostracizing and punishing Nazis is not the same as doing those things to person who is merely a member of a racial minority group.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest that imprisoning a murderer is equivalent to imprisoning an innocent person.
Exactly. Which is why Timex is literally outside murdering Nazis right now.
I’d pay good money to watch that.
I’m not sure how accurate the following is, but it’s how I’ve somewhat imagined the process of societal change;
It’s like football. You’re trying to move the ball downfield, and others are opposing you. They get some big brutes to try and smash you into the ground, so you get your own brutes (offensive line) to smash back and hopefully keep them off your back. Your own brutes will almost never score and sometimes can block your path, but they’re still an integral part of the effort.
I disagree. Not with your general point–I agree that their ideology is loathsome and that it is entirely fair to vigorously oppose them precisely if not only because they are singling out people on a racial or ethnic basis. I disagree with your postulation of false equivalence. No one disagrees that people with these sorts of ideologies need to be opposed, countered, and hopefully, eradicated. It’s the methods and the approach under discussion.
The trend in the conversation here has veered off into assertions that terrible opinions legitimate violent acts against the people holding those view.s. I maintain that terrible opinions need to be countered in the same sphere, discourse; actions can be countered in the sphere of actions. Both verbal and physical opposition has to take place within the framework you are trying to uphold, not outside of it.
No one is saying these right wing idiots are “equal” to anyone else in terms of their ideologies; their ideology is trash. They do, however, remain under the umbrella of the law whether we like it or not. That’s the price you pay for a society that allows free speech.
True. But the error is in assuming, 1) that the smashing is always physical, and 2) that ultimately the means don’t really impact the ends. Both assumptions, to me, are problematic. The Communists tried to meet the Nazis and their precursors in the streets, and all it did was reinforce the message the Nazis were sending. And when you sacrifice your ideals for what seem to be necessary and imperative short-term gains, those ideals are never the same again.
Of course, there are degrees of action and reaction here, so it’s not cut and dried.
WWII isn’t a good example. It wasn’t fought to crush Nazi ideology, for one thing, though eventually that became part of the necessary conditions for victory. For another, it was, well, a war between sovereign nation states, violence that was conducted within the ambit of accepted social and cultural norms. Going to war with Germany did not challenge, fundamentally, any assumptions about American ideology (though the conduct of the war may have, depending on one’s POV).
Violence is, sometimes, absolutely essential to, as others note, smash back the bad guys. But it’s the context that matters. And yes, sometimes you have to, like the retconned Han, let the other guy shoot first. My faith in precognition is limited.
The morality behind it is different, but the act is the same. Which is the point being made.
Please review more of the thread above. This is not a trend. This is specific to Nazis. There are plenty other awful, terrible people and groups that this does not apply to. I am not advocating rounding Neo Nazis up and shooting them. Timex is not out in the street shooting them either, but I refuse to sit on my ass and watch them rise again like we did the last time. History repeats itself because people forget just how awful it was.
Waiting around until they take over another country is waiting too long. You’ve got to knock that shit down before it rises, and a few of these fuckers are already working their way into our legitimate politics with support! They’re so emboldened right now they’re not even hiding anymore. So yeah, punch that asshole in the face, on camera and tell his little Hitler worshipers what they’ll face the next time around.
It feels to me Socialism was mostly a Cold War thing in the US. Maybe the US felt too intimidated by the Soviets, and were willing to capitulate to some degree (e.g. Nixon national health plan, EPA, etc.). Now things are sadly back to “business as usual”.
What Nesrie said. Ignoring them, hoping to beat them in the marketplace of ideas is not working right now. They have gained a sympathetic ear in the highest office in the land. The old tactics are no longer working because the rise of social media allows these fragmented and isolated groups and individuals to connect to each other, to hone their ideology and recruit new members. What once was a small loner in his basement is an underground transnational movement. There are even musical acts that cater to these shitheels.
The internet has flattened the world, but it has one hell of a hangover right now. So we need to contend with them in ways that we didn’t for generations. Right now they are doing everything they can to get a foothold in American policy. They see this as an opportunity to mainstream their hate. The good people of America have a duty to push these bastards back to the shadows that Trump pulled them from.
With force if need be.
But that’s exactly why it’s a meaningless point.
The fact that the act is the same is irrelevant. Imprisoning a murderer is just, imprisoning an innocent is unjust.
The justification for the action is of critical importance.
Punching a black man for being black is inherently unjust. Not only is there no legitimate reason to think poorly of the black man due to his race, he cannot change the fact that he is black anyway. You are punishing him for his mere existence.
Punching a Nazi is inherently different.
A Nazi is not a Nazi by birth. He is not genetically predisposed to being a Nazi. He can stop wanting to commit genocide at any moment. It is entirely under his own control.
And beyond that, his choice to be a Nazi involves voiding his contact with society. He is, by embracing that ideology, denying the rights of everyone else. And in that abandonment, he also abandons the privileges incurred by being a member of that society. He doesn’t get to abandon the responsibilities while continuing to enjoy the rights.
Abusing Nazis is not equivalent to abusing some random person. It does not lead to some slippery slope where you can abuse anyone who disagrees with you.
It sets aside a very specific qualifying factor, that being that the target has chosen to abandon civil society and its no longer honoring the basic responsibility of respecting the existence of other members of that society.
If you choose to step outside of society’s umbrella, then you are on your own. That’s where the Nazis are.
Silly Jews. They must have felt really stupid once they realized they could have hugged their way out of the gas chambers at any time.
Let’s learn the lessons of the past and talk politely to our Nazi neighbors while they clamor for genocide and ethnic cleansing. The fact they have a President who is apparently, at least to some extent, sympathetic to their views should be of concern to literally no one. We should all know, someone calling for racial genocide is probably someone you can have a reasoned debate with.
Well, I see a problem with visceral reactions governing policy, that’s all. I fully agree to metaphorically punch them in the face. But literally punching some loser who spouts horrible rhetoric (using big words he probably doesn’t even understand) doesn’t solve the problem. I’ll repeat, it does not solve the problem. It merely gives these idiots ammunition.
That is how the real Nazis did it, really; they managed to undermine all the substantial opposition to their policies by re-framing it as civil violence, and then used the apparatus of the state to actually secure their victory. Of course, they also used intimidation and violence to create the conditions for that, as well.
But then, the real Nazis had two things going for them that our home-grown rightist do not. One was a homogeneous society, where a race-based ideology could easily be sublimated by the audience which saw no threat to them in it, as they focused on the more “pragmatic,” as they saw it, goals of the movement. In the USA, a much more diverse society, this won’t work. These yahoos preaching race war can, at best, only appeal to what is becoming a minority in this country, that is, white protestants of European origin. Reaching beyond this runs aground on the rocks of their own ideology. Additionally, their more “pragmatic” policies run afoul of the interests of real economic and political elites, and thus they shut off that avenue towards political power as well.
Two, Germany in the twenties and thirties was in a vastly worse situation than the USA is in today, by an order or two of magnitude. That’s not to say these yahoos are not dangerous, they are… And it’s not to say we should not vigorously oppose them, by calling out their lies, belittling their so-called ideology, and demolishing their assumptions whenever possible. And yes, defend ourselves robustly as needed.
But time and again here I’m hearing that it’s necessary to seek these people out and physically attack them. While, personally, I have no real qualms with that in purely personal moral terms, I can’t sanction that in terms of policy or public action designed to, you know, actually have a positive effect, and create society that we can actually live in. What is being called for here presumes you can control political violence and only use it for good.
That I reject, and always will. Once you open Pandora’s box, you’re doomed. You create what you most fear.
This is borderline offensive, and I think you know it. No one here is saying anything of the sort. For one thing, these rightists aren’t doing anything like what the Nazis did, nor do they have any modicum of the power the Nazis did. And in 1933, no one had a crystal ball to say, hey, if we don’t have a counter-revolution now, we’re all gonna die by 1945! Not that it would have mattered, as most of those killed by the Nazis weren’t even in Germany, but whatever.
I get the point that we have seen what could happen when extremists like these people get the ability to implement their ideas. And I could even go along with revisiting the laws around speech and expression, in a way the Germans have done, to make some of the things these groups are saying illegal (though that, too, is a difficult road to travel for many reasons). But I think it’s not helpful to say that pre-emptive violence against American neo-Nazis is justified because, in a counterfactual past, if the Germans had just killed off the Nazis in 1924 none of the bad things would have happened.
For the record, Jews did resist, often quite heroically, as in Warsaw. In the Jewish community, we often have very hard discussions about what happened in the Shoa, and what we, as a generation that did not experience that, should think about how the people of that era acted. Most Jewish communities in the Pale were peaceful, with little tradition of any sort of violence, except as victims. Traditional Jewish teachings were fairly pacifist, for theological as well as imminently practical reasons. And when, finally, it became clear to all what was happening, the “sheep” behavior vanished, though it is doubtful much would have changed even if all the Jews in the East had reacted earlier and more violently.
All I’m saying is that I am not willing to start a pattern of physical violence based on what amounts to fortune telling. That just legitimates everyone to do pretty much anything, and it’s not what I see as a positive thing. YMMV.
Under your logic, even with a crystal ball there would be no difference. You’d still be talking it out as the tanks rolled and in and naked children were lined up at gas chambers. How do I know that, because it literally happened. That is our history. Your wait until they do something, it’s just words now, is exactly what we did. But hey, I guess since we won the war we can try it again and hope we win again… too bad for the millions that will die in the process.
I do not find that acceptable. Not remotely.
You’re absolutely right. When someone comes up to you and says “Hey, buddy, your race is fucking filth and is polluting the gene pool. We’re going to kill your family and drive your kind out of the country”, it’s pretty ambiguous. I mean, maybe they’re just economically anxious? Who can know?
Look, I’m not saying @Timex should grab a gun and start offing people based on their Twitter profiles. But once someone starts dehumanizing and calling for the extermination of their fellow citizens? Yeah, I’m okay with society giving them a collective punch in the face. They can stop being punched as soon as they stop pushing an agenda of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and/or forced deportation of different races, homosexuals, etc.
EDIT: And yes, I know what I said before was borderline offensive. I find it similarly offensive that when I see close friends’ lives threatened because of the color of the skin or their sexual orientation, that I should just treat it like a debate on tax policy. It’s not. They’re living in fear even now, and justifiably so. And the moment one of these fucks comes up and threatens them or their children… yeah, my fist is going to start deploying freedom craters.
Oh, I agree with you…on a personal level, I’d do the same. My point all along has been that there is a difference between how we, as individuals, react to specific situations, and how we, as a group, should react to a political situation if we hope to effect real change.
Mind you, after pummeling the neo-Nazi, I doubt the situation would be improved, but I’d feel better for a bit. All I’m trying to say is that if you want real change, these one on one visceral responses are not going to do the job.
I could slay as well, that under your logic, every you see someone saying something threatening, you just kill them, because, who knows, they probably will do horrible things to you.
I think I will leave it at that. Nothing I have said should indicate to anyone that I’m either a pacifist or someone willing to let people attack me with impunity. I’ve been arguing the difference between personal, emotional actions and collective political actions. I suppose you could get everyone together to go punch neo-Nazis, and that might actually work, but then, it would simply create the paradigm of solving political disputes by violence. And yes, I accept that these neo-Nazis aren’t just making political statements, but are advocating in effect mass murder. I just don’t think advocating individual acts against individual slimeballs is much of a recipe for actually, you know, stopping these people.
It would be a far better world if I could share your optimism and afford to hold your convictions. The fact of the matter is we tried it your way with this group and it failed. That failure cost millions of lives and re-shaped much of the world we know today. And it wasn’t even enough for this group to kill people, they had to torture, rape, dehumanize, pursue different and attempt to eradicate it.
Anyone who looks at what this group did and wishes they were there, wishes they had won, wants to recreate it… you cannot reason with that. You simply cannot reason with someone who looks at rows of starving naked children lined up to be gassed and that is their response…
But @Timex and @ArmandoPenblade have already said it. They can choose not to be monsters and rejoin the human race at anytime. Unlike the people they target, they’re not born with this trait; people are not born Nazis.