3016

I’m with Timex. It is the patriotic duty of every American to punch Nazis.

Christian Picciolini is an excellent example of just such a person. After turning away from white nationalism, he founded Life After Hate, a non-profit group aimed at helping others who have doubts transition out of the lifestyle and offering support services to people affected by their racism.

3017

Put me in the punch a Nazi camp. Hell if someone shows up in a pointy white sheet spouting hateful bullshit, I say punch that guy too. So long as these bastards advocate genocide and treating other humans as non-humans, punching is the leas they deserve.

3018

lol man I really didn’t think I’d login to the forum today to see someone sticking up for literal Nazis. Good job at least giving me first genuine surprise here in awhile, @Scuzz!

3019

I gotta say, while I think that Nazis deserve to be treated the way they inhumanely think and treat others… Assault is assault.

Like, maybe the guy who punched him goes to grand jury, and they refuse to press charges… because, you know… Nazi.

3020

I’m fine with them having a record. With the the assault conviction it should have an asterisk that says, punched a Nazi. Maybe if a few of them had been punched as they rose to power, they wouldn’t have gained power. We know a lot of them were chickenshit. They’ve been hiding for decades rather than face the music.

3021

Hey, scuzz isn’t defending Nazis. He’s just saying punching them is wrong.

I used to feel the same way, with a general sense that no one should be punished for espousing views the majority of society disagrees with.

But two things eventually became clear to me:

  1. a view which respects the rights of others does not require that one respect the views of Nazis, or any other group who specifically bases their views upon disrespect for others. Indeed, consistency demands the opposite.

  2. facilitating the spread of hate perpetrated by groups such as Nazis causes active harm to other innocent people. Even prior to the ultimate realization of their abhorrent beliefs in some act of atrocity like the Holocaust, they advocate the dehumanization of other people, and in doing so, attempt to inspire terror in those people. They damage the quality of life of other innocent people who respect society, and thus are deserving of society’s protection.

If I must choose between an innocent person living in fear of Nazis, or a Nazi living in fear of being beaten to a pulp, then I choose for the Nazi to be the one who lives in terror. And make no mistake, this is the choice we are presented with.

There is no compatibility between Nazism and civil society.

3022

“The attribute of popular government in a revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror. Terror without virtue is fatal; virtue without terror is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.”

Tell me more about how we should empower roving bands of vigilantes to dispense summary justice to thought criminals. I’m sure such bands would be universally understood as being a legitimate (nay, a necessary!) pillar of society, without which there would be nothing to hold back the Nazi hordes. And I’m also sure that further enabling a culture of violence will totally reduce violence in the long term.

Apropos of nothing, Mary Angelica Plaisant, a seamstress, was guillotined in 1794 for exclaiming “A fig for the nation!” Hers was a necessary sacrifice, as it prevented the rise of tyrants, preserved the European peace, and helped spread enlightenment values, like so:

3023

Man they just keep coming out of the woodwork. Well, I guess Trump DID win after all…

3024

Well @ArmandoPenblade he used a quote that uses the word fig. That clearly changes everything.

3025

Nazis aren’t thought criminals. We aren’t imagining some fiction and then blaming innocents. We aren’t using Nazism as a generic term and using it to castigate random individuals.

These are people who openly espouse these beliefs. They reject society.

Rights come with responsibilities. If you seek to dehumanize, oppress, and murder others, then you don’t get the protections of society for yourself. Why would you?

3026

Is punching nazi’s right in the sense that it is a categorical imperative?

If you were in a room with a hundred guys and a nazi, would it be most just to get in the first punch, the last, or one of the one’s in between?

3027

Well I guess that depends on. We get in our time machines. Two people here run around telling the world not to interfere with the Nazis’ right to freedom of speech and public speeches. The rest might actually try to stop the millions of people they wind up killing, and probably wind up dead in the process because a number of us are from the ultra bad mix race status… and the world was content to watch it happen and let them be the first time around. Sitting back and watching led to a massive war.

This isn’t a hypothetical. The Nazis party is about murder and purging other races. They don’t even try to hide it and we already know what happens when they get enough power. Why anyone would be content see that repeated is beyond me.

You don’t stop Nazis as they line up everyone up to be exterminated. The goal is to stop them before that.

3029

I am a non-violent person. I love harmony. I like others around me to be happy and will do what I reasonably can to facilitate that.

But don’t ask me to turn the other cheek while a noose is put around my neck.

3030

I’m going to pipe up here because this is one of the peeves that has been bothering me lately as I see it appear more and more often in threads like these.

Timex, absolutely nothing you said here changes the fact that you are condoning the use of force against a minority because of their beliefs. Yes, you offer a shit ton of justification that it’s fine to do so, and I agree. Yet saying ‘if they just change their beliefs I wouldn’t have to hurt them’ is the same as saying ‘if [religion X] just converted to becoming proper [religion Y] we wouldn’t have to hurt them.’

Now you might argue that your justifications are objectively sound while theirs are just fueled by hate. And you would be right, but the thing is, this still doesn’t change that you are willing to eliminate a minority you despise.

And that is what rubs me wrong about progressives (I’m lumping everyone not-conservative under this) these days. They keep talking about the need to be inclusive, that hating minorities is bad and that everyone needs to have equal rights and opportunities… except fascists, trump voters, alt-righters and whomever else gets caught in the progressive cross-hairs. Those people need to be stomped upon, and I believe it’s this hypocrisy that scuzz is pointing out.

I cannot count the amount of times that people on this board have spoken about, say, rural trump voters in a manner that makes it clear that the speaker would enjoy seeing these people silenced and made irrelevant sooner rather than later because it will be better for everyone. Well… guess what, that’s the exact same thing Nazis believe to be true about Jews.

This is why I feel progressives are such huge hypocrites. Despising certain minorities is apparently only bad if its one of the designated ones. If it’s a minority I don’t like, well then everything suddenly becomes fair game. It doesn’t even matter that your justifications are objectively better than theirs; the underlying hypocrisy remains.

And this is—or better said was— my problem really; how could I not be confused with someone telling me that ‘oppressing or prosecuting minorities for their beliefs is bad’ while it’s clearly only bad in some instances and not in others. It just gave me a strong ‘Some minorities are more equal than others’ vibe.

These days I take the view that’s there is nothing inherently ‘bad/evil’ about hating minorities/ideologies/religions. Everybody is doing it after all, and this is how I finally managed to reconcile myself with it. It’s okay to hate minorities or certain beliefs, it’s not okay to agree with minorities or beliefs that on balance increase humanity’s suffering. For example, supporting gays to have equal rights reduces misery. Killing all Nazis also reduces misery. It may be a reduction bought by increased suffering of a tiny group, but for humanity as a whole things will improve. That’s why it’s fine to cheer on Richard Spencer getting socked in the face. Not because he hates Jews, but because his marginalization prevents a metric shitton of potential suffering.

TL;DR Don’t tell me that hating minorities/religions/beliefs is inherently bad, because that just makes you a hypocrite.

3031

The big issue is how do you define a Nazi, and then, how do you keep that definition from expanding to include non-Nazis.

I mean, punching a Nazi is a good thing, but punching a non-Nazi for no good reason is a bad thing.

Fighting against the War On America has to happen, but you gotta not hit the wrong target.

3032

Nazis are not Minorities. It is not a race classification or even a religious belief system, it is a political ethos defined by hatred of others.

3033

I think this is about interpretations of “tolerance”. I believe in tolerance; however I will not tolerate intolerance, because otherwise intolerance wins every time. Karl Popper explained the paradox of tolerance better:

3034

Timex is having a bit of fun with the specific act of “punching Nazis”, but I’m pretty sure it is mostly rhetorical flourish.

If his argument was phrased as “we, as a society, have an obligation to make it clear that Nazis are not welcome in our society because they have explicitly stated they do not respect the rights of others”, I don’t think anybody would disagree. The question of how you enforce “make it clear they are not welcome”.

It should still be illegal to punch Nazis, because it’s illegal to punch anybody, and rule of law is absolute. But, if I were on a jury for Nazi punching…I’d personally have a hard time convicting. And, as a legal system based on peer juries, that’s entirely appropriate and within my rights.

3035

I’d punch the apostrophe out of Nazi’s any day.

3036

But their beliefs in this case possess a very distinct quality. And that difference separates them from persecuting others due to their beliefs.

That is, advocating violence against Nazis does not require that you excuse violence against ANY group of people. This is a very key point.

No, it’s not the same at all.

The critical thing you are missing here, is that the reason why the Nazis are bad is not simply because they hold “different beliefs”.

The reason they are bad, is because they hold beliefs which are antithetical to civilized society. The specific beliefs that we are talking about here, require that those who hold them to step outside of society’s rules, and advocate violence against others. It’s THEIR choice to step outside of society’s umbrella, and that’s why it’s ok to assault them.

This is not the same as being jewish, or black, or liking dogs. Certainly you could draw an equivalence to violent religious extremists, who believe people of other religions are less than human, and deserving of violence and death. And it’d be ok to punch THOSE people too.

Do you see the key point here? That the belief we are talking about here, with Nazism, possesses a very specific quality… that being that it chooses to ignore the rights provided by society to other people. It is that act of ignoring others rights, which results in Nazis losing THEIR OWN rights.

We killed lots of Nazis in WWII. Was that somehow wrong? Were our actions equivalent to the monstrosities committed by the Axis powers? After all, “both sides were killing folks!”

No, I think not.

You think I’m a progressive?

Trump voters in general don’t deserve violence against them.

Again, you are missing this really important distinction, and attempting to lump every group into the same bin as Nazis. That’s false.

It’s ok to punch nazis, not because they have a different opinion which differs from mine.

It’s ok to punch Nazis because they advocate stripping other human beings of their humanity, and in doing so, Nazis void the social contract and are no longer deserving of civil protections.

Nazis are not merely “a minority group”.