3117

Obligatory linkage:

That said, in my opinion most Nazi speech should fall under Fighting Words. Too bad that literally nothing falls under that designation. It would have back in say the 50’s. If you Seig Heil’d in public in 1953, you would be lucky to get home alive after people were done with you and odds are pretty good the courts would have just shrugged when it happened.

And all THAT said, I’m in support of punching Nazis anyway. It shouldn’t be legal, but every time it happens I’m going to fucking cheer.

3118

Pope hat had the right of it, but while the strongest argument for punching Nazis is de facto voter/culture suppression, just be aware that it’s literally the same argument for abortion opponents, and that you’re not going to have much of platform when they do other than “Your values are wrong because I don’t like them”.

3119

Ok, so, some Nazis have a march, and they hold up signs saying all blacks and jews should be sent to gas chambers. Can I punch them? No? They’re just exercising their right to free speech, right?

Now one of them runs for congress on an explicit campaign of sending blacks and jews to gas chambers. Can I punch him now? Not yet?

He wins. Now?

He introduces a bill to send blacks and jews to gas chambers. Punching time yet? No? He’s still just exercising his rights as a citizen!

The bill passes. Punch?

Blacks and jews start getting rounded up and sent to ghettos. Well, it’s all legal, so no punching?

First person goes to the gas chamber.
First 10,000 people go to the gas chamber.
First million people go to the gas chamber.

Tell me when it’s ok to start punching?

3120

Right! That’s the problem of confronting issues like nazism.

But what do you say when the anti-abortion protestor sucker punches a doctor that provides abortion walking out of their home. After all: 660,000 abortions a year (or thereabouts). To make the obvious and horrible point, more children have died in abortions than Hitler killed! And yet no one cares, no one thinks of the children. Shouldn’t we applaud the doctor sucker puncher after wiping the blood of the nazi off our knuckles? No? What’s your moral standing then? Essentially, i’m right and you’re wrong and go fuck yourself. Ceding the moral authority to sucker punch Nazis may well be a necessary evil (not because the nazi doesn’t save things worth punching) , but make no mistake, it is an necessary evil morally supporting the act of punching cedes and cedes a little bit of the rule of law, leaving society just that little bit less civilized.

3121

How hard is it to follow Popehat’s argument?

Even if taking up arms against your own government becomes a correct action, sucker punching people never does. One of the reasons for this is that it is never the most effective way of preventing a Nazi takeover. One of the reasons the Nazis got voted in in Germany is that the stupid Reds thought the most effective way of fighting them was to rumble with them in the streets.

3122

Well Ken does argue sucker punching them and then accepting the legal consequences could be considered a viable act.

3123

I take the position of joy at Spencer being punched and is afraid to leave the house, and agreement that this is illegal and shouldn’t be done for many valid reasons. So I can make the personal choice not to punch him, but not be too bothered if someone else does. I can’t see my emotional and rational states sitting on the same side of the argument.

3124

Well, at least we don’t have to pretend to be upset when it happens though, right?

3125

Fetus does not equal child. Just saying.

3126

A human embryo isn’t a person. A black person is.

3127

You Americans should just have some mild hate speech or incitement to violence laws. It would solve everything.

If someone wants to be a racist or have a Hitler poster in their room then whatever, but if they speak in a public venue about needing gas chambers or whole sections of society being animals worthy of death, then send the police down there to lock them up for awhile. It’s not complicated.

You’ll jail/kill drug dealers and ISIS sympathisers but not the reincarnations of Hitler.

3128

[quote=“Timex, post:3047, topic:126885, full:true”]Frankly, yes, I think they have… although perhaps not to the degree you think is required for me to reconcile these two positions.

Make no mistake, I am still going to err on the side of free speech in virtually every single case. Hell, even with Nazis, I wouldn’t advocate the government outlawing their speech. I don’t think that’s the role of government.

However, Nazi speech is different than speech which is merely offensive. Nazis have actually shown their desired end state, with attrocities committed against other humans. That shit actually happened.[/quote]

You might be interested in seeing how Germany is handling this recently.

There was an attempt to outlaw the far right party NDP, which is very Nazi -like. We all know Germany has some anti-hate speech laws set in place, like most of Europe, but the outcome of this particular case is interesting, because the Constitutional court decided not to outlaw them.

Because they were deemed to be not really a threat, due to being too small.

So basically, as long as it’s speech without much real consequences, it is allowed. But if the speech is considered to be actionable, then it will be outlawed. I thought it was an interesting solution to the problem, honestly, although I understand the critics that say they should have outlawed the party anyway. But yeah, I thought this would be of interest to you.

I still believe outlawing speech is preferable to punching, but at the end you do need to oppose these kind of murderous ideologies one way or another.

3129

http://wvmetronews.com/2017/04/13/justice-vetoes-budget-by-unveiling-bull-manure/

3130

So you say we should also punch communists right?

3131

I’m not sure about communists per se, but Stalinists? Sure, I think they fall in the same bucket as Nazis.

Good luck finding many in developed countries nowadays, though. The extreme right is a problem NOW in many of our countries (actually, here in Spain it’s a non-issue yet, but it’s due to very specific historical factors -we need at least 20 more years until that kind of discourse is not immediately shut down-).

The extreme left (the one that is as dangerous as the extreme right we are discussing) is pretty much non-existent nowadays in developed countries (if one considers, for example, Greece’s case as probably the farthest left we have gone in the first world recently, it’s definitely in a different ballpark than the kind of murderous ideology we are talking about here).

So i don’t know what your point is other than muddling a very real issue.

3132

Is Stalinism even an ideology per se? Stalin himself was a monster on the same scale as Hitler, but I’m not sure ‘Stalinism’ is a coherent set of ideas that can be compared with ‘Nazism.’ Correct me if wrong.

“Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos, Dude.”

3133

Communism of course does not make its essential philosophy one of violence, oppression, and hatred. As Juan says, Stalinism is monstrous, but fortunately the number of Stalinists remaining in the US rounds down to zero.

3134

It is, but it’s a mostly dead one.

3135

I know I view the alt-right/MAGA types as a existential threat to American and American ideals, and as such, I believe in taking that threat seriously.

The only thing that can be done, the only hope we have, is for all reasonable people to band together and make sure this anti-American element after 2020 stays marginalized forever.

Some of it I can live with, but not the racism, acceptance of corruption, and just lack of acceptance of facts- that’s the part which scares me.

There’s a line where rule of law no longer applies- I agree with that, but the big question is when is that line crossed? Personally I think we’re a lot closer to that line than we think- though he haven’t crossed it yet. If a bunch of elections got decided in favor of the regime here under mysterious circumstances in 2018 or 2020, I’d consider the line crossed easily.

3136

Gerrymandering is the real roadblock there. In places like NC, as you know, we are at the mercy of crazy far right republicans with veto-proof majorities – in as state that historically solid purple. The change has to start at the local level.