Pros and Cons of Punching a Nazi Just Square in the Dick

[Mongrel]

No, instead from what I've seen they've put a bounty on the head of the person who punched Richard Spencer in the face. Ostensibly as a reward for information leading to identifying and arresting him.

[Romosome]

I don't have a burning need to punch Nazis that are Nazis in private!

If people don't want to be punched for being Nazis maybe they should stop dressing like Nazis, talking like Nazis, and openly, brazenly asking for attention so they can taunt everyone with how Nazi they are.

»Nur eines hätte unsere Bewegung stoppen können – wenn unsere Gegner ihr Prinzip verstanden hätten und vom ersten Tag an den Kern unserer neuen Bewegung mit aller Brutalität zerschlagen hätten«

"Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."

Adolf Hitler, 1934

For further reading see The Racist Tree.

[Mongrel]

I don't have a burning need to punch Nazis that are Nazis in private!

If people don't want to be punched for being Nazis maybe they should stop dressing like Nazis, talking like Nazis, and openly, brazenly asking for attention so they can taunt everyone with how Nazi they are.

»Nur eines hätte unsere Bewegung stoppen können – wenn unsere Gegner ihr Prinzip verstanden hätten und vom ersten Tag an den Kern unserer neuen Bewegung mit aller Brutalität zerschlagen hätten«

"Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."

Adolf Hitler, 1934

For further reading see The Racist Tree.

Is there no sense of irony in the suggestion that we follow Adolf Hitler's advice for solving problems?

Like, maybe Hitler was wrong sometimes, you know? Maybe pausing for just a moment to consider that would be an idea?

[Romosome]

ok guys, don't attempt to stop fascist movements, even if they have already gotten official Government sanction and influence, because Hitler said it worked

[Wheels]

Mongrel, this is just... navel gazing. Most people, you don't punch. That guy specifically, the one in all the gifs, needed to be punched. You should not generally punch people due to ideological differences, but the point of this whole thing is that this is an *exception.* Slippery slope is a logical fallacy for a reason.

Well, Spencer being punched isn't very problematic. If it really was just that and ended there, I'd say you were right.

Except here we are having a discussion - like others in many other places online - about whether we should go on punching. That Tweet posted earlier ITT and which has now been very widely circulated and applauded: Be the change you want to see. Go punch more Nazis.

What is actually happening is a contradiction of what you're saying right now.

Whether we should go on punching *NAZIS.* That has always been the qualifier in all of these statements until you took the slippery slope. And yes, we should. Should we punch people that are not Nazis? No, possibly *fuck* no, prone to be overturned on a case by case basis.

[Büge]

What I DO think is that there needs to be a clear and present danger, not vague threats, like, hey these guys might come by in a few weeks/months/years maybe.

Aaaaand right here is where you lost me. Fairly reasonable up until this point, but again, something you're not getting, which I feel I must stress is

The end state of their ideology requires violence to be done.

We are way past the point of hypotheticals, here. There are unapologetically white supremacist men in positions of power. This is not a "vague threat". This is reality.

[Rico]

I know this is kind of your schtick, Mongrel, but you're 45 out of 146 posts in this thread. I'm not saying drop out of the discussion but you are pretty actively derailing it to do whatever it is you're doing. As Wheels said, it's pretty navel-gazy, and as Büge just said, we are talking about our current and very real political situation.

While I'm not saying a Trump presidency won't have very real consequences for Canada, but again, this is a pretty specific and real current event for Americans pretty much all across the country, and you are making it hard for some people to participate and distracting the content of others' posts.

[Mongrel]

ok guys, don't attempt to stop fascist movements, even if they have already gotten official Government sanction and influence, because Hitler said it worked

I didn't say that either. Come on Romo.

Whether we should go on punching *NAZIS.* That has always been the qualifier in all of these statements until you took the slippery slope. And yes, we should. Should we punch people that are not Nazis? No, possibly *fuck* no, prone to be overturned on a case by case basis.

And again the question is who gets to decide who is a nazi.

We are way past the point of hypotheticals, here. There are unapologetically white supremacist men in positions of power. This is not a "vague threat". This is reality.

This is an important thing to consider. Do you think that that United States government is neither a functioning democracy nor representative any more and has actively become fascist? Because I do think that an active armed insurrection would be fully justified under a fascist regime.

Does the presence of of white supremacists in positions of power make the government as a whole fascist? Does the election of Donald Trump now mean that the only logical response is violent revolution? Like, if the problem is white supremacists in government are we going to punch douchebags who show up at rallies or are we actually going to go after those in power?

Did you read my fourth point or just stop outright there? Because that was where I went into the fact that this is exactly the narrative terrorists and Nazis use. That our way of life, our beliefs and freedoms are under threat, that our enemies seek to destroy us. This is what fear does. And it goes both ways. This is why robotic drones murder whole families half a world away. Because comfortable, navel-gazing white folks are afraid. Not of an imagined enemy, but a real enemy, one who would murder us just as willingly as a Nazi would, one who wishes to restore philosophies just as retrograde and disgusting as Nazism.

This does not mean that we should reject violent acts. I've said as much, over and over. But overreach is easy, mistakes are frequent, and unintended consequences are legion. Before we pull the pin on that grenade, we need to be damned sure about where it's gonna fly. And we have by no means demonstrated a good track record there.

I simply don't believe the US government is as far gone as that just yet. It might yet get that bad. But the answer to that is not to start the shooting sooner.

I know this is kind of your schtick, Mongrel, but you're 45 out of 146 posts in this thread. I'm not saying drop out of the discussion but you are pretty actively derailing it to do whatever it is you're doing. As Wheels said, it's pretty navel-gazy, and as Büge just said, we are talking about our current and very real political situation.

While I'm not saying a Trump presidency won't have very real consequences for Canada, but again, this is a pretty specific and real current event for Americans pretty much all across the country, and you are making it hard for some people to participate and distracting the content of others' posts.

There's room for everyone to post, I think, even if I say more than some. I am definitely not sanguine about the implication once again that if I am not with the majority, I am against you, that I am "a distraction" or that my view point is somehow invalid and I should shut up. The stated purpose of the thread is to discuss the pros and cons of punching Nazis, which is all I'm doing. I very deliberately avoided the thread all through yesterday evening so that it wouldn't just be a constant stream of posts or me overwhelming things.

At no point have I said I'm in any way sympathetic to Nazis and my views really aren't all that different from most of yours.

But you're friends of mine, and I respect that too. If you all want to vote me off the island, I will go away.

[Newbie]

Nazis in America are not a new problem. See the punk movement in NYC in the 80s, protests around the WTO and the Seattle riots, etc. You know how the skinheads got rid of the Nazi movement that was overtaking and coopting them? They *punched* them. It was violent for everybody: yes. But it worked.

King did not achieve all that he did because he took the high ground; most of his success came because he crisscrossed black America, telling and teaching black Americans to stop fearing the beating they've been avoiding all their lives. You confront the beating; you endure it. You stand up for what's right, knowing the beating will come.

Meanwhile, the Nazis turn their attention to France.

[Rico]

Perspective from being one of 3 mods on a niche site that has anywhere between a hundred and a thousand posts a day: Having regulars is good. Having a regular (subjective metric) overpost actively discourages other people from posting, especially when many of the posts are very similar. It is a constant battle to prevent the regular from feeling stilted by being asked to dial it back a notch because we don't want to lose the regular. They're good posters who post good posts. But they also sometimes unintentionally damage the community.

Context is super important. You're definitely not being a pure Devil's advocate here, but you're still a presumably white male from another country primarily waxing philosophically. While most of us are pretty similar demographically in a broad sense, several of the people posting here are more actively and specifically affected. I live in one of the most liberal places in the US and a few nights ago I was just a couple hundred feet from a Nazi shooting a protester telling him to shut up. THIS IS REAL.

That certainly doesn't mean you can't comment, but it maybe means comment a little less or differently! I mean, fuck, I've definitely had my philosophy binges on message board topic so I get it. I really do.

[Mongrel]

Nazis in America are not a new problem. See the punk movement in NYC in the 80s, protests around the WTO and the Seattle riots, etc. You know how the skinheads got rid of the Nazi movement that was overtaking and coopting them? They *punched* them. It was violent for everybody: yes. But it worked.

King did not achieve all that he did because he took the high ground; most of his success came because he crisscrossed black America, telling and teaching black Americans to stop fearing the beating they've been avoiding all their lives. You confront the beating; you endure it. You stand up for what's right, knowing the beating will come.

How are you reconciling those two paragraphs? One describes violent resistance and one passive.

Also I know a number of punks who actively lived through that era. The Nazis didn't go away from the punk scene because they were beaten out of it, but because anti-Nazi punks started showing up in huge numbers to show the Nazis how outnumbered they were. Flash crowds are not a new thing or a product of the internet.

[Mongrel]

Perspective from being one of 3 mods on a niche site that has anywhere between a hundred and a thousand posts a day: Having regulars is good. Having a regular (subjective metric) overpost actively discourages other people from posting, especially when many of the posts are very similar. It is a constant battle to prevent the regular from feeling stilted by being asked to dial it back a notch because we don't want to lose the regular. They're good posters who post good posts. But they also sometimes unintentionally damage the community.

Context is super important. You're definitely not being a pure Devil's advocate here, but you're still a presumably white male from another country primarily waxing philosophically. While most of us are pretty similar demographically in a broad sense, several of the people posting here are more actively and specifically affected. I live in one of the most liberal places in the US and a few nights ago I was just a couple hundred feet from a Nazi shooting a protester telling him to shut up. THIS IS REAL.

That certainly doesn't mean you can't comment, but it maybe means comment a little less or differently! I mean, fuck, I've definitely had my philosophy binges on message board topic so I get it. I really do.

Look, I am a nominally-cis white male, yes, but I'm not coming at this from a perspective of comfort or immunity. I have a stake in this too.

My mother is a very brown muslim.

In my life I have somehow managed to have been called a kike, a wog, and even a nigger.

I am married to a woman from a Jewish family. I have been mistaken for a Jew all my life, many times per month and the recent and dramatic rise of anti-semitism is incredibly alarming. If I were alive in Germany in 1939, I would be put on the train. There would be no protestations of my having a Swedish last name or looking the way I do because I'm half-Persian (in spite of the fact that the Nazis quite liked both the Swedes and the Persians). I'd be dead. I am very very cognizant of this fact.

I have been verbally attacked in the street on multiple occasions by random idiots who mistook me for a Jew. And one time if I didn't happen to be with a very large friend with me I might well have been physically attacked.

Again, I'm with you guys. I believe in our right to defend ourselves. We're only disagreeing about the whens and wherefores, of the exact scale of the threat and how to deal with it. These are nuts and bolts sorts of things, not the central premise. And we're not all that far off.

[Rico]

I could have phrased that a little better, sorry. That you have all the optics of the uninvolved-white-man-playing-advocate was never meant to imply that you didn't have real skin in the game, which I tried to hedge against in an earlier post specifically mentioning Canadian consequences of a Trump presidency. Many people in this thread have read exactly that out of what you did post before now, and that general trope is incredibly gross, which is why I suggested posting differently.

[Sharkey]

I had to write a dumb rambling blog about this yesterday, but with all the fat trimmed away this is about as concise as I can make it:

If someone poses a credible and immediate existential threat to yourself or others and cannot be escaped or reasoned with, that person needs to be restrained, incapacitated, or, in the complete absence of any other option, killed.

I think that's a pretty fucking good rule.

Nazi ideology poses an existential threat to ourselves and others. No argument there. The crux of this whole discussion seems to be just how immediate and credible this particular threat actually is, and if punching a dude does anything to improve the situation. By that metric, this asshole is pretty far from pointing a gun at you, leaning more toward "edgy internet shithead" on the credibility and immediacy scale. Not, I think, enough to warrant actually socking him, but close enough to the line that I don't give a fuck if somebody else does.

As to whether or not it does any good, we could argue about that forever.

[Wheels]

And again the question is who gets to decide who is a nazi.
...
Does the election of Donald Trump now mean that the only logical response is violent revolution?

[Newbie]

How are you reconciling those two paragraphs? One describes violent resistance and one passive.

Nonviolent resistance is great, and I fully support that strategy wherever possible. It is just that, though: a strategy to be deployed wherever it can work. So too is violence a strategy, albeit a crude and far overused strategy. It is not wrong to apply lessons learned from the application of one strategy toward the application of another.

Also I know a number of punks who actively lived through that era. The Nazis didn't go away from the punk scene because they were beaten out of it, but because anti-Nazi punks started showing up in huge numbers to show the Nazis how outnumbered they were. Flash crowds are not a new thing or a product of the internet.

You yourself have pointed out that we need to be wary about trying to fight the last war. Spencer isn't concerned about being outnumbered; his patrons won the presidency. This is not about fitting in to convert people on the ground. Spencer himself admitted his concern was that this would provide memetic ammunition to be used against him, which is exactly what's happening.

[Mongrel]

And again the question is who gets to decide who is a nazi.
...
Does the election of Donald Trump now mean that the only logical response is violent revolution?

If you really genuinely think that Nazis are taking over the civil government, then it's fair to ask about organized armed resistance. I don't think Buge is wrong for asking if the white supremacists in positions of government are an existential threat, first on a personal level and second to large groups.

If you think that Nazis are not outright taking over, but perhaps that some of them are weaseling their way into power, where they can do damage, where they might do real harm to people, then we should still be trying to fight them by civic and political means. We should do everything we can to legally retake power to remove them via legal and political means or at least limit the damage they can do.

I believe that as bad as things are, the latter option is still reasonable and feasible.

I believe that people who are interested in justice can start swinging things back the other way. We just need a little bit of leadership, some improved organization, less infighting over secondary issues, and a renewed appreciation for the "hearts" part of hearts and minds (the statistics article I linked is VERY good about this last bit - honestly read it if you have the chance).

[Bal]

ON the matter of who gets to decide who is a Nazi. The fucking Nazis do, Mongrel. The way you can solve this fucking puzzle and winnow out who needs the persecution that Nazis require to be kept in check is by listening to what they say, because if what they say is "I'm a Nazi" or "I'm totally NOT a Nazi but please read my essay on killing all the blacks as a means of social engineering, not that we would, just a thought experiment", then there you got. Nazi identified. Now protest, shun, alienate, and otherwise make them unwelcome until they give up, shut up, and go away. And if they don't, use a brick.

[Mongrel]

You yourself have pointed out that we need to be wary about trying to fight the last war. Spencer isn't concerned about being outnumbered; his patrons won the presidency. This is not about fitting in to convert people on the ground. Spencer himself admitted his concern was that this would provide memetic ammunition to be used against him, which is exactly what's happening.

Actually I think Spencer is very much outnumbered.

We discussed this when, right after the election, we saw a jump in racist incidents. The Nazis think that just because Trump won that they're the "majority". The reality is that lots of Trump voters were lied to, rigidly followed party lines, voted purely to spite the system as a whole, or were even just plain dumb.

Hardcore Nazis are still a small, even tiny number. There were only 200 or so people at that clown car Heil Trump wankparty. Compare that to how many people showed up to the women's march on Washington. Which, I might add was also more than showed up for the inauguration.

[Mongrel]

ON the matter of who gets to decide who is a Nazi. The fucking Nazis do, Mongrel. The way you can solve this fucking puzzle and winnow out who needs the persecution that Nazis require to be kept in check is by listening to what they say, because if what they say is "I'm a Nazi" or "I'm totally NOT a Nazi but please read my essay on killing all the blacks as a means of social engineering, not that we would, just a thought experiment", then there you got. Nazi identified. Now protest, shun, alienate, and otherwise make them unwelcome until they give up, shut up, and go away. And if they don't, use a brick.

Not all of the cases are going to be so clear.

For example, is Trump a capital-N Nazi? How many months did people spend arguing about that?