Is Punching A Nazi OK?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by ElectricFetus, Feb 3, 2017.

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  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Doesn't matter - Breitbart and its fellow media influencers run your political life, and they have for thirty years - since before Breitbart was invented.
    You do not, in fact, have any reasonable idea or conception of the American Left. Everything you have posted here about it is nonsense.

    So what happened really, at this one "protest" by people somebody told you were "the left"? And where did you get the odd metaphor of "collapsing under its own weight"? The American Left weighs less than any other coherent political faction in the country - and that's with all of its disparate an uncoordinated pieces added up together.
    No, I don't. That's nonsense you invented - at one point you had me pushing Clinton in the primaries and calling you "Berniebro", remember? You have to go back and separate out what you attributed to me from what I posted, which are not at all the same thing, if you want to find out how I've been "yammering". Right now you haven't got much of a clue - and it's in standard English prose right in front of you.

    And along the way, try separating what kangaroo boy and the rest of your sources in 4chan and Breitbart and so forth, that little old supposedly "we" you seems to rely on for all your information and vocabulary, attribute to the Left, from what the Left says for itself. Because similarity, integrity, good faith attribution, are lacking there as well.
    The "black bloc"? Your ass crack is showing.

    The world of delusion "they" - meaning you and the Trump supporters and the rest of the wingies - live in, is not real. It is built on lies and deceptions and slanders, and these lies and deceptions and slanders are designed to win any battle and dominate any conflict between competing worlds of lies and deceptions and slander. I can't appease them by adopting their PC vocabulary, I can't beat them at their own game (I don't have even one TV station at my disposal), and I can't control their lying and slander by altering my behavior in any way.

    Abandonment of reason and fact abets power and wealth. It's another aspect of the situation illustrated by the adage "all that is necessary for evil is that the good do nothing". All that is necessary for mass delusion to dominate is that the holders of good faith in reason and reality check in evidence keep silent.
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    There Is No Point to Invoking the Godwin Corrollary

    The funny thing is that while you can't support that statement, I doubt you even know what it means.

    You should probably be careful about invoking the Nazis and Jews since your argument on racism, prejudice, and bigotry backs the Nazis.

    Iceaura and I might have any number of disagreements, but one thing we are both generally capable of is sticking with what we have in front of us insofar as you might not like our projections of various policy, attiude, and behavior results, but deeply rooted within our assessments is a very basic, observable fact, which is civilized society.

    I refer to the range in which your position on supremacist bigotry operates as the suicide pact; that is to say, civilized society is not a suicide pact. We are Americans; our enshrined iteration is that the Constitution is not a suicide pact, taken from two Supreme Court decisions, Jackson's dissent in Terminiello, 1949, and Goldberg's opinion in Kennedy, 1963; the former poses the Bill of Rights as a suicide pact as an outcome of doctrinaire rejection of practical wisdom, while the latter asserts specifically that, "while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact".

    Iceaura and I are looking at function. And your inability to deal with this basic question brings a certain manner of impasse; at this point either Iceaura or I could tell you what is functionally wrong with your advocacy for bullies. And either of us could point out that when asked to address this functional problem, you're not capable of doing so. I had occasion to consider the suicide pact about a month ago↗, in discussing the proposition of the skin color you're born into being akin to willfully committing a sex crime. By the way, where does your scheme fall on that one? The proposition is that being black is akin to committing a sex crime; what sympathy do I owe that argument? As I said at the time:

    Many supremacists throughout these United States really are pissed off by the proposition against a suicide pact, but it is also a specific obligation of our Constitution except, strangely, our jurisprudence considers itself not formally obliged to that portion of the Supreme Law of the Land. To the other, securing the more perfect union, and the justice and public welfare it entails, for ourselves and our posterity is, in fact, a consideration conscientious statecraft is capable of empowering. Yet no matter how delicate or complicated we try to make the question, if our posterity wasn't important, nobody would appeal to it. There is no paradox, however, in supremacists attempting to simultaneously appeal to and undermine societal posterity; supremacism is, after all, antisocial behavior.

    Which, in turn, is a bit more subtle than any pretense about American society you might invent for the convenience of your continued and effortless ignorance would account for.

    You propose, for instance, to distinguish 'twixt a "liberal defense of equal rights even for those with despicable views" and "a defense of these despicable views", yet are incapable of recognizing the illiberal proposition of alienated rights.

    In the United States, you have inalienable rights. You'll find American liberals continuing to assert that on behalf of our international neighbors who encounter our jurisdiction, in opposition to more conservative arguments pretending word games are sufficient to alienate inalienable rights.

    The Constitution is not a suicide pact; your inalienable rights, common to all people, do not by the Constitutional purview include the alienation of other people's rights.

    And it is specifically illiberal to require such alienation.

    There is a reason you can't answer for it; there is a reason you have no way of dealing with the problem you assert; then again, that makes sense if we presume you don't actually think it's a problem. There is nothing in history that says coddling supremacism makes it go away. There is nothing in history that says letting "white people" run riot over people of color, or "men" so dominate women, will lead us through to equality and justice. And until you can explain how that works, all you're accomplishing is the advocacy of supremacism. Presently, Ockham would suggest such a result is, at the very least, just fine with you.

    After all, inventing straw men, as you have, that fail to recognize between inherent condition (Jewish) and chosen behavior (political), is very much in vogue among supremacists.

    But you cannot answer for your suicide-pact argument; Iceaura and I know exactly what we guard against in our society in this context, and there is very little difference 'twixt us on this count, and the fascinating thing is that you are either unwilling or utterly unable to actually countenance where your argument leads. And at this point there really isn't much purpose to playing your worse than useless games.

    Meanwhile, no, your chosen politics―or the next person's, at that, dishonest right-winger or not―are not akin to being born Jewish. In the former Holocaust, one need not be a practicing Jew; indeed, one need not actually be Jewish, merely suspected. Interestingly, in the quarter-century I've attended the Gay Fray, any number of conscience assertions about queers did not actually require that the object of prejudice actually be gay; Christianists demanded the right to discriminate against suspected homosexuals.

    All you want is for the objects of prejudice and bigotry to suffer for the sake of supremacists. That's the only outcome of your advocacy for the bullies. And the problem is that simply in addressing the issue someone will be offended.

    • I know men who are absolutely offended by the proposition that they should not hit on random women in the street, or mall, or office, or wherever. And they always go with this idea that they're just "giving her a compliment" or "being nice", and it's not so much that it doesn't matter to them what she thinks, but, rather, the idea that she gets to think anything at all pisses them off. Man says he's just being nice and giving her a compliment; woman has no right to think otherwise. Now, I've encountered this argument before, and there is simply no way to engage this question without offending someone for the perception of an accusation of sexism and prejudice. And that's an example of why you can't tell anyone where your pathetic sympathy for the bullies argument goes. When the range of people we're attempting to have a discussion with includes a determination to absolutely be offended under any circumstance, such that many can be observed making believe° in order to convince themselves they are offended. It's also the functional problem about the #AllLivesMatter counterpoint:

    (1) Disparate impact

    (2) Response to disparate impact

    (3) Denounce response as disparate impact

    Functional result: Addressing disparate impact in police lethality requires that we not recognize the fact of disparate impact, thus perpetuating the disparate status quo.​

    You would have society accommodate the disparate impact because the idea that someone is killing the wrong person for insufficient reasons seems inherently offensive. You would have society accommodate the fake "Ferguson effect" argument, because pointing out that it's false might make someone feel badly.

    Nor is there anything new about this. You're pushing an ancient fallacy.​

    And as much as you want people to show sympathy to the racists and misogynists and other supremacists, you don't have a functional solution. Indeed, after all this you've pretty much made that part clear.​

    So here's the thing: Maybe it isn't true, in your mind, that all you want is for the objects of prejudice and bigotry to suffer for the sake of supremacists. Really, maybe you really believe you're working toward functional justice and equality. I mean, sure, I don't believe it, but on this point what matters is what you think you're on about. Because the functional result of your advocacy is the empowerment and perpetuation of supremacism, bigotry, bullying, and injustice.

    In this range of issues, Iceaura and I tend to guard against dysfunction, genrally, and antisocial insistence on dysfunction particularly. That is, he and I might disagree about solutions, but certain problems we seem to agree on.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° See latter section, in re "lazy generalisation", of #3425351/4↗:

    One way to explain it is that an accurate reply is still agitating, like the bit about the swamp of crazy↱: Yes, we might tell the boot outlet employee, calling all people from Texas "swamp crazy" is kind of dumb, so why do you do it? That's the thing: She's offended at something she made up in order to be offended.

    Somebody said something stupid; somebody else called it crazy; yet someone else decided that meant all _____ are crazy, and took offense. Oh, poor her, she just must oppose such offense as she just invented.​
     
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    My point is simply that thinking something or defining onesself is not, itself, a crime.

    You cannot act on thoughts.
    You act on actual crimes.

    Now ... if the Nazi opened his mouth and spewed poison, that would warrant action.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    As an American, I have to say that would not be enough. All may speak their minds, in my country - in the appropriate circumstances, of course.

    Just as flag burning is both fine in its place, and a punchable offense in front of the Veteran's Hospital on July 4th.

    So the topic of the thread appears to be the circumstances in which punching a Nazi is ok.
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2017
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Speak for yourself.
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Worked for the right. I am sure the left will be just as adept at it.
     
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I should have said "You would be wrong to..."
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    By spewing poison I was implying assault. i.e. if he spewed posion at some target of his, that is actually a crime.
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Oh ok I'm willing to learn.

    ... and you prove my point. and then you go off jabbering about some kind of very extended strawman that I back a "sucide-pack".

    Let me make my beliefs clear: the first amendment insures anyone, even an out and out self admitted Nazi has a right to stand up in a public square and spout mindless hate, and any attack on him is assault. Spencer is a self-proclaimed "white nationalist" that wants a white ethno-state here in America produced by "peaceful ethnic cleansing"... he is nazi, fine fine "white nationalist" same thing basically.

    Now if said Nazi had a following that formed gangs, perhaps like antifa's blackbloc, masked and going around vandalizing stuff, they should be arrested, prosecuted and jailed, and certainly punished to the highest degree of the law if they commit greater crimes. If on the other hand all they did was spout hate and troll people on the internet, all that can be done is to fight trolling with trolling.

    Law and order, civility comes first, if not we will have a blood bath instead.
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2017
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  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I meant what I said. They aren't crimes but I personally think they are abhorrent enough to justify action. Morally, if not legally. We were morally justified to kill German soldiers during WWII, even if they hadn't yet committed any violence.
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    But what are you acting on? Because someone calls themselves a Nazi, does that mean you're warranted in enacting violence? What if they're just an idiot?

    Kind of makes you as bad as them, dont' it?

    That is war. It is a mutual understanding of sides, aggression and violence.

    Totally antithetical to the thread topic. In fact, I think the point the thread topic is, implicitly, "in otherwise perfectly peaceful, civilized circumstances, is it OK to puch a Nazi?"
     
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  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I can declare a personal war. Also, I would have to judge how serious they are about a fascist, violent agenda.
     
  16. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    "Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the nazi party";
     
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  17. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    In the fraction of a second between when you first clap eyes on them and the time you raise your fist?

    Because the question wasn't 'Is it OK to punch a Nazi to whom I have been listening for the last ten minutes while he's on a soapbox spouting his racist ways to all.'
     
  18. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Can you identify a Nazi What makes a person to be Nazi
     
  19. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    That's easy: anyone the regressive left says is a nazi.
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2017
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Obviously not. And I don't believe in punching Nazis.
    A white person who believes and actively pursues an agenda that the United States and perhaps Europe is for white people alone and all others should die.
    I acknowledge the term is thrown around too easily.
     
  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Getting some conflicting signals here.
    Are you just yanking our chain?
     
  22. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    No. Punching is cruel. Look, it's not like Nazis are a huge problem right now. I said mostly they should be left alone. But I don't believe it's immoral to kill them.
     
  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    So, let me get this straight.

    It's all right to kill them, just not punch them.
     
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