FreeKillB posted:

Trump said protestors at his rallies should be roughed up. This means that he wants Democrats to be afraid of disruptive political speech in the specific context of Trump rallies. (e: Note that political speech that is disruptive of others' political expression is tautologically not a universal right. Violence against protestors is, of course, bad.)

Calling for all political speech of all Democrats to be curtailed in all public contexts is the analogue of what you're shooting for.

What I'm saying is: what you said is worse that what Trump said. Even if you fudge things to put them at roughly the same level of bad, that should be real concerning.

Pseudo-God posted:

Due process, what's that? It's easy to justify your political violence when you feel you are doing it for a righteous cause, but do we really want to live in a society where we feel justified in attacking our fellow citizens based on the perceived assessment of their character? It is entirely possible for an individual to be smeared in public and then mobbed to death by a group that thinks it is doing the right thing, or for someone's words to be taken out of context and then it becomes open season. And if they try to defend their words, who is gonna listen to a Nazi anyway?

I am really shocked by the number of people condoning violence on their political opponents. It's extremely shortsighted, and people who do this fail to see that this mentality can shift against them as their own opinions become the unpopular ones and their enemies get power. Right wingers would then be perfectly justified in violence against "leftists", "communists", "degenerates", "SJWs", and any perceived social ill.

SSNeoman posted:

1) Actually Republicans are doing this

Liquid Communism posted:

I'm curious for those insistent on perfect pacifism

FreeKillB posted:

If by "this" you mean "calling to curtail all political speech of Democrats in all public contexts", I'm going to ask for something in the way of example. By Republicans, do you mean Republican officeholders, average Republican voters, or specific extremists lying within the Republican base? I will be shocked if it's the first, surprised if it's the second, and underwhelmed if it's the third. In the context I was talking about generic Republicans, who are not all neo-Nazis.

Keeshhound posted:

You're curious because you obviously never so much as spoken with one in the past or actually read their writings with the intent to understand.

An honest to God pacifist isn't going to try to compromise with a Nazi any more than you would. They might try to use moral suasion to get them to back down, they might try place themselves between them and their intended victim, or offer themselves in exchange. They might even engage in public self harm to try to shame the Nazi into backing down, but people who are truly committed to the ideals of nonviolence aren't the capitulating idiots you seem to want to strawman them as. Their values are going to be for the most part the same as yours, except that they will shun violence wherever possible, often at great cost, both physical and social, to themselves.

Keeshhound posted:

You're curious because you obviously never so much as spoken with one in the past or actually read their writings with the intent to understand.

An honest to God pacifist isn't going to try to compromise with a Nazi any more than you would. They might try to use moral suasion to get them to back down, they might try place themselves between them and their intended victim, or offer themselves in exchange. They might even engage in public self harm to try to shame the Nazi into backing down, but people who are truly committed to the ideals of nonviolence aren't the capitulating idiots you seem to want to strawman them as. Their values are going to be for the most part the same as yours, except that they will shun violence wherever possible, often at great cost, both physical and social, to themselves.

FreeKillB posted:

"Free Speech Zones" aren't a new development. I remember a lot of buzz about their use in the Bush administration, and while I agree that they have a stifling effect on political protests, matters were still MILES away from "Calling for all political speech of all Democrats to be curtailed in all public contexts ", i.e., de facto complete supression of the entire Democratic party.

Keeshhound posted:

In other words, "I'm perfectly happy living in a authoritarian society, as long as they're my type of authoritarians." No thanks.

Shbobdb posted:

Counterpoint: Republicans calling anyone to the left of the John Birch Society is anti-American traitors seems to have paid dividends. You can't shake hands with a clenched fist. But you can punch back.

FreeKillB posted:

e:^^^^ I assumed you were doing the bolding thing for shock value as an argumentative tactic, to be honest. My view is that while Nazi ideology is far removed from a realm of sane politics, it is absolutely a political position. My view of this thread is discussing whether protections afforded ordinary political speech should be extended to extremely loathsome political speech

Crowsbeak posted:

We really need to wrap ourselves around the flag start identifying with Lincoln John Brown and Harriet Tubman.

FreeKillB posted:

I don't think you even need a slippery slope argument to say that that's wrong. The ends don't justify the means. Or, to quote King, "it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends."

Shbobdb posted:

This but unironically.



There should be a statue of John Brown on the town square of every town and in the capitol of every city.

FreeKillB posted:

I was claiming that Republicans aren't currently calling for the complete abrogation of free speech rights, ie that the party in general currently hasn't totally abandoned our shared democratic norms.

TomViolence posted:

Figure this might be vaguely relevant to the thread.

https://twitter.com/deathbyliberals/status/824699591388004353

Kilroy posted:

Yeah they're only trying to make sure black people can't vote. Again.

Totally different.

Kilroy posted:

It would be the start of Republicans being afraid to say Republican things in mixed company out of fear of being assaulted. That's bad if you're a Republican, and good if you're literally anyone else interested in a healthy civic society.

Republicans are anti-democratic, do you not understand this? If you want democracy you have to do whatever you need to do to protect democracy against those who want to destroy it. If you forced to make a choice between democracy and freedom of speech, you choose democracy.

FreeKillB posted:

Republicans are bad, yes, and they are chipping away at the progress we've made towards being a free and open society. However, most Republican voters wouldn't say they are in favor of vote suppression, they would say they're against voter fraud. This makes them misguided, not monsters.

Keeshhound posted:

This is a five year old's conception of morality. The heroes are perfect and never wrong, the villains are irredemable, evil for it's own sake, always lose and no one ever dies. I'm pretty sure even GI Joe has more nuance than this.

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

Whole lotta people itt saying that Nazis don't deserve to be punched. Weird.

FreeKillB posted:

I don't think you even need a slippery slope argument to say that that's wrong. The ends don't justify the means. Or, to quote King, "it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends."

botany posted:

Pseudo-God posted:

I really am shocked how you people can't see that justifying violence against people for having an opinion, no matter how reprehensible or genocidal, is the opening of a Pandora's Box. If you say "you are allowed to punch Nazis because they present a grave threat to our way of life", you open the way for anyone to justify violence against others based on how they interpret "grave threat to our way of life". Some examples:

"We must kill abortion doctors and bomb their clinics, since abortion is responsible for the murder of millions of innocents."
"We must kill all communists in South America and install dictators in their countries, since their ideology is an existential threat to the United States."
"We must kill all kuffar and destroy the west, since liberalism and western democracy leads people away from true Islam and ultimately damns the world to hell."
"We must bomb and destroy these symbols of capitalism (banks, limos, police stations), since the white cisheteronormative capitalist colonialist patriarchy is responsible for so much suffering and death in the world".

Put yourself in the shoes of anyone who feels strongly about any social cause and you will find justification for the death and destruction of their enemies.

"Agree to disagree" is what our political system depends on for stability. Some idiots here have decided to interpret that as "We should allow the Nazis to do whatever they want until they form the Reich, because opposing them would be wrong". Your opposition should be proportional to the threat posed, and a guy talking to a reporter is NO THREAT AT ALL. The mere existence of people who hold reprehensible views is NO BIG DEAL. You would be shocked how many people wish for the death of their "enemies", even for stupid reasons, doesn't mean we now have to hunt them down in the streets.

SSNeoman posted:

Ah now we're getting somewhere. Are you absolutely sure these perfect pacifists were really that perfect or are you perhaps just believing in a white-washed version of their lives? Cause despite calling for a peaceful revolt, MLK does not meet your standards.

"Wikipedia posted:

...The French pacifists André and Magda Trocmé helped conceal hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.[57][58] After the war, the Trocmés were declared Righteous Among the Nations.[57]

Pacifists in the Third Reich were dealt with harshly; German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky,[59] and Olaf Kullmann, a Norwegian pacifist active during the Nazi occupation,[60] were both imprisoned in concentration camps and died as a result of their mistreatment there. Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter was executed in 1943 for refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht.[61]

After the end of the war, it was discovered that "The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. list of Britons to be arrested in the event of a Nazi invasion of the UK included three active pacifists; Vera Brittain, Sybil Thorndike and Aldous Huxley (who had left the country).[62][63]

There were conscientious objectors and war tax resisters in both World War I and World War II. The United States government allowed sincere objectors to serve in noncombatant military roles. However, those draft resisters who refused any cooperation with the war effort often spent much of each war in federal prisons. During World War II, pacifist leaders like Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy of the Catholic Worker Movement urged young Americans not to enlist in military service.

SpaceGoku posted:

What should black people (and hispanic people, etc) do now that they're seeing their right to vote taken away in places around the US?

Should they sit around and politely ask white people to save them, when white people are the ones disenfranchising them?

Pseudo-God posted:

It's like you people have no sense of nuance or proportion.

Pseudo-God posted:

It's like you people have no sense of nuance or proportion. Like I said, your response to adversity should be proportional to the threat posed. This is why we have BLM protests in the US today, and why it is justified to kill a Nazi when he presents a credible threat to your life. No reasonable person would go and tell the Jews at the Warsaw Uprising that "you guys should just chill, don't you know that killing your enemies is wrong?".

Pseudo-God posted:

It's like you people have no sense of nuance or proportion. Like I said, your response to adversity should be proportional to the threat posed. This is why we have BLM protests in the US today, and why it is justified to kill a Nazi when he presents a credible threat to your life. No reasonable person would go and tell the Jews at the Warsaw Uprising that "you guys should just chill, don't you know that killing your enemies is wrong?".

Incidentally, this is why a lot of people oppose BLM and the Women's March, not because they hate blacks or women, but because they think that the protests are too much, they don't really have it that bad. They have no perspective from the lives of the people affected to see their justification for these protests.

Pseudo-God posted:

It's like you people have no sense of nuance or proportion. Like I said, your response to adversity should be proportional to the threat posed. This is why we have BLM protests in the US today, and why it is justified to kill a Nazi when he presents a credible threat to your life. No reasonable person would go and tell the Jews at the Warsaw Uprising that "you guys should just chill, don't you know that killing your enemies is wrong?".

Incidentally, this is why a lot of people oppose BLM and the Women's March, not because they hate blacks or women, but because they think that the protests are too much, they don't really have it that bad. They have no perspective from the lives of the people affected to see their justification for these protests.

Radish posted:

America turning MLK's message into "just suffer abuse because it's impolite to do otherwise; eventually your oppressor will be magnanimous and stop" was pure evil genius. Especially since he was shot.

enki42 posted:

The only example of primarily violent protest that's springing to mind is the IRA, which wasn't exactly the world's most successful movement.