I have considered attending a counter protest while armed. I gave long advocated that the left needs to learn that a firearm is a tool that can protect you from this sort of violence with it’s mere presence and be used to defend yourself from this exact sort of thing. It’s why those militia guys show up, they know no one will fuck with them because lefties are stereotypically afraid of guns.
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Have you ever heard of such concepts as “privilege” or “empathy”?
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The father of one of the Nazis who marched in Charlottesville has disowned him.
In the above letter, the father relays an anecdote.
He once joked, “The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven.”
That is what Nazis believe about words that oppose them.
Yes, freedom of speech and “defend to the death your right to say it” are noble goals, but at some point they become a fantasy. Nazis don’t care about words. I’m not saying that people should go out and start punching Nazis unprovoked, but I also do not believe that the Nazis fall into the purview of the first amendment, just like threats aren’t protected speech. I am from a country where Nazis are outlawed, and that is absolutely correct because we have seen first hand what the Nazis do when they are in power. It should be like that everywhere.
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These guys were on the ground in Charlottesville providing armed protection to various groups of counter-protestors.
What have privilege and empathy have anything to do with this? Now you’re just throwing out words that make no sense to the current discussion.
Yes, waving a Nazi or Confederate flag is white “privilege.” Yes, I have “empathy” for people who respond negatively to seeing those symbols or hearing their words, but again, that does not give a person free reign to go around punching people. If that was the case, then Holocaust survivors would be legally allowed to punch every KKK member and Nazi they see (and in case you’re unclear on the law, they’re not).
Fine. If people want to outlaw Nazis, change the law, by all means, go ahead. But you yourself said that people shouldn’t go out and start punching Nazis unprovoked, which is what it seems like a lot of people on this forum are exactly advocating for.
I won’t condone going around hunting Nazis and punching them all.
But I won’t condemn it either.
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Your privilege is showing in your belief that their words are just words. To you they probably are. To Jews or Black people or LGBT people those words and symbols are direct threats to their lives.
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And your complete ignorance is showing in making unfounded assumptions about me.
I AM Jewish. My grandfather on my mother’s side has a five digit number tattooed on his left forearm. I grew up with horror stories from him about what it was like in Auscwitz.
My grandmother was one of seven children and the only reason she survived when the Nazis took Poland was because her parents paid someone to smuggle her out of the country. My great grandparents had a literal Sophie’s Choice: choose ONE of your seven kids to save, knowing that the other six will almost assuredly die. The only reason my grandmother was chosen was because she was the smallest and could be hidden more easily than her siblings.
Don’t talk to me about privilege. When you wake up terrified because your grandfather is having a nightmare and screaming in his sleep, then you can talk to me about privilege.
I know damn well what Nazi words and symbols represent.
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Then why would you advocate a wait and see policy with these Nazis? What do the horrors your family endured mean if they have to happen again to warrant action?
What you and others on this forum seem to be missing again and again is that I’m absolutely NOT taking a wait and see approach. Just because I’m not advocating unprovoked violence doesn’t mean that I accept Nazis.
My grandfather, an Auscwitz survivor, loved this country, loved America, more than any person I’ve ever known. He loved it because Jews were allowed to live in peace and acceptance and actually flourish here. He loved this country because people were treated fairly, were treated equally, at least in principal. He loved this country, he told me, because what happened in Germany could never happen here, because our laws protected the weak and the unrepresented. He taught me that words were more powerful than fists could ever be, that anyone could speak out against power without fear of government reprisal. He taught me about Ghandi and MLK and nonviolent civil disobedience and protest. He instilled these values in his daughter, my mother. He instilled these values in me, and he’s probably one of the biggest reasons I became a lawyer, and a government lawyer, to protect and uphold the laws that protect us.
Nazis marching in Charlottesville is everything this country is supposed to be against. But allowing them to speak is everything this country is supposed to be for.
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There’s an easy way to test all this, someone go punch a Nazi and tell us what happens.
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Rubin, it’s your time to shine!
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Heather Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville, was a bankruptcy lawyer who spent her career helping poor people navigate the laws that exist to protect and enrich victimizers of the weak and unrepresented. She was killed by a man who’s hatred and bigotry and rage, stoked and moulded by that Nazi speech, has never been more explicitly represented in the halls of power in a generation
Your grandfather, and so many others, were terribly and tragically wrong.
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No, it’s an act of treason by people who never learned that owning someone is wrong. Because the south never had to repent, because the north had too much of its own racism to press the issue. The Confederacy is a worse threat than the Nazi parts of this in many ways, because it’s our own cancer that we’ve never rooted out.
I’m sorry but the America your grandfather belived in is dead if it ever really existed. Trump in power is proof enough to me. Given the right chance I will punch a Nazi.
I mean, it’s a nice thought. “It couldn’t happen here.”
The fundamental disagreement seems to stem from whether or not it could happen here. Why not? It’s not hard to start a reactionary movement.
That’s pretty much it. It’d be nice if America did represent these values for all Americans but they really don’t. They get twisted and manipulated so much by those who govern us that the ideals of “All free speech” to come through don’t get selected. Too many small loopholes exist for people to take advantage of, including these Nazis.
It’s worth noting the only organization that is defending the Neo-Nazis rights for free speech is the ACLU and even then, the Neo-Nazis would shut them down because they handle mostly other cases for minorities and non-whites.
