Nazis marching in America

Fun quote from this morning’s breakfast discussion, “if you can train a pigeon, why can’t you train a nazi?”

The degree to which an individual has been personally engaged in activism has no bearing on the validity of any argument they make. Whether a couch potato or a career activist makes a point, it must stand or fall on its own merit, with no consideration for the messenger.

Personally I do not talk about any activism, charitable donations, etc. that I may or may not do. That is my own business. If someone talks big about the activism they do, they have to at least ask themselves, if in at least a small way, what are their reasons? Are they in any way selfish? Is that ok? Someone who keeps their activities hidden knows with certainty what their reasons are.

Also, there is a measure of safety in acting anonymously. There are many who have courageously allowed themselves to become targets. Personally, I choose not do so unless I see some benefit in it.

I also do not engage in most political discussions because 99+% of them are unproductive and repetitive. They annoy the heck out of me. e.g.:

A: Can you believe how stupid/evil these people are! They make me so mad.
B: I know right? Did you see this horrible tweet from the president?!
A: I did, it’s so bad. The world is full of such stupid people.
B: I know, it’s good we are not stupid and evil like those people.
A: Did you see this horrible e-mail that was sent in all caps? OMG.

And so on, and so on. In my ears this conversation sounds like this:

A: Did you see that there are people who think 1+1=3???
B: I know, omg, they are so dumb. Everyone knows 1+1=2. WTF

I don’t want or need to participate in this kind of conversation. Everyone agrees. There is not new information. The president has stupid tweets every hour. FOX News airs stupid evil lying garbage every minute of every day for the past X years. None of this is new. There are no new ideas. There is no productive discourse. It is simply another reminder of what we already know. I do not want to hear it, so I follow the golden rule and do not engage in it.

I am engaging in this conversation because we do not all agree. New things are happening. Depending on your perspective, a line has been crossed, or is rapidly approaching. We have moved from fighting within the system to get monuments taken down to just tearing them the fuck down. We have moved from states making it legal to run people over with a car, to nazis literally running people over with a car. We regretfully were not able to prevent it from getting this bad using other methods.

I am absolutely not chest-beating or engaging in any kind of fantasy. A puncher I am not. I can’t even do a push-up. Being engaged in actual punching is fucking terrifying, let alone shooting. I just want people to know if we reach a point where the choice is between punching and losing, we must be bad guys fighting on the right side. Losing is not an option.

Imagine playing a board game where the winner makes the rules. Now imagine you are not the winner, yet you also have this belief that good guys follow rules. You must always follow rules. This belief is self-defeating. You will never win this game. Over time, the winners will make it harder and harder for you to dethrone them. Only cheaters will hold power. The only thing that keeps good guys from winning is their unwillingness to cheat!

There has to be a point at which we will cheat. A point at which we will temporarily abandon our own morals and ethics in order to achieve victory and eliminate the threats to our continued existence. If we insist that under no circumstance will we ever break our bond, we may as well surrender now. Our enemies will simply create a scenario where the only way to win is to do things we refuse to do.

Peaceful resistance works when your oppressor has some amount of humanity. They’ll feel bad about you going on a hunger strike. They’ll take notice and listen to your impassioned speech, even if they disagree with it. Even nutty pro-life creationists have engaged in debates with scientists, following the rules, even though they are very very wrong. Against all of these we can, and should, walk a non-violent path.

A nazi will just murder us and laugh. What good are our principles then?

One thing I know is that at least in one way right-wing people are just like James Bond villains. They tell you their evil plans before they do them. Hitler wrote a book, and then he did what he said he would do in the book. Trump said he would build a wall, ban muslims, etc. and he’s trying to do all those things. The new alt-right nazis say they are going to slowly change our society until it becomes acceptable for them to kill us, and I believe they are going to try to do exactly that.

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Economic strife may not be a strict necessity for fascism in general, but I think that it has played an indispensable role in many individual cases. In the particular case of Nazi Germany I don’t think fascism would have risen without the effects of the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression.

Your point about Huey Long is well put, and it suggests that last century the U.S. was more vulnerable to fascism than many other countries. It’s quite possible that this could still be true in 2017 as well, although evidence would be needed to support that idea.

If we look at the support for ultra-nationalist factions in the EU, most notably Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, and the National Front in France, I think the fallout of the GFC (and poor economic management by the EU) has played a major role. At the same time, though, the European migrant crisis has also played a huge role, and so it’s clear that economic strife is far from being the only factor involved.

Again, the definition of “Free Speech” in that context is exploited. Considering we have laws against the promotion of hate speech…how can any philosophy about Nazism not include hate speech of some kind? Not to mention, the law can turn blind eye against instruments that are used for violence/intimidated if twisted to mean a symbol of protest.

The fact the police don’t go “Holy crap, people preaching the historical murder of people with militia men carrying guns” isn’t some kind of red flag. There’s no other purpose for said tool other than to damage and destroy. It’s taunting so close to that fine line playing with matches the entire time.

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I mostly agree with you. Rule of law does mean that even the worst of us get protected. That said, when is it okay to nip problems while they are still budding? I don’t think these Nazis in Charlottesville aren’t even close to being a movement that has enough clout to change America into Nazi Germany regardless of the POTUS’s connections to them.

But should society let this kind of tumor grow big enough that they it would eventually become a threat under the shield of free speech? Germany post WWII didn’t think so. And as much as Trump’s election and all of backsliding of progress has been hurting America, we still aren’t at that point yet.

I’m not for punching Nazis because its either its a serious enough threat that people have to kill them or its not. And if its not, if things can still be resolved through societal means then lets do that, because punching Nazis only makes having to kill them later inevitable.

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After a couple of years talking about it, it looks like action is finally being taken to move two Confederate statues in my city Lexington, Ky. And of course Nazis are already planning on coming in and doing their thing. The statues are 20 minutes from my house, so I can guarantee I’ll be there letting them know the are not welcome in my city!

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A summary of how the actual original nazis worked:

  1. Advocate as much violence as possible without specifically breaking specific laws
  2. Provoke situations that give them an excuse to claim “self defense” when perpetrating violence
  3. Use cryptic language to call for specific, directed violence from sympathetic followers while maintaining plausible deniability.
  4. Accuse their opposition of everything they are guilty of (“so much for the tolerant left!”) to imply a false equivalence
  5. Use weapons and other violent props/imagery to terrorize their targets (e.g., POC) with implied threats that barely skirt the line of free speech.
  6. Use the “noble martyrs” in their cause to perpetrate murder and violence and then take the fall (protecting the wider movement with insincere disavowals).

Re: the implied threats, the implication is very clear: “If we win, we will literally kill you.”

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Not to drag the conversation back too far, but the general ambivalence I think that this thread is revealing (I’m as ambivalent as the mean post here too I think) was pretty well done by Contra a few months back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEyL1rDe60w

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There was a lot more to that. They specifically found a group that everyone else hated the Communists who couldn’t even work with the Moderate Left party because of their mistrust for each other. Isolated, they started getting into street brawls and attacks on areas where the Communists were strong and at the same time, the Police and Government officials kept letting the Nazi’s off and out of Prison sentences for their actions. The weak Judicial system in the Weimar republic was a HUGE problem and advantage the Nazi’s had, as well as the ton of out of work and disaffected WW1 vets that were looking for work or cause. The Nazi opposition was fractured and was unable to work together from the Moderate left and the Centrist parties to the Conservative (non-Nazi’s) and the Communists. (who were literally getting marching orders from Russia) Add that with the fact that there was a TON of private political oriented Armies.

My rambling point was there was a TON of line crossing, there wasn’t much of a government to hold them accountable.

Though Ultimately the Conservatives thought they could control the Nazi’s and joined with them to form a majority ruling coalition and didn’t realize till it was too late that they Fucked up.

Relevant

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Doubt any of those bills will get out of Committee or stand up to the courts. I mean isn’t that the whole point of the trail, you can present evidence that it wasn’t on purpose?

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If they pass, can I run over nazis with my car and get away with it?

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You think the police officers and KKK members beating up Civil Rights activists felt bad about what they were doing? You think the state troopers felt bad when they were using hoses and dogs and billy clubs? You think the South African government felt bad about what they were doing during Apartheid? You don’t seem to understand the purpose of peaceful resistance. Peaceful resistance isn’t to make your oppressor feel sorry for you, it’s to turn public opinion against them. It’s to stand up and reveal your oppressor or your adversary for the Monsters that they are. It’s to get so much pressure put on them that they crack. That’s what happened in the South, with the Civil Rights Act, it’s what happened in South Africa with the boycott, and that’s exactly what’s happened since Charlottesville.

You wrote that “if we reach a point where the choice is between punching and losing, we must be bad guys fighting on the right side. Losing is not an option.” And I agree with you, but we’re not losing. Why were the Nazis in Virginia? Because they were removing a Confederate statue. Just in May, the City of New Orleans removed four Confederate monuments and the Mayor of that city gave one of the most powerful speeches I have ever heard denouncing everything those monuments stood for. Just today, I see an article that “the mayors of Baltimore and Lexington, Kentucky, said on Monday they would push ahead with plans to remove statues as a national debate flared anew over whether monuments to the Confederacy are symbols of hate or heritage.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-protests-statues-idUSKCN1AV0XE

We’re winning! We don’t need to tear their statues and monuments down illegally, we can work with the government to do it together.

Maybe the difference between us is that I’m an optimist and have faith in our laws and the people around me to know that’s not going to happen. Trump said he’s going to build a wall? Let him try. Not even his own party supports that. It’s never going to happen. Thousands of people have already protested against it, and thousands more will in the future if it looks like that will change. Trump wants to ban Muslims? The Courts won’t let him. Nazis say they’re going to change our society? We may disagree on tactics, but the fact that we’re both so passionate about stopping them, that everyone on this thread is so passionate about stopping them, gives me faith and hope that they’re never going to accomplish their goals. Society is becoming more inclusive, not less, more tolerant, not less. The reasons the Nazis are making such noise now is because they’re desperate. This isn’t a sign of their strength, it’s a sign they know they’re losing. Our country is not Germany post World War I.

I refuse to live in fear. Maybe if the Nazis were actually coming to power, I would agree with you that it’s necessary to cheat and compromise our values, but we’re not anywhere near that point. And until we are, I am unwilling to compromise the values that make this country great, at least in practice. Because if we can be violent towards one group we hate today, tomorrow, next year, 10 years from now, other people could be violent towards a group we agree with.

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https://twitter.com/mahrohj/status/896788951725293568
https://twitter.com/mahrohj/status/896789198769766400

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You still can’t escape the burden of consistency of principle. We don’t have to decide between a world where it’s ok to punch anyone and a world where is not ok to punch anyone. We don’t have to apply the same logic and rules in all cases. We are not forced to decide on the morality of punching as a whole. We can, and we do, say that punching nazis is ok, and punching other people is not ok. It is ok to punch nazis now. It is not ok to punch that hypothetical group of people 10 years in the future. The real world is not constrained by semantics and logical principles. It is a mess. It’s not consistent. There are no universal principles, and that’s fine.

It’s not really a matter of optimism vs pessimism. I am also optimistic. I don’t think we will lose. It’s a matter of strategy.

Think of it this way. What if you are wrong? What if we needed to punch, but we didn’t. We do things the non-violent way. We go by the book. If we are wrong, and we needed to punch sooner, then we’re fucked. We will lose. Your strategy leaves the door open to failure. You are willing to accept a possibility of failure if it means you do not have to violate your moral code.

What if we are wrong? What if we punch, but the problem wasn’t so bad that it required punching? What if we punch too soon? Our hands might hurt. People might die. People have died. But at least nazis weren’t able to advance their agenda. I am willing to reluctantly violate my moral code because I will not allow any chance of failure.

There’s a tiny match on the floor. The floor isn’t even wooden. It’s a cold tile floor in the bathroom. I am extremely optimistic that match is not going to start a huge fire that burns down my entire house. It will just burn itself out. If I want to be sure, I can stomp on it a few times until there is no more visible flame.

But now that flame is fascism. I don’t care if it’s a tiny flame. I don’t care if it is on a cold tile floor with no way to spread. I am stomping on it extra times. I am dumping a bucket of water on that fucker. Maybe two buckets. Take no chances.

And remember:

  1. I believe in non-violence: Non-violence is a privilege to those who are not being directly subjected to violence.

White Feelings: 0-60 for Charlottesville | Erynn Brook

I think this is maybe the key thing that is causing disagreement. The people doing the punching are not going around punching peaceful people because they like punching. They aren’t bloodthirsty savages. They aren’t people with superhero fantasies. They are people who are victims of violence defending themselves against their oppressors. That is the punching that is happening.

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I don’t see how I can ethically tell someone whose entire existences has been legislated against since the founding of this country that they should wait and let someone legally take down statues that memorialize chattel slavery and dehumanization.

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I agree with you completely, and if I gave the impression otherwise, I apologize for the confusion. My point in linking to articles about governments pulling down Confederate statutes wasn’t to say that anyone should wait, but as proof that public opinion has turned. If a year ago, if I had told you that the mayor of Lexington Kentucky wanted to remove the statues honoring the Confederacy would you have believed me? I wouldn’t have believed myself, yet here we are. The tide has turned.

Really? Because I’ve seen the video of Richard Spencer getting punched, and while I may have enjoyed it somewhat because he’s a monster, he’s giving an interview. That’s the type of punching I’m against. If you’re going to advocate that punching Nazis is ok, is that the type of punching you’re in favor of? Punching a Nazi anytime anywhere? Can I now punch Jeff Sessions in the face when he’s giving an interview because I think he’s a horrible human being? What about Paul Ryan? What happens when a member of the Alt-Right decides to punch Bernie Sanders or Anita Sarkeesian? Just to pick two random examples. If that’s not ok, tell me when it is, because it seems like the people in this thread are advocating punching a Nazi whenever they feel like it.

Just gonna throw in my two cents: When Nazis show up to a rally with assault rifles and say their goal is for white people to have their own country and for white women to “no longer be sold to Jews,” then they are inciting violence and any action against them is self-defense, perhaps defense of others and our entire goddamn species.

I fucking wish we could all talk about this, but when the Nazis show up to talk they automatically bring assault rifles and discuss burning down synagogues. There’s not a lot of talking to be done here. Nonviolent protest is good, but stopping Nazis from entering public spaces in large numbers and with weapons is more important.

And I’m not just calling everyone who disagrees with me a Nazi. Watch any interview of these guys or look up their writing. They all talk about how Jews are evil, Blacks are uncivilized, and they need a white ethnostate. That’s what a fucking Nazi wants. No, Jeff Sessions is not a nazi. He’s a steaming racist turd, but that’s not the same thing. I am not being hyperbolic.

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You keep looking for some consistent rule of who it is ok to punch, and when it is ok to punch them. There is no such thing. There is no consistent principle or rule anyone can come up with. And that is fine. We don’t need to draw some kind of line. Trying to think of such a rule is a pointless endeavor. Legality doesn’t matter, only morality does, and it’s vague as hell. The only thing that is clear is that if punching nazis is wrong, I don’t want to be right.