You either get to call everyone you don't like a nazi...

The BBQ Pit
1

…Or you get to punch nazis.

Pick one.

You can strictly define a political group that is uniquely abhorrent and awful, and argue that it doesn’t deserve all the same protections under the law as everyone else, that their speech is inherently violent, and that their ideology must be purged to protect minorities.

You can go around calling everyone you don’t like a member of such a group.

You can’t do both.

Well, okay, you can, but it makes you a gigantic douche, and fundamentally dishonest. It misses the entire reason for curtailing that group in the first place. It draws the battle lines too broadly, and threatens people who would otherwise be on your side. You know why the right isn’t lining up to kick the Charlottesville protesters in the nuts? Because they think they’re next. Because of overzealous fuckers whose theory of mind hasn’t evolved past “I think you’re doing this because you hate a minority, therefore you must think you’re doing this because you hate a minority” on issues like affirmative action. Because of the people who can’t tell that “punch a nazi” is an incredibly dangerous sentiment when anyone to the right of the former governor of Massachusetts can be expected to be called a nazi! It’s really hard to blame them.

This post has been brought to you by Chimera being a gigantic douche. Fucking stop it. I shouldn’t have to explain to people that neo-nazi ideology is noxious, but I equally shouldn’t have to explain that if you say “Nazis deserve no rights” and then call anyone you disagree with a Nazi, you’re an asshole.

2

lol
fair point.
I came across something from the power lin folks which called antifa “Brownshirts”
Is that irony?
Or some other one? (I can never keep all those terms straight.)

I wanted to link to it.
So I went to powr line and searched for “Brownshirts”

Holy shit!
Everyfuckingbody is a Brownshirt (I won’t link, but feel free to try it)

Is that irony? Or the other one?

3

Stop being a clown. I didn’t say they deserve no rights. I pointed out that some people on the right think that people they don’t like don’t deserve Free Speech, yet are running around defending Nazi Free Speech. They’re the idiots who can’t have it both ways, which if you had any reading comprehension at all, maybe you’d have figured out.

4

How far back in your posting history do you think I have to go before finding something along the lines of “punch a nazi” or “nazis shouldn’t have <insert right any other political group has here>”? Because that was just the first example I found on that page, where you seem to be implying that there’s something wrong with defending the rights of nazis to speak. At that point I stopped looking. If you don’t do that… Well, fine, but my point is more general, and Latro still isn’t a fucking Nazi. Stop overusing that word.

5

Go ahead. Search my posting history and show me where I ever said Nazis should not have the same free speech rights everyone else has. Not where you’re reading it into what I say, but where I actually say it. Because I’ve repeatedly posted my beliefs about free speech, which I will repeat here;

I believe in Freedom of Speech.
Because when people are not free to say what is on their mind, you never truly know who they are.
When people feel free to say anything, you know who the bastards are.

Latro may or may not be an actual Nazi, but he has made it clear from his postings that he isn’t too far away and is definitely a sympathizer.

My problems with people defending nazi speech? When you’re known for having a problem with people on the left exercising theirs. When you have people like octopus saying the only reason the nazis came armed to the teeth was because they were apparently scared to death of Antifas and so it is really the fault of all those meanies on the left that the Nazis and White Supremacists came out better armed than the police, tried to burn synagogues, attack peaceful counter-protesters and ram a car into a crowd.

Because clearly, if the people on the left weren’t such violent people, the people on the right would never feel the need to carry weapons, threaten violence and “joke” about killing liberals. Right?

6

And really, what the hell is wrong with people who would rather be defending the rights of Nazis and white supremacists, and attacking people on the left, than disagreeing with those philosophies?

Yeah, it makes you look like you’d rather stand with them and against the left, because you believe the left is far worse than nazis.

7

You know who else thought there were only two possible sides to an issue rather than a continuum?

8

Defending their right to free speech despite the views being unpopular, indeed reprehensible IS disagreeing with their fascist philosophy, you fucking hypocritical moron.

9

Trump?

10

Everyone in this thread is being a Nazi. Especially Chimera. He’s Naziing harder than anyone.

11

If the Nazis take over they’ll remember how much centrist libs like the OP respected the discourse.

12

… and then kill them anyway?

If it walks like a Nazi and quacks like a Nazi …
Similarly if Bubba marches with Nazis and wants to beat folks up with the Nazis …

13

Don’t Nazi so much. You’ll go blind.

14

And if pigs become sentient and superpowered, they’ll look real kindly at vegetarians. :rolleyes:

There has yet to be a single white supremacist gathering that wasn’t absolutely overwhelmed with counterprotesters. The Nazis are not taking over, unless you want to somehow broaden it to the point where garden-variety anti-globalists and anti-immigration hawks qualify as “nazis”, at which point the term has lost all meaning. The far more likely problem is that we ignore and damage norms which help ensure that nazis cannot come to power. The far more likely problem is that we are too broad in our characterizations, and alienate people who might otherwise be allies.

By all means, let’s do our best to make Richard Spencer no longer a part of the national discourse. But let’s remember proportionality. Charlottesville was their big event, and it had what, a thousand assholes from across the country? There are more people at the Southwest Harbor Flamingo Festival each year, and the Flamingo Festival sucks ass every single year. A thousand people is not a threat, it’s a joke. On the other hand, it’s become a tactic among the far-right to announce a march or a rally, then not show up and watch as leftist counterprotesters make asses of themselves. There is legitimate animosity towards “antifa” on the right, because they’re seen as threatening and indescriminate. This did not come from nowhere.

The only way the nazis even stand the slightest chance is if we give up the moral high ground, and make “be a neo-nazi” look like a palatable alternative. That’s one significant failure state for liberalism. I don’t think “Neo-nazis, on their own, become popular enough to have significant influence in the US Government” is a failure state we need to worry about.

15

I dunno, hasn’t the past few years been full of minorities fighting what they see as persistent, systemic racism in America? How far apart are trigger happy cops from Steve Bannon from the decision makers who poisoned Flint from the pipeline builders from the guy who ran over the protesters? Your argument makes the most sense if you are optimistic about racism having little, or even fading, influence in America, and considering the controversies of the past few years, and who’s in the White House, I’d say optimism isn’t universally shared.

16

Absolutely, and we should support that fight. It doesn’t mean that everyone on your list who intentionally or inadvertently perpetuates systemic racism is a nazi, or that we should round to the nearest cliche. I mean, look at this list:

Everyone on this list is in some way problematic. Very few people on this list are nazis. A little under half of 'em may not even be racist, even in the subconscious “implicit bias” ways that you could call certain cops “racist”! And I maintain that if we want “nazi” to mean anything, it has to have distinctions from your garden-variety racist, and even from your garden-variety anti-globalist white separatist. I will stop quoting Slate Star Codex when it stops being the most sensible take on the issue I have seen:

Everyone is a little bit racist. We know this because there is a song called “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” and it is very cute. Also because most people score poorly on implicit association tests, because a lot of white people will get anxious if they see a black man on a deserted street late at night, and because if you prime people with traditionally white versus traditionally black names they will answer questions differently in psychology experiments. It is no shame to be racist as long as you admit that you are racist and you try your best to resist your racism. Everyone knows this.

Donald Sterling is racist. We know this because he made a racist comment in the privacy of his own home. As a result, he was fined $2.5 million, banned for life from an industry he’s been in for thirty-five years, banned from ever going to basketball games, forced to sell his property against his will, publicly condmened by everyone from the President of the United States on down, denounced in every media outlet from the national news to the Podunk Herald-Tribune, and got people all over the Internet gloating about how pleased they are that he will die soon. We know he deserved this, because people who argue he didn’t deserve this were also fired from their jobs. He deserved it because he was racist. Everyone knows this.

So.

Everybody is racist.

And racist people deserve to lose everything they have and be hated by everyone.

This seems like it might present a problem.

Now we’re doing it against with “nazi”. We’re phrasing the term in an overly-broad way, then trying to invoke serious consequences that may be entirely justified towards an exceedingly narrow and dangerous group. Trying to generalize “nazis” to “all racists” is a bit like trying to generalize from “Al Qaeda” to “All muslims living in Saudi Arabia”, or “The Bundys currently occupying government land” to “All SovCit douchefucks”. We shoot at one of those groups, and not at the other, despite the fact that the other still holds some pretty abhorrent beliefs, because that specific group has earned the shit they get.

By all means, let’s fight racism. But if I had to name the most counterproductive way to do this, it would probably involve calling every person you disagree with politically a nazi, ensuring that those who might otherwise be fully against nazis and in favor of going after nazis have to worry about being labeled nazis themselves. Latro is not a nazi. octopus is not a nazi. Let’s not make “nazi” the next “racist”.

17

I was shocked, shocked that an elderly Jewish billionaire brought up in 1950s Chicago, could be the least bit prejudiced against black people.
Speaking of which, I find it cringingly awful when Bannon who worked respectfully for Jewish people — including the man he worshipped, Andrew Breitbart — is called a nazi. I can’t think of any belief we have in common, but considering what the nazis actually did it just seems mental hysterics to use it as a label against a nattering blowhard.
‘Fascist’ has long lost all meaning, looks like ‘Nazi’ is going the same way.

18

IMHO in other circumstances you would be correct, but in this recent unpleasantness the Nazis were the ones that decided what hill to die for and how to generalize.

Of course, as I said, I see a lot of what you say that makes sense; but I have to note too at how conservatives in this message board also have pressed to almost pathological levels the point of “just talking about freedom of speech” while avoiding the elephant in the room caused by the other fact that the Nazis are getting a lot of support from the, while usually also omitting that people were seriously hurt and even killed by the Nazis in the recent attempt to “Unite the right”.

19

The word Nazi means white supremacist now. It has for decades. There is nothing overly broad about this–Aryan supremacy evolved into a less specific white supremacy. No one is using Nazi to mean “person I don’t like.” You’re doing their propaganda for them by saying this.

Yes, if you want to get technical, you can differentiate between those who are proud of Hitler (neo-Nazis) and those who aren’t (KKK/generic white supremacy). But there’s no actual difference in the severity of their racism towards non-whites. It makes perfect sense to lump them all together in this context.

No, punching a Nazi isn’t necessarily the best way to deal with them. It gives them a legitimate grievance and allows sympathizers to hide their sympathy as freedom of speech and anti-violence advocacy. Still, I can’t be too upset about it, because we can easily see through these disguises from context, and I can’t really get upset when an evil person gets hurt, as long as the person who hurt them is willing to accept the consequences.

Still, given that our current President relied heavily on a Nazi base to the point that he can’t publicly condemn them, but act as if “both sides” are equal when a goddamned fucking Nazi commits terrorism–it’s pretty clear that Nazis have an outsized level of influence in our country right now. Pretending that Nazis aren’t a threat right now is ridiculous. They’ve come out of the woodworks, where they used to were thoroughly depowered.

Yes, protesters dwarf the Nazis. That means we’re fighting them. That’s a good thing. Too bad that fight is also against our President. Too bad we had to do this to get the other Nazi sympathizers out of power, like Bannon.

Bannon champions the alt-right. That a euphemism for white supremacy, which fits the definition usually used for Nazi. A KKK member can also work with black people–doesn’t make them not KKK. When you run a website that pushes Jewish and anti-white conspiracies, it seems perfectly accurate to label you a Nazi.

I will continue to use the common shorthand for white supremacists, including neo-Nazis. And, while I don’t think punching them is necessarily the best course of action, I’m not going to get upset when they get punched, as they are equally vile. They are the far end of racism.

Firing them? I’m all for that. If they make an openly extremely racist statement, then it’s basically the duty of those who have power over him to punish him, lest they enable him. It’s bad for the PR of the company, and it’s bad for humanity in general for racism to go unpunished. And, if you argue that he shouldn’t be fired for it, you’re choosing to put your ass on the line.

I would love if all the Nazi protesters similarly became unemployed. There should be consequences for bad speech. It’s a non-violent solution, yet the same people who get upset about violence are upset about this, suggesting that they just think that Nazis should not have any consequences.

Seeing how many Nazis are quite young, recruited from disaffected youth, it’s a good idea to make sure the consequences are dire. Stop this 4chan bullshit where nothing really matters. You want to support white supremacy? Pay the societal cost.

Sorry, I can’t get on board this rant. Getting mad at people being mean to Nazis or proud racists isn’t something I can do. Getting mad because people use language the way it has been used for a while is not something I can do. Combining the two is definitely not something I can do.

20

Neither?