No they're not. People who object to abortion clinics claim to be intervening on behalf of a third party (the fetus) whose legal status is that of a non-person in law and whose moral status is indeterminable by rational means.
Quite a lot of the people who are willing to punch Nazis are, by contrast, people who feel their own persons are threatened, as opposed to being outsiders choosing to insert themselves into a private dispute.
All you're saying is that you don't agree that abortion is murder. I don't either. Would that our agreement on this were dispositive of the abortion debate.
Thomas I can't help observing that you're completely ignoring my second point about what differentiates anti-fascist activists from anti-abortion activists.
Could you re-state it? You know I'm not inclined to blow you off; you've been on my list of favorite commenters for something like 5 years.
I seriously do not see a distinction between the two perspectives, other than that the anti-abortion activists would be employing violence to actually stop what they believe to be real, immediate, kinetic violence.
Again, it's not like my argument here is novel. It's the ACLU's argument, from National Socialists of America v. Skokie.
Anti-Abortion protesters are appointing themselves as moral guardians of a fetus.
Anti-Nazi protesters are declaring their own selves to feel threatened by Nazism, rather than claiming to be intervening in the defense of someone else.
I don't really care about the ACLU's argument. Things have moved on since 1976 and the scope and intensity of violence perpetrated by white nationalists and similar far-right groups has increased considerably. Also, consider the fact that the ACLU was founded in 1920, but it was not the ACLU that defeated the Nazis in World War 2.
These aren't academic discussions with imaginary Nazis. The people killed by Dylann Roof or Jeremy Christian were real people who really died at the hands of people who really profess support for white supremacist ideologies, to name but two examples.
The mini-riots and street battled in Berkeley might seem comical from afar but having been at several of them I can tell you for a fact that there are people there who show up shouting nazi and white nationalist slogans and threatening or engaging people with weapons.
White nationalism is not some tiny radical fringe. I'd remind you that people like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller occupy senior roles in the administration of the executive branch and there's abundant evidence of their extremist views.
This is a pretty ahistorical argument. We've had overtly racist Presidents and Klan members at the highest levels of government in the past, not to mention a 100+ year history of lynchings.
The First Amendment wasn't repealed when Steve Bannon accepted his role as Trump's chief strategist.
Yes, that's quite true. And my point is that vulnerable people are sick and tired of dealing with violence directed at their persons and communities and are voicing their discontent by saying they're not going to take it any more.
Why do these discussions always end up with liberals wringing their hands over whether any Nazis are going to get punched, but the opposition to the eliminationist rhetoric of fascists themselves is so muted? Yes, yes, of course everyone agrees that they're bad and that their ideology is bad.
But the reflexive agreement that Nazism is bad doesn't translate into action to do anything about it. Donating to the ACLU or the SPLC is great, but it does nothing to make the streets safer for vulnerable people. Surely it has not escaped your attention that many vulnerable populations are distrustful of the police precisely because of this legacy of injustice you mention, which has often taken place with the tacit agreement of the authorities. .
Muslims, jews, black people, latino people, queer people and so on are not enthused about being the designated victims for yet another round of The Oppression Show. Simply put, there are a lot of people who don't feel safe exercising their rights in the USA and are getting really pissed off about it.
I'm allowed to hold two thoughts in my head at the same time: that it's important that we do everything within legitimate law to suppress bigotry and racial supremacy, and also that it's important that we defend the basic principles on which our rule of law is built.
So: I'm not so concerned about the welfare of the Nazis that are getting punched.
What I'm concerned about is that normalizing political violence will have the effect not just of normalizing Nazi punching, but normalizing punching of all sorts of people.
Does this mean that vulnerable people should be left to fend for themselves on the streets with Nazis throwing bottles at them or beating them? No, of course not. Beat the shit out of those people (call 9-1-1, too).
But those same vulnerable people are going to need to employ something other than violence to deal with offensive flags and racial slurs, no matter how unsafe they (legitimately!) feel when confronted with them.
I think the basic problem is that people arguing the way you are arguing are basically arguing in a theoretical space. It almost never addresses the practical realities nor tells people how to move the needle in any meaningful way. Arguing about doing it right very often ends up being a form of flak that helps keeps the status quo in place.
I'm currently homeless and I try to explain to people why I don't agree with their position and it kind of boils down to the fact that no matter what I do, I seem unable to get meaningful traction on solutions and, very often, people are content to argue with me about "well, we need the right answers" and ignore the fact that they could do something for me right here, right now.
I am probably not saying this very well, but I just run into an awful lot of people online who imagine themselves to be good people who claim they desire to live in a better world and see zero contradiction between that and crapping all over me personally in conversation while doing nothing whatsoever to help me solve my financial problems in any kind of meaningful way.
I am somewhat sympathetic to your side. I get a lot of flak from women who act like my efforts to empower them are simply another form of blaming the victim. But I increasingly feel that it is both irresponsible and disingenuous to argue the side you are arguing without giving concrete solutions in the here and now to the problems people are actually having. Without that, these arguments merely serve to say "We need to respect Nazis (or other horrible people) and we don't need to respect you and we don't actually care about your problem at all."
Hold on. I DO NOT think we need to respect Nazis or their beliefs. Rather, I think citizens have something close to an obligation to suppress Nazis (and all related ideologies) with every lawful means available.
By way of example: the deference Hacker News gives to racism and misogyny in the name of tolerance is deeply problematic for me, and, I think, an enormous mistake.
Where Ed and I disagree is that I do not think it's OK to physically assault someone simply for carrying an offensive flag. That is probably the entire extent of our disagreement.
When people are horrible enough and are not respecting the laws at all themselves, advocating that we can only go after them by lawful means amounts to advocating more respect for them than they will give anyone else.
I don't know the solution. I really don't. But in order to defend yourself from horrible, predatory people in the world today, you basically need to be some kind of kung fu wizard and diplomatic genius combined or you will be railroaded by the laws that, in theory, are supposed to protect good people.
As a victim of childhood sexual abuse who was clear I would murder anyone in cold blood if they raped my small children -- and then go to jail for a very long time because I would not have at all made a sympathetic defendant -- this is a problem space I have contemplated a great deal. Fortunately, I am hellaciously talented and was able to make sure no one raped my children. But there is something very wrong in a world where we worry more about protecting the rights of heinous people like child rapists than we do about their victims, which is essentially what is going on here.
The moment a Nazi attempts to use physical force against you, all bets are off.
But the idea that you can physically attack someone for carrying an offensive flag can't possibly be defensible.
I understand how the flags and racial slurs and such create strong emotions and I offer you all the rhetorical space in the world to talk about how you personally would beat the everloving crap out of someone who tried to burn a cross in your field of vision. I'm not condemning either you or Ed for having strong feelings about Nazis.
But it remains a simple fact that you can't use coercive physical force to stop people from talking.
What has usually happened in practice is that people seize the offensive flag and shred or burn it. Look Thomas, carrying a Nazi battle flag or a deliberate derivative of it isn't just a matter of 'creating strong emotions' in the sense of some proxy moral outrage. In certain contexts, it's an act of aggression.
Legally speaking this may not rise to the standard of criminality for evaluating criminal threats. But a lot of people are increasingly losing confidence in the legal system to protect their civil rights or fairly balance their interests with those of other people in society. In relation to both this and your exhortation to call 911, it's worth referencing the recent controversy over the acquittal of the police officer in the death of Philando Castile. However you feel about the legal aspects of that verdict, there's no getting away from the fact that many people of color and other groups do not feel safe around police officers.
You keep saying of course we must use available within-the-law means to suppress Nazism, but that presupposes the law is morally neutral (highly questionable), fairly enforced (likewise), and that this job should really be left to law enforcement and prosecutors rather than being the subject of any kind of private or collective action. I suggest to you that that's an easy attitude to have when you are not a member of a vulnerable population, but a potentially fatal error of judgment for someone in a more marginal position.
I have basically the opposite perspective: that in a time like this, when the executive branch of the country is controlled by someone who aspires to be an American Duterte, the rule of law and our institutions have never mattered more. To abandon them now is to lose entirely.
Punching nazis isn't because they're "carrying an offensive flag". If that's all it was, I'd totally agree with you.
The difference is the nazi ideology directly threatens the very livelihood of people, and allowing nazis to spread their ideology is really dangerous to these people. The very ideas they're espousing are threatening, because they lead to bigotry and racism and disenfranchisement and violence and death. You can't just argue against them, because your argument isn't going to convince 100% of listeners to reject the nazi ideology. The only way to actually be safe is to stop the spread of nazi ideology, and the way to do that is to make nazis shut up, and the way to do that is to make them afraid to open their mouths.
Yeah it really sucks that this is what it's come to, but the other systems in this country that are supposed to deal with this lawfully aren't working.
Quite a lot of the people who are willing to punch Nazis are, by contrast, people who feel their own persons are threatened, as opposed to being outsiders choosing to insert themselves into a private dispute.