The Ethics of Punching Nazis

[NineBerry]

Funfact: In Germany, "potatoe" is a racial slur for indigenous Germans.

[pErvinalia]

In Australia a potato is what our Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, is called.

[NineBerry]

X

[Hermit]

Fun facts:

In 2017 a bunch of polo shirted people bearing torches marched through town chanting "Jews will not replace us." This was not a crime.





In 1928 a bunch of brown shirted people bearing flags marched through town chanting "Durch deutsches Land" This was not a crime.

[pErvinalia]

You've been to the future?

[Hermit]

You've been to the future?

What on earth gives you that idea?

[Joe]

It's apropos of the post to which I responded, where someone is cheering on the physical assault and battery of another person for the sole reason that the criminal doing the assaulting does not like the victim's opinions. He's a bad man. He deserves it. Cheer on the violence. Yes!!!

But, the left wingers will not be pleased when the Devil can turn round and be just as free to assault those that they can now claim to be defending themselves from....

"I had to punch that leftist - look at how he/they assault anyone they think are too right wing...."

The law protects as all. And, equal protection of the laws is fundamental.

If we disregard that - if we throw that away - we are left with arbitrary clash of power. Who do you think will with that battle?

Meanwhile, mass-murdering Neo-Nazis are out shooting up black churches, mosques, synagogues, but that's all small potatoes...

Oh, you mean people are complex, and many cowards can also be bullies? If you believe that's not possible, there is a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

And, you mean two things can exist at once? A person can be against violence committed by neo-Nazis, AND against violence committed by non-Nazis against people they think are Nazis or they think might in the future commit wrongful acts?

You post a meme about "Schrodinger's Lefitst" and you apparently claim that if I'm against neo-Nazis shooting up churches, I must be all in favor of Leftists having free reign to assault anyone they believe harbors Nazi or fascist or alt-right viewpoints (even if not having committed a crime).

We aren't a vigilante society - so, even if a person was to murder someone else, that person is not an outlaw, open to retaliation at will. I.e., if black men murders several people for reasons of black nationalism, or for reasons of economic necessity, or for unknown reasons, that does not mean it's open season on black men. If Communists murder several people for reasons of advancing their revolution, or for other or unknown reasons, that does not mean it's open season on Communists - and it's not even lawful to just hit them.

That's why when a mass murderer can be captured, he's captured. We don't authorize the police or common citizens just to shoot them or beat them.

The same is true for those you or others think are neo-Nazis or fascists. Although some of them commit crimes, and some of them even advocate in favor of crime (even violent crime), that does not mean it's open season on anyone engaged in that ideology or adhering to that ideology.

I don't care if you're sad about it - and you don't have to care about that person - or even that you laugh about it. A lot of conservatives laugh when criminals get their "due," and a lot of conservatives laugh when people of ideologies they dislike get harmed in some way. The "liberal" view on this sort of thing, though, is that punishment of crime is for the criminal justice system, which presumes innocence and requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt - and that even criminals have rights -- and that even criminals have free speech rights - and that we don't punish people for their thoughts and words - and that we certainly do not support vigilante justice.

Your view, apparently, is not the liberal one. You have a right to it - even though you support private justice - vigilante justice - and you support hitting (at a minimum) people who express repugnant views - I hold the liberal view that you have every right to think that way, and to express your view that it should be lawful to do those things. I disagree with you, for reasons stated. Go on now, if you like, and support your view that vigilante justice is a good thing, when meted out against the people you think are hateful.

It's a tough sell, defending the speech and due process rights of despicable people espousing despicable ideas, isn't it?

I'm thinking back to the debates on "enhanced interrogation" and indefinite detention in W's Presidency, and the excuses so-called conservatives made for denying those people their rights.

So often, we fall short of our ideals, but at least we can console ourselves that this time the Nazi had his day in court.

The puncher risked a year in prison and a $2500 fine for his actions. That the jury made it $1 and no jail time is newsworthy, but hardly sets a precedent, and Winder still has a misdemeanor assault conviction on his record.

I'm sure it's not the result Kessler would have preferred, but it's not an endorsement of vigilantism either.

[Forty Two]

Oh, you mean people are complex, and many cowards can also be bullies? If you believe that's not possible, there is a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

And, you mean two things can exist at once? A person can be against violence committed by neo-Nazis, AND against violence committed by non-Nazis against people they think are Nazis or they think might in the future commit wrongful acts?

You post a meme about "Schrodinger's Lefitst" and you apparently claim that if I'm against neo-Nazis shooting up churches, I must be all in favor of Leftists having free reign to assault anyone they believe harbors Nazi or fascist or alt-right viewpoints (even if not having committed a crime).

We aren't a vigilante society - so, even if a person was to murder someone else, that person is not an outlaw, open to retaliation at will. I.e., if black men murders several people for reasons of black nationalism, or for reasons of economic necessity, or for unknown reasons, that does not mean it's open season on black men. If Communists murder several people for reasons of advancing their revolution, or for other or unknown reasons, that does not mean it's open season on Communists - and it's not even lawful to just hit them.

That's why when a mass murderer can be captured, he's captured. We don't authorize the police or common citizens just to shoot them or beat them.

The same is true for those you or others think are neo-Nazis or fascists. Although some of them commit crimes, and some of them even advocate in favor of crime (even violent crime), that does not mean it's open season on anyone engaged in that ideology or adhering to that ideology.

I don't care if you're sad about it - and you don't have to care about that person - or even that you laugh about it. A lot of conservatives laugh when criminals get their "due," and a lot of conservatives laugh when people of ideologies they dislike get harmed in some way. The "liberal" view on this sort of thing, though, is that punishment of crime is for the criminal justice system, which presumes innocence and requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt - and that even criminals have rights -- and that even criminals have free speech rights - and that we don't punish people for their thoughts and words - and that we certainly do not support vigilante justice.

Your view, apparently, is not the liberal one. You have a right to it - even though you support private justice - vigilante justice - and you support hitting (at a minimum) people who express repugnant views - I hold the liberal view that you have every right to think that way, and to express your view that it should be lawful to do those things. I disagree with you, for reasons stated. Go on now, if you like, and support your view that vigilante justice is a good thing, when meted out against the people you think are hateful.

It's a tough sell, defending the speech and due process rights of despicable people espousing despicable ideas, isn't it?

No, not at all. Defending speech rights and due process rights is not dependent, in my view, on the despicable or non-despicable nature of people to whom they are afforded. The law should apply equally to the despicable and the non-despicable, particularly because whether a person is despicable is itself debatable. One person's despicable-ness, is another person's godliness. Do you want a nation of orthodox Muslims, Jews and Christians determining if a Satanist is "despicable" or not (so as to be entitled to the same free speech as everyone else and the same due process as everyone else)?

I've always found it odd that atheists would champion the denial of free speech and due process and equal protection to those they think espouse awful and despicable opinions - it is not so long ago that atheism itself was considered by most to render one so untrustworthy that one ought be denied free speech and other rights.

I'm thinking back to the debates on "enhanced interrogation" and indefinite detention in W's Presidency, and the excuses so-called conservatives made for denying those people their rights.

So often, we fall short of our ideals, but at least we can console ourselves that this time the Nazi had his day in court.

The puncher risked a year in prison and a $2500 fine for his actions. That the jury made it $1 and no jail time is newsworthy, but hardly sets a precedent, and Winder still has a misdemeanor assault conviction on his record.

I'm sure it's not the result Kessler would have preferred, but it's not an endorsement of vigilantism either.

No, and I didn't say it was - I was referring to a person cheering it on -- espousing the sentiment that it was good for the vigilante to have done what they did. Obviously, one has a right to hold and espouse that sentiment, too. I was merely disagreeing with that sentiment - I am in favor of equal application of the law - and I would ask myself if I would cheer on someone bashing a communist in the face like that. I wouldn't. As much as I despise communism, and as much as I believe it is an ideology that really hurts people overall, I would not cheer on vigilante justice meted out like that. I loathe fascism too, but I don't make exceptions. If the Commie or the Nazi broke the law, then prosecute. If they haven't, then it's not even vigilante justice - it's WORSE than that. It's mere assault and battery on a person who isn't even guilty of a crime.

Everyone knows the fatuous verdict of the greatly over-praised Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, asked for an actual example of when it would be proper to limit speech or define it as an action, gave that of shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre.

It is very often forgotten that what he was doing in that case was sending to prison a group of Yiddish-speaking socialists, whose literature was printed in a language most Americans couldn’t read, opposing President Wilson’s participation in the First World War, and the dragging of the United States into this sanguinary conflict, which the Yiddish-speaking socialists had fled from Russia to escape.

In fact it could be just as plausible argued that the Yiddish-speaking socialists, who were jailed by the excellent and over-praised judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, were the real fire fighters, were the ones who were shouting fire when there really was fire in a very crowded theatre, indeed.

it’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear. And every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your own action, because you deny yourself the right to hear something.

In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view. Indeed as John Stuart Mill said, if all in society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person, it would be most important — in fact, it would become even more important — that that one heretic be heard, because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous or appalling view.

freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently.

,

“If you hear the Pope saying he believes in God, you think, well, the Pope’s doing his job again today. If you hear the Pope saying he’s really begun to doubt the existence of God, you begin to think he might be on to something.”

let’s say as if in compensation for that, everyone is made to swallow an official and unalterable story of it now, and it’s taught as the great moral exemplar, the moral equivalent of the morally lacking elements of the Second World War, a way of stilling our uneasy conscience about that combat — if that’s the case with everybody, as it more or less is, and one person gets up and says:

“You know what, this Holocaust, I’m not sure it even happened. In fact, I’m pretty certain it didn’t. Indeed, I begin to wonder if the only thing is that the Jews brought a little bit of violence on themselves.” That person doesn’t just have a right to speak, that person’s right to speak must be given extra protection. Because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with, might contain a grain of historical truth, might in any case give people to think about why do they know what they already think they know. How do I know that I know this, except that I’ve always been taught this and never heard anything else?

It’s always worth establishing first principles. It’s always worth saying, what would you do if you met a Flat Earth Society member? Come to think of it, how can I prove the earth is round? Am I sure about the theory of evolution? I know it’s supposed to be true. Here’s someone who says there’s no such thing, it’s all intelligent design. How sure am I of my own views? Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be okay, because you’re in the safely moral majority.

One of the proudest moments of my life, that’s to say, in the recent past, has been defending the British historian David Irving, who is now in prison in Austria for nothing more than the potential of uttering an unwelcome thought on Austrian soil. He didn’t actually say anything in Austria. He wasn’t even accused of saying anything. He was accused of perhaps planning to say something that violated an Austrian law that says, “Only one version of the history of the Second World War may be taught in our brave little Tyrolean Republic.”

The republic that gave us Kurt Waldheim as Secretary General of the United Nations, a man wanted in several countries for war crimes. You know, the country that has Jorge Heider the leader of its own fascist party in the cabinet that sent David Irving to jail.

Now to this proud record they can add they have the courage finally to face their past and lock up a British historian who has committed no crime except that of thought and writing. And that’s a scandal. I can’t find a seconder usually when I propose this, but I don’t care. I don’t need a seconder. My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, anytime. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

Now, I don’t know how many of you don’t feel you’re grown up enough to decide this for yourselves, and think you need to be protected from David Irving’s edition of the Goebbels diaries, for example — out of which I learned more about the Third Reich than I had from studying Hugh Trevor-Roper and A.J.P. Taylor combined when I was at Oxford.

But for those of you who do, I would recommend another short course of revision. Go again and see, not just the film and the play, but read the text from Robert Bolt’s wonderful play “A Man for All Seasons” — some of you must have seen it — where Sir Thomas Moore decides that he would rather die than lie or betray his faith, and at one moment, Moore is arguing with a particularly vicious, witch-hunting prosecutor, a servant of the King and a hungry and ambitious man.

And Moore says to this man, “You’d break the law to punish the Devil, wouldn’t you?”

And the prosecutor, the witch-hunter, he says, “Break it? I’d cut down every law in England if I could do that, if I could capture him!”

And Moore says, “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? And then when you’d cornered the Devil, and the Devil turned round to meet you, where would you run for protection, all the laws of England having been cut down and flattened? Who would protect you then?”

Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else, in potencia, you’re making a rod for own back. Because the other question raised by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is simply this: who’s going to decide?

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker? Or determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the job of being the censor? Isn’t it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what’s fit to be passed and what’s fit not to be, is the man most likely to be debauched?

to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you, relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?

Do you know anyone — hands up — do you know anyone to whom you’d give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there’s no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read? Or hear? I had no idea. But there’s a law that says there must be such a person. Or there’s a subsection of some piddling law that says it. Well, the hell with that law then. It’s inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already.

About the censorious instinct we basically know all that we need to know, and we’ve known it for a long time. It comes from an old story about another great Englishman — sorry to sound so particular about that this evening — Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, compiler of the first dictionary of the English language.

When it was complete, Dr. Johnson was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, of the nobility, of the quality, of the Commons, of the Lords — and also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London, who tended on him at his Fleet Street lodgings, and congratulated him.

“Dr. Johnson,” they said, “we are delighted to find that you have not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary.”

“Ladies,” said Dr. Johnson, “I congratulate you on being able to look them up.”

Anyone who can understand that joke — and I’m pleased to see that about 10 percent of you can — gets the point about censorship, especially about prior restraint, as it’s known in the United States, where it’s banned by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call.

And, more to the point, one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular, the motives of those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English, like Dr. Johnson’s first lexicon, in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves and some instinct about which I dare not speculate.

https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2 ... m-to-hate/

[Forty Two]

Fun facts:

In 2017 a bunch of polo shirted people bearing torches marched through town chanting "Jews will not replace us." This was not a crime.

Who would you entrust with the power to decide which polo shirted people bearing chanting which chants ought to be allowed? The Trump Administration? A Republican Congress? The Bureau of Speech and Public Protest?

[Animavore]

The time may come when we have to kill these people again. We know what these people are capable of. We've been here before. If a few punching these creeps back to fringe prevents that eventuality then clearly it is a moral imperative.


Prove me wrong.

[pErvinalia]

No, and I didn't say it was - I was referring to a person cheering it on -- espousing the sentiment that it was good for the vigilante to have done what they did. Obviously, one has a right to hold and espouse that sentiment, too. I was merely disagreeing with that sentiment - I am in favor of equal application of the law - and I would ask myself if I would cheer on someone bashing a communist in the face like that.

Where did Seabass say that he wasn't in favour of equal application of the law?

[Forty Two]

The time may come when we have to kill these people again. We know what these people are capable of. We've been here before. If a few punching these creeps back to fringe prevents that eventuality then clearly it is a moral imperative.


Prove me wrong.

Who is "we?"

Who are "these people?" How do you identify them in society? Is every white person in that crowd a Nazi? The Charlottesville Unite the Right rally wasn't just Nazis.

Many Nazis are rather good at punching. Are you certain you would like "punching creeps" to be the test? Who decides who the "creeps" are? Marine Le Pen and her party? What if they gain enough seats in Parliament? Who becomes the creep then? When the Devil turns round to face you, where do you go then, all the laws in France being cut down to get at the Devil?

What other people are "capable of" horrific violence and societal damage? Communists? Anarchists?

This article is a good espousal of the censor-the-right view: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opi ... story.html

They turn intolerance into a sterile intellectual exercise, the fears and experiences of its victims reduced to irrelevant footnotes. We debate the meaning of “alt-right,” debate whether Twitter should give David Duke's account the same credibility it gives Jim Acosta's, debate whether Holocaust deniers should be on Facebook and never seem to get that in the very act of making hatred a “debate,” we legitimize it, give it a seat at the table.

It's a fine sounding argument, because it "sounds" nice. We don't like hate - hate has victims of hate - people who are hated feel bad, and so we don't want that - by letting a discussion about hate happen - letting the Nazi or neo-Confederate or white nationalist view be aired publicly is "giving them a seat at the table." We wouldn't give a seat at our table to white nationalists, would we?

The failure of this argument is, however, that it's not "our" table, and "they" are not a "they" - they are just as much a part of "we" as we are. The argument presumes that the good people own the table, and the good people decide who gets to sit there and who does not.

The fact is ,that basic, fundamental assumption is, well, flat wrong.

The good people don't "make hatred a debate" -- ANYTHING IS A DEBATE THAT TWO INDIVIDUALS WANT IT TO BE. The good people dont' get to decide FOR YOU, or FOR ME, what we can and cannot debate. It is not their table - it's not my table - it's not your table - it's everyone's table. And, I do not cede to the so-called "good people" the power to determine FOR ME or FOR YOU what you get to read, see, hear and say.

And, make no mistake, as soon as you say that "we" don't give so and so a seat at the table, you are affording SOMEONE with the power to make that decision. SOMEONE decides where the line is between hate/intolerance and non-hate/intolerance. Who will do it? The Bureau of Speech and Debate? The Ministry of Approved Opinions?

There was a time when the majority of people would have voted to exclude Communists and atheists from the table. Communists and atheists insisted that the table was just as much theirs as anyone else's. Wasn't it? The concept of denial of God was viewed just as much as impermissible as "hate speech" and was, in fact, hate speech of that day not many decades ago. It was injurious and damaging to say "there is no god" - in some countries today, we can see that same kind of refusal to tolerate hate speech in play where an atheist or an apostate can be executed. Executed. That's how evil that speech is. That society doesn't give them a "seat at the table."

[Hermit]

Fun facts:

In 2017 a bunch of polo shirted people bearing torches marched through town chanting "Jews will not replace us." This was not a crime.

Who would you entrust with the power to decide which polo shirted people bearing chanting which chants ought to be allowed? The Trump Administration? A Republican Congress? The Bureau of Speech and Public Protest?

Those who are convinced that people who deny equal rights regardless of race as a matter of policy. If the Trump Administration, a Republican Congress or the Bureau of Speech and Public Protest do that, I will not object.

[Forty Two]

No, and I didn't say it was - I was referring to a person cheering it on -- espousing the sentiment that it was good for the vigilante to have done what they did. Obviously, one has a right to hold and espouse that sentiment, too. I was merely disagreeing with that sentiment - I am in favor of equal application of the law - and I would ask myself if I would cheer on someone bashing a communist in the face like that.

Where did Seabass say that he wasn't in favour of equal application of the law?

Nowhere. I said I am in favor of it. I said, essentially, he was cheering on vigilante justice against someone who hadn't even committed a crime, which I think is fair, since he posted an "applauding" emoji in response to someone basically escaping any real penalty for physically assaulting someone in response to expression of an opinion the perpetrator did not like.

[Forty Two]

Those who are convinced that people who deny equal rights regardless of race as a matter of policy. If the Trump Administration, a Republican Congress or the Bureau of Speech and Public Protest do that, I will not object.

Those who are convinced that people who deny equal rights regardless of race as a matter of policy? What does that mean? I think you're missing some words in that sentence - it's a sentence fragment, actually.

Is the right of free speech one of the rights that individuals should not be denied?

Is a person who punches another person in the head in response to expression of an opinion (or mere presence in a given location) denying the victim equal rights?