[Itse]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Madness.

As time ticks along, we seem to be forgetting the lessons of history.
We don't understand why we have the freedoms and laws we have. We fail to see the terrible peril in suppressing speech and and tolerating political violence.[/quote9


Too many people today fail to recognize how tolerating institutional suppression of speech they hate could (and inevitably will) be turned around to suppress their own speech.

While I'm sympathetic to your worry, I would say history doesn't really support it that well.

I've been looking into this punching a nazi -thing for a while, and have not been able to find a single example from actual history where anti-fascist violence can be clearly shown to a have lead to a general escalation of political violence towards other political movements.

There have obviously been situations where anti-fascist violence preceeded much larger violence towards their opponents, but we're generally talking about places where a fascist coup eventually happened. (Germany, Italy, Chile...)

I don't think you can seriously make a case that the violence towards the political opposition in fascist regimes would have been any less bad if only there would not have been violent opposition towards the fascists.

Very important sidenote however:
There is also no way to use history to clearly disprove your claim either.

If it's okay to punch a Nazi, how about punching a Marxist? After all, they're defending an ideology responsible for the deaths of tens of millions. Their aim of mandating an even distribution of property and wealth has only ever been achieved at the end of a gun.

Right now in India, the states of Tripura and Kerala have democractically elected Marxist governments.

Almost every country in the world has had (and many still have) Marxist political groups that have peacefully taken part in normal democractic processes. Nazis do not have a similar history. Nazi movements everywhere take part in street violence, as the use of violence as a political tool is simply a fundamental part of their ideology.

So comparing Nazis and Marxists is very much a false equivalency.

So I guess the next time some campus Marxist opens her mouth about equality of outcome, the grandson of a Lithuanian massacred in the bloodlands of Eastern Europe should punch her in the face. That's where we're headed.

If a Marxist student opens her mouth about armed revolution, sure, punch in the face is fine. But talking about equality of outcome is not the same thing as talking about white supremacy.

Again, there's plenty of history to prove that Marxists are perfectly capable of being a constructive part of a peaceful democracy. There is no similar history with Nazis.

Stop being children. Read some history.

I have read a crapload of history, and really don't think they support your conclusions. I don't think there's much there to disprove the idea either. History is complicated.

But please don't accuse people of being "children" when they don't agree with you.

Part of me wonders if subconsciously a lot of people really do want an open, violent struggle to sort out politics today. Us against Them. Left vs Right. Fight to the finish, with only one group left standing. Because that's where this type of encouragement of political violence leads us. Think polarisation and political hatred are bad today? It can get worse. Much, much worse.

Good question. I think there is very good reason to worry about an actual war of ideologies.

I am firmly in the belief that we here in the West have failed to identify that a new Cold War of ideologies has started. (Note that I say that only us in the West, because I think there's plenty of evidence that Putin has been fighting this exact battle for a good while now, mostly with the goal of positioning himself as the flag-bearer of the reactionary conservative right. With moderate success.)

I think it's starting to be obvious that the next big clash of ideologies is that between Conservative and Liberal. You may argue (like I guess peter12 does) that this is a war that the Liberals started, and heck, he might even be right. At this point however that doesn't matter.

I think it's clear the new reactionary conservative movement is by now such a large movement that there's no point in "not provoking them" anymore. I think it's ridiculous to say trying to block a fascist social media darling from speaking is contributing to the problem, when you already have a very similar guy (only luckily much dumber) in the White House.

Even further, very clearly a large part of these conservatives have firmly decided they are fighting a literal war of survival. It's apparent both because A) that's what they say and B) That's how they act.

That is the very simple reason why they are so clearly willing to sacrifice things like a working democracy or why they are so eager to walk all over normal political and legal processess. Or why they don't really care that Trump was supported by Russia. I think it's obvious the conservatives in the US are ranking Russia as less dangerous than the liberals.

The above is very much my speculation. Back to history.

I can't thin of an example of a civil war where you can clearly argue that if only one side had refrained from violence, things would not have escalated the way they did. Is USA 2010's different? Of course it could be, because like every other situation in history it's unique.

There are also plenty of examples where a democracy has through mostly non-violent opposition survived an authoritarian turn. But I do think that it's very much a time for the liberals to start playing rough. By that I mean civil disobedience, which is exactly the way things have started to go.

Historically, rioting and destruction of property has been proven to be fairly succesful in getting civil rights. Peaceful protests not so much.