[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Itse

This is a completely ridiculous statement when we're talking about a Nazi march approaching Jewish quarters in 1936 Europe.

Well, that's a reasonable question. If they were planning to head to the Jewish quarters to start attacking Jews, then I would want the police to deal with it, ideally. If that had occurred, and the police didn't do anything about it, I'd agree that at that point, you're essentially acting in self defense or defense of others. But I don't know that that's the case.

We're speaking in hypotheticals, which is fine, so let's put it this way. If the march was to be a peaceful, if horrifying, demonstration of hate, then attacking them was, in my view, the wrong thing to do (though whether the state should allow demonstrations of this sort is a reasonable question of public policy). If it was a parade of anti-semites heading down to start violence themselves, then the police should have shut it down, and if the police had refused to protect the people, I'd be right there with you smacking around skinheads with a baseball bat.

The goal of the anti-fascists was to deny the Nazis from marching through certain parts of London. If there is no confrontation, they would have won. Yet you're saying that the hundreds of thousands of people who showed up were there seeking a confrontation. No maybe's and gray areas, the only group who had no need or plans to do anything if nobody approached them was the most confrontational one.

That's my understanding, and it seems pretty much plain to me. If you have one group that you know is marching in particular place, and another group says, "hey, let's show up and block them", it's pretty obvious that they're seeking a confrontation.

Take Seattle a few days ago - you had a group, at least some of whom were assuredly white nationalists, set up a "freedom" demonstration in a park. You had another group, some of whom were assuredly antifa, who were attempting to get into the park to confront the demonstration. Police barred them from getting there. For me, that's exactly what the Police should do. The group trying to get into the park, thankfully in this case, just stopped at calling the police KKK members and throwing garbage at them and covering them with silly string. If they'd attacked the police, that would have been a bad thing, even if the demonstration in the park was overtly awful.

Nazis saying they're going to march through the local Jewish quarter, fully aware that the Jewish community of the time is deeply entwined with the far-left. Not confrontational at all.

Not unless violence starts. Expression, like a march or demonstration, is not violence. It is, as noted, deplorable, but it's much worse to start a brawl.

The police who kept attacking the anti-fascists for hours injuring over a hundred people, even though it was clear they didn't have much of a chance to push through. (Just look at the video. We're talking about an estimated mass of 300,000 protesters, before police had things like water cannons and tear gas.) That was just the police being very committed to their job. It could not possibly have been motivated by the fact that the anti-fascists were a bunch of no good commies, Irishmen, anarchists and other miscreants well-deserving a good batoning for daring to defy them.

Okay, well, now you're arguing that the police tactics in that particular case in resisting the anti-protestors constituted excessive force, which... okay, fine, you could very well be right. But I don't see how that's relevant to the current situation?

How is blocking Nazis from entering Jewish quarter blocking their free speech? The anti-fascists made no attempt to stop the Nazis from marching. They just did not let their march be used to intimidate local Jews.

This is the exact same logic that sees certain administrators try to limit expression to small "free speech" zones. They have the right to protest on all public property, barring a public policy reason against it (e.g. "you can't block the George Washington bridge during rush hour") and even those limits are free speech limits. It's just a matter of what, as a society, we're willing to accept and prescribe into law. But regardless, that can't be decided by the metric of "whoever can put together a mob of sufficient size to stop the people they don't like gets to dictate the terms of their protest to them".

In general I really fail to see how is the unambiguous intention of scaring a local ethnic minority and promoting violence and hatred towards them free speech that needs to be defended with violence if necessary.

Well, that's fair enough. It's clearly free speech, but the question is whether it's free speech worth defending. As discussed, in Canada, we say it isn't. In Charlottesville, VA, and everywhere else in the United States, it is. But either way, again, that's not for an ideological group to decide for itself.

Especially when "we can not allow Nazis to intimidate Jews here" is somehow so far removed from free speech that it's not just acceptable but necessary to use violence against demonstrators who otherwise would just have eventually gone home.

Again, this just seems like an approval of violence because they're wrong and you're right. In this case I agree that you are and they are, but I don't trust you to make that judgment and I don't trust anyone else to, either, aside from the Supreme Court and hopefully a law-making process that takes long enough to prevent knee-jerk reactions.

I wonder, had the anti-fascist protesters been just Jews, would you still argue that the Jews were in the wrong in trying to stop Nazis from marching through their neighborhood?

Yes, if they sought to use violence to prevent them from doing so.

Framíng this as a conflict between races instead of a conflict between ideologies is white power rhetoric. Let's remember that most people fighting in Cable Street, and in Charlottesville, were white.

You're right, it is more of an ideological war, just largely cast in terms of race. I didn't mean that it would be black vs. white vs. asian vs. whoever. Just that race would be largely what the whole dispute would be about, particularly on the side of the white nationalists.

Not that I think you're a Nazi sympathizer even a little, but when well-meaning and thoughtful people like you start internalizing white power rhetoric it really speaks volumes about where the conversation is at around you.

Yeah, no. This is highly inappropriate. You're attempting to undercut my credibility by attributing false implied or unconscious biases to me. You're poisoning the well in the most debasing possible way. Do not do that. It is discrediting to you, but more importantly, hugely insulting. Seriously, this would be the end of any face to face conversation I had with anyone, and I'm trying to restrain myself in order to put that very mildly.

Did the anti-fascists physically standing up to police and fascists mid and late 1930's lead to a violent killing spree inside the country? No. So clearly these are not the only two options. Conversation and being willing to put yourself in harms way to defend what you believe in are not mutually exclusive things.

We're seeing it right now. First, people will simply blockade entrances to buildings, or scream invectives into the faces of the people they disagree with, or try to drown them out with bullhorns, or disrupt events. Next, they start throwing garbage, or threatening them, or intimidating them. Then they move to violence. That violence is then reciprocated. It escalates. People start getting killed (for example, run over by cars). This justifies higher levels of violence. Given that tensions are high, everyone thinks they have moral virtue on their side, and there are weapons everywhere, it's really not that hard to see how this is going to turn out.