High Command wrote:There really has been a lot of bad-faith arguments put forth in this thread by yourself and others but this is really something else. Fighting literal nazis (as opposed to just anyone I disagree with, I believe I was quite clear on that point) makes one just as bad as a nazi and liable to commit genocide?
Likewise your choice to escalate from punching to shooting which is putting words in my mouth. Since you bring up shooting, my stance on the question of guns is to make them all illegal and take them away from members of the public and the cops. Please don't go into a gun ownership debate though, I only mention it to make my own position clear and am reluctant to do so because I fear a likelihood of being lectured how that position somehow makes me want more people to get shot not less.
I am trying to be specific and deliberate in my choice of language here so let me summarise:
Black Lives Matter - this is a positive movement that is asking for changes that have been too long ignored both in the US, UK and elsewhere. Specifically in the US, the issue of black people being killed by cops and those cops facing no consequences. More generally overt and more hidden forms of racism and racial bias need confronting and changing to make a fairer more equal society for all. I find it a very hopeful thing that so many young people of all races are uniting for this. I am certainly not in favour of protecting the status-quo. Some positive changes are starting to happen with charges being made against culpable officers but more can be done too.
Violence - the overwhelming majority of protest has been done peacefully. Where the worst violence has been the cops have also been out in force in full armour. Yes I am implying that the cops have been the instigators of most of the violence. Either directly through attacking protests or indirectly through provocation. As cops, they should have the training to de-escalate things yet we've seen the reverse. When untrained people are attacked their natural instinct may be to run away or to fight back. I think asking the protesters to behave calmer and more professionally than the supposed professionals is a flawed argument.
I don't want anyone to get killed in these protests. People being killed is one of the main reasons for having them remember.
Destruction of property - Lives matter more than property. Property can be replaced, rebuilt etc. The dead can only be mourned. Yes it's a shame if someone's business is burned down, I hope they have insurance that'll pay out. I'm far less concerned when it's something like a statue that gets destroyed, such as the one of a slave trader in my country where the people of the town had been pursuing every legal avenue for decades. Not all statues need to come down obviously but in this case made for a powerful statement that we don't stand for the pain and suffering this man caused.
Counter-protests - far right groups have been having their own protests, such as one notable example in London recently. They say they were to protest violence against the police and defend monuments from being attacked. The police were there, BLM were not. The counter-protestors had a fight with the police instead, showed their respect to the monuments by giving nazi salutes and one man was photographed urinating beside a memorial to a dead policeman killed by a terrorist in 2017. These are pro-racism protests, in response to BLM anti-racism ones. Some sources say that some of the property destruction seen in the US has come from alt-right groups seeking to discredit BLM, that's unsubstantiated but is not wholly implausible.
Coronavirus - this is actually my biggest concern regarding the protests and I really hope it doesn't lead to another spike in infections. TBH I am surprised there hasn't been one already. Once again, my position is that deaths are bad.
Don't worry, I've no intention of getting into the gun debate. It's hardly relevant to the topic at hand. I do, however, have a question for you: Do you play chess? I ask because when I wrote above I was doing my best to speak to the future, and when I read your words they seem couched in the present. Nothing I said was meant as an implication that you yourself would do anything, or go out to start anything, or even be the first one to tip a domino in that direction. The point I was trying to make is that there are enough people out there already who will be more than willing to do that for you if we don't dial the rhetoric way back.
I appreciate the declaration on principles. I feel like we could spend hours in debate over them but this isn't the time or the place. I think the more important part is that while I appreciate your principles, even the ones I don't agree with, not everyone is going to agree with you. The danger I was trying to illustrate comes from there. You advocate for punching Nazis. That's fine, I'll let you have that. You point out that people waving and wearing swastikas and goosestepping while shouting "Seig Heil!" are Nazis. I can't really disagree with that, i think that would be pretty obvious. And while I don't want to make too grand assumptions, I can only assume that if you saw someone like that walking down the street, you'd probably limber up, stretch, and get a good running start before clocking them across the head. As they say, You do you, Boo.
My concern is that not everyone is going to be as restrained as you. You seem to be willing to restrain yourself to people who out themselves as nazis but that's not going to be true of everyone. Lots of things that aren't even related to the nazis and white supremacists have suddenly become associated with them. A haircut. A hand gesture. Or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If there's a protest in response to BLM and one, JUST ONE person brings a Nazi flag, is this a sign that everyone there is a nazi? And does anyone bother to ask questions before things turn ugly. Does getting the wrong haircut justify punching someone without needing evidence or reason? If someone flashes the white power handsign, otherwise known in the rest of the world as the OK gesture, does that confirm their position with the rest of the Nazis?
The point here is that I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about your ideas. They don't solely belong to you; they're shared far and wide amongst many people. I asked earlier if you played Chess because both of these things have something in common: Looking to the future. Not just as this move, but the next ten moves ahead. Bringing up shooting wasn't putting words in your mouth. Not once did I ever imply you said it would happen. I said that it IS happening and it's going to escalate further unless the violent rhetoric stops. Two protesting groups show up and one side punches the other. The other side shows up next time with sticks. The next time the other side shows up with knives and so on. This isn't conjecture, we've watched it, going back to the protests in Portland and Berkeley and following it though to today. It shouldn't be hard to see where things go from here. In New Mexico vandals showed up to tear down a statue and someone got shot. Those people are going to come back and they're going to come back armed, I'd lay money. In Ohio a BLM march was run out of town by armed protestors. If that march comes back it will also probably be armed, and where do things go from there.
I think we're still in the opening gambits of this conflict, with prodding threats and low casualties. All it will take though is one group that feels justified in using the full force they have available because the other side are nazis, the other side are fascists, the other side are supremacists, or the other side are just threatening them and now it's self defense and it all kicks off. This is what lies ten moves further into the game if we continue with this.
It's not bad faith, it's logic. I've explained myself, taken it step by step, progression from one level of escalation to the next. And yes, taken to its logical extreme it could be genocide. One protest opens fire on another one and a firefight ensues. Massive casualties on both sides. Does this de-escalate tensions or inflame them? Obviously it inflames them. So what's the next move? Assuming that the US government doesn't roll the army in and lock everything down, and there's your fascist state if ever there was one, it will be open season on both sides. Marches and protests will be cancelled, too many people, too easy a target. Instead you'll have smaller cells hunting down other cells, something akin to a cross between guerilla and gang warfare. This could go two ways, either with neither side gaining an advantage or one side gaining a clear advantage, and both are bad. The former means that the fighting could be extremely prolonged, resulting in likely a great deal of collateral damage and casualties. The latter will result in the losing side on the run, possibly being hunted down all the way. Were that to happen I believe one of two senarios likely, the losing side is either driven underground where it can wait and recover, or it is simply wiped out, rounded up and executed. All this assumes of course that the government doesnt come in with an even heavier hand and crush both of them.
All this because people decided it was okay to punch a certain group of people. Call it far fetched, call it a slippery slope but we're already seeing the first parts of this now. The rest is possible, unless you'd like to put forward an alternate timeline of events.
As a final note, I want to reference the genocide comment. Wiping out any group of people, for any reason, is a genocide. The Nazis did it with the jews because...I don't know. The Jews are the punching bag of the whole world and I never understood it. The soviet union did it with the poles. It's continuing today with the Kurds. Rounding up what's left of the nazis which at this point would consist of people who weren't even alive during that time would be no different. It would make you no better than them. If we have learned nothing from the crusades and jihads it's that rigtheous vengence is never right. Justified any way it can, it's still just revenge.
