On Punching Nazis and other hyperbole

[mneme]

I'm willing to sing about punching Nazis, but I'm not willing to seriously advocate that doing so (or censoring them) is ethically and morally right.

Ken White (Popehat) has an excellent post as to why not. (oddly enough, -do- read the comments here).

Comments

[madfilkentist]

As usual, Ken White nails it.

On the punching of Nazis

[avram]

First, on the issue of punching Nazis: While I have seen many people say that the punching of Nazis is a good thing, I have yet to see anyone express any expectation that a Nazi-puncher, should they be caught and brought into court, would be able to avoid prosecution with the "But Your Honor, he's a Nazi!" defense. (These aren't the days of Joe Greenstein.) The argument about Nazi-punching is an argument about whether the police, courts, and our framework of laws can be trusted to defend ordinary citizens from Nazi violence. And, just as you would expect if you knew anything at all about American society or history, the people who do put trust in the police, courts, etc tend to be middle-class white (or white-passing) cis-gendered hetero people. Black people, gays people, etc, these all know that if cops show up, there's a pretty good chance that they'll be prosecuted even if they're the victim, or merely a witness. So: Freelance Nazi-punching.

Ken White knows this on some level; that's why he points out that laws used against Nazis can be turned around and used against non-Nazis as well. But nobody's calling for legalized Nazi-punching. The folks calling for Nazi-punching are calling for it outside of the framework of the law, because they don't trust the law to protect them.

On the no-platforming of Nazis

[avram]

Second, on the matter of denying Nazis access to platforms of expression over which you have some authority or control: Did you notice how much longer and more complicated that part of the sentence before the colon was than just "censoring of Nazis"? That's because there's a difference between censoring someone and denying them a platform. Nobody has a right to demand a platform that they don't own, and Nazis should not be among the people granted such access.

An argument sometimes made by free-speech absolutists is that there's a marketplace of ideas, and that good ideas can drive out bad. Nazis, by their behavior, refute this argument. Nazis are not convinced by reason. If you challenge a Nazi to a debate, and all of their arguments are crap and all of yours are strong, the Nazi will not concede defeat. The Nazi, and his fellow Nazis in the audience, will not think to themselves Oh no! My reasoning has been proven faulty! I must change my ideas! No, they will think to themselves Awesome! They let us get away with saying this stuff in public! Let's push harder; I wonder what else we can get away with!

This sequence played out recently at the University of Maryland. Last month, someone chalked racist graffiti on the campus grounds. When students erased the graffiti and replaced it with more positive, accepting messages, the university president tweeted that they were "exchange[ing] ideas and engag[ing] in debate." The racists apparently got the message that they were free to push harder, so a couple of weeks later a noose was found at a UMD frat house. Then, a few days ago, a Black student (visiting from another school) was stabbed to death by a neo-Nazi.