Legality of assaults

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Should it be legal for other people to assault you if they disagree with you? This poll is closed.
Yes	183	49.06%
No	190	50.94%
Total:	328 votes

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Futuresight: Oct 11, 2012; IT'S ALL TURNED TO SHIT!

Pseudo-God posted:

I really am shocked how you people can't see that justifying violence against people for having an opinion, no matter how reprehensible or genocidal, is the opening of a Pandora's Box. If you say "you are allowed to punch Nazis because they present a grave threat to our way of life", you open the way for anyone to justify violence against others based on how they interpret "grave threat to our way of life". Some examples:

People think and do that poo poo anyway. If we were talking about introducing violence into a world free of it then I'd quite possibly agree with you. Unleashing violence into the world would be a horrible thing. But it's already here, and no matter what we do we can't stop others from doing violence. We have laws in place to blanket suppress violence and that's fine if we don't want the state to decide what is okay violence and what is not (although it does, and it seems to think its own violence is perfectly good and everyone else's is bad). But we decide for ourselves what feels right to ourselves, and should not worry about what other people will try to justify with our actions if we deem them righteous.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:21

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# ? May 31, 2024 14:04

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

It's pretty clear that in all successful non-violent resistance movements there has been a definite good cop/bad cop dynamic with more militant groups, if for no other reason than that the militant groups will spring up when oppression becomes sufficiently bad.

But even if we discount that for the sake of assumption it's pretty clear that if your entire resistance movement somehow manages to stay perfectly non-violent no matter what, then you're basically banking on the oppressor to suddenly realize that what they are doing is wrong, and the list of examples where that has happened is even shorter than the list of successful cases of violent resistance.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:27

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

enki42 posted:

(MLK, Ghandi, 1989 Berlin protests)

in all of these cases, the non-violent protesters succeeded because there was a credible threat of widespread violence being the alternative. violence happened in all of these cases, and without it the movements very likely would not have succeeded.*

in the civil rights movement, you had the black panthers and allied groups exerting pressure. in india, you had terrorist groups like the samiti or the hindustan socialist republicans bombing and killing british soldiers, then barely being contained by ghandi. as soon as he was in jail, the terrorism continued. in germany, you had the famous monday demonstrations turning into riots, with police cars being burned and police and protesters clashing in the streets.

the point is that the choice the establishment was faced with was never "accept the nonviolent resistance's demands or keep the status quo", it was always "accept the demands or prepare for mass radicalization and domestic terrorism". that's why non-violent resistance by itself doesn't work. it can only work if the alternative is much, much worse, and for that you need a credible threat.

* i am kind of exempting the fall of the GDR from this, i assume they would have collapsed somewhere along the line anyway, simply because the soviets did and the state was unsustainable without soviet support.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:28

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Spangly A posted:

Well there's no troops and a delegated parliament so everyone in the north is better off than they were.

Sure, but well short of the actual goal, and history doesn't really regard it as a success or the IRA particularly positively.

quote:

Mandela doesn't spring to mind? Umkotho we Sizwe were trained to blow things up and pressured the SA government at home while SWAPO and the cubans fought the south african border war.

Thanks. That's a good example.

quote:

MLK had 2 million black men turn up at a time when Malcolm X was doing his thing. You have to be seriously ignorant to call the civil rights movement non-violent, especially as MLK got shot.

Sorry, is your point that a march that specifically called for non-violent protest against the government led by someone who was famously non-violent, and derided by Malcolm X because of this non-violent stance was actually a violent protest?

quote:

You haven't named a single example of anything other than your poor understanding of history.

What poor understanding of history? Did MLK or Ghandi advocate for violence? I must have missed that part of my history lessons. Were the peaceful demonstrations in 1989 in Berlin actually violent?

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:29

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

botany posted:

in all of these cases, the non-violent protesters succeeded because there was a credible threat of widespread violence being the alternative. violence happened in all of these cases, and without it the movements very likely would not have succeeded.

in the civil rights movement, you had the black panthers and allied groups exerting pressure. in india, you had terrorist groups like the samiti or the hindustan socialist republicans bombing and killing british soldiers, then barely being contained by ghandi. as soon as he was in jail, the terrorism continued. in germany, you had the famous monday demonstrations turning into riots, with police cars being burned and police and protesters clashing in the streets.

Do you have evidence of this? I always hear this argument, and I acknowledge those groups existed, but I've only seen speculation that the non-violent movement wouldn't have been successful without a violent element.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:30

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

enki42 posted:

Do you have evidence of this? I always hear this argument, and I acknowledge those groups existed, but I've only seen speculation that the non-violent movement wouldn't have been successful without a violent element.

i mean, what kind of evidence are you looking for? it's pretty hard to prove a counterfactual.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:32

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

The point is that if the non-violent resistance keeps failing to achieve its goals and oppression intensifies, people will obviously start turning to violent means. It's the latent threat of militant resistance that generally forces the oppressor to come to the table with the non-violent resistance.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:32

SpaceGoku: Jul 19, 2011

enki42 posted:

Out of curiousity, does anyone have any good examples of violent protest that was successful in achieving it's aims? There's all kinds of examples of successful non-violent protest (MLK, Ghandi, 1989 Berlin protests). I'll accept actual evidence (rather than speculation) that a violent element or associated movement was actually responsible for the overall movement being successful.

[thinking emoji gradually growing larger until it encompasses the size of the known universe]

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:33

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Cerebral Bore posted:

But even if we discount that for the sake of assumption it's pretty clear that if your entire resistance movement somehow manages to stay perfectly non-violent no matter what, then you're basically banking on the oppressor to suddenly realize that what they are doing is wrong, and the list of examples where that has happened is even shorter than the list of successful cases of violent resistance.

There are many, many ways to protest a government without violence. See: most successful protests in the 20th century.

And the point of protest generally isn't for Donald Trump to look out his window and say "man, that sign really made my think about my attitude towards minorities and women", it's to raise awareness of issues among the general public and sway public opinion to your side.

If your opinion is that the point of protests is to actually physically overthrow the oppressors, good luck with that.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:34

Total Meatlove: Jan 28, 2007; Rangers died, shoujo Hitler cried ;_;

enki42 posted:

There are many, many ways to protest a government without violence. See: most successful protests in the 20th century.

And the point of protest generally isn't for Donald Trump to look out his window and say "man, that sign really made my think about my attitude towards minorities and women", it's to raise awareness of issues among the general public and sway public opinion to your side.

If your opinion is that the point of protests is to actually physically overthrow the oppressors, good luck with that.

Name one. One that worked, and had lasting institutional change.

Also, don't forget that throughout this, you're devils advocating for a genocidal nazi

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:40

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

botany posted:

i mean, what kind of evidence are you looking for? it's pretty hard to prove a counterfactual.

I know it's a hard question to answer, but otherwise we're sort of at an impasse. I can say that protests were successful in spite of a violent element, not because of it, and you can say the opposite.

One thing I'll raise is that there have been successful protest movements that didn't involve a significant violent element that were regarded as successful, which at least points towards violence not being a necessary component of a protest movement.

Examples:
- GDR that I mentioned before
- Various feminist movements (suffragates, 60's feminist movement, Take back the Night)
- Occupy (at least in terms of public consciousness)
- Maybe the labor movement (obviously an awful lot of violence against labor, but I can't think of much of the opposite)

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:40

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

enki42 posted:

There are many, many ways to protest a government without violence. See: most successful protests in the 20th century.

And the point of protest generally isn't for Donald Trump to look out his window and say "man, that sign really made my think about my attitude towards minorities and women", it's to raise awareness of issues among the general public and sway public opinion to your side.

If your opinion is that the point of protests is to actually physically overthrow the oppressors, good luck with that.

Uh, yeah, you're not going to get Trump to change his mind by waving a banner outside the White House. That is not a successful protest, no.

Also the point of non-violent resistance in the historical cases has in fact been to force the oppressors out of the country in Gandhi's case or force them to give concrete concessions in the case of MLK, and not to "raise awareness" Raising awareness is a tactic towards achieving your goal, not a goal in itself.

enki42 posted:

- Maybe the labor movement (obviously an awful lot of violence against labor, but I can't think of much of the opposite)

JFC, you ignoramus. The whole reason why the capitalist class started giving concessions to Labour was the threat posed by socialist revolution. In fact, that was explicitly why Bismarck introduced the first modern welfare systems back in the 19th century.

Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jan 27, 2017

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:40

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Cerebral Bore posted:

The point is that if the non-violent resistance keeps failing to achieve its goals and oppression intensifies, people will obviously start turning to violent means. It's the latent threat of militant resistance that generally forces the oppressor to come to the table with the non-violent resistance.

Yeah, I don't think anyone would disagree with the point that there's ultimately a point where non-violent resistance has failed. I don't think that point is one week after the election. The non-violent protest movement against Trump seems to be successful and has caught the public consciousness. The media is pretty much universally against Trump. The U.S. is not in a completely hopeless situation right now.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:43

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Cerebral Bore posted:

Uh, yeah, you're not going to get Trump to change his mind by waving a banner outside the White House. That is not a successful protest, no.

Also the point of non-violent resistance in the historical cases has in fact been to force the oppressors out of the country in Gandhi's case or force them to give concrete concessions in the case of MLK, and not to "raise awareness" Raising awareness is a tactic towards achieving your goal, not a goal in itself.

My point is the actual threat behind these protests is the swaying of the public opinion over to the side of the protest. The civil rights movement was successful because of the general public not supporting violence in the face of non-violent protest, not because of fear of the black population revolting.

quote:

JFC, you ignoramus. The whole reason why the capitalist class started giving concessions to Labour was the threat posed by socialist revolution. In fact, that was explicitly why Bismarck introduced the first modern welfare systems back in the 19th century.

Yeah, OK - probably a stupid example. I admit I have a passing familiarity with that, particularly in Europe.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:47

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

enki42 posted:

My point is the actual threat behind these protests is the swaying of the public opinion over to the side of the protest. The civil rights movement was successful because of the general public not supporting violence in the face of non-violent protest, not because of fear of the black population revolting.

do you have any evidence for your claims?

(also yeah the labor movement is full of riots and killings)

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:50

Total Meatlove: Jan 28, 2007; Rangers died, shoujo Hitler cried ;_;

Rise up Women! 'Andrew Rosen' posted:

15 Attacking Politicians
Only the most serious of the many incidents of the late summer and autumn of 1909 need be described here. Knowing that Haldane* was to speak in the Sun Hall in Liverpool on 20 August, the WSPU rented a house adjoining the hall, and during Haldane's speech suffragettes in the house threw bricks at the hall's windows. On 5 September, as Asquith was leaving Lympne Church, he was accosted by three WSPU members, Jessie Kenney, Elsie Howey, and Vera Wentworth. One of the three struck him repeatedly. Later that day, the same trio approached the Prime Minister's party on a golf course.... That evening two stones were thrown through one of the windows of the house in which Asquith was dining.
On 17 September, Asquith spoke in the Bingley Hall in Birmingham. The hall was surrounded by police, and no women were admitted to the meeting. Earlier that day, Mary Leigh and Charlotte Marsh, the WSPU's regional organizer for Yorkshire, had equipped themselves with axes and climbed on to the roof of a house near the hall. During the meeting they chopped slates from the roof and threw them down at the police and at Asquith's motor car. A policeman standing in the crowd below was badly cut by a slate, and a detective who climbed on to the roof had slates thrown at him and was knocked down to a lower building. When a hose was turned on the women, they called out, holding fast: `Will you see that Mr. Asquith receives us if we surrender?' The police eventually climbed on to the roof and arrests were made. In the meantime, a suffragette in the crowd below, Mary Edwards, assaulted several policemen. Subsequently, at the police station, she broke every pane of glass in her cell. Later that day, as Asquith returned to London by train, two WSPU members threw a metal object at the train and broke the window of a compartment in which passengers were seated. That evening, two other WSPU members entered the Birmingham Liberal Club armed with an axe and did �3 worth of damage to the windows.

Women famously did not get the vote

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:51

Calibanibal: Aug 25, 2015

i'll acknowledge ur exhortations to active non-violent resistance when u go out and practice it urself

# ? Jan 27, 2017 16:58

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Calibanibal posted:

i'll acknowledge ur exhortations to active non-violent resistance when u go out and practice it urself

Who says I haven't? Or to not make it about myself or the posters in here, over 1% of the U.S. participated in active non-violent resistance last Saturday.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:00

Calibanibal: Aug 25, 2015

I say you havent

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:16

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Calibanibal posted:

I say you havent

Then you'd be wrong, but what's the point of this derail?

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:24

FreeKillB: May 13, 2009

Cerebral Bore posted:

The point is that if the non-violent resistance keeps failing to achieve its goals and oppression intensifies, people will obviously start turning to violent means. It's the latent threat of militant resistance that generally forces the oppressor to come to the table with the non-violent resistance.

Even if you view the implicit threat of violence happening as THE ONLY reason nonviolent protest leaders had leverage (I disagree, but for the sake of argument), I don't see how it follows that that means that the protest leaders therefore thought violence was therefore cool and good. To the contrary, their position was usually that violence in protests would only feed further violence making the whole situation worse, especially as the oppressed would bear the greatest costs of such violence.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:25

qkkl: Jul 1, 2013; by FactsAreUseless

Should definitely be illegal, but then again that didn't stop whites from lynching thousands of African Americans. The purpose of free speech laws is not to allow anyone to say what they want; it is to prevent anyone from getting enough power to use violence against people whose ideas they disagree with. IMO the puncher should be convicted of a hate crime.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:30

Rhjamiz: Oct 28, 2007

qkkl posted:

Should definitely be illegal, but then again that didn't stop whites from lynching thousands of African Americans. The purpose of free speech laws is not to allow anyone to say what they want; it is to prevent anyone from getting enough power to use violence against people whose ideas they disagree with. IMO the puncher should be convicted of a hate crime.

I didn't realize Nazis were a protected class.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:36

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

Wait, a hate crime against who? Nazis? I'm like the most spineless liberal in here and even I think that's crazy.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:36

FreeKillB: May 13, 2009

I don't think anyone in the thread has been arguing that sucker punching a Nazi is somehow worse than sucker punching some one else because of their stated political beliefs.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:44

Keeshhound: Jan 14, 2010; Mad Duck Swagger

Total Meatlove posted:

Name one. One that worked, and had lasting institutional change.

Also, don't forget that throughout this, you're devils advocating for a genocidal nazi

Hey, quick reading comprehension tip: read everything twice. No one in this thread is advocating for Nazis. We're arguing that the kind of violent pretaliation that's being proposed will do more harm than good.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 17:49

Seraphic Neoman: Jul 19, 2011

Pseudo-God posted:

It's like you people have no sense of nuance or proportion. Like I said, your response to adversity should be proportional to the threat posed. This is why we have BLM protests in the US today, and why it is justified to kill a Nazi when he presents a credible threat to your life. No reasonable person would go and tell the Jews at the Warsaw Uprising that "you guys should just chill, don't you know that killing your enemies is wrong?".

Incidentally, this is why a lot of people oppose BLM and the Women's March, not because they hate blacks or women, but because they think that the protests are too much, they don't really have it that bad. They have no perspective from the lives of the people affected to see their justification for these protests.

*puts on sunglasses*

the whiteness...its blinding...

# ? Jan 27, 2017 18:06

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

enki42 posted:

What poor understanding of history? Did MLK or Ghandi advocate for violence? I must have missed that part of my history lessons.

Ghandi posted:

Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 18:36

FreeKillB: May 13, 2009

That seems to be a descriptive account, rather than saying that nuking Britain Civ1-style would have been morally good.

SSNeoman posted:

*puts on sunglasses*

the whiteness...its blinding...

I have compiled a short list of quotes. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which speakers were white.

'The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.'

'Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters � then we are for it!'

'My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.'

'Blood alone moves the wheels of history.'

'Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.'

# ? Jan 27, 2017 18:42

Rodatose: Jul 8, 2008; corn, corn, corn

Pseudo-God posted:

is the opening of a Pandora's Box.

It's already open (see the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent muslims that america celebrates and refuses to prosecute), just not against white christians at home who express a desire to enact a more organized and openly stated slaughter

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:04

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Punch a Nazi today so you won't have to bayonet one five years down the road.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:12

Rodatose: Jul 8, 2008; corn, corn, corn

Like I don't think you understand how much america shat the bed in destabilizing the middle east. I guess we thought we could violence it up halfway across the world and not feel the effects of it, but refugees fleeing the carnage we sewed and the constant stream of violent, dehumanizing propaganda that came with the war on terror has resulted in nations adopting more xenophobic policies worldwide and a refusal to hold accountable those enforcers who break the law in victimizing people on a racial/religious basis. Unpunished violence america inflicted on 'foreign policy objectives' went untreated for too long, and now it's spread because everyone thinks they can do the same and be just as corrupt.

It's not a "should we or shouldn't we" argument, because it's already happened and things are going to get a lot worse for everybody. Control has fallen out of the hands of those who should have been respectable, responsible official actors (who in an ideal world are subject to oversight, and for whom this oversight is the check on runaway excesses of violence).

Rodatose fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 27, 2017

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:23

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

So does anyone actually have an example where people were violent towards either terrible people (like Nazis) or their property and this somehow triggered an escalation into widespread violence that also affected normal non-Nazi people and made the situation worse? Some people in this thread keep acting like it's common sense that violence against Nazis will escalate into a bunch of violence that would also affect good people, but I can't think of any examples where this has actually happened. It seems like it's just based on some gut feeling or "common sense."

edit: Like, I don't even really think that punching Nazis will accomplish much, but I also don't see any rational reason to think it will somehow open a Pandora's Box of indiscriminate violence.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:43

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

It lacks the Nazi aspect, but how about the Troubles? It's certainly a case where violent protest escalated to the point where there were significant casualties. And I think it's fair to call the British government at the time oppressive, at least from the standpoint of Northern Irish republicans.

Whether the situation got worse is a matter of debate, but it's not generally regarded as a fun time for anyone.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:48

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Honestly, I'd like to see more rich people punching Nazis.

The wealthy are already functionally immune to much of our legal system's consequences due to the power and privilege of being able to afford top-flight lawyers, so it would be great to see more of them using that power for good.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:48

Meme Emulator: Oct 4, 2000

Liquid Communism posted:

Honestly, I'd like to see more rich people punching Nazis.

The wealthy are already functionally immune to much of our legal system's consequences due to the power and privilege of being able to afford top-flight lawyers, so it would be great to see more of them using that power for good.

The rich are the ones funding the nazis in order to keep the middle and lower classes divided, so why would they.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 19:51

Keeshhound: Jan 14, 2010; Mad Duck Swagger

Crowsbeak posted:

I am. I realized that liberalism didn't just fail here it has failed for fifty years.

I missed this earlier, but now I have to ask; are you saying that because it has failed (in your assessment) to check the growth of undesirable elements, liberal democracy has failed? Perhaps it is even "obsolete"?

# ? Jan 27, 2017 20:06

Venomous: Nov 7, 2011

# ? Jan 27, 2017 20:14

Crowsbeak: Oct 9, 2012; by Azathoth; Lipstick Apathy

Keeshhound posted:

I missed this earlier, but now I have to ask; are you saying that because it has failed (in your assessment) to check the growth of undesirable elements, liberal democracy has failed? Perhaps it is even "obsolete"?

Correct. We need a democracy that acts for the will of the people.

# ? Jan 27, 2017 20:15

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# ? May 31, 2024 14:04

Crowsbeak: Oct 9, 2012; by Azathoth; Lipstick Apathy

Double post

# ? Jan 27, 2017 20:17

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