I have been seeing plenty of guillhotine and mollotov jokes here, and as the title says, punching nazis.
I’ve been reading a book about nonviolence and anarchism, and he basically shows how we shouldn’t use violence, even in extreme cases (like neo nazis).
The main argument is that the means dictates the ends, so if we want a non violent (and non opressing) society, punching people won’t help.
And if it is just a joke, you should probably know that some people have been jailed for decades because of jokes like these (see: avoiding the fbi, second chapter of the book above).
Obviously im up for debate, or else I wouldn’t make this post. And yes, I do stand for nonviolence.
(english is not my first language, im sorry if I made errors, or wansn’t clear.)
(if this is not pertinent, I can remake this post in c/politics or something)
(the book is The Anarchist Cookbook by Keith McHenry, if you are downloading from the internet, make sure you download it from the correct author, there is another book with the same name.)
I’m just gonna focus entirely on the common misunderstanding of the use of violence against Nazis in WWII because that’s such a common argument for punching nazis and it’s really quite wrong on so many levels.
“But Nazis were stopped by violence in WWII.” That’s a meaningless statement without the missing last word. Violence stopped Nazis militarily, after they had already seized power in Germany and were invading other countries. Today we’re not in a military battle with Nazis, we’re in an ideological battle.
So why did the Nazis seize power in Germany? Because they weren’t punched enough? Well the exact mechanism behind how the nazis seized power is a complex web of illegal political maneuvers, political violence, and yes, some degree of ideological success by the nazis. But a key part of that ideological success was the fear of political violence by their opponents - most notably the Reichstag fire - to justify the power that they were illegally taking. It was basically “desperate times require desperate measures”. So in the ideological battle, the perceived* use of violence by Nazi opponents was actually a key part of their victory within Germany.
Meanwhile, over in the US, the contrast between the violence employed by the German American Bund (the US version of the Nazi party) and largely Jewish peaceful protesters ended up being a massive embarrassment to the Bund from which they never recovered. Again, ideologically, non-violence proved quite effective.
Point being, and this should be obvious - violence is a really bad option for succeeding in an ideological battle. Yes, in a military battle, it’s the only rational option. But in an ideological battle, it’s actually counterproductive.
*Obligatory caveat that whether the Reichstag fire was actually set by nazi opponents remains debated, but suffice to say the political atmosphere at the time made it plausible.
Maybe if we just don’t fight the Nazis, they won’t be able to justify violence against us 🤡
Yeah let’s just allow roving gangs of brownshirts to run around attacking and terrorizing minorities because if we don’t they might stage an attack and the “atmosphere of violence” we’ve created by trying to keep people safe will allow them to blame it on us and seize power. The solution is to just allow them to seize power directly through force, without resistance.
This is nonsense. Nazis don’t need a justification to use force against you, they can literally just lie and make shit up, like they did with the Reichstag Fire. It doesn’t matter if it’s true because it’s directed at the weakest and most vulnerable and stigmatized populations, who have the least capacity to fight back and the fewest platforms to counter their narratives, and once they’re done with them they work their way up. They will create terror on the streets and then use the fact that the streets are full of terror to seize power. People are going to try to defend themselves when attacked whether you think they should or not, so the only question is whether that resistance is strong enough to actually work.
Yeah let’s just allow roving gangs of brownshirts to run around attacking and terrorizing minorities
Well that’s blatantly not the argument at all. The question isn’t whether to react, but what do you do about it?
The vast majority of fascist movements are destroyed through nonviolence rather than violence, which itself is typically inseparable from fascism. To refer to the post below, what ended Jim Crow? Was it a bunch of black people going around punching suspected Klan members? On the contrary it was the reverse. The Klan “lynching people and getting away with it” included key rallying points like the murders of Emmett Till, or the Mississippi Burning murders, along with state violence like the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sure, maybe the fascists themselves got away with it, but fascism didn’t. The things the Klan and other segregationists fought for were dismantled, in large part thanks to their own violent efforts.
Nazis don’t need a justification for their violence, but their enablers - Von Papen, or the would-be modern equivalent Mike Pence - do. And these enablers need to tell themselves, their family, and their neighbors, that they have good reasons for their decisions. Exposing fascism as the senseless violence it is robs them of that justification, while giving the fascists a threat to refer to provides it.
I only brought up Jim Crow in response to the claim that the the state will protect people and that there are ways to appeal the state of it doesn’t. The point being that having legal protections on paper is not always enough to keep people safe.
The “fascist enablers” don’t have consciences you can appeal to, because what drives them is money, and they are specifically selected for their willingness to serve capital and cause harm to innocent people. The system selects for sociopaths.
You analysis takes absolutely zero account of the systems or material conditions that exist which compel people to act in certain ways. Germany had an unemployment rate of 30% in 1932, but in your mind, it seems like the communists were only fighting because they wanted to and the capitalists were just reacting to that.
Had everyone on the left coordinated on mass nonviolent actions, like mass strikes for example, the capitalists would still have turned to the fascists in order to preserve their money and power. Violence or nonviolence doesn’t matter, what matters is whether their positions are threatened. You either never do anything to gain power in hopes of being able to beg your enemies for mercy, or you do whatever it takes to win so you don’t have to rely on that. The in between stuff where you pull your punches and try to disrupt things without defending yourself is the surest way to get yourself killed.
Yeah let’s just allow roving gangs of brownshirts to run around attacking and terrorizing minorities
There are mechanisms to stop, apprehend, and punish those who attack and terrorize communities already, without regard to ideology, and without violating the state’s monopoly on civil violence. There’s even recourse when those mechanisms don’t get a fair result.
Yeah, and those same mechanisms existed in the Jim Crow South but that didn’t stop the Klan from lynching people and getting away with it.
An under-appreciated fact about fascists is their karen-adjacent sense of entitlement and victimhood. Which will be amplified if they become the target of violence.
I’m convinced a lot of those “punch a Nazi” people just wanted an excuse to be violent, and just joined the movement because it gave them an excuse to be violent. In another universe they are joining those three percenter militias.
Hey, you guys are going Nazi punching? Can I join?
punching nazis is a meme at this point, which may sound good on paper, but in practice just mean the non-nazi going to jail and getting a criminal record
One worth bragging about to any and all future employers.
I’ll hire anyone instantly with that on their background check.
I’m not gonna do punch anyone but I’d unrepentantly nullify any nazi punching trial jury i end up on. If the movement develops legs that carry it in the wrong direction, I’ll cease supporting it. For now, I’ll grin at the pain of the deplorables.
Depends on the context, and how serious and violent the Nazi. If they’re just an isolated idiot who isn’t politically active and isn’t stupid or thick-headed enough to actually follow through on their claimed beliefs, then violence isn’t really justified. They’re an idiot, but not a threat. The problem is with anymore more dedicated or crazy than that. Past that point, you immediately get to people who want to murder or enslave hundreds of millions. Thats not hyperbolic, that’s literally the goal of Nazi beliefs, and a logical extention of almost every belief that stems out of it or is adjacent to it. In theory, yes, it’d be nice to be able to talk down people like this, or use existing systems of power to force them to places where there isn’t a risk of them trying to murder or enslave people, but unfortunately, when you’re talking about groups who don’t respect human lives, the law, or anyone but their designated, arbitrary in-group, then those aren’t always viable means. This is esspecially true if that person is already in a potition of power. Basically, if someone wants to kill you, you can’t always wait for them to successfully aquire the means to do so before acting. This isn’t hyperbole or metaphor, this is literally what we’re talking about here. The problem is in drawing a line of who is an actual threat, and if there are other means to “disarm” them.
Violence and nonviolence, in the face of violent, intolerant ideologies such as Nazism, or even colonoalism, is not as clear cut as it gets made out to be. I think primary arguments for violence are often misunderstood and taken out of context.
I don’t think it’s a moral question, as moral reasoning seems to lead to either 1. Violence is always wrong or 2. Violence is a moral imperative against certain enemies, for to do nothing is to permit and assent to the violence that they inflict. Neither of these absolutes are adequate within actual consequences, although both views definitely have to their credit historical circumstances where these strategies were arguably successful and progressive.
However i think there are important lessons on violence and nonviolence that can be learned from various historic examples:
-
Individual violence against individuals does not advance progressive goals. Individual violence merely strengthens the status quo against that violence, and can be used to justify mass violence of the state or militias against masses of people, usually a targeted minority.
-
Nonviolence tactics can be effective against state or military repression, but state and military roles in genocidal campaigns, or participation in extrajudicial violence shows that otherizing is effective at dehumanizing, and in order to be effective must consciously and effectively humanize the nonviolent activists to the oppressing forces in order to introduce contradictions into their justifications and create splits within the ruling classes of the oppressing powers. This is a long term strategy so you have to make sure that whoever you are nonviolent resisting isn’t gonna just kill everyone, which they will try to do, even if it is against their interests to do so.
-
Violence may be immediately necessary to protect human life, in the short term or in the long term. The fact is violent repression creates the conditions for violent resistance escalation of violence sharpens the contradictions already present in the status quo and creates splits among the various classes in an oppressor/oppressed dialectic. In this way violent resistance can galvanize both violent and nonviolent forms of resistance for your side, but it also does so for the other side. Therefore violence should be avoided if possible, but if violence is perceived as defensive or necessary it can have progressive or even revolutionary consequences on consciousness and material conditions.
So the conditions that introduce struggle and violence are social contradictions, not necessarily a conscious choice by individuals intending to do violence, although sometimes it is.
So for my part, as an American with that perspective, I’ve become fond of the concept of “armed nonviolent defense.” An example of this is the Deacons of Defense and Justice that proliferated in the south during desegregation. Groups of black men took up arms to defend their communities from Klan violence, and provided security for MLK, CORE; as well as forcing the Klan underground in the south for a generation or two. So organized citizens defending their communities and working together with political groups and revolutionaries to defend against violent reaction without the progressive political movement taking it upon itself to be a violent one.
This is an immense and complex topic and the rightness or wrongness of it is contingent on the historical conditions that are present. So understanding “correct” usages of violence and non violence doesn’t extend from our moral obligations, but our obligations to the real world, each other and the future of our movements.
-
Not at all serious. If I see a Nazi walking down the street, I’m more likely to ignore or avoid him rather than confront him.
If the Nazis take over and implement Project 2025, among other evil acts, then that’s a different situation.
The Nazies are currently taking over and implementing Project 2025.
I’ve been called a nazi on here for suggesting precisely that we shouldn’t punch nazis solely for being nazis so I’m assuming it’s serious for at least some people.
solely for being nazis
At what point do you think it’s okay to punch a nazi?
You should never punch them. Ever.
If it comes to war, you should kill them with guns because they’ll certainly use guns against you. Otherwise we’re all just talking.
Either we settle these disagreements as a civil society, or we settle them with civil war. Talking, or guns. It’s never punching, so you never punch Nazis.
If they’re being violent themselves, or actively advocating for it (as in: in a way that could reasonably cause others to be violent). I’m also not gonna try to stop anyone for punching someone throwing out slurs, though I don’t think it’s a great response. If it’s just “i know this person is a nazi for whatever reason but they act like a normal person” I’m clearly against it and think the punching person is also in the wrong (to be clear, both are). Advocating violence against a group for their beliefs is just something I never consider okay, even if I think those beliefs make them the scum of the earth.
And even with all that I’d probably still press the magic button that makes all nazis drop dead, but mainly because I believe that would probably improve society quite a bit rather than because I think it is justified against them (since I would argue that really isn’t any different from genocide even if it doesn’t quite fit the definiton). That might make me a bit of a hypocrite, but it’s not like that button will ever exist.
My great grandfather would have shot them. He did shoot them. For King and Country. And I’m proud of this fact 😎🇬🇧
I’m surprised no one seems to have mentioned the Paradox of Tolerance. Essentially if you tolerate intolerance, the intolerants will eventually cease power and make an intolerant society, the only way a society can become truly tolerant is by being intolerant towards intolerance.
It’s paradoxical, but makes absolute sense. If you allow Nazis to spread their ideology eventually there will be enough Nazis to be able to take the power by force, and when they do they’ll setback all of the tolerance that was advanced. The only way to prevent it is by cutting the evil at the root and prevent Nazis from spreading their ideology.
Personally I believe that punching a person who hasn’t tried to attack me or anyone is wrong. But the moment someone openly preaches that someone else must be exterminated they’re inciting violence which can encourage others to act on it, to me, morally speaking, attacking that person is as much self defense as if they were commiting the act themselves.
Would I personally punch a person because they’re spewing hate? Probably not, I would probably try to talk to them and understand their point of view and try to convince them otherwise, since I believe that punching them would make the person close himself to any reasoning from outside of his group, which would make him more Nazi than before. But I also don’t think it’s morally wrong to do so, it’s just not the optimal way of dealing with it.
Which people are tolerant and which people are intolerant is less obvious than it looks.
Like if you say “the Jews should be eliminated” then most everyone will recognize you as a Nazi unless you say it in Arabic and have a brown face, at which point punching you is a hate crime.
attacking that person is as much self defense as if they were commiting the act themselves.
With what level of force are you going to attack them? Surely a bloody nose isn’t going to be enough to dissuade them. So are we talking broken bones? Loss of an eye? Or force to the extent that they die from it? After all nothing’s safer than a dead attacker.
Ok but now you’re the one talking about extermination… so what do we do with you? The problem with the Paradox of Tolerance is that there’s a Paradox of Intolerance, too.
Yes, I agree, it’s not always black in white, but your example is a bad example, I don’t care the language someone says that, “The Jews should be eliminated” is an intolerant statement, just as much as “The Muslims should be eliminated”, regardless of who says it, it’s intolerant and should not be excused by someone’s skin color.
Also we must clarify if we’re talking about moral or legal argument, as I said morally I think you’re okay punching someone in the face when they said you should be eliminated, legally you should probably have some proof of that.
With what level of force are you going to attack them?
With forço proportional to the threat, just like the moral basis for any any self defense. You can’t shoot someone who pushed you, but someone who threaten your life is morally (and if you have proof of the threat and it is believable also legally) fair game. Same thing applies here, someone stating “X should be prevented from voting” should not legally be allowed to be punched, but should have his voting rights removed temporarily.
Or force to the extent that they die from it? After all nothing’s safer than a dead attacker.
Yes, if they threaten your, or anyone’s, life then killing them is self defense and morally okay in my opinion. So someone claiming “all X should be exterminated” can morally be killed.
Ok but now you’re the one talking about extermination… so what do we do with you? The problem with the Paradox of Tolerance is that there’s a Paradox of Intolerance, too.
Yes, that’s why it’s a paradox, it wouldn’t be a paradox if it didn’t have some contradiction in it. But that contradiction is easy to fix, in my examples X must be a superset of people that includes tolerant people. This means that Jews or Muslims are an invalid X, since there are tolerant Jews or Muslims, but “people who wish (non-X) dead” are not, e.g. “people who wish Muslims dead” are a valid X.
Maybe I missed it being mentioned elsewhere, but I think the writeup I’m familiar fits well with this angle of the discussion. Basically, it says tolerance is a social contract that we’re all born into and protected by so long as we uphold our part of the contract (by being tolerant.) If you are intolerant then you break that contract and are no longer protected by it, therefore making intolerance toward you acceptable and not a breach of the contract for others.
(Also, I agree that religions/race/etc are invalid for judging somebody’s tolerance)
It’s not a paradox if you see it as a social contract where every side is equally bound and protected by. Failure to abide by this means you are not protected.
100% agree with your message, but just for clarity’s sake I believe you meant “the intolerant will eventually ‘seize’” as in take, like a seizure of assets. Cease is putting an end to something.
Normally I wouldn’t bother to correct someone, but the irony of the mistake is that it contradicts your intended message by saying that if you tolerate intolerance, it will cease to exist.
Thanks for the correction, I’ve edited the comment, indeed that could be missinterpreted.
This precise argument can also be made to justify a tightening on immigration from countries where religious intolerance is the cultural norm, on the grounds that “if you allow [them] to spread their ideology eventually there will be enough [of them] to be able to take the power by force, and when they do they’ll setback all of the tolerance that was advanced”. Reasonable?
Not reasonable because you’re making a broad generalization that everyone in that country will be intolerant. I’m in favor of facilitating immigration, in fact I’m an immigrant myself, but I do believe that specific people who have intolerant views of others should not be allowed to immigrate.
For example (since this is the most obvious example for immigration), not all Muslims are intolerant, lots of them just want to live a normal life, follow their religion and are okay with others following theirs. Other Muslims are intolerant towards different religions or ways of life, just like how you have Christians who think the same. If you make a broad statement of “all Muslim immigrants are intolerant” you’re the one being intolerant, if you say “People who are not okay with LGBT+ rights or freedom of religion should not be allowed to immigrate” then I’m okay with that statement. But in reality the majority of people who oppose immigration also oppose LGBT+ and freedom of religion so it’s unlikely they’ll use this argument.
Also I think that as a general rule immigration requires adaptation, if you’re interested in moving to another country you should adapt to the culture (and even more importantly the laws) of that place. To give a somewhat innocuous example of this, here in Europe is common for women to expose their breasts when going to the beach, in other parts of the world (possibly including the US) people would be horrified and demand that they’re forced to cover themselves, in fact I can imagine a stereotypical US Karen demanding that someone covers their breasts because their kid will see them, but curiously I’ve never seen that happen. In fact I’ve even seen Muslim women on the beach, covered from head to toe with special made swimsuits, in the beach near others who were sunbathing and neither of them complained about the other, they just enjoyed their day at the beach their own way. That Muslim woman was likely an immigrant, yet she understands that this is not the same country she grew up, it has different rules and different culture, and she’s okay with it, she teaches her values and her culture to their kids, but also teaches them that they need to respect others, and those kind of immigrants not a problem, unlike an intolerant co-citizen.
Not reasonable because you’re making a broad generalization
Generalizations are broad by nature, that does not mean they have no value.
But in reality the majority of people who oppose immigration also oppose LGBT+ and freedom of religion so it’s unlikely they’ll use this argument.
Can’t speak for the USA but that is absolutely not the case in Europe.
Otherwise you make some decent points. In any case, IMO discussions like this would benefit if we accepted from the outset that nobody is going to be convincing others to change their opinions. The best that can be hoped for is to understand the opposing side better. That would be an achievement in itself.
I didn’t say that they provide no value, I said that the argument of you can’t tolerate intolerance can’t be used to advocate intolerance towards a group that contains tolerant people, even if the majority of them were not then the argument applies to those specific people, not to the group as a whole.
Congratulations you found the paradox part of the argument! However one of these is not like the other
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/neo-nazi
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/
Neither of the links seems to mention immigrants from intolerant countries, so I’m not sure how they’re relevant to the comment you’re replying to.
These sources don’t prove anything. This is about values. If you want to convince people who are not already on your side then you need to begin there.
These sources don’t prove anything. This is about values. If you want to convince people who are not already on your side then you need to begin there.
Sources often don’t convince the opposing party in an argument, especially in a political one. You’re not my audience, I already know you’re anchored in your convictions. You may as well be an LLM or a useful idiot manipulated by misinformation. I don’t care.
You’re not my audience. I don’t care what you think. I’m providing a counterpoint for folk that haven’t researched or haven’t made up their mind.
You’re not my audience,
That’s a good point and I work to this principle myself. So my observation was pretty redundant, yes.
I already know you’re anchored in your convictions
To the extent you know anything about me, I also “know” that your own convictions are just as unmovable.
Looked at another way, it’s a good thing to have convictions.
K
What you are describing is actually the simple truth that many worldviews and the beliefs and values that stem from them are incompatible and cannot coexist. This is the fundamental problem with the first ammendment. It assumes that people are exercising beliefs that are not diametrically opposed to each other.
They want my wife and children dead. If they are near my family, they pose an existential threat. I will leave saving the proverbial souls of neo Nazis to others. I am interested in establishing that my family is off limits and dangerous for them to so much as look at.
Would I throw a punch at a confirmed Nazi? Without hesitation.
Some people learn to shed the racism from their heart and become better people. Some will only get so far as keeping quiet because they are afraid. There will always be severely racist people. It is just as important that they feel unequivocally unwelcome as it is to change those who will change.
My thoughts are that most people in this discussion have little idea what the word Nazi actually means and that therefore this silly question is a bit of an insult to the victims of Nazism.
Just found one in the wild last week. He had many Nazi Germany references on his shirt. These people run around in Germany and no one cares. So who is insulting the victims of Nazism again?
That’s a specific case that doesn’t falsify my claim that most people in this discussion, here, are inflating away the meaning of the word Nazi so that it equates to, roughly, “somebody I don’t like who is to the right of me politically”.
Tbf it’s impossible to falsify your claim, since it’s just a claim without any argument or example.
I could just say “most people here know what they’re talking about” and you wouldn’t be able to falsify that.
The whole “Punch a Nazi Day!” has two origins:
Captain America #1 - 12/20/1940 - A full YEAR before the US entered the war:
Right Wing Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched during a live interview:
Anarchism isn’t non-violent. To assume anti-oppression and pacifism are one and the same is to make the same mistake Engels makes in On Authority.
Authority is violent, but violence is not authority.
Edit: on this topic I’d recommend Anark’s video on Power, where he explains that anarchism seeks to create a horizontal power structure. It is not the absence of power structures, it displaces oppressive power structures with egalitarian ones.
