Can’t upvote enough. Antifa make themselves much more like their opposition than they think by resorting to violence. It’s a whole lot more fun to think of yourself on this grandoise crusade-battle. The irony.
My grandfather suffered a lifetime of PTSD after having to shoot Nazis during WWII. I went to a few of his unit's reunions and have met a number of other veterans of that war.
One thing I've never heard from a single one of them was bragging about shooting a Nazi.
They suffered years and years of nightmares for having to shoot persons. They were looking through their guns sites and saw people -- young men who looked just like themselves or their brothers.
Maybe there were some who came home and bragged, but to highlight those stories does an incredible disservice to the vast majority of the others. There were things they bragged about, but shooting humans wasn't a common reason for pride.
* Because we're not in a theater of war and they're not enemy combatants.
* Because we're no better than them if we inflict wanton violence on people we would rather not have around.
* Because it's taking the bait. The whole point in kindling all this anger is bring out the worst in everyone and show the world 'the intolerant left' and stupid 'punch a Nazi' bullshit only proves their point. The more these people are silenced, attacked and marginalized by 'leftists' in power the more they're able to show just how much power 'the left' wields.
Yet they are also people too, regardless of how disgusting their beliefs.
Edit: I should've probably known better than to reply to an obvious straw man. Arguing that responding to nazis with violence isn't necessarily the best thing is hardly advocating "tolerance"
nazis were a german political group. they were a member of the axis forces which fought and lost against the allied forces in ww2. that group doesn't exist anymore.
so-called "nazis" that people refer to today are largely just people subjected to lazy labeling.
Would you say that someone who believes in the Communist Manifesto, is convinced by the arguments in Das Capital, who’s heroes are Lenin and Trotsky, joins a Union, tries to organise labour industrial action, writes articles for newspapers and magazines promoting communism, tries to persuade people of communist goals and values is not a communist because they are not a member of any particular formal communist party? I believe Trotsky died without being a member of a communist party. Was he not a communist? Was Goering not a Nazi when he died, and all the former members of the communist party stop being Nazis with the end of the war?
I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but why do you think that approach is useful? What does it offer us that the more straightforward approach of judging people by their convictions, statements and actions does not?
well, 'communists' aren't a specific political group that are tied to a particular time and place. a 'communist' is broadly one who supports 'communism', often as described by marx.
is there a nonzero number of people who wholly subscribe to the nazi party's politcal platform, and want that specific party to be reborn? i suppose that's likely.
however, the word 'nazi' is used to describe a vast swath of people who have little in common with them. reagan, bush sr and bush jr were nazis. jewish political commentator ben shapiro is a nazi. it's all somewhat absurd.
all calling someone a nazi - at least those that don't label themselves as such - does is curb thought, agitate emotions and rationalize violence (rather poorly, i might add).
this doesn't address the argument. people who say it's okay to 'punch nazis' are the same people who hit people with bike locks, assault people, destroy property and torture people. all you have to do is label a person you dislike a 'nazi' and it's a thoughtless greenlight for righteous bloodshed and alienation.
>is there a nonzero number of people who wholly subscribe to the nazi party's politcal platform, and want that specific party to be reborn? i suppose that's likely
That's about as truthful as, "Did Hitler kill Jews? i suppose that's likely."
i don't know what you mean by 'truthful'. it's not wrong, and it's simply a nod to possibility, as that wasn't even the argument. this is just a waste of time on a tangent so someone feels like they had some kind of point.
further, your comparison doesn't seem very apt. you're talking about a historical event. compared to applying labels to people today who haven't necessarily identified as those labels, as a way to rationalize and endorse violence.
> i don't know what you mean by 'truthful'. it's not wrong, and it's simply a nod to possibility, as that wasn't even the argument.
Yes, it is wrong. Saying something is "likely" to occur, is the same as saying there is some doubt. There isn't.
>this is just a waste of time on a tangent so someone feels like they had some kind of point.
Then why are you adamant about it? Do you have to "win" every argument? The poster was right, you could have said so.
> further, your comparison doesn't seem very apt. you're talking about a historical event. compared to applying labels to people today who haven't necessarily identified as those labels, as a way to rationalize and endorse violence.
I was just trying to quickly show why what you wrote wasn't truthful via an example. Instead it seems I had to spell it out.
i can imagine that there is a nonzero number of people who might label themselves that way, but for any given label you can probably find at least one person who might use it on themselves.
what i mean is that 'nazi' is a term used to lazily and reductively describe a disparate swath of individuals. it's manner of use is as a thought-terminating cliche and cheap emotional appeal.
perhaps ironically, thuggish violence against actual nazis in their nascent days (not to say they didn't engage in their own) drove some amount of public sympathy and attracted support.
My sister's grandfather was a Nazi soldier. He became a PoW, ending up a Canadian. Eventually married someone who had had to flee Germany. He didn't need to be shot, he'd been a kid put to serve his country
Was he really a Nazi? He could be a German soldier in World War Two without being a Nazi, just as a Russian could have fought in WW2 against the Germans without being a Communist.
Indeed. But that goes to show that Americans weren't "shooting at Nazis" in WW2. They were shooting at German soldiers, because that's what you do in a war.
