Far-right activist Richard Spencer is punched on camera while being interviewed - General

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;51711265]To punch or not to punch a Nazi. I've been thinking about the Daryl Davis guy, he did something extraordinary for sure. But I'm not sure if it was something unique to when he did it. The KKK hasn't been anywhere near as prolific, violent, and powerful as they were in the 60s. In 1985 I can definitely still see how the KKK can be attractive to people, but in 2017 we live in an age of infinite free knowledge and global interaction from the internet. I think there's a good chance that yeah, throughout recent American history you really had a good chance to logically convince someone that racism is wrong. But Richard Spencer isn't some poor Appalachian southern kid from the south who got sucked up into the KKK because he had no options and was brainwashed, and with almost no interaction with black people to begin with. His dad was an eye doctor from Dallas and he graduated from college with multiple degrees. He's had plenty of opportunities in his life to see the error of his ways, but he absolutely cannot connect on a basic human level with people just because he sees the color of their skin, or even if they are white he learns they are jewish, or if they are gay. [b]He wants these people dead.[/b] He's that dangerous, insidious kind of radical where he doesn't look like some fringe crazy, you don't immediately know hes racist and when you talk to him hes not screaming in your face just because you're black. But he still wants you dead. I think that in our age if someone is so hardcore set in his beliefs, it's not because he just hasn't met a real gosh darn nice black person, it's because something really is wrong with them. So the problem to me is you can't just debate everyone out of their political views. Spend 10 minutes on the internet and you can learn that. You can type an immaculate 300 paragraph response to someone and they'll call you a faggot and tell you to kill yourself. The problem is that when your opposition is a nazi, they skip straight to the death part. If Winston Churchill decided to punch a Nazi before he got big, WW2 as we know it might not have happened. Now we've got alt-righters flocking to Trump, and under his wing you've got everyone who just simply wants less immigration, to those who think he really is going to remove all the jews from America. The man they adore is in power and no one stopped him, and they think they have free reign over the country now, like it's okay to be a Nazi now that daddy Trump won, as if /pol/ was just a pustule waiting for the right president to burst on us with. But it's undeniably true that meeting them with violence only reinforces them. I made up the term escalation of radicalism recently. All it takes is one side to rise up, and the other feels it's their obligation to meet and surpass it, so on and so on. But nothing stops them from sitting there feeling smug and righteous all the time on the internet either. All it takes is for them to find out the attacker eats poo poo and then it's like a double victory because it fits their agenda. With a Nazi I'm not sure you're ever going to win.[/QUOTE] here's the difference between LE GRAND DRAGON OF THE LE KKK and richard spencer - members of the KKK were/are predominantly poor rural whites who hate black people because they've been raised to hate blacks for a bunch of paper-thin dumb reasons. I'm entirely unsurprised that all those KKK members' beliefs basically obliterated on contact with a real life black guy. what makes that story incredible (and to be fair, I hadn't heard it before) is that Daryl Davis had the sheer bravery and audacity to approach and befriend people who fucking lynched his kind. it is incredible that he did that.

[QUOTE=Turnips5;51711324]here's the difference between LE GRAND DRAGON OF THE LE KKK and richard spencer - members of the KKK were/are predominantly poor rural whites who hate black people because they've been raised to hate blacks for a bunch of paper-thin dumb reasons. I'm entirely unsurprised that all those KKK members' beliefs basically obliterated on contact with a real life black guy.[/QUOTE] The KKK thing was a valid point, sure this one guy might not be salvagable but that wasnt the point of what he was saying when he mentioned the Grand Dragon going back on his old ways. No need to be a dick.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;51711309]But here's the rub: what will alter him mentally? He's been on this tirade for years, and has not changed his viewpoints regardless of any sort of rational debate or discourse that's been directed towards him. This is what your average white supremacist/nazi looks like. They're either so intentionally dense or tightly rooted within their own prejudice that they're unlikely to recede from it. The only thing that can stop this sort of thing from happening is better education and larger cultural shifts, which are incredibly slow moving and sweeping changes, and simply will not change people that already believe this stuff. Fighting ignorance is preventative. By the time people figure that this sort of thing is unacceptable, we might have already experienced the genocide these people are advocating for. Or worse, this sort of thinking will become a significant ideology.[/QUOTE] You can't change what he thinks, but you can surely change what other people think of him. To that end, I don't see physical violence helping as it may push the more moderate fellows in his direction as they could view his opposition as violent and him as a victim. We see the alt-right using violent protests and threats coming from leftists as to "expose" the left, and it can be effective. I think the answer is simply, and what has worked so far, is to ridicule people who have these beliefs. Not necessarily censorship, but to reinforce the social stigma.

[QUOTE=AaronM202;51711362]The KKK thing was a valid point, sure this one guy might not be salvagable but that wasnt the point of what he was saying when he mentioned the Grand Dragon going back on his old ways. No need to be a dick.[/QUOTE] I don't think he was trying to be a dick. He has a point. The views and the context behind them of the KKK and Nazis are largely incongruent.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;51711381]I don't think he was trying to be a dick. He has a point. The views and the context behind them of the KKK and Nazis are largely incongruent.[/QUOTE] I was mainly referring to his witty "LE GRAND DRAGON OF THE LE KKK" shit which is unnecessary.

[QUOTE=tehMuffinMan;51711378]You can't change what he thinks, but you can surely change what other people think of him. To that end, I don't see physical violence helping as it may push the more moderate fellows in his direction as they could view his opposition as violent and him as a victim. We see the alt-right using violent protests and threats coming from leftists as to "expose" the left, and it can be effective. I think the answer is simply, and what has worked so far, is to ridicule people who have these beliefs. Not necessarily censorship, but to reinforce the social stigma.[/QUOTE] I agree with this to a certain extent. What we really should be examining is how people like him get to this point. Because from what I've heard, anything from saying that he's a racist to making light of him is how Trump won and how the alt-right rose to prominence.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;51711381]I don't think he was trying to be a dick. He has a point. The views and the context behind them of the KKK and Nazis are largely incongruent.[/QUOTE] The bit about the KKK and Daryl Davis is really just to lead into the point that Spencer is a white guy who has had every opportunity to see how what he thinks is fucked up, yet he continues to advocate racial genocide. I figured most people in the thread google'd the guy a few pages ago and so would be familiar with the story. I don't know what the purpose of LE GRAND MEME DRAGON stuff is but it was only 60 years ago that the KKK was prolifically lynching people. The organization is basically dead now but as I said before, Spencer is an insidious kind of radical. He knows what hes doing for the most part, aligning yourself with the KKK is still bad PR. As in instead of getting punched in an interview, getting stabbed.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;51711403]I agree with this to a certain extent. What we really should be examining is how people like him get to this point. Because from what I've heard, anything from saying that he's a racist to making light of him is how Trump won and how the alt-right rose to prominence.[/QUOTE] It was the mainstream conservatives wrongly being called bigots that pushed a large crowd of them to Trump, rather than actual racists being belittled as they were likely with Trump from day one. On r/The_Donald you see a lot of people making defensive posts along the lines of "Upvote if you aren't racist, here's a picture of a black man in a MAGA cap" because they are vindicated by the regressive left/SJWs who are overly accusing and at times violent which only cements the alt-right's rhetoric in some people's eyes and pushes them into those beliefs. everyone's shit

[QUOTE=Turnips5;51711324]here's the difference between LE GRAND DRAGON OF THE LE KKK and richard spencer - members of the KKK were/are predominantly poor rural whites who hate black people because they've been raised to hate blacks for a bunch of paper-thin dumb reasons. I'm entirely unsurprised that all those KKK members' beliefs basically obliterated on contact with a real life black guy.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Duck M.;51711381]I don't think he was trying to be a dick. He has a point. The views and the context behind them of the KKK and Nazis are largely incongruent.[/QUOTE] It wasn't on contact, it was years. Richard Kelly was in the KKK for 20 years, 1979-1999. It was a process that took years. And no, I'd say the views of the Nazis and KKK overlap quite often. These snippets are from a Washington Post article from 1991 about Roger Kelly and his at the time failing marriage. [quote]Then things began to go bad in the marriage. It wasn't the dual sixpacks every night -- she got him to ease off on that. No, it more or less started the day she was dusting the desk and opened his drawer and discovered his Secret. Then there was the morning she found all the tires on the car had been slashed. And the night they came home and someone had shot out the living room windows. And the time one of the Dobermans got loose and pinned her in her car. It just got to be too much. At work, even, people began to ridicule her. After all, she was married to him. Him, Roger Kelly. The Grand Dragon, Maryland Realm, Invincible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The big man towers over the little woman. He is screaming at her. [B]"Gimme that film, you little Jew bitch!"[/B] She is a photographer, he is a Klan member, and they are having a disagreement. He keeps using the same words over and over, as if maybe he hasn't quite made himself clear.[/quote] [quote]The ceremony opens. A thin woman in cammies and a bush hat leads the Lord's Prayer but stumbles just before the bit about "deliver us from evil" and has to be prompted. The first speaker is "Barry Black from Pennsylvania," also in fatigues, whose topics range from "fags and porch monkeys" all the way up to [B]"Bush -- the kike Bush, I call him, because he is a Jew.[/B]" Next is "Jack Carroll from Maryland" who says he "got brain damage" when he fell between two railroad cars "because of them niggers." Then "Matt from Virginia" takes over on the matter of "that whorehouse in Washington we call the federal government. I am a bigot, I am a racist, and I don't care who knows it." By contrast, Grand Dragon Kelly seems almost refined -- if just as mad. "The Klan taught me life and how to deal with it," he says. "My comrades and my white warriors, I'm proud of each and every one of my Klansmen and Klanladies. We are free from the burden that held us back!" Then he gets down to it. "The black race," he continues, "is in-festering our race and dragging it down to their level." Alleged black criminals "ain't even human beings, they're monkeys." And keeping everyone in the dark is the [B]"funneled-down Jewish news."[/B][/quote] [quote]Kelly has obviously sought to tone down his crude rhetoric. He tries not to use the N-word too often, and repeatedly insists that he's simply a segregationist, not a white supremacist. His problem is that the truth keeps slipping out. When pressed, he finally gets it down to this: "I'm not saying the whites are superior or anything like that, 'cause I still believe that the Chinese race are, not really superior, but there are some Chinese that's smarter than whites... . But I'd say, overall, I'd say it would be the Chinese and the whites and then the Indians and then the blacks."[/quote] [url]https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/11/16/the-fire-of-the-grand-dragon/e9ff5ad3-38eb-4a77-954f-31a2d8dc0b8f/[/url] I also found this article about Kelly when he quit, and while I'd say his opinions still aren't the best (didn't want his daughter to marry a black man) - he definitely did seem to moderate down quite a bit from even 8 years prior. [url]http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/1999/199930/frederickcty/county/a20623-1.html[/url] [QUOTE=Turnips5;51711324]what makes that story incredible (and to be fair, I hadn't heard it before) is that Daryl Davis had the sheer bravery and audacity to approach and befriend people who fucking lynched his kind. it is incredible that he did that.[/QUOTE] for me what's fascinating is that it really started off as just finding out what makes racists tick, spurred on by events such as this [quote]Some years later, a teacher brought the head of the American Nazi Party as a speaker to his 10th grade class. As he remembers it, the man declared, "We're going to ship you back to Africa. And all you Jews out there are going back to Israel ... If they don't leave voluntarily they will be exterminated in the coming race war."[/Quote]

[Media]https://twitter.com/Choplogik/status/823373079074091008[/media]

if you have to get violent, you shouldn't enjoy it. you should be weeping that it had come to that. enjoying the violence is very dangerous, IMO

Do people often forget that the reason WWII got started due to the fact the UK and the French got way too cocky with the treaty after WWI thus putting Germany in an extremely shit economic situation, the people in Germany got really depressed and they were willing to listen to anyone of an idea to get out of it? Do people not realize Trump got this power because US media got too cocky and kept making jokes about it while lots of people that heard them go "Hey wouldn't the punchline be even funnier if he actually got it?".

A bit off-topic here but I find it pretty disheartening that neo-nazi and racist groups have sullied the whole concept of "white pride", I think being proud of your race, culture or identity whatever isn't a bad thing as-long as you don't go as far to say one race is objectively better. I'm a Mixture of Anglo-Indian, Scottish and English and I take a great amount of pride in what my ancestors did and who they were as a people. So I find it a bit sad when I see stuff like "Take this white pride" or "white pride doesn't belong in this century" but I do understand at the same time the people saying those stuff are generally saying it against the tainted nazi/white supremacist concept of white pride what is really just white supremacy. And by the way this is coming from me a brown-olive person.

[QUOTE=Slim Charles;51713428]A bit off-topic here but I find it pretty disheartening that neo-nazi and racist groups have sullied the whole concept of "white pride"[/QUOTE] You just have to be sneaky about it. Gotta be more specific than just "white pride". Go for some Scottish pride and nobody will bat an eye.

[QUOTE=Streecer;51704149]Why should we give oxygen to a group that believes others to be sub-human.[/QUOTE] Do you people completely lack self-awareness? "I hate fascism so much that I'm gonna murder everyone who doesn't agree with me". Just fucking wow. [QUOTE=Streecer;51704149]This complacency was the cause of the holocaust and ultimately WW2[/QUOTE] No. Germans were heavily kept down and had shitload of reparations to pay after WW1. They felt oppressed. And then someone came along and used that very feeling to gain support and to rally people. And now Spencer is going to use what happened to him as a legitimization of his ideas. You people talk how we shouldn't "legitimize" their ideas by debating them. Don't you realize that you legitimize them by violence? All you do is validate their beliefs. Yeah you use reason to combat these people. Debate him or prove him wrong in an article or something. It doesn't even matter if you can't change Spencer's mind, there will be other people hearing/reading it. If you don't make it clear why he's in the wrong, then why would someone rather follow you and not him? If you tell people that earth is round but you don't prove it in any way then you are on an equal footing with someone who's telling people that the earth is flat. It's going to come to the appeal of you and your idea and since you are violent and he isn't you might lose this.

Thread: [media]https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/823319604386791424[/media] General gist: The Nazis came to power because they were allowed to be heard by the democratic platform, reached enough disenfranchised people to gain critical mass, then dissolved the platforms that had allowed them to get there in the first place. Yeah, no one knew that would happen at the time, but we do now, and are in a position where we can refuse to repeat the mistakes of the past. Liberalism's insistence on debating with Nazis is what let them gain power in the first place. Insistence on letting everyone be heard is the insistence that democracy must be allowed to end itself, and I'm fairly certain none of you are advocating for the end of democracy. Some positions [i]must[/i] be excluded from the discourse - such as, y'know, positions that don't even try to hide the fact that they have genocide as one of their core ideals. Saying "oh but that's fascism! That's hypocritical!" is like saying a cop is a hypocrite for shooting an active shooter. Which I'm sure none of you would say, right? And to the smarmy guys in the thread going "well if violence is the only thing that works against Nazis then how come there are still Nazis after WW2?" - yeah, you're right, there ARE Nazis after WW2. ...Except you'll notice that they aren't in control of any countries, and have been successfully beaten down to the point where they're having to re-brand themselves, and have only just now, sixty years later, started to crawl back in from the fringes of the political discourse, desperately trying to redo what they already managed once. Refusing to entertain Nazis in the discourse, refusing to debate them, rejecting them from the political sphere - good shit. The goodest of shit. Punching them every now and then, while legally is wrong, is ethically completely sound in my opinion, because ignoring them is only gonna get us some of the way there. I've yet to see an argument for engaging them in debate that isn't "they'll look silly" like that's gonna affect people who already hold racist positions, or "look at these three times where racists were turned around that definitely happens a lot and are definitely not notable because they're exceptions to the rule" [editline]23rd January 2017[/editline] i'm also expecting a lot of "based on that first tweet i'm not even gonna read it" replies

As someone who was violently beaten for no good reason by my father I can easily say that violence only makes things much worse, no matter how scummy the other person is. Also, denouncing physical assault =/= defending or upholding Nazi beliefs

Also another key point: The Nazi Party lost some popularity for awhile, but because of the threat of communism and polarization, they were able to get the popularity they needed.

If you're gonna go after nazis and make them the exception to the law, allowing you to punch them and so on. You're gonna weaken the system you're trying to defend. Democracy and rule of law. You're proving yourself not to be behaving better towards them than the nazis would be towards you. And if they don't return the violence, who is the one legitimizing violence then? It isn't those nazis, you despise.

[QUOTE=RB33;51714318]If you're gonna go after nazis and make them the exception to the law, allowing you to punch them and so on. You're gonna weaken the system you're trying to defend. Democracy and rule of law. You're proving yourself not to be behaving better towards them than the nazis would be towards you. And if they don't return the violence, who is the one legitimizing violence then? It isn't those nazis, you despise.[/QUOTE] right, because "weakening" democracy by not allowing people who are literally Nazis to participate in the discourse is definitely worse than standing by and allowing it to die outright

[QUOTE=bdd458;51701523]have you thought that maybe an actual conversation might help a little bit more? [url]http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/the-audacity-of-talking-about-race-with-the-klu-klux-klan/388733/[/url] Conversation only helped a leader of the KKK give up the KKK, no biggie or anything, would have been better to punch him[/QUOTE] Spencer runs the alt-right media ship which is incredibly lucrative. Discussions aren't going to change his outlook anytime soon

[QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714338]right, because "weakening" democracy by not allowing people who are literally Nazis to participate in the discourse is definitely worse than standing by and allowing it to die outright[/QUOTE] You can use violence, once they are actually a threat. Not when they are peacefully bashing on minorities while pretending to not be nazis. If you're using violence against them for simply existing, you're normalizing violence and making a society where violence is the solution. Instead of debating, it becomes acceptable to punch each other instead. And when you are the one punching and the other one is not, that's only contributing to portray them as victims.

[QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714223]General gist: The Nazis came to power because they were allowed to be heard by the democratic platform, reached enough disenfranchised people to gain critical mass, then dissolved the platforms that had allowed them to get there in the first place. Yeah, no one knew that would happen at the time, but we do now, and are in a position where we can refuse to repeat the mistakes of the past. Liberalism's insistence on debating with Nazis is what let them gain power in the first place.[/QUOTE] Bullshit. Germans felt oppressed and Hitler used it as a drive for his influence. That was the reason why someone who's extreme could win. There wasn't anything special in "nazism" itself that made it popular, it was exploitation of people's concerns and feelings that made it win then. You are making it sound like allowing nazis to talk will inevitably lead to them taking power. [QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714223]Insistence on letting everyone be heard is the insistence that democracy must be allowed to end itself, and I'm fairly certain none of you are advocating for the end of democracy. Some positions [i]must[/i] be excluded from the discourse - such as, y'know, positions that don't even try to hide the fact that they have genocide as one of their core ideals. Saying "oh but that's fascism! That's hypocritical!" is like saying a cop is a hypocrite for shooting an active shooter. Which I'm sure none of you would say, right?[/QUOTE] No it's more like a police officer killing a guy preemptively, before the shooting. [QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714223]And to the smarmy guys in the thread going "well if violence is the only thing that works against Nazis then how come there are still Nazis after WW2?" - yeah, you're right, there ARE Nazis after WW2. ...Except you'll notice that they aren't in control of any countries, and have been successfully beaten down to the point where they're having to re-brand themselves, and have only just now, sixty years later, started to crawl back in from the fringes of the political discourse, desperately trying to redo what they already managed once.[/QUOTE] They aren't in control in any countries because almost everybody knows it's fucking terrible. Because "nazi" and "fascist" are extremely stigmatized. But that's because that just happened. And like you said, they are starting to crawl back, because the stigma and memory is slowly wearing off. That's why you have to remind everyone WHY and HOW nazism and fascism is awful. Fists don't do that. [QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714223]Refusing to entertain Nazis in the discourse, refusing to debate them, rejecting them from the political sphere - good shit. The goodest of shit. Punching them every now and then, while legally is wrong, is ethically completely sound in my opinion, because ignoring them is only gonna get us some of the way there. I've yet to see an argument for engaging them in debate that isn't "they'll look silly" like that's gonna affect people who already hold racist positions, or "look at these three times where racists were turned around that definitely happens a lot and are definitely not notable because they're exceptions to the rule"[/QUOTE] 1. They won't look silly, they will be proven immoral, wrong and destructive. Which you are not going to do by simply saying "nazism is terrible". 2. You are making it look like people are born nazis and never change. Yeah you won't change the minds of people who already have really entrenched position but not everyone is like that. And people won't change their views entirely in 5 minutes and then stand up and admit that they were wrong. So you're not going to see the effects immediately. 3. How do you expect to get everyone on board with you to believe that nazism is awful if the only thing you're going to say about nazism is that it's awful? You need to say why it's awful. That's the fucking point. Like I said before, if you want to convince people that Earth is round and you're not presenting any evidence, you are on equal-footing with someone who's telling people that the Earth is flat. Then it's not a matter of facts but matter of convincing and if the flat-earther is a better speaker than you, you fucking lose.

[QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714223]"look at these three times where racists were turned around that definitely happens a lot and are definitely not notable because they're exceptions to the rule"[/QUOTE] Want to know why I used those three cases? Because they're notable, because they're important people - around 200 members of the KKK swayed by essentially one guy on a quest to figure out what makes racists tick. Because there are news articles about them. It was actually on the comments for one of the articles on Davis that I read a comment from a gentlemen, who said he's from Texas. Now, this guy living in the deep south also happens to be Mexican. And what he said was in direct support of the Davis article, that what has helped him overcome some prejudice in his life is talking with people who hate him because he's Mexican, and slowly enough they started turning around their views. Neighbors, coworkers, that sort of thing. There's no news articles about them because they're just some average people in Texas, not a leader of the KKK. It's not some rare occurrence because treating someone like a human being is destined to get you farther than if you treat them like an alien who can never change their views. When you latch onto someone's humanity, they become far more receptive to you. That is a fact. Not to mention, everything Sil mentioned before me. Do you personally have to go out and befriend a nazi? No. Only if you wanted to and felt you have the patience to put up with a lot of disgusting speech. If you feel you have the willpower, patience, and temperament to do something like that, more power to you and that'll get you farther than a punch, or exclusion. If your stomach is too weak for but you still really want to stick it to the nazis start putting out pieces of writing, websites, books, pamphlets, or whatever expressing why those views are wrong.

I think punching a guy like Richard Spencer in the face has more in play than just his beliefs. The reason a person might want to Sock ol' Dick Spence right in the face is because he is actively trying to normalize, and make OK, his beliefs. In addition, there are a lot of people who do defend the altright, or average joes who will go "Well, I don't agree with all of it, but..." In the end, I think it's unfair to discount the fact that there may be more than one motive for someone to punch him in the face. Maybe they weren't concerned about the guy, but instead the normalization. Maybe the man with dangerous beliefs that started a political movement. Maybe they just wanted to be famous, and hey, maybe it actually was because he believes in ethnic cleansing. The trouble is, see, a regular neo-Nazi might be cast out socially for their obtuse beliefs - punished by a society that looks down upon that, no violence necessary. But this guy is not, and hasn't yet been cast out yet. Instead, he's an icon of a political movement, that, due to the events of the last election, is growing and pulling more people in.

What exactly would ostracization accomplish? How will it effect the ostracized?

[QUOTE=Silly Sil;51714670]Bullshit. Germans felt oppressed and Hitler used it as a drive for his influence. That was the reason why someone who's extreme could win. There wasn't anything special in "nazism" itself that made it popular, it was exploitation of people's concerns and feelings that made it win then. You are making it sound like allowing nazis to talk will inevitably lead to them taking power.[/quote] Way to miss the point. The Nazis came to power through the "proper channels", legally. They told the populace that they would make the country better and blamed the jews and other non-German ethnic groups for the problems the country were having. Where did I say it was inevitable? All I'm saying is that giving them a platform is opening up the possibility of a repeat of the events that led to them siezing power, and that denying that possibility from existing is clearly better than taking a chance on the future. [QUOTE=Silly Sil;51714670]No it's more like a police officer killing a guy preemptively, before the shooting.[/quote] Which has definitely never, ever happened before, would definitely be unjustified, and would definitely 100% be worse than waiting until the shooting started. [QUOTE=Silly Sil;51714670]They aren't in control in any countries because almost everybody knows it's fucking terrible. Because "nazi" and "fascist" are extremely stigmatized. But that's because that just happened. And like you said, they are starting to crawl back, because the stigma and memory is slowly wearing off. That's why you have to remind everyone WHY and HOW nazism and fascism is awful. Fists don't do that.[/quote] Do you guys not teach kids about WW2, the Nazis and the atrocities they committed? [QUOTE=Silly Sil;51714670]1. They won't look silly, they will be proven immoral, wrong and destructive. Which you are not going to do by simply saying "nazism is terrible". 2. You are making it look like people are born nazis and never change. Yeah you won't change the minds of people who already have really entrenched position but not everyone is like that. And people won't change their views entirely in 5 minutes and then stand up and admit that they were wrong. So you're not going to see the effects immediately. 3. How do you expect to get everyone on board with you to believe that nazism is awful if the only thing you're going to say about nazism is that it's awful? You need to say why it's awful. That's the fucking point. Like I said before, if you want to convince people that Earth is round and you're not presenting any evidence, you are on equal-footing with someone who's telling people that the Earth is flat. Then it's not a matter of facts but matter of convincing and if the flat-earther is a better speaker than you, you fucking lose.[/quote] Again, do you guys not teach kids about WW2, the Nazis, and the atrocities they committed? People know what the Nazis did. Some people, with access to all the facts and figures about them, think that it's good. There are people out there who hold these views but are silent about them because of the aforementioned stigma against those views - but as soon as they see that there are other people who think that way, that they aren't alone, that those views are being spread on public platforms, they're encouraged by that stuff, and believe those views are justified. [QUOTE=bdd458;51714710]Want to know why I used those three cases? Because they're notable, because they're important people - around 200 members of the KKK swayed by essentially one guy on a quest to figure out what makes racists tick. Because there are news articles about them. It was actually on the comments for one of the articles on Davis that I read a comment from a gentlemen, who said he's from Texas. Now, this guy living in the deep south also happens to be Mexican. And what he said was in direct support of the Davis article, that what has helped him overcome some prejudice in his life is talking with people who hate him because he's Mexican, and slowly enough they started turning around their views. Neighbors, coworkers, that sort of thing. There's no news articles about them because they're just some average people in Texas, not a leader of the KKK. It's not some rare occurrence because treating someone like a human being is destined to get you farther than if you treat them like an alien who can never change their views. When you latch onto someone's humanity, they become far more receptive to you. That is a fact. Not to mention, everything Sil mentioned before me.[/quote] In a perfect world, you'd be right. I'd be overjoyed if "be nice" was the answer to all the world's problems. But if you genuinely believe that enough nazis would be be receptive to that stuff or would engage with someone they wholeheartedly believe is subhuman, to render the movement unable to do damage, you're probably wrong. It would help on an individual basis, but overall? Not so much. ...not to mention everything everyone else in this thread the people who are on my side have said before me [QUOTE=bdd458;51714710]Do you personally have to go out and befriend a nazi? No. Only if you wanted to and felt you have the patience to put up with a lot of disgusting speech. If you feel you have the willpower, patience, and temperament to do something like that, more power to you and that'll get you farther than a punch, or exclusion. If your stomach is too weak for but you still really want to stick it to the nazis start putting out pieces of writing, websites, books, pamphlets, or whatever expressing why those views are wrong.[/QUOTE] Most people aren't gonna be able to do this. They just aren't, for a multitude of reasons. And I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I'd imagine that nazis probably don't go out of their way to consume media that directly conflicts with their views, the same way I don't go on Stormfront or have a copy of Mein Kampf. Yeah, it would probably be healthier for me to do just that, to go out of my way to read literature that conflicts with my own beliefs, but I, too, just do not have the patience for that.

[QUOTE=Slim Charles;51713428]A bit off-topic here but I find it pretty disheartening that neo-nazi and racist groups have sullied the whole concept of "white pride", I think being proud of your race, culture or identity whatever isn't a bad thing as-long as you don't go as far to say one race is objectively better. I'm a Mixture of Anglo-Indian, Scottish and English and I take a great amount of pride in what my ancestors did and who they were as a people. So I find it a bit sad when I see stuff like "Take this white pride" or "white pride doesn't belong in this century" but I do understand at the same time the people saying those stuff are generally saying it against the tainted nazi/white supremacist concept of white pride what is really just white supremacy. And by the way this is coming from me a brown-olive person.[/QUOTE] they haven't really sullied these things that much, maybe english, scottish pride are a bit associated with loutish behaviour or whatever but they're still acceptable and should remain so because they make nationally and culturally coherent sense white pride is not like these things. white people are from massively disparate cultures. you probably think of russians as white today, but to hitler they were the "asiatic hordes" who needed exterminating. "white people" have never had one homeland. they've been fighting each other all their lives. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people#Antiquity_and_Middle_Ages:_physical_description]the idea of "white people"[/url] didn't really exist until someone had to justify why "black people" were subhuman. this is kinda why "white pride" folks have this odd fascination with proving that niggers aren't really people or whatever [media]http://twitter.com/CaucasianAllure/status/823328082434080768[/media] and just generally pages and pages of [url=https://twitter.com/BastienClementS]this[/url] kinda bullshit I'm an anglo-pole. I am interested in my heritage and I think plenty of it is incredible, but I can't really claim it as my own. I didn't do any of those damn things, they're not my accomplishments to crow over. so I'm not massively into british or polish pride for that reason. but I don't think people who are are wrong.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juxn289fV7E[/media] relevant video

[QUOTE=evlbzltyr;51714223] Refusing to entertain Nazis in the discourse, refusing to debate them, rejecting them from the political sphere - good shit. The goodest of shit. Punching them every now and then, while legally is wrong, is ethically completely sound in my opinion, because ignoring them is only gonna get us some of the way there. I've yet to see an argument for engaging them in debate that isn't "they'll look silly" like that's gonna affect people who already hold racist positions, or "look at these three times where racists were turned around that definitely happens a lot and are definitely not notable because they're exceptions to the rule"[/QUOTE] I'd argue that the venue for legitimizing false or radicalizing detrimental beliefs has changed since the rise of the Nazi's and the circumstances surrounding Hitler's Regime, and would making punching nazi's turn white supremacy into a bigger problem. Public access to news and communities were very different in WW2. Journalism was strictly through newspapers from journalists. Now news can come from anywhere. Blogs, Twitter, and tabloids are now slowly being recognized as sources of news. If compared to the rise of the Alt right, neo-nazis and now recently the rise of antiscience, you will find that they were extremely radicalized by festering outside public view. The radical alt-right rose as a reactionary group to SJW's and regressive left, but was legitimized by Trump's inauguration and now extremely rampant. Climate change deniers were also legitimized by Trump's Inauguration. Neo-nazi's fester their hatred of minorities through 1 sided fight videos or assaults or finding others like them. Everyone one of these communities has absolutely zero facts to back up their beliefs. To justify violence in response to any form of nazi medias does nothing but provide ammo for them to gather more followers and justify their own beliefs. But in each one of those communities you will see that their reasoning for believing in stupid shit is shakey and delusional at best. And the only way those communities grow is from gullible or vulnerable idiots. If the only and recent response to their ideologies is physical violence against them, they will never and I mean [B][I]NEVER[/I][/B] look to find opposing information. When we look at the Alt-right and notable persons like Milo Yiannopoulos, debates are made of polarized opinions, pushing and pulling to see who can shut down their opponent rather than discussing claims and presenting arguments. But when it comes to arguing against white supremacy and the recognizing nazi ideology, it is so simple to present facts and arguments I don't see why physical violence is necessary.By blasting shit beliefs on national TV, what use are those videos of a nazi's beliefs being shut down? Arguing against white supremacy and nazi beliefs is so easy that you will never find a "White supremacist shuts down crybaby liberall!!!" video on youtube.