thenuanceddebater:

mr-cappadocia:

paperdemons: mr-cappadocia: paperdemons: in-all-conscience: paperdemons: in-all-conscience: paperdemons: mr-cappadocia: ladyghirahim: mr-cappadocia: paperdemons: Guys if you don’t defend people who think it is ok to kill you, you are a bigot sorry I don’t make the rules. No, if you subscribe to the belief that it’s acceptable or “justified” or “excusable” to use violence to silence others because you disagree with their ideology you’re a bad person and the villain of the story. Wait what? What is OP even trying to say? Why am I defending people who think it’s okay to kill me? Why are you defending the rights of people you disagree with? Because I don’t think my humanity is a debate I’m comfortable letting other people have. They’re going to have the debate whether or not you beat the shit out of them. Be the better person and don’t get violent towards people just because they hate you. “Be the better person and just let other people debate your humanity!” Great advice!!!! How is it you keep missing the fact that we’re saying you shouldn’t get violent towards them? Nobody is saying you should be okay with it. Nobody is saying you shouldn’t oppose it. Nobody is saying you shouldn’t fight back against it. They’re just saying that you shouldn’t use violence. How hard is that to understand? The KKK isn’t exactly opposed to violence. If I tell someone who would like to see me dead to get it of my neighborhood and they won’t, they are threatening me and I will remove them myself. The KKK might feel validated that I am aggressive, but they’re never going to think anything besides that I am less than, so why are we circle jerking about this? The KKK is an extremist terrorist group. What are we honestly losing by standing up to them when necessary? If someone expresses an opinion in public I oppose I reserve the right to use violence to remove them. At which point why does the KKK not have a right to pull out a gun and fucking execute you in the street? You are infringing on their rights, you are threatening (or engaged in) actual violence against them, and they have a right to defend themselves from your attack. More to the point nobody gives a shit what the KKK thinks. But what you have convinced ME of is that you believe the rights of people with whom you disagree with are conditional things subject to whatever tickles your fancy or whatever bullshit justification you can make up for it. You are more dangerous than the fucking KKK and you don’t even see that. Thanks to freedom of expression the KKK can promote their views and we can all sit around and laugh at them. You want to take that away. You want to make it the new normal that anyone who speaks “incorrectly” based on little more than your preference suffers violently for the offense. You’re the bad guy. And you’re allegedly a “Journalist”… who supports using violence to suppress speech she doesn’t approve of. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!?!?!? You are misrepresenting the entire point of this. My humanity is not an opinion. It is not a debate. My right to dignity and respect is not something a person needs to be having an opinion about and if they do its not something that should be respected. The idea that violent recourse against me simply for existing is acceptable is not an opinion. It puts people in danger. I believe there is extremely – and I mean extremely – few beliefs that we as a society should work to eradicate completely. Genocide against persons of color is one of them. I’ll take it one step further – LOTS of fanatic opinions, no matter the intent, can be violent or get people killed. But most of them do not have violence in the fucking description. It is not in the “list of requirements” to subscribe to that belief. The KKK and Neo Nazis believe in violence and that puts ALL people in danger, not just the ones they hate specifically. And let’s not pretend the KKK doesn’t inspire hate crimes in their wake. If a group of notorious arsonists were congregating in public in your town, talking about how you should be able to light anyone’s house on fire, you would probably be nervous. Now imagine that you know copycats like to lurk around after these gatherings and commit arson, even if the original arsonist group hasn’t committed arson in recent memory, you’re not going to be inclined to take these meetings lightly. You seem to think that you would be ok for people calling for your death in the streets because you are so pro-free speech and I have to say it’s narrow minded and self centered to expect all people to feel the same. Just because you don’t have any emotions on the subject does not mean everyone else will feel the same. The least you can do is respect how fearful and defensive people may become in the Klan’s presence. Lastly, you keep trying to bring violence in this when my first and only point was that thinking it’s ok to murder certain people is not an opinion. It is a violent ideology that we should curtail. So let’s go down the list. Your humanity is an opinion. As is mine. People are welcome to secretly believe I’m a fucking Android from Mars for all I care. You do not have a right to dignity or respect. Anyone peddling that bullshit is lying to you. You’re not a Queen and if you were I’d sneer at you even louder explicitly because of your bullshit expectation that you’re entitled to my respect or special treatment. You have a right to your body, which means I cannot lay a finger on you without your consent, and your other assorted property.. but beyond that you haven’t got jack shit as far as I’m concerned. You’re welcome to call me every name in the book, white man included, and I support your right to do so. You want the right to additionally lay a finger on me when my words “cross the line”. You’re saying violent recourse against THEM is acceptable all while decrying them saying violent recourse against YOU is acceptable. So long as them keeping that to the level of words I’m okay with that. Just like I’m fundamentally okay with you saying violent recourse should be an option. While you’re wrong as fuck it’s still just words. Arsonists Galore? The problem with Freedom is that it’s dangerous as fuck. There’s no getting around it. What you’re demanding is that we limit the speech of one group of people on the off chance that another group of people, who were not directly incited to burn shit down (merely that it should be legal to do so) might burn shit down. People have repeatedly called for my death. People have sent pictures of themselves in masks with guns telling me their group was going to kill me. I’ve had people send me pictures of what they thought was my childhood home and the phone numbers of my relatives. I’ve had people attempt to destroy my source of income. They failed but that didn’t stop them from trying. And who were these people? People just like you. Finally when you attempt to curtail ideologies, any ideologies, you set a precedent that’s dangerous as fuck. People are already curtailing Nazism. They have examined the information. They have determined their ideas are flawed. Now, it appears you want either a fucking mob, or the Government, to be able to step in and determine which ideologies are acceptable and which are not. Again, this is dangerous as fuck.

One of the biggest problems of being a free speech advocate is that you have to defend the most reprehensible people with some of the most hateful ideology as long as all that they are doing is talking as opposed to acting violently. As a free speech advocate, I am not forced to defend the Ku Klux Klan, who if they had their way would likely destroy the entirety of my family as I am Jewish. Nevertheless, I have to agree with Cap here. @paperdemons, I’m afraid that you are mistaken.





So, let me start off with the limitations that we currently have on free speech. In John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, he basically states the classical liberal idea that one person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin, and thus states that the only limit on free speech should be “clear, present, and gave danger”. For example, a man giving a speech on how the government is terrible and it should be overthrown is entirely acceptable, whereas a man giving a speech about how the government should be overthrown and then handing out weapons and inciting his followers to attempt an overthrow of the state is not as acceptable. The Supreme Court basically poached this doctrine wholesale in the form of the “clear and present danger doctrine” established in 1919 in the case of Schneck v. United States and while never being formally endorsed by the Court was in fact used and cited many times throughout the 20th century to today. So, let’s discuss the Klan rally in the realm of “clear and present danger” shall we?





So, from what I have read of the events of this particular Klan rally, it seems as though onlookers started the violence against the Klan before the Klan had done anything violent to them. Unfortunately, that represents an escalation of force from what the Klan was doing. Even if the Klan was preaching the most vile, hateful, evil rhetoric possible, they were not being physically violent at the time. Thus, any violence directed toward them is an escalation as opposed to a response. That means that in order to make what happened to the Klan justified, we have to prove that there was a “clear and present danger” for the instigators to become violent. And quite simply, I don’t think we can do that. Why? Well here are a few reasons.





First of all yes, the Klan has a history of violence but that means very little when they are not in fact being violent at the time. We do not get to arrest convicted felons when they have done nothing wrong simply because they have a history of committing felonies and being arrested. That logic doesn’t fly there. And it doesn’t fly here either. The Klan’s history of violence has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the violence against the Klan was justified.





Second, from reports of the incident the protesters began the violence before anything that could remotely be considered clear and present danger was said. According to the LA Times, anti-Klan protesters attacked a man with a T-shirt the read “Grand Dragon” soon after he exited a vehicle. The rally had not even begun yet. The Klansman had likely yet to say a single word (or more than a few sentences) when the violence began. This means that it is incredibly unlikely to the point of being impossible to prove that the Klan represented a clear and present danger to the anti-Klan protesters. In fact, you would likely be more able to prove that the anti-Klan protesters represented a clear and present danger to the Klan. So, the violence against the Klan is no way way legally justifiable. Understandable? Yes. Justifiable? No. And that’s why the Klansmen who were arrested by the police were released as they were deemed to have acted in self-defense.





Now that we’ve got that incident out of the way, let’s talk about how this related to your opinions and why Cap is so strongly against what you seem to be suggesting.





When you state that just by having a protest in your neighborhood the KKK are “threatening [you]” and “[you] will remove them [yourself]” you are making statements that actively impede on other people’s First Amendment rights– namely the right to peaceful association and the right to freedom of speech. How could I ever assert that the Klan is a peaceful association with their history of violence? The same way that I can assert that the Westboro Baptist Church can represent a peaceful association despite the fact that they have been violent in the past. The term “peaceful association” doesn’t refer to the group’s actions as a whole but rather their actions at a specific time. If I was to be a part of a union that engaged in peaceful protest and demonstration and also attempted to attack people that opposed our goals, I could not be arrested for my affiliation with this group as long as I did not engage in any illegal activities. Likewise, just because the Klan has engaged in illegal (and quite frankly utterly reprehensible) activity in the past does not mean that they are doing so now. If all they are doing is holding a rally that they have a permit for and speaking about their ideology, then you have absolutely no right to attack them physically. And if you do so, you will likely be arrested and tried (or at the very least you should be arrested and tried). Because there is no clear and present danger even if you think there is.





Second, you do not have a right to be respected by other people. That is not in the Constitution nor has it been passed by any Federal nor State statute. Can you imagine if we did in fact have that right? Donald Trump could sue a significant portion of the country and win. Sorry, but we do not have the right to respect. That right does not exist. So acting in response to “protect” this nonexistent right is in fact acting aggressively.





Third, regardless of the severity of the belief engaging in physical violence against another individual is never justified without clear and present danger. Also, I would argue that one should never attempt to eradicate an ideology through violence, but through discourse, debate, and more peaceful measures. For example, in the second LA Times article I linked, anti-Klan protesters decided to have a “love march” in order to counter the Klan’s “hate”. That’s totally fine, and even highly admirable. However, any violent action that these same anti-Klan protesters have taken is not. Because attacking another person because of their opinions as long as said opinions are expressed peacefully is not really ever legally justified. And vilifying a group and declaring that they deserve violence because their very existence is offensive and threatening is not only legally ridiculous but also descends into the prosecution of thought crime and in fact becomes similar to many fascist and communist regimes. You know, the type that we’re taught to be different from in high school, because their censorship of people’s dissident opinions and ideas is generally seen as oppressive. Even when we agree with those ideas.





So quite simply, no. I don’t think you have the right to ban these people from protesting due to their opinions, I don’t think that their existence inherently warrants violence, and I most certainly do not support any violence done against peaceful protesters regardless of their ideology. I have had the misfortune in my life to peak with a very intelligent neo-Nazi in person, and he calmly told me straight to my face exactly why my family and I should be exterminated in order to promote racial purity and further human evolution. And I wanted to punch him in his smug little face. But, if I had done that it would have been assault. Because no matter how vile the rhetoric is it’s still just rhetoric. It’s not physical violence even if it feels like it. And there was no clear and present danger. So I angrily told him off, and left the area. And apparently more people came up to him and told him how wrong he was and then left to comfort me, and I didn’t get arrested.





That’s how to handle a situation like that. Not with physical violence but with nonviolent measures and with respect for the other person’s rights. Because as Voltaire’s biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarized, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. Such is the life of a free speech advocate I suppose. And you are most certainly taking a stance contrary to the freedom of speech. So, perhaps you should think about that.