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[Lord Shonus]

In the US, more progress has been made with the possibility of force than the actuality, particularly with the Civil Rights movement. To vastly oversimplify things, the black militant groups advocating armed revolution, along with the blacks that simply were forced to use force and the threat of force to protect themselves from racially motivated violence (as an aside, this is how the NRA became so prominent in the first place - most southern branches began with the purpose of fighting KKK-backed "keep the blacks from shooting back" gun control laws) primed the nation to view the explosion as inevitable; and the other wing of the Civil Rights movement swung in with fully peaceful -even explicitly pacifist- marches, sit ins, etc. With the iron fist of force so visible, huge numbers of the otherwise apathetic and indifferent were galvanized into caring, and then they saw the velvet glove of MLK, Rosa Parks, and the reformed Malcom X. This resulted in more progress being achieved in a few short years than had been achieved in the century since the Civil War.

[martinuzz]

Where they? I'm sure you have people who loved to trash too. We maybe just don't rememebr them.

Oh, probably there were some, yeah. Not many though. For one, they weren't welcomed. Ideology was a real thing back then, especially in the Netherlands, which was split in in a handful of ideological pillars, in a period called 'de verzuiling', which roughly translates as 'the pillarization'. Just some rando with a mask showing up at riot day to trash stuff would have been removed from the premises by the protestors themselves.
In fact, the protests were so well organised, and self-regulated, that the Dutch secret service and police started using undercover instigators to try and put protest groups in a bad light.

Well they kind of were... but they didn't really have a message or solution. they were kind of complaining to complaining.

Erm, no? The protests in the 60s-70s had clear messages and solutions. They gave women the right to abortion. They made contraceptives freely available, they made weed semi-legal, they made squatting legal for nearly 40 years (as a measure against vacancy through property speculation in times of housing shortage), they empowered labour unions to come to a compromise with employers about employee rights.

[Neonivek]

In fact, the protests were so well organised, and self-regulated, that the Dutch secret service and police started using undercover instigators to try and put protest groups in a bad light.

This is a lot more common than it seems.

[SalmonGod]

In the US, more progress has been made with the possibility of force than the actuality, particularly with the Civil Rights movement. To vastly oversimplify things, the black militant groups advocating armed revolution, along with the blacks that simply were forced to use force and the threat of force to protect themselves from racially motivated violence (as an aside, this is how the NRA became so prominent in the first place - most southern branches began with the purpose of fighting KKK-backed "keep the blacks from shooting back" gun control laws) primed the nation to view the explosion as inevitable; and the other wing of the Civil Rights movement swung in with fully peaceful -even explicitly pacifist- marches, sit ins, etc. With the iron fist of force so visible, huge numbers of the otherwise apathetic and indifferent were galvanized into caring, and then they saw the velvet glove of MLK, Rosa Parks, and the reformed Malcom X. This resulted in more progress being achieved in a few short years than had been achieved in the century since the Civil War.

This is my perspective as well.  The civil rights era has been whitewashed into oblivion.  Most comfy white people today would characterize it like MLK just showed up one day and said "Hey let's ask for equal rights, but let's be chill about it."  And through charisma and persistence, after being treated like shit for a while, he got the white powers of the time to say "Oh, alright.  Your pure goodness has shown us how bad we've been and we promise to treat you better now."  I've literally seen people say "MLK would have never blocked traffic" so many times now it's sickening.

But there was so much more to it.  White supremacy took a major PR hit from WW2.  Everyone had just come home from a war that horrified the world by showing what the end-game of that mentality meant.  It can't be coincidence that after hundreds of years, it was shortly after this that minorities started gaining ground.  But there were multiple, multi-faceted movements involved.  There was growing threat of violence from people who wanted rights.  And there were people asking (relatively) peacefully.  The peaceful actors gave the dominant culture and its institutions a way to give in to demands, while saving some face and building a resistance for the future.  They said "Ok.  You win.  But the peaceful ones get all the credit."  And just giving black people legal rights didn't make them equal.  White power still ran everything, and they had ample influence and time to build up the story of the great martyr MLK, who won rights for his people.  Who taught the world what the acceptable way is to challenge powerful institutions.  And what this really did is disempower future activism.

Now the WW2 effect has worn off.  It's no longer "We just finished a war with these motherfuckers because they turned out to be really good at capitalizing on people's insecurities and then acted on their words when they had power, and if anyone says those things again, we fully understand what it means."  Now it's "That's just another opinion.  I disagree with it, but if I don't give them equal access to public political discourse, then I'm just as bad as them."  And it's my belief that if we can't get over the MLK white-washed idea of how oppressive ideologies should be contested, that we will continue to regress towards them until it reaches the point of something horrifying happening again.  Because we've been culturally programmed to see conflict and progress as one-dimensional.

I've always been quite aware that bigotry is alive, prevalent, and only half-dormant in American culture.  But I've been honestly surprised to see the resurgence of the last few months.  It feels analogous to the Hydra revealing itself to SHIELD.  It should be taken seriously, and we need to recognize that opposition is only effective if it takes place dynamically and responsibly on all fronts.

[martinuzz]

Well they kind of were... but they didn't really have a message or solution. they were kind of complaining to complaining.

Erm, no? The protests in the 60s-70s had clear messages and solutions. They gave women the right to abortion. They made contraceptives freely available, they made weed semi-legal, they made squatting legal for nearly 40 years (as a measure against vacancy through property speculation in times of housing shortage), they empowered labour unions to come to a compromise with employers about employee rights.

[Reelya]

Strife: I get where you're coming from, but are you really saying we need to give benefit of the doubt to literal Mein Kampfe quoting neo-nazis? The point is, if they're literally openly calling for German or Italian style fascism and dressing up as brownshirts, they're the last people you want to give benefit of the doubt to.

Shut that shit down before it spreads. We've seen how that history ends, and it's not pretty. These pre-existing hardcore nazi groups have started to wake up to P.R. and remove the hitler regalia and blend in as "Trump Supporters" now, because they realize they can hijack that movement to grow a mass base of support. Hitler with his moustache shaved off is still Hitler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Movement_(United_States)
These are some of the guys I'm talking about. They're hardline hitler fans, and have recently dumped the swastika as their party logo, they're also linked in with a lot of the violent pro-trump protests, and they're running for office as a "mainstream" party now.

[martinuzz]

Strife: I get where you're coming from, but are you really saying we need to give benefit of the doubt to literal meine-kampfe quoting neo-nazis?

It's Mein Kampf (my struggle, singular) and not meine Kämpfe (my struggles, plural)

[Lord Shonus]

First, most of the people being shut down aren't those - we don't need to shut down the openly Neo-Nazi parties because almost everyone just points and laughs anyway.


The big problem we have right now is that the "shut the fascists down" crowd is using a combination of Hitler Ate Sugar and accusations of "Dog Whistling" to label almost everyone rightward of themselves on any issue a fascist, which is a huge problem.

[martinuzz]

First, most of the people being shut down aren't those - we don't need to shut down the openly Neo-Nazi parties because almost everyone just points and laughs anyway.


The big problem we have right now is that the "shut the fascists down" crowd is using a combination of Hitler Ate Sugar and accusations of "Dog Whistling" to label almost everyone rightward of themselves on any issue a fascist, which is a huge problem.

Agree. Polarization is the disease of the 21st century

[Rolepgeek]

Strife: I get where you're coming from, but are you really saying we need to give benefit of the doubt to literal meine-kampfe quoting neo-nazis?

Maybe just don't sucker punch them? Like, fight, sure, whatever, but don't sucker punch them out of nowhere. If you get into a fistfight because they called you or someone you know (or someone you don't for that matter) a racial slur, that's one thing. I find that more or less within reason.

@Covenant: If it's going to be based off Trump's actions for the next few years, I think that the outcome is more or less clear unless he reveals he's been hustling us this whole time.

[Strife26]

Strife: I get where you're coming from, but are you really saying we need to give benefit of the doubt to literal Mein Kampfe quoting neo-nazis? The point is, if they're literally openly calling for German or Italian style fascism and dressing up as brownshirts, they're the last people you want to give benefit of the doubt to.

Shut that shit down before it spreads. We've seen how that history ends, and it's not pretty. These pre-existing hardcore nazi groups have started to wake up to P.R. and remove the hitler regalia and blend in as "Trump Supporters" now, because they realize they can hijack that movement to grow a mass base of support. Hitler with his moustache shaved off is still Hitler.

I am literally saying that we should be giving the benefit of the doubt to Mien Kampfe quoting neo-nazis provided their protests meet traditional place-time restrictions on any public speech. I'm more than confident in the ability of liberal, progressive thought to survive and win in the marketplace of ideas. To quote Theodore Parker's famous sentiment

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

In the short term kinks of the arc, I place my trust in the institutions, checks, and balances of the American system (in a system without them, the recourse to violence would have to be much sooner). Even if nazism gets to somehow be a thing, if they're voted into power, then they get to use all the power available to them under the system to enact their platform and I'm not going to go beyond traditional, nonviolent means of protesting.

So no, I recognize no Nazi exception nor a WBC exception nor a hate speech exception to purely political conduct.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It really baffles me how people want the community, or even worse, the state, to respond to neo-nazis and company. It was mere months ago that the government flipped from the maybe-kinda-neoliberalism-maybe-not of Obama's Democrats to the balls out nativism and demagoguery of Trump's Republicans. No government where ideological shifts of that magnitude are possible is one where someone should seek to assign "shut that shit down" as an acceptable card, the same goes for popular culture.

It's a cheap rhetorical tactic as well. "Look at bad thing, how can you suffer the existence of bad thing? Can't you see that bad thing is going to magically suborn all society if we do not take Action? What are you, some kind of bad thing lover?" Literally McCarthy. That fascism is actually a bad thing doesn't change this, it's a thoroughly unhelpful chain of thought.

There are two things that matter for adjusting the future path of society. First is winning common and culturally-backed support, second is adjusting the structure people live in to encourage positive developments and discourage negative ones. Getting in street fights with reactionary dumbasses acquires neither of these, and I could see an argument that it actually goes against both.

In addition, political nonviolence is a highly, highly desirable quality over political violence, and is about equally as hard to obtain. To place such a thing at risk is immensely unwise, especially in light of some of the politically violent places we can see from here. The only acceptable political violence is self-defense, and if you're seeking out or preempting conflict it stops being self-defense. A good guide is the practices of contemporary antifa versus the Black Panther Party. In spite of what popular culture suggests, the latter were often immensely exacting, memorizing the law as written and using that to their advantage. They also performed services for the community, most famously free breakfasts for children. This, in spite of being about as far-left as antifa, is perhaps one of the clearest guides of how broken antifa really is as any sort of activism.

[Strife26]

I'd disagree about parts of that, there's times where political violence is justified besides self-defense, but it isn't something justified under the American system.

[redwallzyl]

Where have we seen this kind of violence between two extreme and unrepresentative sides while the center collapses after failing to deal with it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hmm, not coming to me.

[Strife26]

A country without the American tradition, you'll note, but certainly an example to be wary of.