Census Is it ok to punch fascists in or around their face?

Ender you go after America like it was a date that stood you up on prom night. I’ll never understand it.

And yes, I think America should have gone to war sooner. In fact, the exact moment is when they found out what Hitler was doing or planning to do
to his own people.

You can’t stomp out an ideology by killing its members. Ideas don’t go away, they linger. The only answer to a bad idea is a better idea. The moment violence becomes an acceptable method of dealing with ideas you don’t like, democracy as we know it will fall apart.

 

I go there because had America not been cowardly (spoiler: it was) then millions of lives would've been spared. Non-violent indifference doesnt' save lives. And honestly? I'm happy for fascists to linger, afraid and underground, because fear of reprisal beatings and censorship leaves them feeling vulnerable. Let them hate, so long as they fear.

 

JFC, Lindburgh's speech about "America First" (co-opted by someone recent, if only I could think of who it was...) in support of the American Nazi Party and explicitly warning Jews what would happen to them if we got involved was September 1941 (ironically, 70 years to the day before 9/11)... it's not like we didn't know what was going on by then, as we were turning back Jewish refugee ships in 1938...

Ender's not wrong here. He'd probably be singing German if the Japanese didn't bomb us...

 

Well then who's to say what's a good idea and what's a bad idea?

 

So would you. Because it's not like anti-semitism didn't peak during that time. If you'd not been bombed you'd have probably welcomed nazis with open arms, as a nation.

 

I wouldn't be singing anything at all.

 

As long as you aren’t actively hurting people with your ideas, then it is pretty subjective which is better, ie capitalism v socialism. There is arguments for both sides.

And yes @Ender Sai if the US had gotten involved earlier more lives would have been saved probably. But we have the benefit of hindsight. So it is easy to say what any country should have done.

 

You can hardly blame the Yanks for Adolf . It was our fault : Europe , why we let him re-arm Germany is shameful , it was less than 20 years since The Great War .
If I was an American in the 30's I reckon I'd be thinking : 'Hell didn't we bail 'em out just 20 years ago ? Now they've let another lunatic take over ? we've just come out of a severe economic depression and we're being asked to send our men overseas to die again ?'

USA did help us and they did join the fight and as proud as I am of Britain for standing up against Hitler I'm just as grateful for the Americans who gave their lives as well .

.

 

Okay so what if we had this exchange:

John: Blacks are people and should have equal rights as whites.
Gary: No, blacks are not people and they shouldn't have rights.

Who's right?

 

Always love these arguments, as if you're not talking to someone from a country that got involved in 1939 before it was attacked.

Think how many Allied lives would have been saved had the Americans an ounce of moral courage.

Then tell me we shouldn't oppress fascists.

 

I know where you're from Ender .

What you say about Australia doesn't change what I said about America . You can't just blame americans for everything .

 

I'm saying, that attitude had consequences and we should bloody well learn from it rather than repeating it.

 

^^

Every country, and most of the individuals in said countries, has had issues in the past. No entity is perfect, and many of those follies are quite drastic. Regardless of whether I agree with Ender's argument, I will sing this particular quote from the mountain tops.

 

As much as I think morally America should have gone to war in 1939 - WWII is one of the main eras I enjoy studying, and the state of our military is 1939 was terrible. Every airplane and tank we had was outclassed, our main artillery piece was a WWI design on rubber tyres for motorized towing, our cavalry divisions were still on horses. If we had entered the war in 1939 we would simply have lost even more men and material to little or no gain. There would have been an AEF lost in France in 1940 for sure.

 

Didn't we already have this discussion elsewhere? The U.S. wasn't the only country that was reluctant to get involved. Britain and France didn't want to fight Germany when it was gobbling up its neighbors. Russia certainly didn't want to get involved, and in fact allied with the aggressors at the time. Brazil and Mexico didn't get involved until fairly late in the game, while Sweden and Turkey never joined the fight at all. Why pick on America as the only example of moral cowardice?

This applies to today's world as well. How much quicker could the crisis in Yugoslavia or Syria or the South China Sea have been resolved if other non-western democracies had spoken up and lent their diplomatic weight towards punishing the aggressors and resolving the conflict? Our voice alone only counts for so much.

 

I’m not sure where you are going with this one. But I’ll take Johnny’s opinion.

“Blacks are people” is hardly an idea, it is a fact that can be proven.

 

the point on the WWII thing was that we saw the consequences of trying to reason with fascism, and by the time it hits the awareness of the US body politic, there was literally no excuse for inaction.

This is not a one-time historical moment. It's a lesson.

 

Okay, so let’s take your idea. Fascists should be physically harmed for their beliefs, probably killed.

Round them up, and kill them. Who does that sound like to you?

 

It sounds like a small mind resorting to hyperbole because it wants to be David to a Goliath made entirely of straw?

 

Okay.

So, fascists, should they be just physically harmed for their beliefs? Or killed. Because one sounds like murder, and the other like torture.

 

An lo, mighty Dread Pirate David did smite the wicked straw Goliath, with naught but a stone from his sling...

What I'm saying is that liberalism's tolerance is a weakness as well as a strength. Fascism by its nature is a violent, repressive, and illiberal ideology that thrives off exploiting division. We should not afford it the tolerances and protection of liberalism, demonising it, outlawing it, terrorising it, and driving it underground. Fascists should live in fear, as we secure our state from it.

 

But it seems you would do to fascists what fascists do themselves. Rule by fear.

I think if we were to do that, the idea of “we can destroy an idea by outlawing, and terrorising it” would spread, and that is the very nature of fascism itself.

You propose dousing a fire with more fire.

 

Okay, so what if I were to hypothetically argue Gary's position. What is the definition of "people"? A member of the species homo sapiens? What if Gary were to argue that "the amount of genetic variation between black-skinned humans and white-skinned humans is sufficient enough that blacks should not have rights"? What should be the response to that?

Where am I going with this? It's like you said, what constitutes a good idea or a bad idea is subjective. When it comes to a fundamental question like this, it only ends with one side laying down the law to the other...and if neither side backs down, the result is violence.

 

You’ll have to forgive me, I have a small mind.

But I’m still not seeing what you are saying. Is it that violence is inevitable? A government can create laws and enforce them, but that is justice. What we are talking about is vigilantes taking justice into their own hands.