Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of Richard Spencer’s comments. I am angered that the fervor and collective ignorance of the internet and sensationalist click-bait media has forced me to waste time giving any legitimate thought to any one of the hundreds of white supremacists comments made by random racists on the day-to-day basis. These thoughts are not in defense of him, or his statements. They are in defense of the right to expression, which, ironically enough, the keyboard warriors seem all to eager to forfeit in exchange for a quick masturbatory rush of a 5-second clip of a shitter getting decked in the middle of his spiel.
Many people have taken to the idea of describing Spencer as a “Nazi” and citing WWII era propaganda featuring various American heroes punching Nazis. The idea is to compare Spencer to a Nazi to justify the use of violence against him. However, this thinking is based on a faulty comparison fallacy.
At the crux of this issue is the divide between ideas and actions, and how to treat them. The Nazis in the propaganda are soldiers of the Third Reich, they are in action, practicing and enforcing the ideals of Nazism on others, and killing them. To my knowledge, for all the horrible things he has said, Spencer has not killed anyone. He chooses to misuse his freedom of thought and expression to expound horrible ideas. He doesn’t, or at least hasn’t to date, taken any violent actions based on those thoughts.
The idea of physically attacking someone for simply holding and or expressing ideas, no matter how universally vile they may be considered, crosses into a territory where the rights of expression are disregarded. After all, if punching a white supremacist for holding and expressing those disagreeable ideals is okay, then so is punching a black supremacist, a radical feminist, or really anyone whose ideals the listener happens to agree with.
To have a civil society where people are respected and have the right to self-expression, it is paramount that all speech is protected. This is not say that people have a right to say anything they want to whomever they please without consequence.
America didn’t punch Nazis in WWII for holding the ideals that they held, Americans punched Nazis for their brutal campaign across Europe killing and taking the lands of innocent people. Americans punched Nazis for performing insanely cruel and inhumane experimentation on humans against their will. Americans punched Nazis for killing over 6 million men, women, and children in a concentrated effort to exterminate an entire race of people.
Spencer’s cowardly comments are something that almost no one agrees with, and the the only reason he can make them is because he doesn’t live in Nazi Germany, where speaking something that the government/majority doesn’t agree with is cause for death, and anyone that happens to hear it, and doesn’t take the state-mandated action of stifling that speech, is subject to that same death sentence.
Nazis are all for punching out the expression of fringe minority ideals, the idea that all people are equal was a fringe minority ideal that many people found disgusting in Third Reich Germany.
Since, according to the rash reactionary internet, it’s now okay to punch someone for speaking ideas that you disagree with, I will be expecting my punch in the face for these thoughts.
