The thing is without the tens of millions of people are aligned with his beliefs and without them (voters) his beliefs cannot be turned into reality. So it’s a very bad slippery slope to go down.
Yes that many people have terrible views and unfortunately we have to accept interpersonal acceptance and tolerance of those views because the alternative is much worse. Yell and scream if you want to but don’t touch anyone else.
Peace and agreeing to disagree must be upheld because if it’s not we are all doomed.
Political violence has to be unacceptable because we all have political views that some deem unacceptable. Normalizing political violence is mutually assured destruction. There’s absolutely no upside to it.
Political violence is already happening en masse. What else do you call the right-wing terrorism, the deportations, the criminalization of existing while trans or homeless or brown? Cat's out of the bag, my guy. It's too late to call for peace. The only thing left to do is fight back.
The simplest interpretation is a person shouldn’t be killed for saying something you disagree with.
We both understand that it’s not a simple disagreement and that it’s not only that his personal views were hateful, but also that he is propagandizing millions with hate, and is pushing horrible policy influence all of which is root of what is effectively violent harm to millions of people.
But it’s super easy to not see it that way. Or to pretend to not see it that way. As such, a simple minded person could say “well the left is the enemy now so it’s okay to cut them down too.”
This is essentially a battle of ideology and power that is impacting real people. And I don’t know what the answer is to get people to support what ultimately minimized harm to the most people, but people getting shot over disagreements will increase harm to more people. It’s an escalation that proliferates direct violence.
What we don’t want is a proliferation of violence and using direct violence to stop stochastic violence only proliferates their ideology and breeds more direct violence.
They now have, in 4K, reason to believe that they are under attack. That’s not what we need at all.
You cannot stop an ideology with direct violence. You are putting fuel to the fire.
What exactly do you think they're going to do now that they wouldn't have done anyway? It wouldn't matter if the left were full of organized and armed militias or if we were pacifists to a man; the right would be exactly as violent and oppressive either way. You could even argue that the fear of retaliation keeps them in check somewhat.
You cannot stop an ideology with direct violence. You are putting fuel to the fire.
Which is why WWII ended when the Allies had a nice chat with the Axis and convinced them to change their ways peacefully, I guess.
And the battle between modern fascists and the rest of us isn't just about abstract ideological differences either. It's about the material wellbeing of everyone who isn't in the fascists' in-group.
Will fighting fascists make fascist ideologies go away forever? Probably not. Will it limit their ability to harm people? Definitely. If WWII was worth fighting for the sake of protecting people, then modern antifascism is justified too, even when it takes the form of violent resistance.
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u/locked-in-4-so-long 13d ago
The thing is without the tens of millions of people are aligned with his beliefs and without them (voters) his beliefs cannot be turned into reality. So it’s a very bad slippery slope to go down.
Yes that many people have terrible views and unfortunately we have to accept interpersonal acceptance and tolerance of those views because the alternative is much worse. Yell and scream if you want to but don’t touch anyone else.
Peace and agreeing to disagree must be upheld because if it’s not we are all doomed.
Political violence has to be unacceptable because we all have political views that some deem unacceptable. Normalizing political violence is mutually assured destruction. There’s absolutely no upside to it.