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Old 17th March 2017, 09:11 PM   #1672
Thermal
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Seems reasonable enough. Broadly speaking, the question being debated in this thread is whether it is beneficial to our society when the "piping up" takes the form of violent outbursts in response to "fascist" speech.
'Beneficial' is a bit slippery. It is certainly not the ideal, so not directly beneficial. But it is certainly instructive/informative, so a benefit is gained. There were end benefits to the violence of the civil rights movement in 1960's America, would you agree? Even though it would have been ideal for things to have gone down more peacefully.

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You seem to be equivocating a lot on this point. You seem to approve of using violence to steer expression, but when pressed on this you insist that you mean simply that you forgive violence as a response to expression.
Approve and forgive I think are overly judgemental terms; I prefer 'accept', if that makes it clearer. I don't think it's a good idea to get rowdy (and have said that I generally wouldn't do so myself), but I accept (a shade of difference from approving) that others may do so and in some circumstances excuse it (a shade of difference from 'forgiving'). also, I look at relevant law as more of an academic point, rather than the guiding principle of behavior, if that helps to clarify why my POV is not so absolute in terms of right and wrong.

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Which is it? Do you trust that America can be steered away from fascism by piping up with violence whenever fascists speak?
America sometimes needs to be loud to be heard, and ideally, words would be enough. In the OP, I really don't think the events had anything to do with Milo's individual speech. An article posted earlier by an eyewitness writer said that Red Hats were out in force, taunting and rolling out a Pepe banner. This seems to me an Us v Them clash, not thugs trying to silence Milo. So fascists can certainly speak, it is a guaranteed freedom they have. Protesters can bark back. Another freedom. Ideally, it should end there. But I accept that sometimes it doesn't, and that the two sides are stepping onto a figurative (literal?) battlefield in a situation like this. Both sides had (or should have had) a reasonable expectation of hostilities, hence my opinion that this was closer to a street brawl than a suppression of poor Milo's freedoms.
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