Ok, let me be clear here: When I said "Godwin himself bemoaned the overapplication of the law", I am saying that he bemoaned the fact that people like yourself invoke it to dismiss or otherwise discredit legitimate or otherwise warranted comparisons to the Nazis.
And who's deciding whether it's unwarranted?
Rhetorical question, you think it's warranted, I don't.
No, these ones really weren't done to protest ideology/regimes, unless you're being so sweeping with your concept of "ideology" as to encompass Islam as a whole.
Islam
is an ideology, just like any religion. I'm not sure how you could argue otherwise.
Let me put it to you this way: If I piss on a copy of the Bible, that is not a protest against Marjorie Taylor Greene or other self-professed "Christian Nationalists" in Congress, nor is it a protest against Westboro Baptist Church, or even the policies of the Catholic Church. That's taking a swipe against Christians in general.
Is it?
I mean, it could be, or it barring any of those examples you mentioned, are you attacking Christians, or are you attacking Christianity? If I piss on the flag of Russia, am I attacking Russians, or am I attacking Russia? If I tear up the flag of Israel, am I attacking Israel, Jews, or Zionism? When Stan Grant attacks whiteness, is he attacking the concept, or the people who would be called white? When TB states all fantasy is eugenic, are they attacking the fantasy genre, or are they calling me a eugenicist because I write fantasy (this actually happened, BTW)?
If you believe you can't distinguish between the ideology and the followers, that isn't an unreasonable proposition, but it's one I disagree with. To borrow a quote, "no idea is above scrutiny, just as no person is below dignity."
The Jews weren't the ones burning the books to express their contempt for and intimidate the people that the books represented.
No, but people
were protesting against the Nazis. You're so fixated on the act of burning books, you're ignoring everything else.
If a Jewish person burnt a copy of Mein Kemph in protest, would they be in the wrong to do so?
Quod erat demonstrandum. Bringing up the Nazis is not in itself childish. Bringing them up is not inherently unwarranted.[/quote]
I agree, but again, Reductio ad Hitlarium. You may think the comparison is warranted, I don't.
I brought up the Nazis because we're talking about book burning, something well associated with them, as part of a chastisement that the association with that tactic was not one you wanted to court. That you don't like it does not make it irrelevant, hyperbolic, or childish.
You're certainly entitled to think that. I still do. This entire Nazi detour has been childish.
Who were the Nazis intimidating with their book burnings? The people associated with those books.
And who was the book burner intimidating? You're comparing one man to an entire government.
Again, your entire moral paradigm seems to be that anyone who burns a book must be like the Nazis, regardless of any actual context.
A book burning is a performative gesture meant to symbolize the desired destruction of the contents of the book and those things associated with it. This is not rocket science, don't be obtuse.
And? Ideas don't have special protection. And if you think religion
does deserve special protection, good for you, I don't.
Second, where it occurs is not relevant. The relevant factor is what inspired the action.
Actually, the relevant factor is the action itself. What inspires the action may be relevant, but it's never as relevant.
Words aren't violence. Violence is.
I'm not playing "who's the Nazi". You're the one who tried to pull an uno reverse card in response to me linking one image to convey that championing book burning was not a good hill to die on.
You brought up the image of Nazis burning books. You brought Nazis into this. You could have chosen any image of book burnings from any culture from any point in time, but intentionally or not, you chose the Nazi image.
Just own it.
Nobody is arguing that you can't protest "Islamism". We're arguing that this is not the way to do it because it predictably causes more harm than good.
Well, you can make that argument if you want, but you would have to agree that you're compromising on principle, right?
...And we're done here. You aren't so much as making a token effort to understand the position you're arguing against. You clearly just want it to be wrong on principle, otherwise you might have realized how stupid that allegation is. You know why I'm worried about the incitement to violence? BECAUSE IT RESULTS IN VIOLENCE! These are not separate things here. As you yourself pointed out, the violence is not occuring in areas those countries have jurisdiction over, but the things they are in response to are. So the causative factor is the aspect you can control to reduce the violence. And that causative factor costs you nothing to give up.
I want you to actually consider the implications of your argument.
Yes, on a technical level, not burning the Quran would have resulted in a scenario where violence didn't occur. However, consider the following:
1) If carrying out a non-violent action results in violence, why is the onus on the people doing the former to cater to the demands of the latter?
2) What, specifically, about this religion is causing such violence? We don't even need to look at the Quran, look at cartoon depictions of Muhammad for instance? I can certainly find other examples in other religions, but not with this amount of regularity.
3) If your view is entirely based on the question as to whether violence occurs, then you would also concede that any form of protest (or at least certain forms of protest) must also be subjected to the same scrutiny. I'm not talking about assault, I'm talking about similar displays.
If you actually cared about the violence as much as you pretended, this would be easy calculus. Burning the books triggers a violent response. Consquentially, choosing not to burn the books results in less violence. If your goal is reducing violence, that's an easy choice to make. That doesn't even warrant being called a concession! It's just not including book burning in your tactics after it's shown to be counterproductive and causing more harm than good!
Because sometimes, it's not just calculus.
The Nazis invaded in WWII, with violence. The Allies fought back, with violence. There's plenty of examples where violence may be justified. HOWEVER, we have a case of a non-violent act being responded to with violence, and your goal seems to be to remove the possibility of violence by not carrying out protest, or at least, demanding protest be done in a certain way.
Here, ask yourself this: Why on earth do you care about burning a book so much that you evidently consider abandoning that particular tactic to be a betrayal?
I don't know if "betrayal" is the word I'd use, Denmark and Sweden can't "betray" me. But it's still moral cowardice on their part, since they're effectively acquiescing to the threat of violence by curtailing freedom of expression.
That you see the burning of a book to be worth the violent response that you know the action inspires? That you see prioritizing the lives put at risk by that action over continuing to use that same action to be cowardice? That you see arguments to the effect of "hey, can we please stop doing this thing that predictably results in violence, because it puts people in danger" to be "more worried about the incitement to violence than the actual violence"? Why is this particular tactic evidently so important to you that leaving it behind is in your eyes the same as saying that something can't be criticized at all?
There's a difference between criticizing an action, and banning an action.
Again, actually consider the implications of your argument (or if you have, reconsider them). Consider the sequence of events:
1: A non-violent action is carried out in protest.
2: Violence erupts in response to the protest.
3: In response, the government bans the protest.
You're basically fine with intimidation carrying the day.
