Kyle Gaddo said:
Proud Boys are racists, white supremacists, misogynists, and beyond. They deserve to be protested against at every turn, even if they scream loudly.
They do and they should be -- non-violently, which is my point. That means turning away from and condemning black bloc tactics. Compare this week's news cycle with regards to Proud Boys protest to last. Last week Andy Ngo was lionized on corporate media for wandering into a crowd of Antifa expecting to get his ass whooped on camera, and getting what he wanted. This week we get to point and laugh at Tinder incels and Gavin McInnes losing a fight against a pair of plastic handcuffs.
I know which one I'd rather deal with. I'm also sick of people drawing false equivalencies and excluding middles against me
for condemning the black bloc and violent counter-protest. This is a battle that can and should be won in the marketplace of ideas, that can only be
lost in the streets, and I'm sick of people on
my side picking the losing option; ergo, when a scenario happens demonstrative of what
should be done and how, damned right I'm going to shout it from the mountaintops.
Hate speech is not free speech. Despite the fact that it's protected under the First Amendment, hate speech is inherently violent, because it infringes on people's rights to live their life under the very same Constitution that should protect them.
Honestly, as an American, having an American perspective and understanding America's track record of censorship, I find the continental conceptions of speech and expression repugnant and morally bankrupt. Over here, laws, rules, or policies permitting the regulation of "dangerous" or "offensive" speech have a far,
far greater track record for leading to the suppression of voices dissenting or critical to those in power, and persecuting historically-disadvantaged persons, than they do of protecting them. Viewpoint- or content-based suppression of speech should
never be a power afforded to governing entities.
Ever.
Public
or private sphere, lest anyone forget the oppression of LGBTQ's in Hays Code and Red Scare-era Hollywood.
It means that things can and should change for the safety and protection for all of a nation's people.
I can think of at least one famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that would serve as adequate clapback to this...
...and in the spirit of that, how about hijab bans? What's the compelling government interest in banning hijab? Niqab and burka bans, you could relatively easily make the argument...that is, in service to a surveillance state, so fuck that right there.
Saelune said:
LGBT people literally fought back against abusive cops and it helped spark the LGBT rights movement.
You're emphasizing and idealizing the
violence at the cost of all else. That's what's wrong with your argument. If you can't or won't understand how that's contrary to the reality and the spirit of the topic, that's on you. Least of all if you can't tell a difference between defending oneself against a physical assault by a dirty cop, and assaulting others on the street.
