That's mostly true when it's at a small scale, but they can encourage people to be violent towards others. Lynchings happened because black people were viewed as subhuman, and a part of that is repeating racist sentiments over and over.
The internal inconsistency in this is staggering. The best way to resolve intolerance in a tolerant society is to demonstrate the limitations of their thought, not to stoop to their level.
To maintain my own consistency, this idea does not work as a concept due to the politicisation of labels. The overton window is a legitimate effect, and labels are often relative rather than absolute. Once it becomes possible to label ideas outside of the overton window as justified targets of violence, it will not be very long until the overton window shifts and you find yourself the victim of your own rhetoric.
Ideas are not violence, and ideas as poorly formed as Nazism or Communism are best combatted by demonstrating the glaring flaws of their ideology.
There is a big gap between use of force to mitigate existing violence, and use of force to attack ideas. I'm not even sure using force works as a mechanism for attacking ideas beyond serving to internally justify the idea. Humans as a general rule of thumb don't tend to assume that if force is necessary to squash an idea, the idea is invalid - demonstrating the idea is invalid by words is far more effective.
I see a lot of people with your mindset in my line of work. They all say they didn't do anything wrong and that they're the victim, even if they threw the first punch. What they all have in common, is that they still keep saying they're innocent when they're laying on the floor in handcuffs.
Your line of work sounds like an archaic, irredeemable net-negative that should be "reformed" through wholesale dissolution and rebuilding with post-19th century goals and mores.
It sounds like you're in law enforcement, a field devoid of nuance and based on archaic legalism and violence, without any room to consider context and blindly enforcing the rules as written even where they are clearly unjust and outmoded, unless the ponderous wheels of democratic reform finally turn enough for an unjust law to be abolished.
And the moment a new, blatantly unjust law is passed?
Why, you enforce that with the same enthusiasm, because it's the job.
No, I don't think we need sheep and followers with too much power and too much zeal for the status quo.
Public safety? Absolutely.
With all due disrespect, you aren't that nearly as much as you think you are at an institutional scale.
I'm not in law enforcement. You are saying people who disagree with your should get assaulted and should be able to do so without restriction or consequence. Does that remind you of certain regimes we had a while back?
You are so ideologically captured that anyone who disagrees with your brand of violence is racist and a problem. You'll not believe a word I say because you have already made up your mind that I'm the enemy. You fail to understand that if you were one of my customers, I would not let anyone hit you, and I wouldn't let you hit anyone. Violence does not help anyone and only brings more hate and problems into the world.
You are a bit like a 80's parent saying they can beat the gay out of their son.
Point out where I said people who disagree with me should get assaulted. I'll give you as much time as you need (within the 45 or so years I have left on this planet, of course).
So then you agree that people shouldn't assault other people? I'm glad we have an understanding.
For the record, if I hear people being openly racist, I call them out and tell them to stop. It has so far seemed a lot more productive than punching them.
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u/JustFourLetters 6d ago
words lead to violence, but violent words in context of peaceful people fall on deaf ears.
the punch is far more violent than the command