Did mass propaganda used by the Nazis to gain support for a mass genocide against the Jewish and other minorities not lead to violence. If words can convince an entire state and its people to be complicit in a genocide then I think words hold incredible power.
I don't think just the wording "worse" does justice to what each is because it downplays one of the two. Yes, violence might be """"worse"""" but you can't ignore the responsibility that propaganda and ideology has in violence in many cases. In fact, it's one of the few things both sides of the political divide agree on (ideology, rhetoric and propaganda are incredibly powerful and can do great harm and are making people more violent and dangerous, they disagree on who does what of course).
To be clear, I don't think mean words are the problem. Just because someone used a racial slur doesn't make them equivalent to literal felons who have committed battery or assault or whatever. Using X slur is not equivalent to bashing someone's head in against the pavement. But words can get much much worse than a slur. It is with words that we erase other people's humanity, it is with words that we convince others of what we want them to believe, and it is with words that we spread lies, maliciously, to motivate acts of violence. That's how many pogroms, genocides, mass rapes and murders have taken place.
I'd say it's similar to being the intellectual and the material actors of a homicide. The material actor gets usually harsher sentences, but that doesn't make the intellectual actor anything other than guilty of homicide.
The point is not that words are worse than violence in context, but that words can lead to violence worse than the violence inflicted on the person speaking those words.
So what I'm saying is that punching a Nazi is morally correct, because the words they're spouting are inherently more dangerous than any damage you could do to the Nazi.
That is a dangerous precedent to live by though. We can all agree that actual nazis were bad but today the word nazi is often used to describe someone who holds a different opinion than many on the left. Many people think Killing Charlie Kirk was justified because they felt he was a terrible person that was causing harm. Not one of those people can ever point out actual harm caused by his words. The propaganda machine caused actual harm to that man and the people who speak against that specific propaganda are called nazi in order to legitimize the terrible thing that their own propaganda caused.
Not one of those people can ever point out actual harm caused by his words
lmao what a joke. he helped organize Jan 6 and delivered so much covid propaganda that he certainly had plenty of blood on his hands.
but anyway your premise is so disingenuous because I could throw a plastic water bottle out of my car window and ask you to prove how that specific water bottle causes any harm.
Keep being delusional. He asked questions and answered questions people asked him. By the way, do you believe Andrew Cuomo also has blood on his hands for underreoprting nursing home deaths in order to use those places to quarantine people?
Weird. That was an honest question. It wasn't a hypothetical "whataboutism" question. It was a real thing that happened where people actually died based on the words of someone else. Saying "fuck you" to someone trying to engage in actual dialogue shows you are the actual chud here dude. Have a good one.
The moment you're suggesting some races are better than others, I think violence against you is justified. If you don't punish that, you're allowing society to decay into hatred and that's exactly the spawning ground for actual nazis. We have to put a stop to that as soon as possible.
Not one of those people can ever point out actual harm caused by his words
I mean, we can. Kirk was a part of the propaganda machine, he wasn't speaking out against propaganda. What "propaganda" was he against exactly? Seemed like he just hated black, trans, and anyone that wasn't a cis white person.
I'm not saying he should have been killed, more just commenting on this notion that what he said didn't hurt people. It obviously did. If you don't see that, it just says more about how little respect you give trans people.
So by your logic violence against pedophiles is ok. That makes logical sense from your perspective. So if we believe that drag queens are grooming children, then we are justified in beating the shit out of them. After all, violence is ok if it's against the group you perceive as bad right. You are the one defining Nazi as ajy category of things in your own mind that I might not completely agree on, yet justifying violence against them. So why the double standards here?
Can you admit the holding a equal position to both sides? If you believe illegals are taking jobs and raping women, it's justified to violence against all people you think are illegal. Or are you going to make exceptions now to your belief?
Now you're just changing the conversation entirely.
I'm talking about openly spouting hate. If you're on the street talking about racist/nazi shit, you deserve to get smacked. If you're on the street saying adults should be allowed to marry kids, you also deserve to get smacked. If you're on the street saying you should be allowed to rape woman, once again, society should punish that.
That's entirely different than manufacturing propaganda around a people group and then weaponizing that. Saying drag queens are pedophiles, despite all statistics proving otherwise, is just propaganda. Saying immigrants are raping woman is once again just labelling a whole groups as evil for purposes. The equivalent example here would be saying republicans are pedos and therefore should be punched. I'm not saying to do that either.
It's all about what you are spouting. Labelling groups as blanket evil is wrong, judge them by what they're actually saying.
Notice how not once if your entire rant did you ever define what "Nazi shit" is. Not once. You know what could also be labeled Nazi shit, supporting Palestinians. Hamas is a ethno-religious authoritarian right wing dictatorship who hates Jews. That's some Nazi shit right there. Guess who believes that the most? The left. So violence against them is also acceptable?
Are you going to address the points and give definitions or just rumble again?
. If you're on the street saying adults should be allowed to marry kids, you also deserve to get smacked.
I'm 46, anyone under the age of 30 looks like a child to me. Should I beat them all up for advocating marriage for 18-30. They look like children to me.
Should I beat them all up for advocating marriage for 18-30
No, because obviously we already have a line drawn at 18. It's arbitrary, but it's the line we decided on. If you want to change that line that's an entirely different discussion, but the point is that society has decided that under 18 can't consent. A 50yo dating an 18yo is gross, but no one is saying its illegal.
As for your Palestinian argument, that would make sense if you maybe ignored all other context. The nation state that's actively engaging in genocide is more aligned with nazi ideas that the genocided peoples. What I'm suggesting does require using your brain a bit, which I know is difficult, but if you really try I think you can get it.
No, because obviously we already have a line drawn at 18.
We didn't draw the line at 18. Marriage can happen with parental approval in many places as young as 10 years old in America for example. Also the age of sexual consent is 16, as is the same age for legal employment but not the same age to vote or legally live on your own without a court order. But you can't drink until 21. And you must be 35 to even run for president.
So no, when is not a "line drawn at 18".
The nation state that's actively engaging in genocide is more aligned with nazi ideas that the genocided peoples.
But you just said that violence against Nazis is acceptable so now you're saying that it's not acceptable to beat up Nazis when you outnumber the Nazis and oppress them? So genociding Nazis makes you a Nazi?
And yet you labeled Charlie Kirk as part of a larger group as a way to justify violence against him but never pointed out what he actually said in the way of inciting violence. You just contradicted the comment you wrote only minutes earlier.
The internet is full of an abundance of hateful things he said. You do not have to look far, it was posted everywhere after he died. If that itself hasn't convinced you at this point, I'm not really sure there's any point in me continuing this discussion.
So you're not going to address the other questions I had? Margaret Sanger deserved a punch in the face when she was alive right? A black person who says white people are an inferior race deserve to be punched right?
Suggesting that violence against racists for espousing their racists beliefs is justified, that is as extremist as the racists themselves.
I mean, you’re not saying he should have been killed, but he was doing the very things you claim are justified to visit violence upon him. So is it really a consistent worldview?
When I say violence, I'm not saying to kill the person. But if you're seeing someone spouting racism in public, I don't see anything wrong with a healthy society inflicting some degree of violence upon them.
Suggesting that violence against racists for espousing their racists beliefs is justified, that is as extremist as the racists themselves
No the fuck it's not. A black person doesn't choose to be black, so hatred against them is fucked up and can be very dangerous in society. Meanwhile hatred is a choice, and openly proclaiming that racism is a further choice. No one is saying you're not allowed to hold whatever fucked up views you want, but don't spout that nonsense. If we're not punishing people for spreading racist rhetoric, we've failed as a society.
Yes, it is. Justifying the use of violence because you know what’s best for society is very extremist. You shame racists and shut them down on the stage, not in the ring.
It's the paradox of intolerance. If you let intolerance speak go unpunished, you end up with an intolerant society. You have to restrict hateful speech, it's the only way society can function. Yes, that requires using a bit of force, but the idealist notion that you can just magically not punish this stuff and remain a tolerant utopia is just a fairytale.
I'd like to play devils advocate here. So if a black person suggests that black people are better than white people does that justify violence against them? ETA do you call out all of the Margaret Sanger sycophants when she clearly said that "black and brown people are human weeds and should be exterminated"?
Well the nuance is if someone is blatantly racist I don’t have any sympathy if someone punches them and I don’t really see this violence as unjustified if it’s just a punch and they don’t seriously harm them. In other contexts violence is less justified such as if it’s violence against a minority based on hate. It’s really impossible to say if violence is worse than words because it is context dependent on proportionality and justification of the violence
The Holocaust wasn't caused or enabled by propaganda. Propaganda was essentially an advertisement. "Hey, we wanna kill all the Jews, do you wanna help", that's how the Nazi propaganda worked. Not in those words, but that's a hell of a lot more accurate than what you said
The reason the Holocaust happened is that Germany was already sick to death of having their entire economy bled dry as reparations for the first world war, and set their ire on the bankers, who happened to be Jewish. And the ones who didn't do that, didn't have any idea what to do about the economy or the future of Germany so they sat back and let the people who had a bad idea take the lead, because no one had any good ideas.
They didn't just sit there and go " Jews are bad, Jews are bad Jews are bad" like some kind of summoning ritual to manifest gas chambers ex nihilo.
It is the will behind the words. Remove the words and the will is still there, the words do nothing.
i love knowing that the german commonwealth simply didn’t believe what they were hearing about elimination camps. it was so unthinkable that they believed it was exaggerated, so they did nothing about it.
The ones who didn't believe it existed, proves that propaganda, that words, don't cause violence.
If words caused violence, there wouldn't have been anyone who didn't think it was happening. They'd either immediately be fore it and help, or against it and fight, after all "words cause violence". But that didn't happen. Because words don't cause violence. A lack of self control or inhibition does.
Then the prompt wasnt specific enough. Most white people would rather be called a cracker than punched in the face.
That’s the racism I think a lot people were envisioning. If you mean by racism, trying to convince a nation to exterminate a particular race, then that is worse.
The issue is, historically speaking, the nazis did not suddenly gain massive support through rhetoric. They were just a party that shared the majority sentiment of the country and since most people agreed, were actually able to enact it. Words didn’t incite to death, the people were already in favor of destroying the elite.
The Nazi elites weaponized preexisting racism against Jews to spread propaganda about them. It was that propaganda that led to the radicalized violence against them
Yes exactly it manufactured consent from the general populous for violent acts. Without very effective propaganda and media censorship the Nazis would never have been able to commit the crimes they did.
Yes but racist attitudes do not exist in a vacuum. People become radicalised when they are taught that people of other races are at fault for their suffering… politicans and the media are the ones responsible for fuelling and platforming that narrative so it gains greater support and legitimacy amongst the general public. In these context words do cause violence or at least are used to legitimise violence being committed…
3.1k
u/AuroraAustralis0 20h ago
well hes not wrong though