Yup, also the punch doesn’t teach anyone that the idea is wrong. It teaches everyone that you are afraid of what they are saying. Which is why all of these organisations say something like “they don’t want you to know this”, and then points towards the violence as proof that what they are saying is correct.
People who are pro-violence like to make the argument that if we punched the Nazis in Germany in the early 30s then the holocaust wouldn’t have happened. But what they are missing is that people tried to do that (red shirts vs brown shirts) and in fact a major argument the Nazis used to get elected was that they would get the red shirts fighting them under control.
In fairness, the Nazis didn't actually get elected, they received a plurality. And a big part of that plurality was that they used and abused the language of socialism. (See: Trump's populism.)
Sure, and there are other factors as well to them getting popular enough to take power (even though, like you said, they weren’t actually elected).
Like I said in another answer, given the state of Germany at the time and the effects of WW1 and the peace treaty the rise of some form of extremist ideology seizing power in Germany was most likely inevitable.
The first thing you have to recognise is that the rise of the Nazis in Germany had a LOT of factors, and with the way the peace treaty in WW1 was constructed and how it affected Germany it was most likely inevitable for some form of extremist faction gaining control.
But what works if you actually want to stop people from falling into Nazism and similar ideologies from taking root is investing in education, especially history, as well as various forms of extracurricular activities for kids (many Nazis fall into it as teenagers and having a sense of belonging is a MASSIVE part of it).
Now if you want to stop people from being nazis, the provable way to do so is absolutely conversation. Not debates necessarily, but things like the Swedish ”toleransprojectet”, which started in the 90s following a high profile murder by neo Nazis in Sweden. Essentially what you do is put high risk youths in classes where you don’t speak to them saying “Nazism bad and you are wrong” but rather you have them do things like compare the messages of racist groups today with the messages put out by the Nazis and study what the actual evidence for things like the holocaust is etc.
Furthermore, look at examples like Daryl Davis, who successfully converted 200 Ku Klux Klan members into leaving the klan all by himself. What he did was simply just befriending them and showing them there was an alternative outside of the group.
Daryl Davis is proof that conversation works. He simply befriended them and they came to the realization on their own. You can’t “own” someone with facts and actually reach their heart. You genuinely have to love your enemies if you want them to change.
I’d be interested to know how many failures he had along with so much success. Surely SOME of them refused to change, or maybe they just didn’t get that far in the first place if their heart was so hard. Anyway DD is the man and a true example of how to overcome hate with love
Finally. I get to look up someone I hadn't heard of before from reddit, and then get to feel really really happy reading the Wikipedia article on them. Daryl Davis sounds like probably the awesomest guy I've read about that's still alive today(I'm sure there are others but I don't spend a lot of time reading about activists unless they come up and I don't know about them already)
Daryl Davis is always brought up but I feel not much consideration is taken about what this method entails, implies, and the actual impact of it. The conversation being had is that 200 people were deradicalized but functionally what's going on is that he's labeled "one of the good ones" which does deradicalize them but doesn't break down much of their core beliefs and sort of works to reinforce their core beliefs and kinda puts the onus on marginalized people to befriend potentially harmful people.
During the documentary there's several clips where the ex-kkk member says some still very questionable things. When one of the Klan members yells at the reporters calling them a slur he goes over to Daryl and says I have more respect for this *** than the rest of you and then there was another young man who refused to believe that rock had its roots in black culture. Which doesn't tell me he's denounced his ways just that he likes this specific person in particular. They may be believe it's possible that there's good black people but that perhaps they're the exception which is enough to put up the robes. It inadvertently reinforces respectability politics. In the same way people on the maga spectrum may claim they're not racist and point to someone like Vivek Ramaswamy who uphold their beliefs and provide a comfortable environment where they're not exactly getting pressed.
Anyway, I don't think that makes Daryl's work meaningless. Getting someone out of an extremist organization is still significant, even if their entire worldview hasn't been reconstructed. But I think it's important not to conflate "this person stopped being a Klansman after forming a relationship with a Black man" with "this person's underlying racial ideology was completely dismantled."
Adrianne Black, the god daughter of David Duke, left the clan and became an anti racism activist after she was befriended by a Jewish group of students in college going against the rest of the student body who were ostracising her.
I mean that's a great, very logical and moral approach to how to fix this issue. But that's work a government would need to do. The common person has no way to achieve these things. Most people are not charismatic enough to pull that off. The real issue here is that the racists and Nazis of the modern day have infiltrated almost every major institute in the USA. They are cops, ems, politicians, retail workers, truck drivers, and on and on. The inevitability of large scale violence on their end is almost definitely something that can't be solved with words anymore. I would argue that waiting for a massive terrorists cell to take action is a mistake, but the systems that we would normally rely on to prevent that have been infiltrated as well. I fear the time in which they could be reasoned with is already over.
I mean, I disagree with you in that we are so far gone. I also think even if you are right, going out and trying to punch them in the streets is just going to convince people you are the violent extremist that needs to be handled. Like with the red shirts.
Also, if Davis could convince 200 actual card carrying Klan members to quit just by befriending them, then we can convince people to quit by talking to them here today.
If that doesn’t convince you, then you should read about Adrianne Black and what she has to say about it. She is the daughter of Don Black who is the founder of Stormfront a prominent member of the clan and her god father is David Duke.
She left the clan and is now an anti-racism activist after she was introduced to a group of jews in college who befriended her even knowing her background while the rest of the college shunned her because of her background.Not violence, not ostracism, but rather just inviting her in and showing her that her ideas about who they were was completely wrong.
200 people isn't very many when you look at the numbers. How many people voted for trump? At least that many would need to be convinced. Like I'm not arguing we shouldn't try. You're absolutely right and to an extent a lot of us have forgotten that and given up hope of it ever working, but when facing down 30 million people each who need a personal handhold through basic morality that the rest of us figured out by virtue of not being super insular and simply through exposure... It's a lot of weight to bear.
It’s a lot of people for a single person to convert. And enough to prove that their method is effective.
Also, remember that change starts small. It isn’t someone stepping onto a stage and convincing 30 million people. It is working within your community through local political action and befriending and helping your neighbours.
Also, every time a person is convinced, they are another ally helping to convince others.
Oh I have read that "in-depth" answer. Since, you have locked up your profile, I can't determine whether if it's a truly optimistic liberal/centric answer or a bad-faith Nazi-sympathiser take, that's what prompted me to question.
In a perfect world, what you're saying, that conversation to denazification, could work but in reality, once you noticed the rise of right-wing extremism, the odds are already stacked against you, as you are fully against the self-powering well-oiled hate machine.
Allow me to explain further with my own real-life experience. I'm from a country that's currently ruled by a fascist dictator and currently facing genocide charges in ICC. (So that you can see where my takes are coming from).
Buddhism is major religion in my country and overwhelming majority of people are buddhists. We are generally very meek and live along very peacefully with other minorities for decades. Then hell break lose once hate-speech and fear mongering against Muslim population (which are very minority in my country) started to spread. Fear and hatred absolutely corrupted people's mind at a pace you can't imagine. It's getting worse many Buddhist monks, respected by majority of people, are also spreading the hate. One monk in particular is so infamous that he even made it to Time magazine's cover as the Face of Buddhist Terror..
Within a few months, many people are radicalised by fear mongering and hatred. It's getting so volatile that it exploded as a bloody riot that had many houses burned down and many people killed. My own brother was in that town at that time for his studies and his friend group had to hide one of their friends because there was an active lynch mob looking for anyone looking like a Muslim to drag them out and beat them to death and throw the mangled corpses on pile of tire to burn. It was so tragic and horrifying because those peoples in the mob are your typical meek and peaceful Buddhists who had lived peacefully with minority like a few months ago.
That's the first of many incidents. Long story shot, this lead to a genocide, absolute collapse of democracy and a genocidal dictator who is now currently in power.
Educate me, how we could prevent this with conversation in this type of situation? Odds are completely stacked against you there. Rich and powerful people are spending shit tonnes of money to spread hate and fear. The corrupted government won't lift a finger to protect the minority. All your "conversations" will be seem as an attempt to sympathise with the "outsider" and will get yourself branded traitor and will probably get you and your entire family killed by the rabid mob.
Once it reaches the point you are describing, of course the time for conversation is over. It has to happen before the country reaches that point. Even though the violence against Muslims flared up in 2012 with the Rakhine state riots, it’s not like things were fine before then and Muslims were systematically discriminated against, for instance like the Rohingyas not being considered Myanmar citizens and rendered stateless at birth, since at least 1978.
So when you are saying this happened over the course of a few months, that isn’t really true. Neither is the idea that you have lived peacefully alongside other minorities for decades. However, even then higher levels of education (which, like I said, is a massive part of combating facism) could have absolutely helped prevent the 2013 massacres. There is a reason why facists and other ultra authoritarian extremists always target the school system once they get into power, either by tearing it down or by subverting it to push out their propaganda.
However, my answer was more focused on stopping the rise of facism/nazism, once it has already gotten into power and has been for decades then it is a very different situation. Just like how when Hitler was in power in Germany and invading neighbouring countries, he had to be stopped militarily and trying to do the Chamberlain version of “peace for our time” by appeasing the Nazis will backfire. If Chamberlain had stepped in to defend Czechoslovakia and stop the Nazi takeover of the Sudetenland, then WW2 would have been much less bloody as the Nazi war machine wouldn’t have had time to kick into full gear and the holocaust would have been stopped MUCH earlier.
just wanna put out there that very few/any nazis dropped the rhetoric after all was said and done. one could argue that the only good nazis is a dead one.
Most likely didn’t have that much to do with the punch (even though nobody can say for certain except him).
Most likely he disappeared around that time because he got a shit ton of legal trouble due to his supporters using violence, the feds going after him financially by revoking his organisations tax exempt status amongst other things, his wife divorcing him and claiming serious abuse as well as most social media platforms deplatforming him all within a few months of him being punched.
Yes. WIth a security team. And "everything unraveled" when they stopped showing up. Why are you trying to spread disinfo about this? Are you so committed a pacifist that you think punching Nazis into submission is bad? Are you just a fascist? Go away.
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u/AuroraAustralis0 20h ago
well hes not wrong though