Violence in Charlottesville

[Montmorency]

There is a certain point when the defense of the deplorable (trigger warning to any alt-right in here) is no longer noble and is indeed deplorable in itself.

The time to play devil's advocate is not when you have Nazi's marching in your streets.

Nazis have marched in the past, and the ACLU has gone to bat for them, but let's be clear on the specific argument now:

Tolerance is not an absolute, but a social contract and a pact of peace. Once the aggressors make themselves known and break the peace, they forfeit their enjoyment of tolerance from society. Neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and adjacent speech has been identified in our time as a clear and present public danger and may as such be restricted by the government. Apart from the government, citizens have a moral and civic obligation to tamp down and repudiate any such speech wherever they find it, both on-line and off. More or less the same applies to all stripes of terroristic Islamic jihadism.

One concern here is that this principle is not a very clear or robust one other than in privileging the status quo. A more refined principle might be prejudiced against any speech where propagators wish to dismantle the system in which they act, or hold an ideology that intrinsically calls other human life incompatible. But I'm not convinced; one moral value attached to tolerance and retribution is proportionality, and where someone believes and expounds that I and my family should die for the sake of their paradise, it would be proportionate for me to apply severe interpersonal and communal sanctions - but arguably disproportionate to adjudicate criminal liability.

Doxxing and ostracism ("no freedom from consequences") may be the appropriate recourse short of categorical repression. No, you never have to respect or debate Those People. You find the space between "respect" and "destroy", keeping in mind that in the end even Nazi/Confederate rights were baseline human rights (Then again, are human rights really worth it?) To concerned individuals who worry that

“At some point, someone will propose a concentration of power and winnowing of the public voice, and the public sphere will let it articulate the means by which the public sphere can itself be dissolved.”

notice that the bar of proportionate retaliation rises in turn. But we should consider that it isn't there yet, and pre-emptive maximum escalation is intrinsically something you can't mobilize the society for, in addition to being morally dubious. We aren't talking about individuals "standing their ground" against threats. This is always group-level and the mediation of your own actions in that context.


That's not to say we should coddle a certain person here on this forum. One strategy in these types of situations is to practice

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

debunking without direct engagement of the propagator.