Too late?

[Primula Baggins]

Absolutely.

And if this ever happens again, to anyone—I hope not, but if it does—please know that you can PM me, and I'll take it from there. We do not tolerate attempts at bullying here.

[River]

I deleted it

Aw man...and I was thinking up thoughtful response too. Not much gets that sort of reaction from me these days.

I think we've all heard opinions like "Why did they stay with them?" "Why didn't they say something?" "I would never have put up with that." and so on. Until you're in the situation you just don't know how people react to it, and your most compassionate reaction would be to truly listen to the voices of the victims or the oppressed and to value what they say as truth, not run it through your own prism of privilege and dismiss it because it doesn't match your views and experiences.

Truth. There are some things you can't understand from the outside looking in. Some situations are just impossible. Or, at least, seem that way to the person caught within them.

[samaranth]

I’d also love to read your post Griffy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RoseMorninStar]

Griffy, I'm sorry to hear that. :'( It's often the wrong voices which get suppressed.

I was discussing this subject with someone today (intimidation, suppression of voice/differences in power and how people take it from others). It has come up several times in different places, one being a very thoughtful TEDTalk.

[Griffon64]

I have a post that’s been sitting in a text file on my computer for more than six months. I wrote it at some point while reading this thread, but I haven’t posted it because I feel like I’m talking to a wall when I have this conversation, and I just get sick of that wall. And even when I do try to talk to the wall, it seems standard for the wall to get abusive, or defensive if I'm lucky.

But, some things need to be said because civilization can always do with improvement. So here it is. Some of the references refer to posts made waaayyy back when, but I’m leaving them in. They stand on their own.



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I condemn violence.

Sometimes violence goes beyond physical violence. It is said that abusers may hit their victims in areas covered by clothing, to hide the abuse from public view. But punching isn’t the only kind of violence there is. Oppression, injustice, inequality - these things also do not leave physical marks but instead assault the minds, thoughts, self-worth, and happiness of the targets. It is not a death threat, not a punch. But it is still real violence. Self-defense against this type of violence, though ... that might leave physical marks, and if you discard the initial violence as "not real” ( on purpose or not ) you can then paint those defending themselves as aggressors.

At events like this, why do we have a charged and angry atmosphere amongst the protesters in the first place? Why is the onus on the protesters to toe a line, and not on the speakers to not agitate for inflicting harm on those protesters? Why, to be on the nose, do the targets need to behave but the white suprematists and misogynists do not?

Speaking generally: the protesters are afraid because they are facing people who want them dead, or at the very least oppressed, based on intrinsic things like their ethnicity or gender. I think fear and frustration is a pretty reasonable response for a human being to have in that situation.

I also realize that being reasonable is a mental state not easily achieved during times of fear and distress.

And thus, on one side we have people who are not threatened, not in in danger, who can calmly call for reason and point out that some people are getting a bit uppity here. On the other side we have threatened, fearful people. People protesting the inequality that others aim or want to aim at them. It should be easy to see that they are under more duress than the unaffected who can calmly and philosophically point things out.

When I debate a topic, I attempt to focus on the emotion that surround it. I attempt to find similarities between what I feel about that topic and what the people I talk to may feel. Sometimes I will try an example from something related, trying to find a common grain of feeling, trying to frame what I feel in terms that the other person might be able to grasp better than just listening to me talking about my feelings. I do this because it is important to understand how people feel about a topic. That is what inform their actions on it. Like Frelga said at one point, very little effort goes into standing on principle when there is no personal risk involved. Cool, calm, abstract reason is easy then.

I struggle to find a good parallel to feelings around oppression and threats of oppression because of ethnicity or gender when I talk to white men. ( If you just read this as a white man and felt a stab of anger, hold on to that feeling. Did it make you want to shut this conversation down and get angry at me and shout at me? Did it make you inclined to be reasonable? Did it make you want to complain that everything is the fault of white men these days? It could be a germ of understanding for how the targets of Nazi-speech and pro-gender-discrimination speakers feel. ) There are not many good generalized instances, in the context of oppression due to ethnicity or gender, to mention to white men in America or Australia or any other country where white men hold dominance in an attempt to get them to understand that visceral reaction you get when people target you like that. Even when people directly oppose them white men can still be secure in the fact that the opposition have blunt teeth: Lawmakers are mostly white men, CEOs and other financially powerful people are overwhelmingly white men, police officers are often white men. They can look up the chain and see themselves very well represented.

The best parallel for threats of violence or extermination based on ethnicity that I can come up with for white men in America is September 11, 2001. Of all the voices defending white suprematist free speech, how many rise up in support of free speech for a Muslim terrorist, in a public place, advocating for the deaths of white American infidels? If there is not an absolute one to one overlap there the conversation is not about free speech. But that impulse has not been tested, because we haven’t had rallies of Muslim terrorists crying for the deaths of white American men on American soil.

So, to wrap up my example at the start of this post: if you begin your reasoning about tolerance at the point where an oppressed person retaliates against the threat of yet more oppression you will simply see them as the aggressor but you are ignoring everything that came before. You are discounting the effect of the oppression, the non-physical violence of oppression, on them. You are being unjust in your judgement and unsound in your reasoning.

[Alatar]

Great post Griffy.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes! I'm glad you elected to repost it.

[Frelga]

Brilliant post, Griffy. Thank you for your courage in re-posting after a negative experience.

[RoseMorninStar]

Thoughtful post Griffy. I am going to leave a TEDx Talk here. I found it interesting: I've lived as a man & a woman - here's what I've learned

[Frelga]

Meanwhile. I am not the biggest fan of Cory Doctorow, but this is on topic

Richard Spencer says that antifa sucked all the fun out of college appearances, calls it quits

Elements of the left say that antifa tactics -- direct, physical confrontations with fascists and racists -- are a "gift to the alt-right," letting them play victim and validating their paranoid fantasies about the persecution of white dudes -- but punched Nazi Richard Spencer says that antifa tactics have worked as intended, making it impossible for him to continue his on-campus recruitment tour for his forthcoming race-war.

[RoseMorninStar]

Infighting tears apart modern hate group, just as it did for the Klan

Infighting/infidelity among 'Unite the Right' (The Workers Party/TWP) leader Matthew Heimbach, who has been called the 'next David Duke', and other members may signal the breakdown of the group.

[yovargas]

Meanwhile. I am not the biggest fan of Cory Doctorow, but this is on topic

Richard Spencer says that antifa sucked all the fun out of college appearances, calls it quits

Elements of the left say that antifa tactics -- direct, physical confrontations with fascists and racists -- are a "gift to the alt-right," letting them play victim and validating their paranoid fantasies about the persecution of white dudes -- but punched Nazi Richard Spencer says that antifa tactics have worked as intended, making it impossible for him to continue his on-campus recruitment tour for his forthcoming race-war.

I would bet Spencer just gets replaced by someone more willing to punch back, thus escalating the violence.

[Frelga]

I'll take that bet. How much?

[yovargas]

29 cents.

[Frelga]

To be paid when?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

In person only. It's in the "Laws and Customs ... ."

[yovargas]

To be paid when?

Wait...does that mean I win the bet the next time the Nazi side of these rallies get violent? I don't like this bet. I think I'm going to cancel.

[Frelga]

Well, at least there'd be some upside to it? You'd get a free postage stamp.

But actually, I feel pretty good about my bet, and this is because the key words in that quote I posted were "on campus recruitment tour". In that context, giving the Nazis a stage and engaging in debate serves their purpose. It makes their philosophy look legitimate, something to discuss.

When instead it is treated as something to fight, they lose. When being seen as supporting them means a risk of losing a job, a place in the community, even a fist to the face, they lose.

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

Very eloquent Griffy, but I don't agree with it. You needed to mix a lot of contexts to ultimately get to the conclusion of "words are violence too, so responding with violence is acceptable."

The first context is that of abusers hurting their victims in ways other than violence. This means you are discussing verbal abuse / emotional abuse, something that takes place in intimate relationships or family relationships. It doesn't work nearly as well when it is one stranger confronting another stranger at a political protest and counter-protest. Antifa protesters showing up when Sargon of Akkad speaks, and calling him a Fascist and Nazi, their words don't hurt him for a large number of reasons, the first of which being the absolute lack of any sort of truth value of any type. Carl is also a stronger person than the average person who finds himself in serial abusive relationship and knows better than to be hurt by it. In many ways, the abuse just slides off peoples' backs these days, such as when a Democrat says to a Republican "you disagree with me about the farm subsidies rider for macadamia nuts, so therefore you are a racist." Republicans aren't hurt by being called racist anymore, because they know that no matter what they do they will be called it and therefore there is no reason to be apologetic to people who will never accept any apology.

You ask why counter-protestors are expected to be better behaved than protestors? That one should be obvious. If you want to appear to be the better side, you should act like the better side. It is the phrase "stooping to their level" that should be considered here. That means that if you want to look like the "good guy" you should not be the one who initiates violence. I did not say be a pacifist, but if people do have a right to self defense.

Talking about "oppression, injustice, inequality", those are all abstract terms. They are useful abstract terms, but they are still abstract terms. When there is a protest and a counter protest, and one person strikes another, neither one of them are "oppression, injustice, inequality", they are one individual striking another. That is why no matter what "institutional injustices" a person is protesting or counter-protesting, initiating violence is not the answer.

I stand by my earlier statement - if, when confronted by an argument in favor of racism, the best counter-argument a person can come up with is violence, that person should remove himself from discussion. There are so many good arguments against racism that anyone who feels that resorting to violence is a good first argument, that person is a failure.

[RoseMorninStar]

This isn't a simple or easy topic. The answers are not simple or easy either. I agree, C_G, that verbal/emotional abuse is most often far more damaging from those we know. They know what buttons to push. Resorting to violence is not a good first argument. I don't agree with violent protesters or counter-protesters no matter their affiliation. The pitchfork & torches alt-right 'protest' in Charlottesville felt more like a threat than protest to me. It is a complex situation and what might apply to one situation may not apply to another.

I watched a video a couple of weeks ago that was the opinion of a Japanese man, living in Japan. He was quite worked up and angry about what he felt like was the 'victim attitude' of black people in the US. He compared the situation to the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki and he said that the people of Japan 'got over it' and he couldn't understand why black people in the US could not 'get over' the past. I am not black, so I cannot speak for black people (and I'm not Japanese so I cannot speak for them either) but I could not help but wonder if, for example, Americans had erected statues of American generals glorifying the atomic bombings and prominently displayed flags which stood for the defeat of Japan, for decades & decades after the war, if that man might feel differently. If Americans had enacted laws in Japan which made the Japanese people less than human (I suppose one could compare this to the Japanese internment camps of WWII)--however wrong and awful those internment camps were, our government/culture did not glorify it for more than a century. We allowed the wounds of WWII to heal and we are now allied with Japan. The situation in the South had not been allowed to heal in the same way. General Lee did not want statues of the Confederacy erected for this very reason. He wanted the South to heal and move on. It's been 150 years and some people just will NOT allow things to heal. To put slavery/superiority in the past. They enjoy threatening people or the implication of a threat because it makes them feel superior. The contempt and hate of some people is all too obvious. I can only imagine that affects the psyche of a person and over time, it wears a person down. There are a lot of psychological studies that show that we often only achieve what is expected of us. If expectations are low and negative, it is very hard to overcome that.

I read a story of a white woman who had 2 (natural) sons. One was white, one black. The difference in the way the two boys are treated break her heart. She knows it will adversely affect the life of her black son.

So, yeah, a 'one-off' incident should be easy to resist a violent response, but for some people, they likely don't see it as a 'one-off'/first argument situation but a lifetime of provocation coming to a head. Again, I am certainly not advocating violence, just trying to see the issue from more than one point of view.