Disgraceful! Richard Spencer Sucker-Punched While Giving Interview

I have the sense that destruction of other people's property is pretty much the only thing that anarchists actually do.


This.
Back in late 19th and early 20th century, they got a pretty good body count of killing people (including a US President and a couple of Kings, and a few random bombings) but nowdays they don't do much above the misdemeanor level.
 
This.
Back in late 19th and early 20th century, they got a pretty good body count of killing people (including a US President and a couple of Kings, and a few random bombings) but nowdays they don't do much above the misdemeanor level.

Quite the selling point for a movement. New improved anarchism! Murder free, made from 100% vandalism!
 
Quite the selling point for a movement. New improved anarchism! Murder free, made from 100% vandalism!

Just the ticket for a bunch of revolutionary wannbes,who want to act like they are standing up to the Man, but do not want to do anthing really dangerous.
 
The number of people here who think that blindly destroying other people's property is a acceptable form of protest is really disturbing.

I also think the circumstances with the Boston Tea Party and what happens when the Anarchist are around are vastly different.
 
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No he shouldn't he was defending himself

If the punchee decided to press charges, Aldrin should have been arrested, but the mitigating circumstances presented by a stranger accosting the puncher in public, screaming ridiculous accusations and aggressively harassing him probably would have resulted in all charges being dropped 10 mins after the arrest.
 
No, it really doesn't.

Yes, it observably does. Feel free to point out the threads/posts denouncing the other assaults which happened that day. Other than my posts in this thread I'll bet you won't find any. Liberals only care about violence when it's directed at Nazis.

Is it your opinion that there was no threat of harm or death to the Nazi as a result of the cowardly assault?

I haven't seen any cowardly assault, so you'll need to specify.

You're worried that identifying the thug may put him in danger.

The thug is already identified, his name is Spencer. I'm talking about the person who gave him an alt-highfive.

I take it this means you don't wish for his arrest?

Spencer? I don't care really.

His assailant? I'd prefer for him not to be identified and probably killed.

Which reminds me, just a few days ago an anti-fascist organizer of the IWW was shot by one of Spencer's crowd. With reference to the first paragraph: Hello? Liberals? Heeelloooo? Liiibeeeraaals? ... Nope, no response, the only violence which needs to be denounced is that against Nazis.
 
The number of people here who think that blindly destroying other people's property is a acceptable form of protest is really disturbing.

If the true party of the working people ever achieves real power in the US, the typical "education" doled out to counter-revolutionaries will make one yearn for the days of property damage and sucker punches.
 
What is wrong with violent protest where you need to cover up your identity? The nation was founded by such noble actions like the boston tea party. Destruction of private property to protest political actions is one of the most american values there is, it helped in its founding after all.

Rearrangement of private property isn't violence. Private property is a belief system, being a legally mandated belief system doesn't change that. Refusing to accept a belief system isn't violence no matter how much people who do adopt that belief system may say so, just like refusing to belief in God is not violence no matter how much religious people may claim so.

Violence is against people, not against inanimate objects subject to intricate belief systems.
 
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Rearrangement of private property isn't violence.

What a charming euphemism for vandalism. I'll have to remember that the next time I feel the urge to go destroy stuff I didn't make.

Which will probably be never, since I'm not a sociopathic loser, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.
 
Rearrangement of private property isn't violence. Private property is a belief system, being a legally mandated belief system doesn't change that. Refusing to accept a belief system isn't violence no matter how much people who do adopt that belief system may say so, just like refusing to belief in God is not violence no matter how much religious people may claim so.

Violence is against people, not against inanimate objects subject to intricate belief systems.

That was the type of rock solid thinking that led to the Russian famine of 1921.
 
Thanks for your reply -- thoughtful but not fulfilling. I want specific goods on Spencer. I'd like to see his actual words, not a characterization.

Looks like poster A'isha thoroughly addressed that. I confess that I am not overly familiar with Spencer's body of work; I have read/heard enough from him to know we are irreconcilably of different philosophies.

If someone advocates violence against Spencer, that's not a lot to ask.

I'm not sure that any posters actually advocate violence against him, or that his words merit assault. His ideology is based on violating the rights of others, which puts him IMO a step or two outside the confines of civilized folk and their laws. While he is ultimately governed by law and subject to it, the content of his speech goes for a leisurely stroll outside it. I think some of us find it 'ok' to go for that walk with him. It's like two people who 'take it outside', knowing that fighting is illegal, and subject to punishment, but agreeing to do so anyway. I see his declared willingness to violate others to be a tacit agreement to take it outside, beyond those pesky laws and rights he so freely condemns.

I don't want the sort of hate speech laws like exist in Europe because I highly value free speech. Unfortunately that permits a lot of disgusting speech.

Truth. Tolerance is the price of freedom and all. And if he is willing to freely discuss the merits of Black Genocide, he can tolerate a well-deserved smackdown. :)

OK so there's a beginning of a standard. "If someone genuinely feels" followed by something that's plausibly horrific. This impresses me as a recipe for a whole bunch of vigilante justice.

I mostly agree, except this. While I'm strongly pro choice, I can't dismiss the feelings of anti-abortion zealots as insincere.

That's fair. I think that calling abortion murder is hyperbole for the hard core pro-lifers. If they believe it is actually murder, as we all define it, then they would be utterly monstrous for living with it peacefully. 'Terminating a potential human' just doesn't have that cool bumper-sticker oomph, I guess.
 
What a charming euphemism for vandalism.

So you agree that it's not violence? Do you then agree that, indeed, on the day in question it was the government's gang which initiated the violence?

Now you seem to want to attach this term "vandalism" to it, are you really that desperate to appeal to emotion that you prefer inaccurate emotionally-laden terms over accurate empirical ones, such as "the rearrangement of molecules of inanimate objects [of private property]"? As you can see you can even add your belief system about private property in if you want.

I'll have to remember that the next time I feel the urge to go destroy stuff I didn't make.

An interesting remark. Much of the basis for the left's opposition to capitalism is exactly that under capitalism workers do not get possession of the full product of their labour. You should also maybe be mindful of the difference between private property (ie of the means of production) and personal property (yeh toothbrushez) - no homes or so are getting damaged, are they?

Which will probably be never, since I'm not a sociopathic loser, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

Interesting.

So as far as I understand it you (as in general you but including you personally) promoting a belief system called "private property" (is this going to be one of those unicorn things?). It seems to be a specific map from physical objects to persons, such that a person being associated with a physical object means this person has the right to decision making power over the molecular arrangement of said object. Where "right" means that should another person usurp said decision making power that the state is now justified in the use of violence against that other person.

Some properties of this belief system appear to be:

- Persons is not equal to people. It can also be an abstract entity called a "company". This reminds of that Jabba thread where persons can exist without a presence in the natural world. Maybe the codomain of "private property" should be called Jabba-persons instead.

- If we look at the specific map there doesn't seem to be any rational or desirable properties to it. The physical objects are associated with Jabba-persons in an apparently arbitrary way such that none of the following properties hold: 1. Everyone gets equal decision making power. 2. Decision making power is democratically decided. 3. Jabba-persons get decision making power over that which they made themselves.

- It is woefully inaccurate by mixing a bunch of distinct concepts into one. For example it includes both someone having a toothbrush and a multinational corporation having a chain of factories. Neither the arguments of use (I'm the one using my toothbrush) or emotional attachment (It's my toothbrush damnit!) which could be employed in the former case hold for the latter.

Basically it's a crappy, violent and murderous belief system. Poverty is violence, after all, and poverty does kill - as opposed to, say, rearranging a limo.

The way said belief system is defended, after a group of non-believers were seen expressing a lack of belief in it, is also pretty revealing.

There are the ritualistic denunciations of the non-believers, as expected lacking any sort of either rationality or empiricism, but consisting entirely of appeals to base emotion with rhetoric of "idiots" and "despise". Responding using the same rhetoric but directed at the militant believers entails moderator action, so it's one of the unstated official belief systems around here. Which is amazing by itself since the adoption of this belief system requires the acceptance of the concept of Jabba-persons.

There are the claims that expressing non-adoption of said belief system constitutes violence. In what way it is supposed to be violence is never explained. Is expressing disbelief in "God" as violent as expressing disbelief in "Bank of America"? They're both Jabba-persons after all. But then the rhetorical use of the term violence is solely as an appeal to emotion, through an association between "violence" and "bad". Yet one wonders that if people have such a problem with violence then why they aren't focusing on all the quite unambiguous violence which did happen there that day, rather than desperately seeing violence where there is none.

All in all, a crappy, violent and murderous belief system defended at the level of a raving religious cult when someone expresses disbelief in their deity.
 
I'm not sure that any posters actually advocate violence against him

I do. But then I'd have advocated punching Hitler in the 1920s as well.

or that his words merit assault.

Not because his words merit assault per se. Because it's the only thing that works - with "works" again not being stopping him from saying these words per se but stopping his followers from acting on them.

If anything, Spencer should be punched more often.
 
That argument would be self-contradictory and wrong. There is a legal standard for what constitutes inciting violence. Language which incites criminal action (violent or otherwise) is not protected speech. Since you state that his speech is legally protected, it cannot be incitement.

You misunderstand. Inciting to violence is not protected, true enough. But Spencer's speech carries a subtext which clearly promotes violence. You perhaps think that discussing how to best exterminate a race is not advocating it, and that advocating it is not a tacit incitement? His speech is protected, but the 'reading between the lines' ideology is arguable, as I said.

No. Regardless of the contempt one might feel for the law, the principle has always, always been that anyone who obeys the law deserves its full protection, and Spencer has (to the best of anyone's knowledge) obeyed the law. To apply the law any other way is to punish thought crimes, and there's really nothing poetic or just about doing that.

Disagreed, although the poetic thing was pretty obviously tongue-in-cheek. For a lot of us, the law is not God, but more of a standard we have to answer to if caught breaking it. Do you mean to suggest that you have never failed to declare some cash income from a yard sale on your taxes, or come to a complete stop at a stop sign? We all knowingly break a law here and there, the question is only of degree. Spencer openly advocates taking legally protected rights away from others, and in doing so his philosophy entrenches him outside the laws as they are. It's at least a little poetic to meet him there on his own right-trampling terms.
 
I do. But then I'd have advocated punching Hitler in the 1920s as well.

I don't advocate it, but I can tolerate it. Preaching about violating the rights of others puts him in a position where he can't reasonably object to having his rights violated.

Not because his words merit assault per se. Because it's the only thing that works - with "works" again not being stopping him from saying these words per se but stopping his followers from acting on them.

If anything, Spencer should be punched more often.

I doubt that. They likely see him as a Nazi martyr now, and Spencer was already tweeting about taking their self-protection into their own hands.
 
Thank you. I'm aware of that event. There's no denying that Spencer is massively disgusting. But that's weak tea as justification for vigilante justice. Not even a call for extermination, as has been suggested.

To avoid misinterpretation, I'm in a class of people that would fare poorly if Spencer was actually exterminating. Opposing the Spencers of the world has been a significant focus of my adult life.

I'm curious: Who would you say is the most significant "Spencer of the world" that you have opposed, and what form did your opposition take? I'm assuming it wasn't vigilante justice.
 

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