Is it OK to Punch a Nazi?

1. 

   @Junior2000625

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   Where did he say Jews aren't people?

2. 

   @russellmars-bg2pf

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   Its your duty as americans

3. 

   @MrBooYa-yd5er

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   I don’t know what Spencer believes but I do know that people of European descent cannot espouse for putting their people first like everyone else without being demonized and ostracized.

4. 

   @joshuanewman5988

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   Yes

5. 

   @nakdad

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   its fine

6. 

   @kasketbase8741

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   If a alt right/Nazi woman got raped, would you feel bad because she got raped or fell good that she got harmed cuz she’s a Nazi 🤔

   I’m not playing devils advocate, it’s more like a burning question

7. 

   @julianbigelow2794

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   Punching a nazi is not something that I would recommend. However, I do believe that punching a nazi is vastly more okay than being one.

   Think about it this way. If you had to be locked in a house for a 24 hours and you had to choose someone to be with for the duration, would you rather the person in the house with you be a nazi or someone who once punched a nazi?

8. 

   @kezia8027

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   I think for me, the most important way to frame rules around what a person 'can or cannot do' is – would I want my political opponent to have this power over me?

9. 

   @yungjoemighty879

   August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

   Nazis deserve only violence

10. 

    @LoudAngryJerk

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Yes.
    Next question.

11. 

    @GiantPetRat

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    "You can't beat somebody in a battle of ideas if they aren't playing by the rules."

12. 

    @SawtoothWaves

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    bill nye didn't platform ken ham as much as ken ham platformed bill nye. i was on kens side when that debate came out, but hearing nye out really influenced me.

13. 

    @yesterday1396

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Yes.

14. 

    @themysteriousnavi6850

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Unless they try to throw the first punch, do not attack…

15. 

    @Davethe3rd

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Punching Nazis is good because it makes them feel less safe to express their Nazi ideas and Nazi propaganda.

    I mean, everyone should feel safe to express themselves…

    …until they start expressing ideas that lead to harm to people.

    Then, they should get stomped out.

16. 

    @Nahasapasa

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Is it ok to punch a female Nazi?

17. 

    @hewhoisme4343

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    There should be a law that we just punch neo-nazis in the face when we identify them, until they stop being nazis that would be amazing

18. 

    @marisa1637

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    LMAO I love how hella eloquent you are on every topic but you bring it back to brass tacks when you say "Yeah, fuck that guy"

19. 

    @1973Washu

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Attacking someone who is just a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time during a protest and calling them a Nazi can sometimes be enough to radicalize them and turn them into one.
    The Nazis will be there with tea and sympathy and use the attack as a recruiting opportunity.
    The whole "Now, can you can see what we are opposing?" argument has extra weight when the audience is bloodied, bruised and scared because they were just attacked.
    And this will be followed up with an offer for 'self defense classes' in the countryside , which will also be used for further indoctrination into right-wing cause.

20. 

    @kamikazegoat3641

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    You piss me off by being so right

21. 

    @bluelion203

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Captain America #1 literally features him doing exactly this, punching a Nazi in the face. If Captain America is OK with it, I'm OK with it too.

22. 

    @eminentbishop1325

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Still the best argument I've heard on this topic 😎👍

23. 

    @jannepeltonen2036

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    I still think if you're okay with the idea of some ideas just being unacceptable then the correct way to stop propagating them is via state action, using laws that hopefully reflect the opinion of people in general. If people start taking justice into their own hands, that rarely ends well. And I mean, freedom of speech or expression is just one basic human right. It's not something inherently inviolable, however much many Americans seem to believe differently: when it contradicts other human rights, it may have to be limited – but when you limit it, the only good arguments for limitation are based on other human rights, not anything else.

24. 

    @r.nixxed3344

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    It doesn’t matter WHEN we kill the nazi any more than it matters WHEN awe kill the germs on our hands. We’re supposed to do it as often as possible. Nazis are scum and should surrender and shut the fuck up or be burned alive.

25. 

    @MetatronsRevenge613

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Punching him shuts him up, and prevents more Nazis from existing

26. 

    @mikehenrik1

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    There is no point in punching this nazi. First, you alienate him, confirming what he already knows about his opposition. This will motivate him to continue. Also it will give him credibility among his own people. Does that mean that violence should never be used? No. An absurd example was Ghandi's correspendance with Hitler. What on earth was Ghandi thinking? Fortunately, there was a British demagogue, a flawed manic depressive drunkard with dubious colonial and nationalist creditials who stood up Hitler, Winston Churchill. However, this isolated nazi on the corner is not Hitler. So there is no need for any churchill. This punch was not given to save democracy. In short, it was a waste of time. This nazi may even have been converted if he had met some ghandi person in his life. Or perhaps even his own mother. What do I know?

27. 

    @EveryTimeV2

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Everything you do is 'okay', depending on how you view your capacity to choose what decisions you make. However, punching a nazi is a negative, less preferable outcome. Ideally we'd like it if we didn't have nazis, violence is a last resort to conflict resolution that usually is only necessary when you're literally fighting for your life.

    If it got to the point (it won't, nazis are a minority, fact), that people were mobilizing like happened in nazi germany, we already know that the nazis lost. The confederates lost. The slave owners lost. History will just repeat itself, if the unthinkable happens. So talking to people who hold these views is more of a courtesy for their benefit than it is for us.

28. 

    @vitorafmonteiro

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    I agree with your take, but I would like to add a non-philosophical (but strategic) opposition of mine to the nazi punching: it does not work. The Cap. America cover was AFTER nazi-fascism had already took over most of Europe and started invading the rest. There are many myths on the rise of nazism: a popular left one is "Everybody was nice to Nazis, if we outlawed, kept a "cordon sanitaire" and punched them all, they wouldn't have taken power". But the left and centre-right then did that (at first). German Communists fought nazi paramilitary in the streets daily (each Nazi killed was an instant "martyr"), Hitler was arrested for a coup (wrote "Mein Kampf" in jail), the Nazis were 1 year outlawed (a "lighter" "National Socialist Freedom Movement" appeared) and that "time of struggle" (as they called it) that made them "martyrs". Left to non-nazi right at first did all to keep them away, and only the zeitgeist giving them more votes forced first the Communists (who kept fighting the Nazis till '34, but in '31-32 collaborated with them to bring down a Social Democrat local government because the Communists still considered the Social Democrats the main enemy due to supporting far-right militias against communists 10 years earlier; history is complicated) and then the non-Nazi right (which allowed the Nazis to form a government without a majority in 1933).
    The issue (for practiced antifascism) is not if punching them is wrong, if you should debate them… if they get big, no one will be above deals with them, outlaw a party, they will make a less obvious one, "cordons sanitaires" die when they have big polling, and to limit them will bring victimisation speeches. The leaders of those movements do not want to debate by the rules, but to fight the current members of them on the streets and repress them will have 0 effect ("What about the Capitol raid?" Well that actually had 1 positive effect: it unmasked the BS of them respecting the police and being anti-riots. The wake up call is here). If the context stays favourable, they will grow, regardless if you de-engage them, punch, deplatform or outlaw them, and if they get too big, they will be in the system and nothing but civil war will remove them. Where you oppose them is neither with fists nor debates, and not engaging them is not enough, it is by convincing EVERYONE ELSE into the widest intersectionalist social and voting coalitions you can with ethnic minorities, LGBTI+ people, poorer whites, moderates. Will it be easy to make all work into that? Hell no, but "intersectionalising" IS hard, if you don't want hard, don't try it.

29. 

    @rahmanahashem3484

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Yeah the problem comes when they decide that all Trump supporters are Nazis- simply because… mental gymnastics

    This is not a stretch, considering that according to certain leftist crazies, "all whites are racist" now. Of course these crazies changed the definition of "racist" specifically so it can no longer apply to black people. Anyway now you have other people who listen to these crazies who are now OK with calling random white people on the street "racist", simply because of their "white privilege" (Takelia Hill for one, feel free to look her up), even though they don't know them or anything about their lives or what privileges they actually had growing up. Simply because they are white means that they are part of the white patriarchy and part of the racist system that oppresses black people and thus they benefited from the systemic racism against blacks. Thus all whites are racist. Thus all whites are Nazis… You see where I'm going here?

    When words no longer have meanings based in reality, but rather based in people's feelings and emotions and political alignment at any point in time, people can and do any and all mental gymnastics required to validate their viewpoint.

    The word Nazi used to mean "soldier for Hitler in the 1940s", but now seems to mean "anyone whose political views I don't agree with"!

    So while I may have nothing morally wrong with punching that guy personally, I know it definitely wont stop with him.

30. 

    @bkaebel

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Only recently discovered your commentary on so many relevant issues, T1J, so this comes very late: German law prohibits the propagation of Nazi ideology, including by means of unmistakable gestures, the display of certain symbols, etc. One of the ideas behind this law is that engaging in the propagation of Nazi "values" equals engaging in hate speech; hate speech of a kind which, in the case of Nazis, is meant to end in the slaughter of part of mankind, i.e., genocide, and the subjugation of the majority of the rest so the Germanic "master race" can lord it over everyone "inferior." In short, engaging in Nazi propaganda is considered a criminal act, not free speech.
    As with a lot of other extremists, not just on the right, it is true that "you cannot defeat [Nazis] in a battle of ideas because they're not playing by the rules." (As it were, their "ideas" are hatred turned speech rather than anything resembling results of thinking.) Still, people in Germany are allowed to hold Nazi views. They are just not allowed to propagate Nazi ideology outright. (And that, alas, is only in theory: If these a-holes have just the least bit of a brain, they change the terminology just enough to evade prosecution. There are now people in the German parliament who are Nazis, one of them a certified one, who can't be put on trial and locked up because they never go as far as to use outright Nazi language and symbolism, but only – very clearly – hint at them. Still, everyone knows what they are saying. [Like the original scum, they don't even have the guts to own up to what they are and believe in.])
    You object to the German state prohibiting the propagation of Nazi ideology even in forms that aren't immediately physically injurious to others because you feel strongly about protecting free speech (as stated above, I think Nazism's only logical and inevitable conclusion is "inflicting physical harm on innocents," so to me its propagation is already part of a murderous act). At the same time, if I have understood correctly, while you generally object to punching people one disagrees with, you make an exception for Nazis. (Here, let me emphasize that my gut reaction with regard to these enemies of humanity actually goes way beyond punching, but so far I've successfully checked this impulse. Actually, my punching+ impulse also applies to, for instance, hardcore racists and the like – all of those who spew hatred against innocent "Others" because they hate themselves and the lives they lead but are not willing to face their pathology.)
    You imply it's okay for individual citizens, or that it may even be their duty, to punch Nazis because in terms of depravity, Nazis are so far gone that normal rules of interaction don't apply to them (a sentiment I can totally relate to). But I wonder: doesn't that amount to vigilantism (one of whose forms is lynch law)? If "decent folks" take it upon themselves to punish people whom they deem so unacceptable that they can't be dealt with within the norms applied to everyone else, even unsavory people, just not Nazis, isn't there still a danger that, over time, these decent folks extend meting out this civic-duty based punishment to others they consider beyond the pale? And who decides who's to be punched and who isn't? (Again, my punching impulse extends well beyond Nazis. I've met white racists that would be best friends with Hitler.) How about people claiming someone they don't like is a Nazi so that person can be punched with, possibly not impunity before the law, but definitely social approval? And what if some day decent folks decide it's okay to go beyond punching – 'cause it's just Nazis, right? Might it not, then, be better to hand the punishment of Nazis back to the state, where, at least ideally, there is a greater chance of some semblance of accountability and less acting on impulse? Just a thought, though 🙂 .

31. 

    @Psiberzerker

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    For being a Nazi? I don't care who you are, Herr mack, or where you come from, but if you attack someone, I'm going to try to do something about it. A violent Nazi, or Anti-fa. I don't really care, either way. Yeah, I'll punch a Nazi, or anti-fa, if they're a clear threat to anyone. Here's the thing, Nazis have a history of attacking people, burning down capital buildings, raiding affluent neighborhoods, kidnapping, and committing murder on an intercontinental scale. If you wave that flag, and march alongside Klansmen (who have the same History) then I'm going to assume that you have those interests. Which kinda makes me suspicious.

32. 

    @spectrum8554

    August 5, 2025 at 5:22 pm

    I'm not familiar with Ken Ham but I think the difference between him believing in creationism & Richard's belief in racially segregating the world into ethno-states is that Ken's belief in creationism isn't dangerous or hurting anybody, so I think his belief in creationism should be considered acceptable no matter how stupid it is. I agree that debating Ken's belief in creationism is probably a waist of time.

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