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He Infiltrated a Notorious White Nationalist Group. Now, He’s Being Sued for Exposing Them
(www.rollingstone.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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politics
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How's about the right to a fair trial? Food in prison? Right to appeal? Right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment?
Think about what you say and think, lest you wind up being just as much a threat to democracy, freedom, and equality as those you claim to oppose. Don't get me wrong; I get that it's really tempting to treat Neo-Nazis the same way they'd like to treat everyone else, but then you're just like them.
I think there's a big reason why treating them the same way they treat others is fine.
The people that Nazis target are not only usually innocent, but they often don't even have a choice in the reason for their bullying. You don't choose to be non-white, be gay, be trans, etc.
Nazis choose to be pieces of shit that hurt innocent people.
The argument that people bring up for not treating them badly is that we don't want to set a precedent in case the Nazis eventually get in control and decide being on the left is worthy of being deprived your rights.
But I think we all know that they wouldn't need a precedent to deprive you of your rights if they took control and didn't like you. They would simply do it if they had the power.
No, the idea behind human rights is that you get them if you're human, period. If we suddenly decide this particularly horrible group of humans doesn't deserve them, we are literally dehumanizing them and paving the way for someone else to later decide another group of humans doesn't deserve them either.
Your second point is the exact point that I addressed. There is no "paving the way". They will do it if they want to, regardless of what we do now.
As for your first point, that's a fair statement. I maybe jumped the gun a little bit. Human rights are Human rights. My point is more addressed at civil rights. Civil rights are taken away all the time. You lose your right in the USA to vote, to own firearms if convicted of a felony.
You lose your right to live in a certain places if convicted of sex crimes.
If you are a Nazi, you definitely still deserve the human rights. But you shouldn't have a say in how anything is decided. You shouldn't have the right to vote, because you will always vote to attack minorities for no reason. You shouldn't have the right to own a gun.
No, that's not what I was saying. The "someone else" I was referring to wasn't the Nazis or any other extremist group; it was some other person, likely later on in history, probably well-meaning and certainly part of the mainstream, using our decision to strip Nazis of their rights as precedent for stripping another group of those same rights. People like, say, rapists. Rapists are bad, right? Why do they deserve rights? Or how about just anyone who expresses a bigoted belief? People who are convicted of crimes? I hope you see the point: it's the slippery slope argument. You open the door just a crack, because you think in this particular instance it's justified, and soon someone else comes along and says, "hey, here's another instance I think is justified;" faster than you'd think, the door is wide open and our government itself has become the fascist terror organization.
Civil rights are different and not what I was objecting to in the original comment.
There's a certain irony here as one of the early things the Nazis did was make other parties illegal so as to ensure they would remain in power despite a hypothetically democratic process. Depending on how you define "Nazi" (what is the bare minimum position or action one would have to have/take to count as a "Nazi"?), this touches awfully close to that.
Basic human rights must be guaranteed. That's what separates us from them. But beyond that? I completely agree, fuck them. Nazis should not have free speech, because Nazis sure as hell won't give you free speech.
It needs to follow a paradox of tolerance situation -- if someone would use X right to get into power so they can take away X from people on the basis of race, religion, sex, orientation, identity, ethnicity, etc then they relinquish X right.
On the surface this seems hypocritical, but it really isn't. Stripping white supremacists and Nazis of free speech is not taking away a right on the basis of race, religion, sex, orientation, identity, nor ethnicity. It's taking it away on the basis that they think a born trait makes someone inherently inferior to them. Believing in discrimination is not a born trait. Plus, there's also the order. The express purpose of limiting the right is to protect vulnerable groups from losing it.