A Chart to Help Those on the Fence About Punching Nazis

They are evil.

You are also evil since you want to believe that the communists also marching through American streets under the flag of a murderous regime are not a threat to America.

Not anyone who sees it, no. Blacks, Jews, gypsies, gays, Muslims. When marching through the streets with weapons, shouting appropriate slogans. Of course that is what it means. I literally know of no other political faction that is not just prepared to kill people for its cause, but has made killing people its one main cause. Do you?

Whom do they want to kill? Not in general or perhaps or in the long run or despite themselves, but right there, physically, during their rally?

Evil K.

Sounds like a breakfast cereal.

We're talking past each other. I think the idea has boiled down to a cultural one. You, being German, have grown up with and are a-okay with the anti-Nazi symbol laws in Germany. Remember, we dealt with that when WF first opened on an Austrian server. Generally, in the United States, those would make for an interesting Supreme Court case. Free expression has to be balanced against threatening behavior. A guy flying a Nazi flag from the front of his house is stupid and the act is offensive. But, it's not illegal. But, another guy wearing a brown shirt and a Nazi arm band beating up anyone is illegal and the latter should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

None of that says that swastikas cannot be used as a signal of the imminent intent to use unlawful force. So again, we do not disagree on what a threat is, but on what the swastika means.

No, that is absolutely false. I oppose and despise those laws, because they fly in the face of free speech. I have consistently said so here, and I consistently say so publicly in Germany.

Not necessarily. They might be intent on immediately killing someone, but that carrying a flag doesn't mean they are. If it did, there would have been a lot more than one counter protester dead. Some of those guys had firearms...but nobody got shot.

Then I don't understand where the disagreement is.

The law says you have to have a reasonable fear of an imminent threat to use self defense. Saying, "I was afraid for my life because he was waving a particular flag" isn't reasonable IMHO.

You can publish a book saying all Jews should be killed -- despicable, but legal; free speech. You can say as much through a microphone at a rally. But when you then take up weapons and start marching, a Jew seeing you move towards him, or any other decent person prepared to defend said Jew, need not wait for the attackers to fire and kill someone before they can respond with force.

Chanting, marching, with weapons drawn? Most of them are cowards, but a person defending their own life cannot be expected to count on the fact that every last person in that mob is too cowardly to act as they have announced that they will.

They do in the US...unless you're saying laws be damned.

I honestly don't know, where some of these guys armed? Don't say a word about the tiki torches. There's two not twenty feet from where I'm sitting. Those are not weapons. Is open carry legal in VA?

I'm also going to hold these guys to the exact same standard you're stating for the Nazi's.

I don't believe that. Are you really saying that if a person is moving towards you pointing a gun at you, saying, "I will kill you!", yes have to wait until they pull the trigger before you may defend yourself?

l

Wait a minute. Are you saying that happened? People with firearms advanced on the counter-protesters pointing guns at them saying "I will kill you"? And then the counter protesters punched them? If that's the case, then yeah. It was self defense....and the counter protesters have big brass balls as well.

But it would be the guns and to a lesser degree the verbal threats that make it justifiable...not a flag or chant.

j

There were some armed right wing and left wing militias there. I didn't even know there were armed left wing militias. But I hadn't heard about them pointing guns at people telling them they were going to kill them. That's the definition of an imminent threat.

"...no permit."

If that's the case, then all bets are off. Skin that smoke wagon and go to work. Weapons Free.

However, something tells me that if that had been the case, the Police would have been acting differently.

This is a good point.

I understand what you're saying, but the mere act of flying a swastika is (typically) insufficient to constitute a threat. Rather, the actions that the Charlottesville Nazis took (being armed, threatening people, carrying torches, "blood and soil" chanting, etc.) combined with the fact that they were doing this under a swastika constituted a threat.

Obviously that is menicing and the law covers that as a crime. Simply saying something you disagree with, even waving a Nazi flag objectionable though that is, does not meet the legal threshold. Your position is just a bunch of hog wash not so artfully or convincingly designed to justify political violence which you like.

Why is it so hard for you to say all political violence is wrong? I guess both you and your Nazi great grand dad have sonething in common after all... Yoi both like pokitical violence as long as you agree with it. That is sad.

That flag only has 25 stars on it, she clearly believes in kicking out half of the states.

Not exactly. Brandishing the weapon and the vocal threats are enough. It doesn't matter what flag they're waving or what they're chanting or even if they're Nazis. They could have been nuns and they'd constitute a threat.

True, brandishing weapons and issuing threats are sufficient alone, but in the context of the swastika I feel that it makes the threats a little more imminent.

This is the old South Park "Look out! He's coming right at us!" defense.

It doesn't work that way. Just marching down the street, saying stupid shit, carrying a flag, and even ooen carrying a firearm does not justify self defense.

A person following your belief who attacked someone in this way would go to jail.

Any use of force has to be justified. Protesters marching in the street do not qualify.

They have to act beyond just being there.

No weapons were drawn. Open carry is not weapons drawn.

Open carry is legal in Virginia. If it wasn't the police would have swarmed anyone they saw with a gun.

That said I hate it these fucks were carrying guns because now leftists groups ate talking about trying to ban open carry.

I don't like open carry personally but i do not want to see it banned where it is legal.

Show me a single video where that happened.

JUST ONE VIDEO.

If it did than self defense is fully justified and in fact the police should have gone after anyone who did such a thing and if necessary than shoot them.

You would not have to wait for a person pointing a gun at you to fire that gun before you could defend yourself.

No, I'm formulating as clear a case I can to test the principle you just proposed (although each aspect of that did happen, only not all at once). The point is you don't have to wait for the other person to kill, shoot or even punch first if it is clear that they intend to do so.