On Political Violence

[Mickey_Rat15]

I realize G'Kar and Delenn were our two main non-human cast members involved in the Homeguard plotline, but does that judgement of humans at the end fall flat from those two characters. G'Kar's major motivation for most of this season is his hatred of the Centauri (which is not without some reason but is a prejudice against all Centauri). The Minbari had a genocidal reaction (which she had a personal role in) to humans after the misunderstanding of Minbari customs that lead to Dukat's death, and their Warrior Caste still has not gotten over it. It is also funny that Humanity's hat in the B5 'verse is a unique drive and ability among the races for diplomacy and building alliances (which is seems to be why the Shadows subvert EarthGov in order to suppress).

Was Chuck calling Danica McKeller's character "stupid" meant to be ironic?

[Fixer]

Take a step back for a moment. Look at the result, and the Berkeley riots too.

You only need to google "Berkeley hypocrisy" or "nazi punch hypocrisy" to see the outcome.
There's no search terms I can find that find that say that this support of violence has changed their mind for the better. In fact I would challenge anyone to to find someone from the right that's been moved to change their stance. Meanwhile I can find many from the left that are now moving away or now ashamed to have even been loosely associated.

Google search above got this video here which I feel sums it up nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miE-kwQM0mo

What you see is the alt-right emboldened. The left divided between those cheerleading violence and those distraught that people on their own side of the political spectrum would ever do such a thing.

This is why all the attempts to rationalise violence as appropriate or false equivalences to make a moral argument for it fail. The immutable facts of reality demonstrate it has been a win for the opposition, hardened their resolve and created more division than existed before.

[SFDebris]

To avert any confusion anyone may have, the individual in Fixer's video, Jonathan Pie, is a fictional character by Thomas Walker who is inspired in part by those moments when journalists who think they're not being recorded go off on a rant - in Pie's case, it's his disgust with the right, his exasperation with the left, and his general hatred for the media that he is a part of. You might have seen his post-election reaction video that went viral, more than 3 million hits. Walker does admit the character largely represents his own views, just taken to a ridiculously angry degree. He's quite funny, and I just discovered pulled a similar coma gag to the one I did for Civil Defense.

[SuccubusYuri]

I am so torn on the "Should racists be beaten up" issue. On the one hand I agree that love wins and you can't change someone's mind by beating them up.

On the other, someone that is actively advocating genocide is probably too far gone to be reached anyway, and it's also important to make it clear that hatred will not be tolerated, and that we will defend our human brethren by any means necessary.

The principled person in me doesn't want to give them the satisfaction of having their views legitimized.

The asshole in me smiles every time because it's the same people who think that "safe spaces" shelter marginalized groups from "the consequences of their life choices".

[FaxModem1]

Hypocrisy and bigotry, it's not just for humans.

[Wargriffin]

I had a mini-rant on twitter about this episode; I've posted it below


Over the past 90 days this debate has come up again and again in my life; about if humanity, at it's core, is good or evil
and while I deeply respect @sfdebris and his opinions, I disagree with them.
I know that @sfdebris also brought up the issue of nazi punching; that's one where I've not expressed much of an opinion.
my comments mostly refer to the ending of @sfdebris 's latest video, and the deep implication that it makes about humanity.
the longer I live the more I see how deeply malicious, naive, and deranged the average person is; and have lost all hope for the species.
The only up side is that there are a small number of good, honest, and just people who fight to keep things fair
in the end I'll always fight for fairness, even if it costs me my life at the end of the day.
those who say fairness is a childlike concept, can, in the words of today's youth, "heck off"

Ahh the age old question... Is man at his core inherently Good, Evil or Neutral


or perhaps... despite all the claims to the contrary... We are still at our core those tribes of caveman fighting over whatever... and the winner gets to decide what was is "moral" or "immoral"

[Rocketboy1313]

or perhaps... despite all the claims to the contrary... We are still at our core those tribes of caveman fighting over whatever... and the winner gets to decide what was is "moral" or "immoral"

Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test.

A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest.

Man's vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgments ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised.

Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.

-Cormac McCarthy, "Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West"

[Dragon Angel]

Hi! LONG time fan of yours here (I've watched you since you were posting your reviews on SDN). I've mostly agreed with your takes, sometimes disagreed (sometimes very much), and I find you to frequently be an inspiring voice to listen to on literary and narrative subjects. I mean it, even on episodes we would disagree on. And I respect your motto of "I'm just a viewer with an opinion", and have taken it very much to heart.

This subject, though ... I have to vehemently disagree with you on. Other people--Arkle, Rocketboy, Wild Kraken, scraps, et. al.--have stated my beliefs already and me typing them again will just repeat them. I want to add some statements to the record, though:

Violence is not a desirable outcome, but sometimes, it may be the only outcome available for a group to be noticed. Stonewall has already been mentioned as one of the key events for LGBTQ rights. The Civil Rights Movement, while best known for its nonviolent protests today, also had a streak of violence that forced those in power to choose between the strong words of Martin Luther King, or the stronger actions of the violent factions. Those who whitewash those facts do history a grave disservice, as doing so implies just merely asking for equal rights means you will get them. That societal progress is in a linear relationship with time, guaranteed, without a possibility of being regressed.

Violence is not a desirable outcome, but for so many of these communities, they have already suffered violence beyond imagination. The entire purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement is to show that law enforcement and other government officials tend to not value black lives nearly as much as white lives. Black people have asked for law enforcement to stop targeting them as if they were cattle for decades. Instead, they have constantly been met with derision, mockery, and have only begun to be better noticed in recent years. How long would you expect communities to withstand that kind of pressure without that pressure eventually exploding?

Violence is not a desirable outcome, but we already have nonviolent protests being outright ignored, and in many cases had atrocities committed against them. The Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, for example, were nonviolent protests who were constantly met with dogs sicced on them, who were shot with rubber bullets and had tear gas and concussion grenades thrown on them, who had water cannons fired upon them in sub-freezing temperatures. It was a taste of what black people under the Civil Rights Movement had to endure. In the end, while Obama had ordered a stay on the Dakota Access Pipeline's construction, Trump made rounds to completely reverse that decision ... making any gains from it void. How long would you expect people to believe in the power of protest after that? After the government literally making it known that protest will never matter, your voice will never be heard.

I understand the aversion to violence. I understand the want to avoid violence as much as possible. I understand not only for seeing the greater picture of wanting to not normalize political violence, not only for knowing that people will be hurt, but also that people who are marginalized in those groups will be hurt as well. But, to say violence has accomplished nothing at all in recent history? That's ahistorical. That's a very incomplete image. It erases what was done in so many instances in history that helped to accomplish so much of what we take for granted today, that could be taken away at any time with the stroke of a pen, the mash of a keyboard.

I do not want violence, and I do not advocate it as a first solution, but if marginalized communities either never live to see their rights equalized, or live to see their gained rights taken down one by one, they will see it as the only option left. Babylon 5's example of G'Kar inciting violence does not equate, because the Babylon 5 staff were extremely willing to deal with the Homeguard. They had a moral core that was disgusted at the thought of the Homeguard's existence. Our government has trouble finding motivation to deal with frickin' Nazis! Look at how Trump's administration wants to remove white supremacism from the list of extremist ideologies to deal with. They don't care, unlike Sinclair and Garibaldi and co. They just do not care.

[Dragon Angel]

Starting a fight, no matter the reason, always spreads aggression. Not opposing it in a constructive manner establishes it as a valid way of accomplishing goals, and spreads more aggression. Punching a Nazi gives the Nazis credibility when they beat a Jew bloody; after all, their opponents are hardly better.

With all due respect, this is a cowardly, fallacious argument. "Punching a Nazi gives the Nazis credibility" is a statement that assumes there is a middle ground between "Let the Jews live" and "Gas the Jews". How many people who aren't already entrenched in white supremacism and Holocaust denial are going to honestly side with the latter? Are you serious?

You may as well believe the absolutist interpretation of the Prime Directive, where interfering even to save the existence of an alien civilization will always prove to be wrong.

[TGLS]

OK, then, Nazis are a poor example. Go get in a brawl with white supremacists. That doesn't give them a smidgen of credibility when a loony shoots a black man. Nobody's going to say, "Well look at those radical leftists! They're going around beating us! They're the same!"
Go bomb the Westboro Baptist Church; the less radical homophobes won't be swung their way.

All comparable aggression (i.e. punching people, shootings, etc.) must be equally opposed, because failure to oppose the aggression grants it legitimacy.