Ian Mug
A video from Inauguration Day that shows Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched in the face has gone viral recently.
Apparently, there is room for debate on whether or not it is appropriate to punch such a person who uses the platform of free speech to espouse his ideology of racial superiority and hatred.
The logical answer is, of course, that no one should be silenced for giving their view in the United States, that a dialogue needs to be created with these people in order to better understand them and perhaps change their views.
While I deeply empathize with this notion of free speech, I cannot comfortably say that I’m against punching someone in the face who is exploiting this right to one day take that very right away from others and almost commit genocide.
To say that someone acting to intimidate Spencer and his kind makes them no better than a Nazi is patently false. While those who intimidate Nazis through acts of violence are doing it to protect the rights of others, Nazis use it in order to suppress those rights.
The man who punched Spencer was not attacking free speech, but protecting it from people who would exploit it and systematically do away with it. These people are now less likely to go through with these ideas because they know that, in the end, it won’t be tolerated by the free people.
Am I telling you to go out and punch Nazis you see or know of at ESU?
No.
However, I want to make it clear that those who do so, are not wrong in their anger against Nazis and have plenty of reason to feel justified in their actions.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurred a few days ago, should serve as a reminder to all that those at ESU who act to intimidate Nazis might be more than justified in their actions. There is no room for error, when people’s lives are at stake.