Just Stop Defending Nazis.

From a FB friend: When the ACLU defends Nazis, that's their job. If you're defending Nazis in your spare time, you need a better hobby.

White supremacy is bad. White supremacy is dangerous. White supremacy isn't a difference of opinion we should platform and debate.

Making a space for white supremacy, arguing that white supremacy should be allowed to express and enlarge itself, aids and empowers it.

If I see a neo-Nazi being treated unfairly, I don't help him. If a neo-Nazi being treated unfairly asks me for help, I don't help him.

If I see others who aren't neo-Nazis helping the neo-Nazis, I might say, "Why are so many of us going out of our way to help neo-Nazis?"

Because I don't get it. If you're against racism and fascism, stop fighting alongside racists and fascists.

If you don't like being unfairly labeled as sympathetic to racists and fascists, then stop fighting alongside racists and fascists.

I'm sorry to keep harping on this, but I am genuinely upset and baffled by it.

What is so admirable about rushing to the defense of people who would KILL YOU if they had the power to do so?

How is it a defense of liberty to spend your energy making sure there's space for people whose ideology calls for an end to liberty?

When people show up to disrupt a Tax Day protest holding up signs with Nazi slogans and making the fucking Hitler salute...

...and you decide to spend your time arguing against the people who showed up to OPPOSE the Nazis, I'm sorry, I don't understand that.

This "they wouldn't have done any harm if we'd have just stood aside and let them have their say" attitude.

This "well, punching a Nazi makes you WORSE than the Nazi because the Nazi didn't punch anybody" bullshit.

You don't even have to approve of Nazi punching to think it's ridiculous to judge the guy punching a Nazi more harshly than the actual Nazi!

Yesterday I had a very frustrating Twitter exchange with someone I respect, where I was told I was sacrificing the "high ground."

We have very different concepts of what constitutes high ground in this case.

If holding the high ground means taking the side of racists and fascists over those who oppose them, then I never had it to begin with.

Supporting free speech means accepting that not everyone who exercises that right will say things you like. I've always believed that.

But that belief doesn't require me to step up and object when fascists and racists are being shut down by protesters.

Because the truth is if I were close enough and I had the guts, the only right place for me to be would be WITH those protesters.

Not throwing punches, not swinging bats. That's not my thing. But placing my body alongside others, against organized, emboldened bigots.

There's this tendency in skeptical/atheist circles to treat every argument as abstract, to approach everything in "in-principle" mode.

But white supremacists aren't gaining traction in principle. They're really doing it. It's happening.

White supremacists aren't working in the White House in principle. They're there. They're shaping policy.

Neo-Nazis aren't recruiting people and becoming ever more active on social media in principle. It's not a thought experiment. It's real.

And I'll be goddamned if I'm going to do anything to help it, however well intentioned, however rooted in principle.

If supporting free speech but failing to defend it when the defendants are Nazis makes me philosophically inconsistent, so be it.

If it makes me a hypocrite, so be it. Not the end of the world. I can live with it.

Inconsistency and hypocrisy are a lot easier to live with than enabling racism and fascism.

Free speech for everyone, but Nazis can defend their own rights. I'm not doing it, especially not in the name of humanism.

P.S.: Just to be extra-super-clear about what I have a problem with here, since I've been accused of dishonestly framing this argument:

I don't think people who take it upon themselves to defend free speech rights of Nazis are Nazis themselves or sympathetic to Nazi ideology.

My quarrel with them isn't that I think they're Nazis.

My quarrel with them is that they speak up to defend the rights of Nazis, and in doing so make it easier for Nazis to keep doing Nazi stuff.

And unless you're a public defender appointed to defend a Nazi, I don't think defending Nazis is something that you should ever do.

Even if, legally speaking, that Nazi has a case. Are you that Nazi's lawyer? No? Then stop defending the Nazi. Fuck that Nazi.

Okay, now I'm really done. Probably.