If the topic is violence as a means of silencing others, then the right or alt-right certainly doesn't have a monopoly. I think we've all seen the clip of Richard Spencer being punched in the head, and the dude in the Nazi arm-band getting KO'ed by some guy, and probably many similar incidents over recent years.
And it's hard to feel sorry for a guy like Richard Spencer or a dude in a Nazi armband getting punched. It kind of feels good to see it happen, doesn't it?
But the point is: some progressives are willing to use violence too. Progressives by and large don't object to violence as long as they think the target of the violence deserves it. And if the targets are people like Richard Spencer, or James Field and his tubby little alt-right friends at Charlottesville, then maybe they do deserve it.
But not everybody has the same idea of who deserves it. It's not just Nazis who get punched. Some progressive people thought student journalists covering the Mizzou protests a few years ago deserved to have force used on them too. Some progressive people think that TERFs deserve to get beat up. If everybody gets to decide who deserves to get beat up, then everybody's going to get beat up by somebody someday.
-k
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