“People Should Get Beat Up for Stating Their Beliefs”

So. If people saw a Muslim ranting against Christians and Christianity on public transportation, should vigilantes use social media to track the person down and beat him up on a public street?

What if it were a Nazi, ranting against blacks?

You say I’m creating a false equivalency?

Look at that first scenario again.

I’ll bet you’re more likely to want to track down and beat up the Christians, right?

This isn’t an apology for Nazism. Nor is it to be added to the ball of “The Persecuted Christian.”
What it is, is this: Should people get beat up for stating their beliefs? Even if said stating is meant to intimidate and harass? Or do we just believe that free speech applies only to speech we agree with and that the best answer to hatred is more hatred?

I’m reminded, of all things, of a scene from the 1980 film Popeye, where Olive Oyl and J. Wellington Wimpy recognize the baby Swee’Pea has a gift for picking winning horses at the betting parlor.

Popeye happens to be against gambling. But the Oyls are in dire straits, having lost everything to the Commodore.

Popeye: What are you doing, there? No childs 'o mine will be exploiticated for ill-gotten gains. [to Swee'Pea] Yeah, that's true. You're gonna be president one day.

Olive Oyl: It is not ill-gotten, it's good-gotten gains. These races will clothe us, and feed us, and save us.

Popeye: Wrong is wrong, even when it helps ya.

J. Wellington Wimpy: The horses are at the gates.

Olive Oyl: I think family is more important than dumb morality, hmm?



What would I do if I saw a Nazi on public transportation harassing black people?

I’d speak up about it. On the bus. In the face of that Nazi. And hope others in the same car or on the same bus did the same. I might contact the local police if the situation escalated.

I would not track the dude on social media and then cheer when he got the shit beat out of him.
Because in that victory, you’re adding to the paranoia. He is persecuted. He is being held down by whomever. He’s got the bruises to prove it.

And that smug feeling of superiority you get watching “justice” be done? That comes from using fascist tactics against the fascists. Maybe you think using force is right. It’s not. Because the person who uses fascist tactics is a fascist themselves.

I’d love to have this conversation with my father. He saw real Nazis in action during World War II as a civilian in The Netherlands. Maybe he’d think I’m wrong. Maybe he’d want us to punch any Nazi we saw. But I doubt it. Because as much as he hated Nazis, he also loved Tevye’s line from “Fiddler on the Roof”:

Villager: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

Tevye: Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.

Wrong is wrong, even when it helps ya. I learned that from Popeye.

But I’m just a quiet voice in a world where this is becoming the anthem.