1060
Defediverse
(lemmy.ml)
EDIT: no, I don't sympathize with nazis (neither I sympathize with those who call everyone nazi when they're losing an argument ;)
No they weren't, this is what Popper defines as intolerance of the second degree. Taken from the German wiki page because this aspect is better explained there than in the English version (translated with deepl):
In other words the intolerance against Nazis is justified because they are the ones being intolerant in the first place, and sometimes this is the only way to fight them on that.
I'll grant that this is disregarding your premise of Nazis not existing, but to be quite honest if I may, that's a pretty stupid premise. The Nazis did exist, they were the poster child for intolerance of the first degree, and their ideology is far from being as dead as they are.
I agree that attempts at enlightenment should always be the default option. Not least because of the passage I purposely quoted along, that separating first and second degree of intolerance is an intractable problem.
I get your point that being called a Nazi while you are not isn't fun. This rhetorical move is known as a "Totschlagargument" in Germany by the way (literally translated: manslaughter argument, i.e. it kills discussion). Maybe don't throw out the baby with the bathwater though, and keep your only way of effectively resisting against them, abhorrent though it may be.
Case in point...
These sentences are literally applicable to historical Nazis, just replace Facebook with pamphlets and radio. And this is the sense in which I mean that their ideology is far from dead, there are plenty of people that espouse fascism in general or Nazism (as in national socialism) specifically today. They all have their subjective reasons and none of them matter in the end, because their conclusion is fascism, an inherently inhumane ideology.
So what if they don't, if they remain blind in the face of the light that is humanism? If they remain intolerant even after being confronted with the error of their ways? I'd argue, and you would seem to agree, that violence is the only real option left in that case, because the other option is surrendering society to them and their misguided ideology. These people can vote, Hitler was elected by people such as this. Some of them are in positions of power right now.
So to extend your conclusion: Violence is bad, but it is also necessary sometimes. As a last resort, yes, but still.
Veering off to what you said earlier and expanded on in a sibling comment:
Sorry, but this is just wrong. Denazification in Germany stopped pretty much with the upper echelons being brought to justice in the Nuremberg trials. Both German states had a metric shit-ton of actual Nazi war criminals in their administration, because they needed administrators due to the cold war shifting geopolitical priorities, and they had to use the ones available. There was a criminal trial against a former concentration camp secretary happening last year (because there is no statute of limitations on genocide, she was 17 at the time apparently), although given her age and health it might indeed have been the last one of those. But over the decades the career of quite a lot of high-ranking German officials stumbled upon their past as Nazis, on either side of the iron curtain. They weren't magically exterminated on victory day, quite the opposite actually, many found their way into the power structures of the victors, sometimes poisoning them from within.
And there are literal Nazis in the current generations too, here in Germany as well as abroad. People who espouse Mein Kampf and all that kind of shit. Who say Hitler was right. Granted, the general movement mostly mutated into a white supremacy idea rather than the "Arian" (i.e. German) people being the master race, so maybe not all of them are Nazis in the strictest sense of the word, "Nazi Classic" if you will; But the ideology is there, it's fascist, and many of them worship actual fucking Nazis and follow their ideals.
And while all of those people already deserve to be fucking punched just by virtue of being whatever somewhat coherent definition of Nazi you may apply, for many of them it's also the only recourse you have, because words will simply not convince them.
So in conclusion "punch a Nazi" is a valid statement of political discourse in my opinion, as long as it uses an appropriate definition of what a Nazi is (i.e. a fascist, racist, national socialist, etc. pp.). Notwithstanding the fact that you were apparently mislabelled as one in some online discussion.