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[sluissa]

I mean, I don't care about the nazis in this case, but I'd agree that despite the risks of galvanizing the far right that many confederate monuments should be destroyed.  Even ignoring the whole "regardless of whether they owned slaves or not, they were indeed defending slavery" thing.  They're symbolic of treason against the union as a whole, and glorify the men who nearly brought about its destruction.  That we haven't been more thorough with it in the past century astounds me.

So I suppose "I don't care that much about the far right, but sure, if the south wants to base its heritage around the events during and leading up to the American civil war, fuck the south?"  I guess that's what I'm saying.

I get where you're coming from, and I can't even really fully deny that's the right word to use in certain circumstances, but, and this thread is the first time I've ever heard it come up in casual conversation, when you use the word "Treason" to describe the history of the south, as a southerner it really pushes my buttons. And this comes from a person who generally considers confederacy worship to be on the silly side of things.

I'll be honest though, it seems like it's the rest of the country that can't get past painting us as these truck driving, stars and bars flag toting, gun carrying racists. There are individuals that are like that, yes, but the region is much more diverse than that and to be honest, I've found much more similarity in my travels than difference. People are the same everywhere and yet when you want to make the south this place of "others", "backwards hicks", "racists", and "traitors" I'm not surprised that some people get defensive. That some people grab onto that thing which others hate and double down on their resistance to the criticisms.

On the other hand, I'm not innocent either, but it's always of the areas I haven't seen for myself yet. I've visited a lot of the country, but the big northeast cities and the west coast are the only areas still left out of that. Funnily enough, those are the areas I still have stereotyped opinions of. New York is too big, too crowded and too full of crime to ever want to visit. California is too full of hippies and drug users and people who want to limit my ability to call people hippies and drug users. The Pacific Northwest (namely Seattle) is full of hipsters.

That's not to say any of this is wrong. The stereotypes exist for a reason, but it doesn't paint the whole picture either. I've run into far too many New Yorkers who love the city (although oddly enough go on a lot of vacations to get away from the city, which is where I run into them )  and paint a beautiful picture of it to completely discount it as a lost cause. California, for all its faults, does lead the country on some important issues politics wise. And again, it's another place that people love. I've met so many transplants from California whose only long term plan is to "someday move back." And Seattle... apparently has nice weather? I joke. Again, it's one of those places that's obviously successful and thus a victim of its own success. It drives me away simply because I can't imagine paying that much to just live there, but I'm sure the people are just as diverse as anywhere else. (Also of note, I've met very few people FROM Seattle, which tells me one of two things. Either it's nice enough nobody needs to leave for vacations, or it's expensive enough people can't afford vacations. I would say distance is a factor, but I've met more people from Alaska and Hawaii than Washington state.)

Where I've seen, in or out of the country, people are the same, but when you start poking at the differences, even where minor, or not originally considered a core feature to that person's existence, suddenly it becomes a big deal. Much bigger than if you'd just let it be. Example: I will viciously fight a British person over whether to call it a biscuit or a cookie.

[Pwnzerfaust]

This is all a lot of words to justify the unjustifiable, I'm afraid.

You should not initiate violence. I don't see why this is difficult for some to grasp.

[smjjames]

Yeah, we're united via our differences as well as similarities. California does have a bit of a deserved reputation for being somewhat hippie, and yeah, "As California goes, so goes the nation", sometimes anyway.

And as much as California has the usual drug problems that come with cities and society, they're WAY worse elsewhere, appalachia region especially. Stereotyping California as full of drug users and people who restrict your ability to call people drug users just distracts from places that really do have severe problems.

[Trekkin]

Seems like they're pretty quick to jump out of the uniform once you scare them enough, at least. He sure wasn't convinced to do this with reasoned argument, though I'm sure he'd prefer to deal with that, because he's a bitchboy wearing a hateful flag. Myself, I'm going to continue mocking this bunch of hateful bitchboys by assuming they're all just like that punk kid, and encourage others to do so while keeping in mind that declaring one's self to be a nazi carries with it an implicit threat of violence against a huge swath of the population. There's a problem with trying to hold a peaceful discussion when the other side has a key part of their platform being the removal of non-white people without much concern how they go about it.

I'm not entirely sure if you're aware of this, Max, but people can say they're not a Nazi and take their shirt off while still being a Nazi.

Actual reports of and by ex-neo-Nazis, the kind of people we'd like there to be a lot more of, tend to be light on "and then this guy called me a bitchboy beta cuck and punched me and now I'm good." The things that make ex-Nazis are things like being forced to work (or, in some cases, play football) with Black people, or having Muslim neighbors, or really almost anything that brings them into (nonviolent) contact with the people they've been told are plotting their apocalyptic downfall. Neo-Nazis' identity is founded on cartoonishly stupid ideas, and that's to our very great advantage -- unless we play into them by getting violent and helping convince them that they really are in a life-or-death race war of genocidal scale and on the losing side to boot.

Although I am glad to see that you've gone from punching them to mocking them. There's hope yet.

See, I don't want there to be Nazis, so I'm inclined to study how people stop being Nazis and then look at how to scale that up. (And, just as necessarily, why people become Nazis and how to remove that impetus.) I don't care how we do it so long as it's efficient and effective. Reforming them is. Violence isn't. "Punching Nazis" is so in line with their rhetoric, so contrary to what we know works, so helpful to their recruitment, that it should be regarded as a form of collusion.

This is all a lot of words to justify the unjustifiable, I'm afraid.

You should not initiate violence. I don't see why this is difficult for some to grasp.

Because there are a lot of angry people in the country right now looking for an outlet for their rage, and Nazis are very punchable.

[smjjames]

@Trekkin, there was this story of one guy who reformed in part because he had a daughter and didn't want his daughter to be exposed to that kind of stuff, plus opened an electronics shop and met other minority people and started to feel like being part of a community.

Another ancedote (emphasis on ancedote), which I know little information about, is one guy reformed when he worked with an elderly Jewish shopkeeper (I forget the profession).

Reforming ex-nazis is extremely individual, but the core part is dealing with the alienation that led them to becoming nazis in the first place. It's a lot like dealing with people who join ISIS because of disaffection and alienation in society since the reasons are much the same.

[Arx]

I have a genuine question for the people in favour of punching nazis. This is something I actually just want to know, not an attempt to make an argument or anything; please don't reply with a glib "that's a false equivalency" or something. It may well be, but I want to know why.

I've seen a lot of reference to groups like Malcolm X's Black Panthers and so on regarding the use of violence as a tool for social change, which led me to question: Why, if violent oppression couldn't stop the Civil Rights Movement, and so on, why do you believe it will stop naziism?

Actual question. I'm not an American, I don't necessarily have all the context you do.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

While Malcolm X's style was associated with that of the Black Panthers, he wasn't one of them. Malcolm X was primarily a member of the Nation of Islam.

As for the Black Panthers themselves, it's right there in the name: The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense. Their main activities weren't a nebulous "violence", it was exercising the rights they were allowed under law but not in practice and developing an organizational body to guard (mostly) against killer cops. Their militancy was primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the police.

I know I didn't answer your question but I've not been involved in this line of discussion, I just want everybody's historical definitions to be clear. There was not a clearly delineated non-violent Civil Rights Movement lead by MLK and a violent Black Panther Party lead by Malcolm X, as some people bizarrely try to claim.

[Max™]

I never stopped favoring the violent response to the violence inherent in being a nazi, never stopped favoring mocking and excluding them either, for the reference, Trekkin, as for Pwnzerfaust: I'm not the one saying it's ok to attack anyone who isn't white, I think that is a vile ideology to support, and accordingly think it is appropriate to respond by saying it's ok to attack anyone who claims to be an actual nazi. Society should protect people who might be threatened or attacked for simply existing, people who claim it is ok to eradicate a particular group seem to be forgoing the protection of society. All they have to do is knock that shit off, but assembling in groups with torches is the wrong way for this trend to go, before we start talking about assaults and deaths being involved.

I have a genuine question for the people in favour of punching nazis. This is something I actually just want to know, not an attempt to make an argument or anything; please don't reply with a glib "that's a false equivalency" or something. It may well be, but I want to know why.

I've seen a lot of reference to groups like Malcolm X's Black Panthers and so on regarding the use of violence as a tool for social change, which led me to question: Why, if violent oppression couldn't stop the Civil Rights Movement, and so on, why do you believe it will stop naziism?

Actual question. I'm not an American, I don't necessarily have all the context you do.

It worked pretty well last time we had nazis stomping around wiping out their targeted groups, it didn't eradicate them, sure, but it sent the message that "doing this shit en masse results in the rest of the world jumping up and down on you" and forced them to go back into seclusion with the cockroaches and whatnot.

Civil Rights was a fight based on "we're people too, we should be treated the same" while nazis are trying to pick a fight based on "that group isn't actually people, and should be removed or killed" so you're going from self determination to other discrimination. One of these things will be looked at differently historically from the other, and that might seem unfair if one were a nazi but fuck those guys?

[Zangi]

Cause righteous justification.  Might makes right, when convenient. 

I don't believe it is a great idea to widen their support/defenders by targeting other shit and calling it 'Nazi' related.

@MLK: They did have the right idea of having bodyguards though, considering what happened to MLK.

And the last time we curbstomped the Nazi was cause we had an actual war. 
Though, I'm sure people can magic up a way to read people's minds and use it as a base to determine if people are legally combatants, then declare war.  /s

[sluissa]

While Malcolm X's style was associated with that of the Black Panthers, he wasn't one of them. Malcolm X was primarily a member of the Nation of Islam.

As for the Black Panthers themselves, it's right there in the name: The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense. Their main activities weren't a nebulous "violence", it was exercising the rights they were allowed under law but not in practice and developing an organizational body to guard (mostly) against killer cops. Their militancy was primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the police.

I know I didn't answer your question but I've not been involved in this line of discussion, I just want everybody's historical definitions to be clear. There was not a clearly delineated non-violent Civil Rights Movement lead by MLK and a violent Black Panther Party lead by Malcolm X, as some people bizarrely try to claim.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's right there in the name. It's a democratic republic doing its best for the good of the people. Everything it does is just exercising the rights they have under international law, but that imperialist forces refuse to allow them. Their militancy is primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the US.

I love the white washing that goes on in regards to the Black Panthers' violent history.

[RedKing]

I mean, I don't care about the nazis in this case, but I'd agree that despite the risks of galvanizing the far right that many confederate monuments should be destroyed.  Even ignoring the whole "regardless of whether they owned slaves or not, they were indeed defending slavery" thing.  They're symbolic of treason against the union as a whole, and glorify the men who nearly brought about its destruction.  That we haven't been more thorough with it in the past century astounds me.

So I suppose "I don't care that much about the far right, but sure, if the south wants to base its heritage around the events during and leading up to the American civil war, fuck the south?"  I guess that's what I'm saying.

I get where you're coming from, and I can't even really fully deny that's the right word to use in certain circumstances, but, and this thread is the first time I've ever heard it come up in casual conversation, when you use the word "Treason" to describe the history of the south, as a southerner it really pushes my buttons. And this comes from a person who generally considers confederacy worship to be on the silly side of things.

I'll be honest though, it seems like it's the rest of the country that can't get past painting us as these truck driving, stars and bars flag toting, gun carrying racists. There are individuals that are like that, yes, but the region is much more diverse than that and to be honest, I've found much more similarity in my travels than difference. People are the same everywhere and yet when you want to make the south this place of "others", "backwards hicks", "racists", and "traitors" I'm not surprised that some people get defensive. That some people grab onto that thing which others hate and double down on their resistance to the criticisms.

On the other hand, I'm not innocent either, but it's always of the areas I haven't seen for myself yet. I've visited a lot of the country, but the big northeast cities and the west coast are the only areas still left out of that. Funnily enough, those are the areas I still have stereotyped opinions of. New York is too big, too crowded and too full of crime to ever want to visit. California is too full of hippies and drug users and people who want to limit my ability to call people hippies and drug users. The Pacific Northwest (namely Seattle) is full of hipsters.

That's not to say any of this is wrong. The stereotypes exist for a reason, but it doesn't paint the whole picture either. I've run into far too many New Yorkers who love the city (although oddly enough go on a lot of vacations to get away from the city, which is where I run into them )  and paint a beautiful picture of it to completely discount it as a lost cause. California, for all its faults, does lead the country on some important issues politics wise. And again, it's another place that people love. I've met so many transplants from California whose only long term plan is to "someday move back." And Seattle... apparently has nice weather? I joke. Again, it's one of those places that's obviously successful and thus a victim of its own success. It drives me away simply because I can't imagine paying that much to just live there, but I'm sure the people are just as diverse as anywhere else. (Also of note, I've met very few people FROM Seattle, which tells me one of two things. Either it's nice enough nobody needs to leave for vacations, or it's expensive enough people can't afford vacations. I would say distance is a factor, but I've met more people from Alaska and Hawaii than Washington state.)

Where I've seen, in or out of the country, people are the same, but when you start poking at the differences, even where minor, or not originally considered a core feature to that person's existence, suddenly it becomes a big deal. Much bigger than if you'd just let it be. Example: I will viciously fight a British person over whether to call it a biscuit or a cookie.

*shrug* I'm a Southerner as well, and I certainly grew up defending the South and the Confederacy. I have ancestors who were in the CSA, who died in Union prison camps. Having researched their service histories, I know they weren't in it for the "cause", whatever you choose to define that as. They deserted multiple times, whether to avoid combat or try and collect the enlistment bonus multiple times, or just missing home -- I don't know. But the point is that they weren't True Believers.

So it seems silly to defend something my ancestors didn't even particularly want to defend. And yeah, I have gotten defensive in the past about Southern stereotypes. I've long said that being a Southern liberal is to be the red-headed stepchild of American politics. Non-liberal Southerners think you're a commie pinko f*g scalawag, non-Southern liberals think you're well-intentioned but backwards.

But I've also seen the nasty side of the South. And a lot more acutely over the last 10-15 years. I've seen our state and local politics get more and more egregiously unjust. It's easy to say "we're not all like that" when you live in a moderately urban center in the South. But then you get 30 minutes outside the city, and you see the handpainted "REPENT SINNERS" sign nailed to a tree, and the buckshot marks on the No Hunting sign, and the rusted-out cars on cinderblocks overgrown with kudzu, and you go "Oh. Yeah. We may not all be like that, but there sure as shit still are a lot of those folks around."

Obama got in trouble for his comment about "bitter people clinging to God and guns", but he was 100% correct. That's exactly what you find in a lot of these little towns across the South. They have legitimate reasons to be bitter. But their acrimony is directed at the cities, at the blacks, at the Mexicans, at a system that seems rigged against them. But not at the parts of the system that look like them and tell them their resentment is well-founded and legitimate.

There was a time when I would try to talk those people down off the ledge. But they don't want to hear that and will actively resent someone providing an opposing view. So, at my age, I've reached the point of "fuck those people". The older ones will die off in the next couple of decades, and the younger ones have their own choice to make. If they choose to ally with the far-right, then fuck those people too. 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

While Malcolm X's style was associated with that of the Black Panthers, he wasn't one of them. Malcolm X was primarily a member of the Nation of Islam.

As for the Black Panthers themselves, it's right there in the name: The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense. Their main activities weren't a nebulous "violence", it was exercising the rights they were allowed under law but not in practice and developing an organizational body to guard (mostly) against killer cops. Their militancy was primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the police.

I know I didn't answer your question but I've not been involved in this line of discussion, I just want everybody's historical definitions to be clear. There was not a clearly delineated non-violent Civil Rights Movement lead by MLK and a violent Black Panther Party lead by Malcolm X, as some people bizarrely try to claim.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's right there in the name. It's a democratic republic doing its best for the good of the people. Everything it does is just exercising the rights they have under international law, but that imperialist forces refuse to allow them. Their militancy is primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the US.

I love the white washing that goes on in regards to the Black Panthers' violent history.

I am perfectly willing to recognize that the Black Panthers did not do everything right and did sometimes engage in violence, up to and including murder. However, the state of public consciousness is most definitely not skewed towards white washing them, it's skewed towards demonizing them. Arx is a foreigner, but I've seen allegedly historically conscious Americans have a view on the Black Panthers that's quite similar to his.

Not to mention? America probably would kill and abuse North Korea's people en mass if given the opportunity to do so. Blood does not wash out blood.

All in all, for a structured organization stomped down on by most of society the Black Panthers did better than most at not turning into a gang of marauders, which is the general tendency of human organizations.

[sluissa]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I mean, I don't care about the nazis in this case, but I'd agree that despite the risks of galvanizing the far right that many confederate monuments should be destroyed.  Even ignoring the whole "regardless of whether they owned slaves or not, they were indeed defending slavery" thing.  They're symbolic of treason against the union as a whole, and glorify the men who nearly brought about its destruction.  That we haven't been more thorough with it in the past century astounds me.

So I suppose "I don't care that much about the far right, but sure, if the south wants to base its heritage around the events during and leading up to the American civil war, fuck the south?"  I guess that's what I'm saying.

I get where you're coming from, and I can't even really fully deny that's the right word to use in certain circumstances, but, and this thread is the first time I've ever heard it come up in casual conversation, when you use the word "Treason" to describe the history of the south, as a southerner it really pushes my buttons. And this comes from a person who generally considers confederacy worship to be on the silly side of things.

I'll be honest though, it seems like it's the rest of the country that can't get past painting us as these truck driving, stars and bars flag toting, gun carrying racists. There are individuals that are like that, yes, but the region is much more diverse than that and to be honest, I've found much more similarity in my travels than difference. People are the same everywhere and yet when you want to make the south this place of "others", "backwards hicks", "racists", and "traitors" I'm not surprised that some people get defensive. That some people grab onto that thing which others hate and double down on their resistance to the criticisms.

On the other hand, I'm not innocent either, but it's always of the areas I haven't seen for myself yet. I've visited a lot of the country, but the big northeast cities and the west coast are the only areas still left out of that. Funnily enough, those are the areas I still have stereotyped opinions of. New York is too big, too crowded and too full of crime to ever want to visit. California is too full of hippies and drug users and people who want to limit my ability to call people hippies and drug users. The Pacific Northwest (namely Seattle) is full of hipsters.

That's not to say any of this is wrong. The stereotypes exist for a reason, but it doesn't paint the whole picture either. I've run into far too many New Yorkers who love the city (although oddly enough go on a lot of vacations to get away from the city, which is where I run into them )  and paint a beautiful picture of it to completely discount it as a lost cause. California, for all its faults, does lead the country on some important issues politics wise. And again, it's another place that people love. I've met so many transplants from California whose only long term plan is to "someday move back." And Seattle... apparently has nice weather? I joke. Again, it's one of those places that's obviously successful and thus a victim of its own success. It drives me away simply because I can't imagine paying that much to just live there, but I'm sure the people are just as diverse as anywhere else. (Also of note, I've met very few people FROM Seattle, which tells me one of two things. Either it's nice enough nobody needs to leave for vacations, or it's expensive enough people can't afford vacations. I would say distance is a factor, but I've met more people from Alaska and Hawaii than Washington state.)

Where I've seen, in or out of the country, people are the same, but when you start poking at the differences, even where minor, or not originally considered a core feature to that person's existence, suddenly it becomes a big deal. Much bigger than if you'd just let it be. Example: I will viciously fight a British person over whether to call it a biscuit or a cookie.

*shrug* I'm a Southerner as well, and I certainly grew up defending the South and the Confederacy. I have ancestors who were in the CSA, who died in Union prison camps. Having researched their service histories, I know they weren't in it for the "cause", whatever you choose to define that as. They deserted multiple times, whether to avoid combat or try and collect the enlistment bonus multiple times, or just missing home -- I don't know. But the point is that they weren't True Believers.

So it seems silly to defend something my ancestors didn't even particularly want to defend. And yeah, I have gotten defensive in the past about Southern stereotypes. I've long said that being a Southern liberal is to be the red-headed stepchild of American politics. Non-liberal Southerners think you're a commie pinko f*g scalawag, non-Southern liberals think you're well-intentioned but backwards.

But I've also seen the nasty side of the South. And a lot more acutely over the last 10-15 years. I've seen our state and local politics get more and more egregiously unjust. It's easy to say "we're not all like that" when you live in a moderately urban center in the South. But then you get 30 minutes outside the city, and you see the handpainted "REPENT SINNERS" sign nailed to a tree, and the buckshot marks on the No Hunting sign, and the rusted-out cars on cinderblocks overgrown with kudzu, and you go "Oh. Yeah. We may not all be like that, but there sure as shit still are a lot of those folks around."

Obama got in trouble for his comment about "bitter people clinging to God and guns", but he was 100% correct. That's exactly what you find in a lot of these little towns across the South. They have legitimate reasons to be bitter. But their acrimony is directed at the cities, at the blacks, at the Mexicans, at a system that seems rigged against them. But not at the parts of the system that look like them and tell them their resentment is well-founded and legitimate.

There was a time when I would try to talk those people down off the ledge. But they don't want to hear that and will actively resent someone providing an opposing view. So, at my age, I've reached the point of "fuck those people". The older ones will die off in the next couple of decades, and the younger ones have their own choice to make. If they choose to ally with the far-right, then fuck those people too.

And I've gone in the opposite direction. Growing up in the south as a liberal I felt isolated. I wanted to stay away from "these backwards people" I even did the best I could to avoid gaining a local accent.

As I've gotten older I've softened. You find that even where you find people who have beliefs that might just be outright wrong, the reasons they hold those beliefs are usually understandable. Sometimes even solid from their specific point of view. And it's easier to just make friends with them and have the chance to talk it out and show them other viewpoints than it is to hate them and avoid them. It's not necessarily the arguments that convince people, it's the respect and trust of the people who disagree with them. And while that alone may not sway opinion completely. It will do a lot to moderate that opinion. Someone that holds racist beliefs may swing to keeping it a personal hidden thing, rather than swinging towards the open advocation of violence and hate.

EDIT:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While Malcolm X's style was associated with that of the Black Panthers, he wasn't one of them. Malcolm X was primarily a member of the Nation of Islam.

As for the Black Panthers themselves, it's right there in the name: The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense. Their main activities weren't a nebulous "violence", it was exercising the rights they were allowed under law but not in practice and developing an organizational body to guard (mostly) against killer cops. Their militancy was primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the police.

I know I didn't answer your question but I've not been involved in this line of discussion, I just want everybody's historical definitions to be clear. There was not a clearly delineated non-violent Civil Rights Movement lead by MLK and a violent Black Panther Party lead by Malcolm X, as some people bizarrely try to claim.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's right there in the name. It's a democratic republic doing its best for the good of the people. Everything it does is just exercising the rights they have under international law, but that imperialist forces refuse to allow them. Their militancy is primarily in the course of resisting actions taken by the US.

I love the white washing that goes on in regards to the Black Panthers' violent history.

I am perfectly willing to recognize that the Black Panthers did not do everything right and did sometimes engage in violence, up to and including murder. However, the state of public consciousness is most definitely not skewed towards white washing them, it's skewed towards demonizing them. Arx is a foreigner, but I've seen allegedly historically conscious Americans have a view on the Black Panthers that's quite similar to his.

Not to mention? America probably would kill and abuse North Korea's people en mass if given the opportunity to do so. Blood does not wash out blood.

All in all, for a structured organization stomped down on by most of society the Black Panthers did better than most at not turning into a gang of marauders, which is the general tendency of human organizations.

I don't even think there's anything wrong with demonizing that sort of behavior. Because they "limited" themselves to murder and shootouts and assassinations is not something to be praised. If anything I think they were praised as heroes in the public consciousness. It took until college and actually reading the histories in books to actually get an accurate picture of them. Growing up I had no idea and the little I heard about them at all was nothing but good things. I remember black children I grew up with talking about them on the same terms as if they were a sports team to root for. (And this was despite the fact that they'd been gone as an organization for years at that point.)

[Loud Whispers]

I have a genuine question for the people in favour of punching nazis. This is something I actually just want to know, not an attempt to make an argument or anything; please don't reply with a glib "that's a false equivalency" or something. It may well be, but I want to know why.

I've seen a lot of reference to groups like Malcolm X's Black Panthers and so on regarding the use of violence as a tool for social change, which led me to question: Why, if violent oppression couldn't stop the Civil Rights Movement, and so on, why do you believe it will stop naziism?

Actual question. I'm not an American, I don't necessarily have all the context you do.

Short answer: Suppressing ideology is easier than suppressing an entire race, one which has popular support no less. Moreover, where the civil rights movement had large domestic and international support, neo-naziism does not, and the concern for the USA is whether the neo-nazis will be able to make sufficient change to the USA now which will cause the rise of a neo-nazi regime later. Thus they punch the nazis to disrupt their organizations, whether they appear in towns, universities or politics, ensuring that their ability to leverage influence or minds of the future is minimal. Also it helps relieve stress, and kills the reddit. The message this action sends is clear: This ideology will not be accepted without a fight, and thus while this does not change the minds of nazis, it will change the minds of people thinking about joining nazi ideals, as they do not want to be punched.

[MrRoboto75]

*shrug* I'm a Southerner as well, and I certainly grew up defending the South and the Confederacy. I have ancestors who were in the CSA, who died in Union prison camps. Having researched their service histories, I know they weren't in it for the "cause", whatever you choose to define that as. They deserted multiple times, whether to avoid combat or try and collect the enlistment bonus multiple times, or just missing home -- I don't know. But the point is that they weren't True Believers.

My civil war ancestor was a habitual deserter as well.  I heard it was because they were farmers, and often went back home to tend the land/probably check if wasn't burnt down or something.