On the Morality of Punching People

There's been a lot of talk lately about punching people with whom we don't agree.  Nazis, mostly, although I'm sure people would also debate punching the Klan, bigots, or people who don't like Aerosmith.

I'm a pacifist.  I have the privilege to hold this belief without a lot of testing.  I'm as white as they come, I'm a cis man, I live in a country which hasn't yet started rounding up dissidents, and, while I'm pretty doggone poor, I'm not so poor that I can say I don't have privilege there either.  So my moral resolve on pacifism is a bit like most people who claim they would die before they gave up their faith: it's a nice thought, but when the rubber meets the road, I bet a lot of us would give up our morals quickly enough.  I say this about myself because I can; I assume this about others because of my pessimism about human nature.

So at the bottom, I don't believe you should punch anyone.  Violence is immoral.  I will not sully the names of those people who have held this view and have been tested and have passed with flying colors.  I am not like them.  They passed the test, as it were.  It's very easy for me to say that I believe this.  It's much harder to put it into practice.

I also find myself, at times, being less of a pacifist and more of a believer that one should not do undue harm.  What I mean by this is that I don't believe killing anyone is ever justified, but maybe a slap, just a little pain, a rebuke, is morally acceptable.  If no lasting harm is done, is it really wrong to give someone a zetz to knock some sense into them?  I don't know.  I waffle.  This is why I'm pretty sure that, when the chips were down, I would not pass the test.

But there are people who take the moral stance that it's not about the violence, it's about the freedom of speech or expression.  And while I believe that governments should protect freedom of speech, I don't believe that anyone has any expectation to the kind of freedom that people seem to think is enshrined in the Constitution.  There are already plenty of restrictions imposed by the government on speech.  And above all else, freedom of speech simply means, from the government's point of view, that the government can't restrict your speech.  It says absolutely nothing about what non-governmental agents can do.

This is why, for instance, you can't sue a newspaper because they don't print everything you send them.  You could argue that they're infringing your freedom of speech, but you don't have the freedom to force a private entity to allow you to speak.  Newspapers are a bad example.  Let's try Twitter.  Twitter is a private platform.  If Twitter wants to put a rule in place which says you can't use the letter Z in your messages, they have every right to do so, and you can't stop them.  You simply either put up with the rules or you don't use the platform.

This isn't as simple as I'm making it sound: governments can and do restrict what restrictions private individuals and platforms place on their users/members.  In the interest of equality, if the someone found out that Twitter wasn't allowing black people to be members of their site, or was placing burdens on them, that someone could sue, and it's possible that the courts would rule in their favor.  It's tricky.  There are laws which people claim infringe their freedoms which are upheld or struck down all the time.

But beyond that, is there a moral imperative to allow anyone to say anything?  I would argue that no, there isn't.  And unfortunately, much of the time, those arguing that people should be allowed to say things are not those who are directly affected by the things those people are saying.  If I, a white, cis man were to argue that racists have a right to yell insults and death threats at people of color, I would be injecting myself into a situation which doesn't need me: while yes, the welfare of the world affects me, I am not being affected directly by this speech, and thus I should shut the fuck up.  It's not brave, and my beliefs in free speech are not really being put to the test.

So, having explained my moral position, I would like to say conclusively that it's wrong to punch Nazis.

But.

But unless there's some pragmatic reason otherwise, you should probably do it anyway.

"How can you say that?!  Hypocrite!"

Yes.  Yes I am.  I am, along with everyone on this little globe of ours.  It isn't heroic to recognize it. I'm hypocritical.

I don't want to make it seem heroic to punch Nazis either.  But consider the moral prohibition on lying.  One should not lie.  It's a pretty basic moral precept.  And yet, if one were harboring Jews from Nazis, one should lie one's head off.  One should lie and lie and lie and never stop lying in the service of protecting those Jews from Nazis.

And one should know that one is doing a morally wrong thing.  A morally defensible, yet morally wrong thing.  That's what's important.

Philosophers have been phrasing this question different ways for thousands of years.  Most recently, it's the Trolley Problem: what are the ethics of choosing to, by action, take one life while saving five, or by inaction take five lives, saving one.  You can wrestle with this problem, put it through various permutations, and try to justify it to yourself, but I think the thing which gets missed is that there is no morally "right" answer.  Any option you choose, the result is that you will have committed an immoral act.

And that's freeing, in a way.  Because if you're going to be wrong no matter what you do, you can look at it from a more pragmatic point of view, and depending on your axioms and your ethics, you can arrive at a solution.  What you choose illustrates your axioms and ethics, and that's why the problem exists, not as some brain-teaser on how to be more or less moral.

Because you will be immoral, somehow, no matter what.  Because we're all immoral.

So when I say you should punch a Nazi (actually, I think you should do something else other than punch unless you're a trained fighter because punching untrained is a very good way to injure yourself, and I speak from personal experience) I am not ducking the moral issue.  I believe, as strongly as I can believe without being tested, that it is immoral to punch anyone, to harm anyone.  Violence is immoral.  But sometimes you have to accept that the immorality of your action is on you, but the greater good can still be served.  You are not being heroic.  You are doing what must be done.  And if punching a Nazi must be done, then you must shoulder the burden of immorality and punch them.

I say this to people who believe that Nazis must be punched.  The people who are directly affected by them.  But they don't need my approval.  They need my support.  And that's a responsibility of those who believe, as I do, that violence is immoral.  If we cannot punch a Nazi, we must do something else to help stop them.  It's not enough to sit here and say, "It's wrong to punch Nazis.  Everyone should have freedom of speech."  If you believe that, then you must fight for the freedom of speech of those who are being oppressed.  Nazis aren't being oppressed.  If you believe that violence is never justified, then you must help those who are attacked.  You must.  You cannot talk about morals sometimes.  Either work for morals all the time, or not at all.

This does not cover all objections to Nazi-punching.  I'm not pretending that it does.  There are purely pragmatic objections which I cannot address because frankly I don't know the answers.  I've heard smart people on both sides, and I think that it's an argument worth having as long as it doesn't distract from the vital work of preventing Nazis from punching others, hurting others, killing others.  There are people who are strong in their beliefs that violence is never the answer, people who have been tested.  They are braver than I could ever be, and they are probably not wasting their time writing things like this, but rather are out there doing what they believe.

All I can say is that sometimes one must behave immorally for the greater good.  Yes, this is a slippery slope, and yes, it is entirely subjective, so there's really no point in trying to argue that others have believed just that and have done horrible things.  We're all human.  We're all hypocrites.  And we're all immoral.  It is important to acknowledge the immorality of our actions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take those actions.

Lastly, if you believe that violence is morally indefensible but that Nazis shouldn't be allowed to speak, may I suggest singing?  It's worked in the past.  It's hard to say much of anything when you're being drowned out by singing.  Aerosmith I can take or leave, but if that's what floats your boat, by all means, stand up to a Nazi today and sing Love in an Elevator at the top of your lungs.