The Crust Punk Bar Story

[jayphailey]

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(transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer.

One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you.

So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.
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[jayphailey]

Michael Okuda
@MikeOkuda
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, NOT as a moral standard, but as a social contract. If someone does not abide by the terms of the contract, they are not covered by it. In other words, the intolerant aren't deserving of your tolerance.

[jayphailey]

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies.

They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge.

But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.

The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors.

They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

- Jean-Paul Sartre

[jayphailey]

I post these to explain why I support a zero tolerance policy for hateful, racist or fascist language here.

If someone brings that energy, they are not here to engage in an honest exchange of ideas. They are not out to seek truth.

They are out to use our tolerance against us. They have violated the social contract and IMHO voided their invitation to be here.

I have seen what happens when the admins say "Beat them with better ideas"

You can see the end result of that on Twitter, now.

I've seen BBS Subs, e-mail lists, forums, and social media subgroups destroyed by nazis. Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.

I've even seen the Libertarian Party ruined and my own home country damaged.

The health of any organization can be measured by its ability to exclude nazis.

I think to keep this place healthy, if it ever gets wider participation, we should set up a strong "Nazi Punks - Fuck Off" policy and hold the line on it.

[jayphailey]

Oh.

And this thread is one reason I like the Forum format. I can stack up arguments in a hopefully coherent string.