I disagree. I do not consider peaceful advocation of an extremely controversial or violent activity to be violence in of itself.

Moreover, I think it is important to be able to express why advocation of a thing can be bad without resorting to conflating the advocation with the thing itself. You lose a lot of nuance in discussion (and charitability for opposing views) with this kind of hyperbole in the general case.

> Talking about "ideas" is so abstract and antiseptic; clearly there are things beyond the pale.

I disagree with this as well. In my opinion, things are only beyond the pale if there is nothing new to contribute to the discussion, not because we are born with a heuristic that refutes it automatically.

For example, we should consider advocating genocide bad because every critical, completely informed examination of genocide comes to the conclusion that it is a net loss for society, and there is no novel information to lead us to a different conclusion. We should not consider advocating genocide to be bad because we believe genocide is bad a priori; this is in fact untrue.

Note that I disagree with dialectic methodology, not overall conclusion. It is important to use rational methods for deriving conclusions instead of subjective dismissals. It is bad to beat a dead horse when we know the result is bad for society, but we can’t begin from a position that is unwilling to examine certain subjects because others consider them “beyond the pale”. Rational dialectics generalize to other topics and arguments; subjective heuristics do not.

There is also a very real normalization that goes with online threats. If 100 people talk about running over liberals in a chat room, and then one of them does it; the other 99 facilitated that violence.

Groups that do just that have governmental support in Canada, the UK and many other first world countries, and this is one of those things that one simply isn't allowed to speak of publicly.

We need to be able to attack bad ideas, and few ideas are worse than "Death to all people of <ethnic group>!"

I'm generally for free speech, but very much against governmental support of groups advocating violence and very, very against shutting down discussion of whether, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood does or does not advocate ethnic violence.

Verbal violence is a real thing that has real impact on people. Ask anybody who was in an abusive relationship, even if they were not physically beaten. Or consider that Trump has not physically thrown a punch, but most reasonable people would agree he has caused a lot of harm to minorities and immigrants’ safety and ability to share their brilliance with the world.

We don't take into account peer-pressure when charging adolescents. However, that does not mean that peer-pressure does not exist, on the contrary, it is sometimes the sole motivator behind the deed. These things don't conflict.

If Bob only made the decision to punch Alice because Mallory asked him to, yes Mallory shares in the responsibility. But that implies a notion between Mallory and Bob that is rather different from mere advocation. I do not consider a scenario in which one party convinces another, both with agency, to be advocation. In some cases, I would even consider the person who provided the imperative for violence to be more responsible than the person executing the imperative.

But we are getting into Wittgensteinian weeds here with respect to definitions. For my part, I consider advocation to be the scenario in which one person or group receives peacefully submitted recommendations for a course of action. I think an advocate can be responsible, but I do not think it is productive to use one word to describe the impact of both advocation and execution of a thing.

Using your real world example, I can agree that Donald Trump has committed real harm to various people. I cannot agree that Donald Trump’s position is one of advocation; in fact, I would say that Trump is one who is advocated to. A position of advocation, in my opinion, implies a position that is lesser in power to one which has the power to effect the change on their own.

This is important because of accountability and nuance. If I advocate for war, it is unreasonable to try to invalidate my position by claiming that I should volunteer to go to war. You can incorporate that into your argument, but it does not on its own invalidate my argument. Similarly, my advocation of violence is not violence itself, despite how violent all war must necessarily be.

This is a matter of using the right methods of investigation and persuasion; you might end up at the rational conclusion using an irrational method, but that method will insidiously steer you wrong elsewhere. It is important to be able to posit advocation of an idea is wrong according to some set of moral axioms without trying to posit the much stronger (and untenable) stance that advocation of violence is itself violence. Rational methods of investigation generalize, and irrational ones do not.

From my perspective, war seems to be a pretty good example. War is violent almost by definition. If you argue that advocating violence is also violence itself, this implies that advocating for war is an example of violence, does it not?

Edit: To reiterate for those downvoting - I do not understand why this is a strawman, and my example seems to be relevant, reasonable and logical to a discussion of whether or not advocacy of violence is violence itself. If it is not a good example, I don’t understand how you think silently downvoting is going to meaningfully alter my perspective or provide context for others to see why I’m incorrect. I’m happy to receive your downvote, but I’d ask that you at least try to engage with my argument instead of dismissing it out of hand.

Wow.

First, I grew up in a situation such that all of my friends were (and mostly remain) “less privileged.” I’m also familiar with bigotry directed towards myself.

Second, whether that does or does not describe me has no bearing on the merits of my argument, which is sort of my entire point through these threads - that’s not a rational heuristic.

Third, I’m going to circle this back to my original point. You never explained why my argument is fallacious or a strawman, opting instead to deride it as such without a reasonable explanation.

I never made an argument in favor of bigotry or genocide. I never said that advocating for such things is good. In fact, I’ve specifically and explicitly said they are not.

My point, very specifically stated already, is that advocacy of violence is not violence, and further that this distinction is important for the purposes of discussion that arrives at rational conclusions consistently. I don’t know how you arrived at the comment you wrote, because you’re not just missing the point, you’re firing an arrow at a far off place I don’t recognize. It seems like you’re fixating on verbal violence directed towards others when I am talking about public advocacy in the general case.

It’s deeply frustrating to me that you brought personal background and identity into this, and furthermore that you consistently mischaracterized my argument. You’ve twice now called it fallacious without any substantive refutation and without responding to my central thesis. It’s clear that you’re not interested in a good faith discussion. What you’ve done here is extremely antagonistic to another individual expressing their views.

Consider this: you dilute the extent to which violent aggressors can be held accountable for their actions if you group them with the same descriptions and responsibility as those who advocated for the violence. And while it may not be the case specifically with genocide, in the general case, you enable censorship if you attempt to call violent those who advocate for violence. It is not a far leap from there to claiming thoughtcrime, and while you might arrive at the rational conclusion by using that heuristic for genocide, you will not necessarily arrive at the rational conclusion for a context in which violence is controversial but not immediately wrong.

The term has unfortunately been redefined by the same people who want to use it to censor speech.

1) This isn't about "feelings", it's about the fact that speech _has consequences_. People get hurt both emotionally and physically because of things other people say, especially in aggregate.

2) Etymologically speaking, violence comes from "violent", which meant "having a marked or powerful effect".

3) Legally speaking, violence includes intimidation.

4) Practically speaking, arguing definitions is a total waste of time.