The appropriateness of punching a Nazi is determined by actual circumstances

The argument

This argument holds that the question 'is it okay to punch Nazis?' cannot be answered in the abstract because the morality of any act of violence is determined by actual circumstances — and a blanket yes and a blanket no both fail in predictable ways. Consider how differently the act sits across real situations. A punch thrown to stop a Nazi who is assaulting someone, or who poses an imminent physical threat, is self-defence or defence of others — justified under the ordinary ethics of violence that virtually everyone accepts. A punch thrown at a man standing on a street giving an interview, however odious his views, is an unprovoked assault on someone who at that moment threatens no one. Between those poles run countless gradations: is the person inciting a crowd toward violence right now, or expressing beliefs? Is there a present danger, or a symbolic target? The moral facts shift with the answers, which is exactly how justification for violence works everywhere else — we ask what was happening, not merely who was hit. The blanket answers each ignore this. An unconditional yes makes the permission to assault hang on a label — one that, in heated political conflict, gets applied promiscuously to people who are not Nazis at all — and so licenses freelance violence on the assailant's own classification. An unconditional no erases the genuine cases of defence the context can supply. Both substitute a slogan for the assessment the situation demands. From this standpoint, the only defensible answer is conditional. Because the appropriateness of punching a Nazi is determined by actual circumstances, this argument holds, the question does not fit a yes-or-no framework.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The distinctions drawn here are the ordinary law and ethics of self-defence: force to stop an imminent assault is justified, force against someone posing no present threat is battery. Those principles apply to everyone, whatever they believe. That is precisely why the analysis does not open a third position — it is the same analysis one would apply to punching a stranger at a bus stop, and applying it yields the answer that punching a person who threatens no one is wrong. Which means the question actually being asked goes unaddressed. 'Is it okay to punch Nazis?' is not asking whether self-defence exists; everyone in the debate accepts that. It is asking whether the target's ideology changes the answer — whether there is a permission for political violence against organised fascism that does not exist for other people. The argument's answer, if its reasoning is followed, is no: the ideology makes no difference to the assessment. That is the negative position, arrived at by a different route, not a refusal of the framework. 'The question does not fit a yes-or-no framework' is also a claim about the question rather than an answer to it, and it is available against almost any moral question, since circumstances always vary. Applied consistently it would dissolve the field. The argument's strongest observation, moreover, points to one side rather than to indeterminacy. That the label is 'applied promiscuously in political conflict' to people who are not Nazis is a reason to withhold the permission, not a reason to say the matter is unsettled. And the rival positions already absorb the contextual material: the negative position concerns violence against people posing no present threat, and the affirmative concerns organised political violence — neither is committed to ignoring circumstances.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The distinction drawn is the ordinary law and ethics of self-defence, which applies to everyone regardless of belief; the analysis is identical to punching anyone else, so the question of whether the target's ideology changes the answer goes unaddressed. [Rejecting P2] That a label is applied promiscuously in political conflict is a reason to withhold the permission rather than a reason for indeterminacy, and so supports the negative position rather than a third one. [Rejecting P3] Both rival positions already accommodate circumstance — the negative concerns violence against people posing no present threat, the affirmative concerns organised political violence — so noticing that situations vary does not open a distinct third answer. Almost any moral question could be dissolved this way.