It is not up for outsiders to judge resistance movements

The argument

This argument holds that the moral standing to judge how people resist Nazis belongs to those who are actually threatened by them, not to comfortable outsiders. The targets of Nazi and white-supremacist ideology — Jewish people, Black people, Roma, LGBTQ people, disabled people and others marked for hatred — face a movement that, where it has held power, has pursued their persecution and extermination. For such groups, proponents argue, opposing Nazis is not an abstract ethical puzzle but a matter of self-defence and survival, and the question of which tactics are legitimate cannot be settled by people who bear none of the risk. Proponents draw on the example of historical resistance movements. Those who fought fascism under occupation, or who organised armed self-defence against pogroms and lynchings, did not have the luxury of debating civility with people committed to their destruction; their methods, including violence, are now widely honoured rather than condemned. To insist from a position of safety that the threatened must confine themselves to polite disagreement is, on this view, to demand a restraint that the comfortable have never had to test, and to second-guess the judgement of those who understand the danger first-hand. The conclusion is one of deference: outsiders who are not in the line of fire should not presume to lecture the endangered on the limits of their resistance, and should recognise that a punch thrown against a movement dedicated to one's annihilation may be a legitimate act of self-protection rather than mere aggression. Because it is not up to outsiders to judge how the threatened resist those who would destroy them, this argument holds, it is okay to punch Nazis.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that moral and legal principles about violence apply to everyone and cannot be suspended by identity or standing. Whether preemptive force against a person for their beliefs is justified is an ethical and legal question that does not become off-limits to 'outsiders'; in a liberal society, using force against someone who has not themselves attacked anyone is assault, however odious their views, and the 'self-defence' framing stretches when the target poses no imminent physical threat. They warn of a slippery slope: a norm that it is acceptable to strike people deemed dangerous enough, as judged by those who feel threatened, licenses political violence broadly and can be turned against dissenters of any kind. Honouring armed resistance under occupation, they add, does not translate into endorsing street violence against individuals in a functioning democracy with legal remedies.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Moral and legal principles governing violence apply universally and are open to everyone's judgement, so standing or group membership does not place the question beyond outsiders' assessment. [Rejecting P2] Historical armed resistance under occupation or pogroms is not equivalent to punching an individual in a functioning democracy, where the person poses no imminent physical threat and legal remedies exist, so the analogy does not license the act. [Rejecting P3] A norm that the threatened may use force against those they deem dangerous licenses political violence generally and can be turned against any group, so deference to their judgement is not a safe basis for legitimacy.