Punching Nazis

My (not fully formed, merely intuitive) view on the ethics of punching neo-Nazis used to be roughly that it ought to be done but that you ought not to do it. This doesn't sound very coherent. I used to think that no one should punch anyone but that there is always likely to be someone who wants to fight and that these people, if they must punch someone--which they shouldn't, should be punching neo-Nazis rather than anyone else. That is, although no one deserves to be punched, the least undeserving are neo-Nazis (and maybe some child abusers, etc.). Now I'm not so sure.

Speaking of Nazis, here's Orwell's review of Mein Kampf, in which he echoes Nietzsche on utilitarianism. Here's Orwell:

Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,’’ Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation “Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” is a winner.

And here's Nietzsche:  "If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does." (Maxim 12 from Twilight of the Idols).

The dominant economic theory, of course, is based on utilitarianism, although these days it's based more (as far as I can tell) on the ideal of maximizing preference-satisfaction than maximizing pleasure as such. (And this is mixed with the fantasy that some version of libertarianism will in fact produce such a maximization.) But, as Michael Thompson has pointed out, it makes sense to say, "I don't want to do what I want to do." People want a why, a reason to do things. Hence the appeal of ideologies that offer something other than pleasure or the even emptier satisfaction of preferences. But speaking of reasons and getting back on topic, is there reason to punch neo-Nazis? 

Here's J.S. Mill:

It would always give us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness, that acts which we deem unjust should be punished, though we do not always think it expedient that this should be done by the tribunals. [...] We should be glad to see [...] injustice repressed, even in the minutest details, if we were not, with reason, afraid of trusting the magistrate with so unlimited an amount of power over individuals. (Utilitarianism, Chapter V)

A state Nazi-puncher would be a bad thing. And perhaps being a neo-Nazi doesn't count as an unjust act, but perhaps in order to be correctly identified as a neo-Nazi one would have to have committed unjust acts. I think it does chime in at least somewhat with our feelings of fitness when a neo-Nazi gets punched. Which is not to say, however, that it chimes in with our feelings of fitness when someone punches a neo-Nazi. My reaction, at any rate, is that the neo-Nazi got what he deserved, but not that the puncher necessarily did a good thing.

And here's Kant:

If a man who delights in annoying and vexing peaceable people at last receives a right good beating, this is no doubt a bad thing; but everyone approves it and regards it as a good thing, even though nothing else resulted from it; nay, even the man who receives it must in his reason acknowledge that he has met justice, because he sees the proportion between good conduct and good fortune, which reason inevitably places before him, here put into practice. (The Critique of Practical Reason, Chapter II)

"[T]his is no doubt a bad thing; but everyone approves it and regards it as a good thing" sounds a bit like "It's raining but I don't believe it." Which part does Kant not really mean? I think he means roughly what I've been saying (and I think this on the grounds that surely everyone would agree with me): that the beaten person in this case got what he deserved, which is good, but that it is bad that the beating was done. It would have been better if he had somehow been hoist with his own petard (as long as no one else was hoisted with it).

I wonder though. For one thing I wonder how good it is that people get what they deserve--if what they, in some sense, deserve is really terrible, is it really good that this terrible thing should happen to them? And for another thing, I wonder whether all (people who might reasonably be called) Nazis deserve the same fate. Is merely having Nazi beliefs, perhaps for a short time, as bad as spreading such beliefs? And is that as bad as committing hate crimes on the basis of those beliefs? Surely not, in both cases.

In general I think that what people deserve, in the sense that they could hardly complain if these things happened to them since they have inflicted much the same on someone else or supported its being done (if only in thought), is not what should happen to them. If I were God I'd be more forgiving than that. (Although I'd also be wiser and so might have other ideas.)