Tough to argue with this piece, but let’s see if we can poke some holes in the author’s ideas...
https://eand.co/america-needs-to-break- ... 15b4b75a3fThat is why it’s so, so important that justice be done. Fully. The way it should be. They weren’t rioters, they were fascists, and that wasn’t an insurrection, that was a coup. And it should be punished and treated as such. For the three reasons I’ve outlined above. Let me repeat them and simplify them.
One: you can’t compromise with fascists because they are totalitarians to begin with. They only believe in a violent, hateful, ignorant, binary worldview, and so any compromise is a lie, a trick, a strategy, doomed to fail.
Two. You shouldn’t compromise with fascists and terrorists because it creates a norm with a very special name all its own: appeasement. And there is no road to ruin swifter and surer than appeasement — just ask history, or America 2016–2020, which appeased its way, one weary, surrendering step at a time, from rhetorical hate and scapegoating to concentration camps to kids in cages to Gestapos beating moms in the streets, all the way to a violent coup at the Capitol. That’s not some kind of coincidence — it’s stark proof of an old, old truth. The only way appeasement ever ends is with the fascists and terrorists winning.
Three. You give terrorists no mercy because when you do, they have succeeded at terrorising. They have demonstrated that they can get away with it, and that’s scary: it has chilling effects on society, it emboldens them, it keeps their movements alive, it lets them laugh at the wrist-slap, which is exactly what scares the sane and thoughtful person who opposes them.
When you give terrorists mercy and quarter, they have succeeded in their mission, which was to terrorize. They have scared you into treating them lightly, into submission, to relent. Why else would you go easy on them, unless you were terrorized?