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In reply to the discussion: Portland antifa/right wing protests escalate to 'civil disturbance' [View all]JustThinking...
(91 posts)I think it's reasonable to define "whatever means necessary" as using any amount of force up to what is needed to accomplish the goal of stopping an attack against a victim, with accomplishing that goal being the only consideration. Excessive force is unnecessary however sometimes an attacker could run the risk of bringing excessive force upon themself depending on how their victim views the severity of the threat.
Accomplishing the goal of neutralizing the physical violence the nazis are performing in these cases could probably, and should be achieved by the legitimate and consistent enforcement of existing laws by the police that are present, but obviously that does not always happen.
So when a citizen is physically attacked by a nazi (or anyone) who has announced their intention to do physical harm, and they must defend themselves by force, they wouldn't be able to limit their force to match the force applied in the attack if that would not be enough to completely stop the attack, that might only escelate the force used by the attacker since their intention to harm the victim has been made clear. Instead the victim would be forced by the attacker to use the amount of force that they can be sure will completely stop the attack once and for all.
Thanks for asking me this question, I had to think it through for myself to answer and that's a good thing. I have no idea whether my opinions would hold water legally, and I DO NOT CONDONE INITIATING VIOLENCE OF ANY KIND OR AT ANY TIME, but as the situation that we're discussing is extralegal in nature, (peaceful citizens denied police protection, facing groups of armed nazis who have announced thier attention to physically harm citizens after proving the extent of their intention by murdering at least one peaceful citizen in the street, in front of witnesses and police).
It does go further as we know. Above I was only relating my opinion on defending against physical attacks on individual peaceful citizens. In the broader picture we have a very similar situation of these same attackers publicly announcing their intention to harm our democracy with no political reprisals from the current government, leaving us as peaceful citizens no alternative but to show up and face down these attackers with demonstrations as is proscribed in the constitution, to defend and protect our democracy from those attacks.
It's only when those attackers begin to make good on their threats of physical violence, without interference of law enforcement, that the citizen's physical defensive use of force must obviously be applied.