James Peron
2 min readMar 15, 2021

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There is much I agree with and much I disagree with. First, I would note that the degree to which racists and other bigots are violent depends entirely on the degree of social sanction they have. When they are utterly rejected by society they retreat to their private communities and hide, but even then they frequently come out and commit acts of violence.

Racism is not just imposed by “government force” but private force as well. And when there is wide social sanction for that bigotry the private force can be quite extensive. The attack on the Capitol by alt-Right authoritarians was not a government project, but a private one. Lynchings were done privately.

While I don’t mind such people separating themselves from the rest of us they do not have total rights to do as they please in their community. They still don’t have the right to lynch people, they don’t have the right to torture. They may live together but their use of force is still restricted—the idea they can do as they please is a anarchist fantasy. It either allows them to initiate force force or it restricts them, whatever body has the power to restrict them is the state no matter what you call it.

No one here suggest suppression of idea so to counter that twice is not necessary as no one suggested otherwise.

But I would remind that hate is an imperialistic emotion and the more it is embraced the quicker and more likely it is to resort to violence. Only social sanction and rejection keeps it in check. There is NO example of a society where bigotry was socially acceptable where violence did not follow and it matters nothing at all whether that violence is done by the state or private bodies—either is a violation of individual rights.

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James Peron
James Peron

Written by James Peron

James Peron is the president of the Moorfield Storey Institute, was the founding editor of Esteem a LGBT publication in South Africa under apartheid.

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