When To Punch Nazis
Imagine if the Americans who marched through Charlottesville this weekend at the invitation of Jason Kessler's "Unite the Right" event had been rallying for something so uncontroversially true as "2+2=4." If they came marching with torches in the dark, invoking some of the most noxious imagery in the American historical imagination, if they came bearing Nazi flags, chanting Nazi slogans, clearly articulating their white supremacist beliefs in order to defend "2+2=4"--they would still be wrong, no matter how right "2+2=4" is. If they'd come to Charlottesville to defend "2+2=4" with bats and sticks and rocks and torches and cars as weapons, they would still be utterly abominable, no matter how correct "2+2=4" remains.
What happened here this weekend was absolutely, uncontroversially, simply wrong. It should be condemned in such simple terms. This is not how one does the “civil society” thing. It's not hard. This isn't hard!
“But two and two is four, though. Surely the truth matters!”
No, in this case, it doesn’t. What matters is that they showed up as actual self-declared Nazis and white supremacists! This isn’t hard! They should be condemned.
“But, I mean, the fact remains that two and two--”
No, listen, goddamn it! We’re not talking about math any longer! When they showed up with burning torches and were all decked out to look like Nazis and started to talk and chant like Nazis, they very much changed the subject. This isn’t hard! They should be condemned.
But, ahh, in most cases, they shouldn’t be punched.
Maybe it’s just the internet tricking me into thinking mine is a controversial position, but it seems like a lot of people think it’s totally fine--in fact Good--to “punch Nazis,” now. Here is a representative sample:
“Some silly memes about Captain America punching Nazis--is that what you’re really bent out of shape about? I didn’t know little snowflakes could even bend that far out of shape!”
The above two “status updates” showed up in my feed Monday, not actually posted by friends, but endorsed by them by way of a ‘like’ or share or a ‘heart’ or whathaveyou. (The same goes for all the Captain America memes.) “Nazi-punching”--as an Internet Thing, anyway--seems to have really gotten off the ground when Richard Spencer, the self-styled creator and leader of the “alt-right,” took a good one to the face back in January. And you know what? It was kinda funny, I must admit, to see that smarmy asshole get sucker-punched! But it wasn’t Good. It wasn’t something that should be endorsed and encouraged to be visited upon other Nazi-esque goobers.
While I am personally compelled by your standard-issue free speech argument against beating up your ideological opponents, it should be obvious that pro-Nazi-punchers are not similarly compelled, so I will not attempt that approach. (It really should be enough, though! For chrissakes, violence doesn’t kill, or even much hurt, bad ideas. Have the last 15 years of perma-war taught us nothing? (Don’t answer that.))
This is a problem of confusion about institutions, I think. Even if you grant some of the absurdity above--that the cost of education or healthcare is violence, for instance [ed. note: Blogger had mild aneurysm trying to grant said point, shouted “NO GODDAMN IT, VIOLENCE IS VIOLENCE, YOUR FUCKING TUITION IS NOT VIOLENCE,” and quite startled the cats.]--it is beyond ridiculous to suggest that Cletus in his Nazi get-up must be held accountable for your institutional grievances, no matter how valid. Yes, the prison system is bad. Yes, institutional racism is a thing, and is quite bad, and we must fight it together. But Cletus, on the street, at his white supremacist rally--surely you don’t think *he* represents those things! If he does, it’s goddamn news to him, no doubt--or he wouldn’t be out marching in the first place, would he? And even if your average street-Nazi does somehow represent the vast institutional forces keeping this a forever socially-unjust nation, how does Cletus--a mere cog in an impossibly powerful machine, apparently--getting a personal comeuppance do anything to advance your cause, exactly? And one more thing, he said to the empty room--if the problem is institutional, and punching street-Nazis is a form of retributive violence against the institution, it’s rather likely to provoke some unintended consequences. Fortunately I can’t think of any other time in history that violence, ahem, “against” a Nazi institution was used to rally support for Nazis and vastly expand their power.
And now to finally beg forgiveness for the bad thought experiment that began this essay, I’d like to suggest that the “2+2=4” stand-in above is also a problem of confusion about institutions. Jason Kessler was (ostensibly) trying to “Unite the Right” around the grievance that a Robert E. Lee statue will be coming down soon, and that the City of Charlottesville chose to rename Lee Park.
These monuments in our cities and parks are the very public-facing symbols of our culture’s institutional memory. (The institution of representative government--the one that won, to be clear.) What they choose to honor, and why they were erected in the first place, very much matters--not to a person’s individual sense of their own history or heritage, but to the expressed identity of the institution itself. Those monuments are a symbolic expression of the institutions that are meant to represent all citizens, not just the ones whose side, you know, lost the goddamn war. Charlottesville has no business recommending Robert E. Lee as a symbolic expression of its institutional status, and certainly far less so now than when it was privately commissioned in the 1920s--he fought to maintain the institution of slavery by cleaving the nation in two--among many other things, yes, but also the institution of fucking slavery. Whatever else our faults, institutional or otherwise, a government of, by, and for the people can strive to have more appropriate public-facing symbols of our institutional memory. If you want to honor your history and heritage, feel free to do so! You can even do so in the public square, for all I care! But you don’t get permanent naming rights to the square, too--and the institution need not erect and maintain monuments to your personal heroes. We have better things to celebrate.
Oh, and, so, ahh, when to punch Nazis? When that Nazi is fucking Hitler, that’s when, like in the lead historical photo document at the top of this essay. When we’re literally at war with a dominant genocidal global power in a fight for control of the planet. Not when the “Nazi” is a loud, stupid, sad, ideological infant minority being hateful on the sidewalk.
