Alt-Right dinguses really very excited that one of them punched a woman in the face

@Steven Dutch

I disagree somewhat. While I do think assault is the wrong tactic (although with someone who advocates for ethnic cleansing like Spencer I won’t complain) Trump’s followers have been assaulting people since he was a candidate. AntiFA didn’t start that. And it was an attack solidly aimed at someone who deserves it with no immediate collateral damage.

The real mistake was the first “battle of Berkley”, back when Milo was going to be a speaker on campus. There was a peaceful student-led protest against it, and then AntiFA came in wearing masks and causing property damage.

They made the peaceful protesters look really awful (and some peaceful protesters got arrested or attacked by police) but called it a victory because Milo didn’t get to speak.

The problem is they were disrupting a protest they agreed with, and caused a lot of damage to innocent people. That is stupid as hell. If you’re going to engage in disruptive (AKA violent) protest you have to make sure you are only going after your enemies. You also can’t hijack a peaceful protest and turn it violent, that’s not ok.

Also, damn kids need to stop tossing firecrackers around. Someone’s going to get shot. *shakes cane*

@Steven Dutch

The alt-righters have a WAY higher willingness to inflict violence than you do. Plus a lot more weapons.

Is this a threat? Don’t fight the fascists because you’ll lose and be in pain?

@Ouroboros

Hey guys, remember when Paul Elam was the worst basket case out there?

No

Bet you guys miss him!

Oh, hell nah

On reflection, Paul Elam seems like the guy who left the band just before they hit the big time. He’s the Dave Mustaine of the alt-Right.

I don’t think violence is necessarily an appropriate antifa tactic but it worked for the 43 Group. I’ll just leave this here.

I think both violence AND non-violence are both necessary. From what i’ve seen most non-violent revolutionary leaders were greatly helped by people were willing to get their hands dirty. To “go low”. Unfortunately, they’re mostly forgotten.

@ makroth

Unfortunately, they’re mostly forgotten.

I’ve often wondered how that came about. There does seem to be a popular narrative that really plays up non-violence as a successful method in achieving social justice, especially if there’s a martyrdom element involved.

So Ghandi gets the credit for Jinnah’s achievement. People misinterpret MLK’s words and suggest he was somehow opposed to Malcolm X. Emily Dickinson is (rightly) a symbol of the suffragist movement but the physical resistance to the Cat & Mouse Act is barely mentioned.

A cynical view would be that it suits vested interests to suggest that passivity (and maybe getting yourself killed) can bring about change, as it diverts people from tactics that are actually effective.

However I suspect it’s maybe just something inherent in people. We like the image of the plucky hero(ine) not being cowed in the face of oppression and the idea that resolve alone will be enough for the enemy to shudder and back down. It produces good iconic imagery.

We forget of course that Tianaman Square’s Tank Man was arrested and never heard from again and putting flowers in rifle barrels didn’t stop Kent State.

@ EJ

White people want their Black liberation heroes to be cuddly and nonthreatening.

That nicely articulates the point I was trying to make. I think you could also replace white and black with any descriptors of privilege and oppression.

It’s noticeable that in my youth Steve Biko was an ‘acceptable’ icon. But whilst not downplaying all the sterling work he did it’s like he’s celebrated for being murdered. It was like you were allowed to shake your head and go ‘poor lad’ but overtly supporting the underlying struggle was seen as endorsing terrorism. So even in the supposed anti apartheid camp it became about not buying oranges.

I’m happy to share if people are interested.

I’d be very interested. As you know, you and I have somewhat different perspectives on this, so I’d very much like to hear your thoughts. It’s obviously a complex topic full of paradoxes and moral quandaries.

As a specific example, do you have any thoughts on Frederick Harris for example?

@EJ

He’s the Dave Mustaine of the alt-Right

You win ?

@Pompous Euro… Oh, fuck you

@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs

I may have spit pop out at my monitor at that last crack. xD

Pretty sure that “lay down and take it, that’s the only way to get anywhere” is the message foisted onto every marginalized group ever. It’s super convenient that letting the privileged walk all over a marginalized group who offer no resistance does such a good job of preserving that privilege.

When privileged people hold up nonviolent protests as the only acceptable model, they are not giving good advice. They are protecting themselves and their privilege. They are erasing the danger that the protestors are in when they act, and erasing the very fact that the protestors are taking actions in the first place. The reality is that nonviolent protest that is safe and gentle is utterly ineffective because it doesn’t get any attention. However, in the mouths of the privileged, nonviolent protest is recast as being passive and safe, while other than total nonviolence is recast as being active and provocative.

Witness:

but on pragmatic grounds further escalation seems bad tactics, and if preparing for violent confrontation, you’re most likely going to get people coming along who actively want to start a fight with them.

Leo is implying that nonviolence is the safe method, the one that doesn’t escalate and isn’t going to provoke a violent retaliation. But a black man sitting at the whites-only lunch counter and waiting expectantly for service is in serious danger, and is being deliberately provocative even though he is being nonviolent about it. The nonviolent act is an act, not passivity, and if it doesn’t risk violence then it isn’t going to be effective. Nobody is going to notice when someone protests in a safe and non-provocative way.

We need to honor that danger if we’re going to talk honestly about nonviolent protests. Nonviolence escalates. It isn’t safe. It provokes a response. Provoking a response is the entire purpose of it. It’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

So. On violence.

Richard Spencer getting punched in the fucking face was hilarious. I may have watched versions of it on Youtube in which people added gangster rap beats and Nintendo sound effects. It was a moment which will live forever in television history. It’s great partly because it captures, in that moment, a very rare event: the person with power and the person who’s capable of inflicting violence are not the same person.

Most of the time, you are either the person capable of inflicting hurt on others or the person capable of being hurt. Take me, for example, as an absurdly privileged straight white man in a wealthy country. If I were to advocate violence, I’d have a reasonable expectation of not becoming a victim of it. If I were to go and inflict violence on Black people or on women or LGBTQ people, the police would do their best to ensure that I still remained safe from violence in return.

I think of this as being in an inflict-only mode: if there is to be violence then I would be inflicting it, not suffering from it.

If I were some poor Syrian slum kid, then I would be in the opposite position: Americans, Turks, Israelis, Iranians and many other people might kill me for their own reasons, but everyone would be horrified if I tried to kill people in return. I would be in a receive-only mode. *

So what does this mean for Richard Spencer’s punching? Firstly, it was hilarious. The reason why it was hilarious is that it subverted our (and his) expectation: he thought that he was inflict-only but it turns out that he could receive violence, too.

Secondly, however, we must remember that it was an exception. Richard Spencer and people like him have privilege. Society is going to do everything in its power to place him back into an inflict-only mode. If we increase the overall level of violence, he (and people like him) aren’t going to be the ones doing most of the suffering.

Thirdly, Spencer did the thing that a lot of privileged people do: rather than try to reduce the overall violence level, he just tried to use his privilege to insulate himself from it. He doesn’t mind violence, he just objects to being in receive mode.

Lastly, I think this shows what we have to do. The solution isn’t punching Nazis, regardless of how funny it is. The solution is the same as that of so many issues: reducing straight white guys’ privilege. How we do that… well, that’s a bigger issue and one that other people know more about than I do.

—–

* “But terrorism!” you might say. No, I reply. The people carrying out terrorist attacks may belong to the same ethnic groups or religious groups as that Syrian slum kid, but bombs dropped on Aleppo weren’t going to kill people living in Nice or Berlin. The perpetrators of terrorist attacks tend to be better-off, living in the West or belonging to privileged groups: like our own military, they’re mostly inflict-only and their targets are receive-only.

@Ikeke35, I feel you there. Non-violence comes up as hollow when it’s literally our lives on the line and mine is. My children’s are. I have family who don’t have my passing privelage. My Abuela has gotten to a point where she’s back to being “That Foreign Lady” when people are nice. I’m just waiting for one of my cousins to call us from Mexico in a ‘Born in East LA’ kind of situation because it’s already happening.

Non-violence is amazing until you’re the person there. And like was said above active protest doesn’t even have to be us punching first. Just by existing we invite the violence as far as they’re concerned. I see no harm with enjoying someone who was out to get us, literally, punched in the face or punched at all.

In general, if there’s one truth I learned from my days as a Punk Stomper back in the 90s is that the only way to get rid of the fucking Nazis is to kick them out with the end of your boot and keep them out with your fists so they crawl back into their hidey holes and keep their shit to themselves. You don’t go after them to kill them all, you just keep them out of the public, you know, to protect people like my that Neo-Nazis and Fascists want dead. Hell, I’m likely hated even more for being a latinx who a) passes as white and b) is mixed race. Race traitors, yo. Proud to be one to my Gringo side as far as these assholes are concerned.

/rambles