The Punch Heard ‘Round the World
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nazi-Punching
In case you missed the meme of the week, white supremacist Richard Spencer gave a punchy interview that’s gotten a lot of hits. Here’s the blow-by-blow:
Let’s back up a second. Who is this guy? Why is there a meme of him getting punched? How did this happen?
That’s Richard Spencer, one of the originators of the alt-right movement. Ever since Donald Trump brought on Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, the phrase “alt-right” has floated to the forefront of American media, and it seemed many people were pretty unclear on just how to categorize them.
But the facts are far from unclear. The alt-right is a conglomerate of anti-feminist white nationalists who think America and Europe are experiencing (in their words) a white genocide. In the era of former president Obama and Black Lives Matter, white supremacist politics have only intensified.
Richard Spencer was the editor of www.alternativeright.com when they published an article titled Is Black Genocide Right? which asked questions like:
Does human civilization actually need the Black race?”
Is Black genocide right?
What would be the best and easiest way to disose of them?
Since I just made you read that trash, here’s a video of Richard Spencer getting punched to Hamilton’s “Right Hand Man”. You’re welcome.
Rather than condemning them out of the gate, the media milked the alt-right’s publicity for all it was worth. CNN went so far as to call them the “trendy young face” of the far right, while right-leaning websites such as Breitbart called them “serious free speech advocates”. Since then, the media has been dancing back and forth as to the alt-right’s true nature.
But in the week since the punch, the alt-right became synonymous with “Nazi”, as meme after meme of Nazi-punching flooded the internet. Many changed their profile pictures to an iconic photo of Indiana Jones punching a Nazi on a tank (from The Last Crusade).
It wasn’t thinkpieces that firmly shifted public sentiment on the alt-right. It wasn’t solid logic and argumentation. Getting through to hate groups by making a logical argument that changes their minds is a futile exercise. There are no “moderate” white supremacists we stand to “get through to” via civility.
In fact, public debate likely makes things worse, by giving them the positive, civil publicity they need to reach more potential marks. That is a lesson we should have learned from the millions of dollars in free publicity we gave Donald Trump throughout the election.
What we need to do is deny people like him access to free publicity and impressionable minds to convert. We can deny them a platform. No college talks, no public debates, nothing that would grant them an iota of legitimacy. We don’t prohibit their free speech, but we also don’t treat them like adults worth engaging with.
Their image in the public eye matters far more than the logic of their arguments or the truth of their claims. They need to seem edgy enough to be intriguing, and yet harmless enough to attract new recruits — recruits who won’t be exposed to the full violence and extremism of the ideology until they are well indoctrinated.
And at heart, we know that. After all, that’s how we treat non-white, non-Christian extremists like Daesh (ISIS). Nobody’s trying to let Abu Hassan al-Muhajir hold a web conference on our college campuses.
What is the difference? Reception. And that’s what this meme changed. That punch went beyond removing Richard Spencer’s platform to speak. It sent a clear message: your ideology is not edgy, it is repugnant. Simultaneously, it portrayed him as more than just harmless, by making him look weak. If anything flies in the face of a fascist ideology, it’s weakness.
So should we go around punching members of the alt-right willy-nilly? No. But it is still important to note that this particular punch — a publicized act against a prominent white nationalist that humiliated rather than harmed him and made him seem weak — has significantly altered his public perception.
Once public sentiment shifted, the meme machine could take over. One white supremacist punched on camera became *the* meme overnight, and now he — and the alt Right — are synonymous with Nazi. This is what compelling symbolic speech looks like.
EDIT: Apparently, it may have him reconsidering how he does public appearances:
