Give No Quarter to Nazis
The United States Constitution was written nearly 250 years ago as a framework for a democratic representative republic. Almost immediately after it was written, the writers decided to amend it with a list of basic human rights to be codified into law. The first of these protected three essential freedoms: speech, the press, and religion. Freedom of speech is perhaps the most important right granted to a person, but the right to use speech comes with responsibilities not to use one’s words to cause pain, suffering, or infringement of other people’s rights. That is to say, the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee one can say whatever that person wants without fear of recourse. For example, one cannot commit perjury, libel, or slander. One cannot run into a crowded room and shout “fire” in the absence of one. And one cannot use words to incite violence.
“Inciting violence” is a tricky statement in some cases, especially since those who tend to say the kinds of things that make people fly into a rage can weasel their way around intent and claim they’re only practicing their State-protected rights to free speech. It’s why the debate around hate speech is so contentious, even if it really shouldn’t be. People mask their intent through slimy channels like pseudoscience or hiding their racism through conservative economic buzzwords (they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!). That all being said, everyone should come to a full agreement when it comes to Nazis, right?
The Nazi Party, White supremacists who co-opt Nazi ideology, or Nazi sympathizers aren’t adopting theoretical ideology. They’re joining a group that has actually enacted its racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and otherwise genocidal policies to grotesque ends. Nazism got the world the Holocaust, the systemic murder of 11 million people, six million of them of the Jewish religion. When one says “White power,” when that person gives the Nazi salute, when that person dons the swastika, that person endorses the murder of non-White, non-Christian, or otherwise queer human beings. To wit, they are inciting other racists to commit violence, which is not protected speech.
So when the head of the Neo-Nazi think-tank National Policy Institute, Richard Spencer, takes an elbow to the jaw that would make Mitsuharu Misawa smile down from the heavens, it is not overreacting to someone’s free speech, because Spencer’s hate speech should not be covered by the First Amendment. Spencer is not a man who totes neoconservative lines about economics as dog whistles against minorities. He has out-and-out toted Nazi language in regards to Jewish (going so far as to ask if Jews were actually people after several craven mainstream media outlets did soft focus profiles on him) and Black people. He is not exercising free speech. He is inciting violence against huge swaths of people. Hell, he even has co-opted the fucking salute:
And so because of that, action needs to be taken against him. The government should do something about him, but since the Federal level is controlled by cowardly, power-thirsty Republicans at least and Nazi sympathizers at best, the reaction from it will be spotty at best. So it is up to you and me to take the fight to Nazis like Richard Spencer. Throwing ‘bows at him is just the start. Any avowed Nazi should be afraid to espouse their views in public, and if it takes force from citizens and civilians, then it’s what has to be done. Nazism flourishes in the absence of action, and all the retweets of passages from books about how regular Germans’ and other Europeans greatest regrets were not resisting the Nazi Party hard enough before World War II will mean absolutely fucking nothing without actions behind them.
This means any feckless liberal with a “well violence never solves anything” chestnut is the enemy. Firstly, punching a Nazi isn’t violence. Violence by definition is undue. If a man punches you in the face for no reason, that’s violence. If you hit him back, that’s not violence, it’s self-defense. Punching someone in the face who has said, and I quote, “We should instead be asking… ‘Is Black genocide right?’” is not violence, it is a public service for all your fellow Black citizens who don’t need skinheads trying to round them up for mass murder right now or ever.
So, anyone who says that punching a fucking Nazi doesn’t accomplish anything † is the enemy. One might expect someone from the Republican Party to decry this action because whether they want to admit it or not, racists, Nazis, and other scum are part of their base and lord knows you don’t wanna piss of the fucking base. But when otherwise “reasonable” people get on the train, it’s time to start treating them as the pariahs they are. People like Brianna Wu are not your ally no matter how much they identify with the Democratic Party. Reason Magazine should be treated as having none for decrying things like this. And hell, one would think Nick Spencer (no relation, I hope) who WRITES a Captain America comic (see the above picture for Cap’s original writers’ stance on punching Nazis) would know better. HE doesn’t, and thus, he’s the enemy. Don’t even get me started on anyone who might donate to this piece of shit GoFundMe. Granted, it might not be legit, rather something that the fascist nerds at 4Chan may have come up with, but impotent Democrats who think politics are a sporting event and not a life or death struggle for the downtrodden donated money to transphobic attempted election thieves in the North Carolina GOP. I wouldn’t put it past any of them to give money to this crowdfunding attempt, whether legit or troll.
To be honest, Richard Spencer got off light with just an elbow to the face, and any Nazi who is bold enough to proclaim their love for genocide, racism, homophobia, or antisemitism being allowed to move freely around the land without fear of bodily harm is in the same boat. Their speech is not protected by the First Amendment, nor should it be. It is your right, nay, your duty to punch a Nazi in the face, to make a Nazi afraid to show his or her face in public, to dissuade any violence from happening with your righteous force. Nazis deserve nothing but scorn and no relief, and not even Ron Fournier should be allowed to say “gotta hear both sides” in regards to their ability to spout their evil words in public.
† — Reminder that the United States was built on violence. The Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, the US wouldn’t be here if not for people smashing shit and throwing punches (or more accurately, firing guns).
