This is How We Fight
My parking space was full. While it was irritating to find someone else in the spot, I am lucky to be able to afford a reserved space in a stretch of the neighborhood with limited curbside parking, so I spent a few minutes finding a space a few blocks away. The hours of my job are erratic, and I was frustrated to spend a handful of bleary-eyed minutes after a tiring shift searching for parking. But it was a pretty minor annoyance.
I could conjure many reasons as to why someone might park in the space. While it might not have been the most thoughtful move on their part, the car’s out-of-town plates suggested that they might be visiting family. Maybe there was an emergency, and in their grief, they had paid little attention to the giant “Private Parking Tow Zone” sign. Or perhaps they were college students visiting friends at a party, and had gotten drunk. While the latter option was irksome to contemplate, I’d rather spend a few minutes grumbling over parking than have someone drive drunk through my neighborhood.
When I came back from my shift the next day, the car was still there. This was either the result of an epic bender (which I could perhaps grudgingly respect) or straight-up insouciance. Regardless, like any good Cantabrigian, I decided that it was time to take the gloves off. It was time for a strongly-worded letter.
Possessing a puckish streak, said strongly-worded letter was duct-taped to the offending windshield. That would show them. Lo and behold, after my next shift, I I returned to find the car in the same spot, with a faint patina of duct tape lingering on the windshield. Three days in, the gauntlet had been dropped. I called the towing company.
Within days, I was assured that both the building management and the towing company had made the situation their highest priority. They had top men working on the project. Two weeks later and two signs more, the car remained. At this point, simply mocking me with its incontrovertible, two-ton presence and Vermont license plate.
I contemplated several potential avenues for vengeance. The furious romantic in me suddenly became unhinged. Having explored various quasi-legal means of retribution (there were none, as rental of a parking space confers no actual legal rights), I decided it was a matter of either unleashing the sledgehammer I incidentally purchased from Home Depot half a decade prior (the combination lock really had it coming) or showering the parking space with thumbtacks (“of course, your honor, I sprinkle thumbtacks across my parking space on a regular basis…”). A friend suggested that affixing a Trump bumper sticker might accomplish the same goal with plausible deniability.
So the car sat there for another week. So I got mad. Internet mad. And there were clues aplenty. A college parking permit hung in the window. And a squash racket with said college’s logo provided all the context one needed to discover that the owner of the offending vehicle was a summer intern for Goldman Sachs, eating club of the princes and princesses of the universe.
A simple email did the trick. “Would you kindly move your car? This is a reserved spot, and it will be towed…” brought her running down from her perch in less than five minutes. She moved the car to an adjacent spot, furtively glancing around as she skulked back into the building. “I’m so sorry!” she replied, “I had no idea that this was a reserved spot.” The baldness of the lie rankled, but in retrospect, I was mostly just glad that she had pillaged my parking spot rather than my pension.
The episode was instructive because it showed me that people with a basic lack of decency are fundamentally cowards. Bullies are fundamentally pathetic people who thrive on our unwillingness to sink to their level. However, taking the high road is the wrong response to bullying. Relying on the rules to come to your defense, or assuming that decent behavior will inspire others when your opponents have no decency is unfortunately a recipe for getting kicked around.
Writ large, our society is imperiled because of our unwillingness to fight craven bullies in the open. American Nazis have emerged over the past year under various none-too-subtle guises, but their mission has been quite clear: to intimidate those different from themselves, and to destroy the fundamental institutions of American society in the process. Assuming that the organizations that claim to be sources of authority will truly “call balls and strikes” is a means of letting stupid win.
So what is a red-blooded real American to do when faced with the advent of American Nazis? Though the temptation may be great, we advocate against violence and do not endorse going the full BJ Blazkowicz. Instead, we offer the following suggestions for outfoxing the enemy.
Call a Nazi a Nazi. Leave it to a group voluntarily following in the footsteps of the Chthonic evil of the modern era, but many American Nazis don’t actually want to own up to the label. They prefer labels that allow the same hate without the troublesome stigma, many and would rather be called the “alt-Right.” This Orwellian term, which should be reserved for navigating Microsoft Windows, makes modern Nazism sound like a perfectly legitimate alternative to American Conservatism. While I disagree with essentially all the tenets of the modern Republican party, their voice is a part of American democracy. Nazis are not. Remind them of it by calling them what they are: Nazis.
Achieve physical superiority. Arch-bullies are often physically pathetic specimens who incite others to perpetrate violence on their behalf. As the irascible scion of American strength training has said, “strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.” So when you read the next dumb claim someone makes on Twitter, don’t get angry, get to pumping iron.
Think laterally. Although we don’t endorse the reuse of specific dirtbag tactics that Nazi trolls use, such as doxing, we are all for returning fire. And slinging mud in the private press is as American as apple pie. However, in the 21st century, the smart way to do this is to get a robot to do it for you — chances are your opponents are too dumb to know the difference.
Embarrass them with the truth. In the 1940s, Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the KKK, and exposed the group’s secret handshakes and risible rituals to the general public via the Superman radio show. Figuring out the shibboleths of modern American Nazis requires none of the risks that Kennedy took, as so much of these groups’ drivel is already out in the open. Thanks to free email addresses and the ease of obtaining a Twitter handle, ingratiating yourself with the fascists at home has never been easier.
Study archaeology. How this translates into a coherent means of stopping the Nazis is a little unclear, but we can’t argue with the results.
