On The Ethics of Punching Nazis
Earlier this year videos and GIFs of white supremacist spokesman Richard Spencer getting sucker punched during a TV interview spread like wildfire on social media. By the time of The Punch Heard Round The Internet, Spencer had garnered a reputation for espousing fascistic and ethno-nationalist views. Given his shitty opinions (and arguably shittier haircuts) many — myself included — applauded the punch. Seeing Spencer and his Hitler Youth hairdo temporarily mussed up seemed like a measured response, not to mention an eminently satisfying one.
However, the cheers were hardly unanimous. Critics argued that punching virulently racist and xenophobic assholes like Spencer, cathartic though it may be, was anathema to civil society. Not only did punching Spencer constitute criminal assault, they scolded, those who justified it lose the moral high ground. Those ascribing to the Gandhi/MLK school of social justice advocate nonviolence for ethical reasons, i.e., they believe it’s wrong to engage in violence for its own sake, and also because they believe that violence inevitably begets more violence.
The debate over the Spencer punch seems to belong to a relatively more innocent time than the one we live in now. Back in January, Spencer was at the vanguard of a white power movement that was growing in power and prestige; now that we’re in August, we can see that that movement has ballooned to disturbing proportions. Before we could laugh at seeing a dandyish Nazi get his just deserts; now we frightfully wonder when and where the next scene of Charlottesville-style violence will occur.
What’s more, President He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has further stoked the fires of national discord by charging that both sides of conflict were culpable for fomenting violence. In this way he’s muddied the waters of our popular discourse to the point where a number of Americans think that counter-protesters were equally responsible for the physical and rhetorical violence that took place in Virginia this past weekend.
I don’t intend to use this essay to deconstruct the inanity of his blame-both-sides “logic” (you can see me examine the topic here and here). What I am interested in examining is whether it’s possible, or even desirable, in our current social climate to practice nonviolence in the face of the armed, radical racists that constitute today’s white supremacist movement. It’s not just that such foes exist; indeed, they’ve always been a consistent presence throughout our nation’s history. What we must also contend with is the strong institutional support the movement enjoys with our current administration, support that has only encouraged the encroaching racist and fascist forces that threaten to engulf this country.
Many Americans have rightly been outraged by this president’s unambiguous support for and romanticization of white supremacy. (Of course, for those of us who followed his race baiting antics on the campaign trail it hardly came as a surprise.) It can’t be seen as a coincidence that the first several months of his presidency has correlated with a sharp rise in hate group growth. In response, a loose coalition of anti-fascists, known collectively as Antifa, have emerged to disrupt white power events. What makes Antifa controversial is the fact that its adherents are willing to engage in direct physical confrontations with white supremacists if necessary. This has engendered much hand wringing not only within the right-wing media, but also from mainstream and left-leaning pundits as well.
This essay is not an apologia for Antifa; I am not a representative of their cause nor do I abide by the violent methods adopted by their more extreme proponents. With that said, a false equivalency has been made by the president and his supporters between the Nazis, Confederate statue huggers and other white supremacists on one side and the Antifa and other leftist counter-protesters on the other. In receiving on-the-ground accounts of this past weekend’s protests, a clearer picture has emerged of the activities of the two groups. Some non-Antifa affiliated counter-protestors, including the professor and social critic Cornel West, testified that Antifa intervened to protect them from violence.
Though no doubt Antifa forces did more than secure the safety of nonviolent counter-protestors, we have yet to hear of any injuries or fatalities that they directly caused in Charlottesville. I don’t need to tell you that the other side cannot claim such a spotless record.
Nazi punching — or at least visual and rhetorical representations of it — has become more widespread on social media thanks to such trending hashtags as #ComicsHateNazis. This has enabled those with a disdain for Nazism and other forms of white supremacy to express those views in a jocular, Internet-friendly way. The Nazi punching seen on Twitter and elsewhere is, for the most part, a creative catharsis — it’s the rhetorical equivalent of a rapper who releases violent impulses through his lyrics without actually following through on his or her actions. Contrast this with many white nationalists who express violent, bigoted attitudes and actively follow through on them.
Though there’s a part of me that’s ashamed to admit it, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I got a visceral, base-level thrill from seeing Nazi sympathizers like Spencer get coldcocked in public or otherwise humiliated. And I’d wager that I’m not the only one to feel this way. Perhaps that has something to do with our cultural upbringings as Americans. We generally accept such cultural pieties like “violence is not the answer” in this society, knowing full well that those attitudes aren’t often reflected in our media or, indeed, in the history of the country itself.
And this is where I get back to the question of whether nonviolence in the face of Nazism and white supremacy is the answer. In my lifetime, Nazis have often been the stock villain of choice for various books, films and TV shows, so I suppose it could be argued that mainstream media helped inculcate within me a repulsion towards Nazis. And as we often find in these mass media stories, direct physical confrontation is presented as the primary method to defeating them. So as you can see, there is something of a disconnect between our stated ideals as a nation and the art we produce that reflects our more violent impulses.
For instance, one of the more popular film franchises when I was growing up was the Indiana Jones series. In the first film of that series, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the primary antagonists were Nazis attempting to secure the Ark of the Covenant. To the best of my recollection, Indy doesn’t spend the length of the film calmly negotiating with the Nazis seeking to kill him and take over the world. Instead, Raiders features images such as the one below:
One of the enduring characters in mainstream superhero fiction is Captain America. The character debuted in Captain America Comics #1, which went on sale in December 20, 1940 — nearly a full year before the United States entered into World War II. It should be noted that the cover depicting the hero punching Hitler generated its fair share of controversy at the time from those who viewed it as an outrageous attack on a sovereign leader. By the time the U.S. officially entered the war, however, other red-white-and-blue garbed heroes like Wonder Woman joined the Nazi punching parade as well.
Such works of fiction were a gateway drug to the true-life artifacts of Nazi malevolence: specifically, the historical record itself as detailed by scholars and researchers, and first-hand accounts of Nazi atrocities from Holocaust survivors like Elie Wiesel. What those texts teach us is that Nazism and white supremacy is uncompromising in its ultimate aims. There is no polite and civil debate to be had with those who advocate for a white nationalist ethno-state. There is no convincing a white supremacist, a neo-Nazi, a Confederate sympathizer, no matter the reams of evidence at your disposal, of your humanity as a person of color, as a LGBTQ member, as an ethnic or religious minority.
There is not, despite the president’s claims, “very fine people” on that side of the debate. Exceptions to the rule notwithstanding, to pretend that violent white nationalists can be converted or reasoned with is to engage in a fantasy. A fantasy that, unless we stop indulging it, will result in more violence and the loss of lives.
It should be acknowledged that we’re at the cusp of a unique historical moment in our country. While history affords us instructive examples, I haven’t seen (at least in my lifetime) such a gratuitous embrace of white nationalist principles at the highest levels of our government. To be sure, there were other times in America’s past when violent racists ruled the roost, such as the civil rights era of the 1960s. But unlike the Kennedys, John F. and Robert F., we don’t have a president or Attorney General who would be willing to intervene on behalf of the people facing the white nationalist assault. You could appeal to the humanity of the Kennedys, or at least their common sense; the current occupant of the White House lacks both attributes.
And even in the case of the 60s civil rights movement, the cold hard facts remain that nonviolence was not the only tool employed by activists of the time to combat white supremacy. Direct violent confrontation won’t help us achieve our aims, but a diversity of tactics ought to be considered to achieve the goal of dismantling the current white nationalist power structure.
As the great Frederick Douglass once said, “power concedes nothing without a demand.” Now is the time to demand an end to the power structure that supports white supremacy in this country using the best means at our disposal. We can do nothing less if we hope to be judged favorably by history.
