Given this weekend unqualified disaster in Washington and Charlottesville, I think we can all agree that, yes, it's OK to punch a Nazi. Why? It's a deterrent. THREAD/
1. I don’t like Richard Spencer. That won’t surprise those already familiar with my thoughts on him. But there’s more to it than dislike. Hatred is accurate. So is contempt.
2. Not only does he advocate white supremacy as a theory for reorganizing the American polity, he does it all while getting an allowance from his rich mom. motherjones.com/politics/2017/…
3. It would pain me to say Spencer is right about anything. In this case, however, he might be. This weekend’s rallies in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C., got wall-to-wall coverage and overwhelming scrutiny. Both were unqualified failures.
4. More than two dozen showed up to protest near the White House. About the same number arrived in Charlottesville. Counter-protesters outnumbered fascists two to one.
5. What does that have to do with Spencer? In March, he said antifa was winning.
6. Antifa is short for anti-fascism. These are the black-clad people who come to protest the fascists. They are mostly peaceful but they are open to using violence. That’s what happened last year in Charlottesville.
7. The brawl had been the top-line story until one of Spencer’s fellow travelers rammed his car into a crowd, killing a woman.
8. “I really hate to say this,” Spencer said in a YouTube video in March. “Antifa is winning to the extent that they’re willing to go further than anyone else, in the sense that they will do things in terms of just violence, intimidating, and general nastiness."
9. But is antifa really winning? Yes, and no. The answer is complicated.
10. To begin, we should have a better understanding of antifa. For that, we should have a better understanding of fascism. Here’s how Mark Bray, a Dartmouth lecturer and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, put it. Fascism, he wrote, is:
11. Bray: behavior "marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood … [that] abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
12. Antifa, on the other hand, is committed “to fighting to the death the ability of organized Nazis to say anything,” Bray wrote, adding that it’s “an illiberal politics of social revolutionism applied to fighting the Far Right, not only literal fascists.”
13. The temptation has been to say that fascism and anti-fascism are two sides of the same coin. That comparison is categorically wrong. These are not moral equivalents for a simple reason. One side is fascist. The other side is anti-fascist. That’s the easy part.
14. Harder is seeing antifa’s shades of gray. I disagree with leftists celebrating it uncritically. I agree with the head of the Connecticut GOP, who said:
15. "“All these neo-Nazis are assholes. Where Trump missed the mark, and the only way I can explain this, in the grand scheme of things, this white supremacy Nazism, on a scale of evil, that’s a 10. But the antifa guys are like at an eight.”
16. Antifa is almost evil, but not quite. I think that’s about right.
Better: a tolerable evil.
Better: a tolerable evil.
17. Violence is the difference between an open and closed societies. But openness is why the Richard Spencers of the world have flourished. In making room for their “free speech,” open societies make room for ideologies that seek “internal cleansing and external expansion.”
18. Philosopher Karl Popper called this the paradox of tolerance. "we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force ... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
19. Today’s liberals, like Nancy Pelosi, won’t and probably shouldn’t condone antifa. The House Minority Leader said last summer: “The violent actions of people calling themselves antifa … deserve unequivocal condemnation.”
20. But civil society is working with antifa to fight fascism. I’m not suggesting coordination, only correlation.
21. Over the past year, the far right has undergone enormous press scrutiny. As a result, some have lost credibility. Some have lost jobs. Others have lost marriages. Spencer, and now conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, have been pushed off social-media platforms.
22. Add to that the problem of overwhelming physical opposition in the streets, opposition that’s “willing to go further than anyone else.” The result, as Spencer put it in March, is that hate-speech rallies and fascism aren’t fun anymore. Time to quit.
23. “When they become violent clashes and pitched battles, they aren’t fun,” Spencer lamented. “Until the situation changes, we are up a creek without a paddle.”
24. Is antifa winning? Yes, as long civil society tolerates it.
25. Apologies. This thread is later in the day than usual. But THANKS for reading! There's more where this came from. Sign up for free with THE EDITORIAL BOARD! stoehr.substack.com/p/antifa-civil…
