In 2017, neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville, VA chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
One counter-protester was mowed down in a car. She died.
“Punch a Nazi” became a slogan of the far-left group, Antifa.
The cancer of political violence has metastasised in 🇺🇸 since.
1/
One counter-protester was mowed down in a car. She died.
“Punch a Nazi” became a slogan of the far-left group, Antifa.
The cancer of political violence has metastasised in 🇺🇸 since.
1/
I should’ve been writing my PhD at the time. But instead I watched, petrified, from my Istanbul apartment as things I never thought possible transpired in my home country.
Neo-Nazi rallies & counter-demos in tiny Eastern KY coal towns where I’d not fathomed protests possible
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Neo-Nazi rallies & counter-demos in tiny Eastern KY coal towns where I’d not fathomed protests possible
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Gentle friends whom I’d known from Louisville libraries & quiet coffee shops, bespectacled geeks I’d befriended on language study abroad programs—people who seemed too bookish to hurt a fly—started identifying w/ this new group, Antifa, posting “punch a Nazi in the face.”
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3/
I remember finding it an almost pitifully comical attempt at pushback then. “Could any of them even throw a punch?” I wondered. “They can’t be serious.”
So I asked some & was both flabbergasted & disturbed to learn that, yes, they seemed serious.
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So I asked some & was both flabbergasted & disturbed to learn that, yes, they seemed serious.
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Meanwhile, visible Muslims were being increasingly attacked in the US. Just months before Charlottesville, two men were killed on a light rail train in Oregon while trying to defend them.
The following spring, 11 people were killed at Tree of Life, a Pittsburgh synagogue.
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The following spring, 11 people were killed at Tree of Life, a Pittsburgh synagogue.
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All the while, the drumbeat of reciprocal radicalisation beat on. I told myself it was just rhetoric, but couldn’t believe the transformation that I was seeing in some of my friends. Friends who’d poured panda-shaped patterns into my coffee cup & played Regina Spektor for me.
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On Facebook, I saw that some groups really were punching Nazis, or people they’d deemed as such.
My coffee pouring & Regina Spektor-loving friends grew sterner, more siloed, and more allergic to any hint of nuance or grey area in debates of the day.
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My coffee pouring & Regina Spektor-loving friends grew sterner, more siloed, and more allergic to any hint of nuance or grey area in debates of the day.
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I’m ashamed to say that I, too, was at times swept along—not in this violent rhetoric, but in group-think overreactions to certain flashpoint events at the time.
Polarisation was a powerful tide, carving ever wider sea lanes between right & left in US politics.
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Polarisation was a powerful tide, carving ever wider sea lanes between right & left in US politics.
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