Thread by @studentactivism

Here's a thing about wearing a swastika armband in public—not in a march, not at a demonstration, just walking around for hours in public.

It's not just a speech act. It's a test. It's a test to see whether you can get away with it. It's an attempt to shift boundaries.

It's an attempt to frighten, to cow, to subdue. It's a challenge: "Are you going to stop me?"

It's not "political speech" in the way we typically think of that term. It's not simple advocacy of Nazism. It's street harassment.

So when you ask me what I think of someone getting punched for wearing a swastika on the street? Here's what I think:

I think it's the same as a woman pepper-spraying a man for accosting her with sexual insinuations while she walks to the subway.

I think it's the same as a gay man punching the guy who threatened him and shamed him for kissing his boyfriend goodbye.

I think it's the same as clocking someone you see yelling at an old Jewish lady, telling her she should have been gassed like her mom.

We can distinguish coherently between different kinds of speech, and how we respond to them. We do it all the time.

If your view is that a woman who pepper-sprays a street harasser is an enemy of the First Amdt and the public good, okay. Make your case.

But if you contemplate that scenario, and you're not revulsed, ask yourself why the swastika case is different.

And if you come up with an answer to that question that makes sense to you, I'm happy to chat about it. I'd be eager to.

Because I actually do believe in the power of discussion to shape and strengthen social norms, and I believe we need more of that right now.

Whew. A lot of people in my mentions seem really confused about a few things, so let me say a little more.

First, there's a big difference between legal and moral, and between morally obligatory and morally permissible.

I'm not attempting to establish punching Nazis as a principle of correct behavior, or argue that it should be legal.

What I'm saying is that wearing a swastika in public is more similar to street harassment than it is to typical political speech.

But "If we punch Nazis, what's to stop us from punching catcallers and people who shout homophobic slurs?" is never the argument made.

Finally, I find "If we punch people wearing swastikas, what's to stop bigots from punching people wearing pride shirts?" utterly mystifying.

First of all, "punching people in pride shirts" is already a thing that happens. It's a thing that happens a lot more than punching Nazis.

The idea that homophobic violence rises and falls in tandem with rates of Nazi punching is not as intuitive to me as it is to some of you.

Second, even a commitment to the First Amendment doesn't demand that we pretend we don't know the difference between good and evil.

"When is violence appropriate in confronting evil?" is a reasonable question. "Isn't confronting evil the same as confronting good?" is not.

Oh, and I guess there is one more thing.

I've never punched anyone. I may never punch anyone. I am not encouraging others to punch anyone, or committing to punching anyone.

My instinctive response to physical assault is, I've discovered, not to fight, but to place my (large) body between attacker and victim.

So no, I'm not a physical coward, thanks for asking, and no, I'm not a fan of gratuitous brutality either.

So why the thread? Because I think we have an urgent need for a shared ethics of resistance—active resistance—to brutality.

"No violence ever" is not such an ethics, in my view. "Punch all the Nazis" isn't much of an improvement. What would be? Don't know yet.

Gotta get back to work. Lemon out.