Some Thoughts on Punching Nazis
I need to make two things clear at the start of this blog post.
[image error]
First, I am a pacifist. I believe absolutely and without reservation that for me as a Christian, it is against God’s will to ever use violence against another person. More broadly, I believe conflicts in general are better resolved, and oppression better resisted, through nonviolent direct action than through violence.
Second: it costs me nothing to be a pacifist, and therefore my opinion about pacifism isn’t worth much. (You know that’s not going to stop me from writing a blog post).
It costs me nothing to be a pacifist because I am not oppressed and I have never been a victim of violence. I’ve even been lucky enough (and it is sheer luck) to avoid the kind of casual sexual assault (unwanted touching/groping, etc) that many if not most women experience at some point in their lives. It’s easy for me to be a theoretical pacifist when I have never been in a situation where violence would be a likely or necessary response. I’m an extremely privileged person in this conversation and I get no points for theoretically renouncing a weapon I’ll probably never need to use.
Not only am I not a victim of violence, I probably wouldn’t be any good at using it if I had to. I don’t know how to shoot a gun. I’m not athletic and have never taken a self-defense class. My college boyfriend tried one time to teach me how to kick someone effectively and punch someone in the face without breaking my hand, but as I never practiced those skills I have no confidence I could do either of those things effectively.
[image error]When a person with a black belt, or a person who’s a deadly aim with a gun, or a person who’s six-foot-five and three hundred pounds of sheer muscle, renounces the use of violence to solve problems, their renunciation means something. Mine means nothing. Giving up violence, for me, would be like giving up liver for Lent — it’s just not my thing.
When a person who is the victim of systemic oppression — who, because of their skin colour, their social class, their gender identity, the place where they live, is in constant danger of physical harm — when than person renounces violence, it means something. It means nothing when I renounce it.
All that being said, I am still a pacifist. You may disagree with me. A lot of people do. A lot of my fellow Christians read the same Bible I do and come away convinced that Jesus would be fine with them defending their home with a gun, serving in the military, or punching a Nazi in the face (don’t worry, we’ll get back to the Nazis). What can I say? I read Walter Wink at an impressionable age (the age was 35, but still, I was impressionable). I have immense admiration for the tactics and commitment of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others who have led highly disciplined and courageous groups of people into nonviolent direct conflict with oppressive powers. Anyone who marches into a line of armed police or military willing to take a beating without lifting a hand to fight back, is a hero in my book.
All of which was pretty theoretical, living the safe and comfortable life of privilege I live, until the last week or so. In the wake of the white nationalist march Charlottesville, Virginia, the question of whether or not to resist evil with violence is suddenly much more relevant. While I, personally, may never be called upon to punch a Nazi, should I cheer for the person who does? Should I cheer at the sight of a flamethrower burning a Confederate flag (bearing in mind that the person holding the flag could be harmed by the flamethrower)? Should protests against fascists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and their ilk (which, we’ve been promised, we’ll see more and more of, and don’t think we haven’t got them in Canada) be met solely with nonviolent resistance, like those lines of clergy in their vestments and many other peaceful resisters marching down the streets of Charlottesville. Or should there be room for the antifascist protesters who come armed and ready to fight back?
The presence of counter-protesters who were willing to fight back made it possible for Donald Trump to claim that there was violence on “both sides,” and “two hate groups” present, just as the fact that some Black Lives Matter protests erupted into violence has led some Trump supporters to complain that the far left is just as violent as the far right. This is obviously false equivalency: there is every difference in the world between a group marching to declare hate against others and try to take away their rights, and a group marching to defend their own and others’ rights. You can’t pretend “antifa” [anti-fascist demonstrators] are the same as fascists: we wouldn’t have antifa if there weren’t any fa.
But apart from the fact that the motivations of both groups are quite different, the question of tactics remains. It’s obvious that if all the counter-protesters in Charlottesville had been completely committed to non-violence (which generally requires organization and considerable training as well as a lot of courage), there would have been no grounds for Trump and his supporters to make their claim of false equivalency. The very thing that made Gandhi’s movement, Dr. King’s movement, and other non-violent protests effective is that there was no room to say, “Well, one side is just as violent as the other.”
True non-violent protest takes away any claim of moral high ground from the oppressor and displays evil in the starkest possible light: as the club that beats the person lying prone on the ground. There’s no room, in the face of true non-violent action, for the oppressor to claim any false moral equivalency.
That’s a powerful argument in favour of keeping anti-Nazi protests, or anti-racism protests, non-violent. A counter-argument (made well in this article) is that some kinds of evil require a violent response and will not yield to non-violent resistance. I’m not sure this is true, but it’s a point worth considering, and obviously it’s a position embraced by some of the anti-fascist counter-protesters who show up to right-wing rallies.
It’s clear that the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville marchers, many of whom came to the protest heavily armed, embraced the possibility of violence from the beginning. So did some of the counter-protesters. A great many more counter-protesters (including the guy with the flamethrower, who picked up his improvised weapon after gunshots were fired at his feet and says he was later beaten with metal rods while running from protesters) went out that day intending to make a peaceful protest, but fought back in self-defense or in defense of others. Without the leadership and commitment of a Dr. King or a Gandhi, many non-violent resisters will resort to violence when they feel threatened. It’s obvious that the Nazis came intending to threaten, as Nazis always do.
Can you imagine being attacked — whether with guns, or sticks, or rocks — and not picking up a weapon to defend yourself? Not fighting back, but taking the beating or even the gunshot (or, as ultimately happened in Charlottesville, the vehicular homicide), knowing that the cameras are rolling and your suffering will be a powerful testament to the evil you are fighting?
I can’t really imagine it. I’ve never been hit in anger, never had to take a beating. And the very fact that I haven’t been in that position — that I don’t have to deal with that threat on an everyday basis — means that I don’t have the right to tell someone else to protest non-violently.
Gandhi and King and other famous non-violent resisters were able to lead those movements because they themselves represented their own communities, communities under threat. A white preacher telling Southern blacks to take a beating from police, a British government official telling Indians not to fight back against British Army brutality — these people would have had no moral right to preach non-violence, any more than I do.
If you are the person on the front lines facing racism, police brutality, hatred and oppression, you have your own decision to make about whether you will fight to defend yourself and others, or choose the path of non-violent resistance. I am a pacifist, but my pacifism is meaningless until it’s tested, and it may never be.
It should go without saying that there were not two violent hate groups in Charlottesville on Saturday: there was one violent hate group, and there were people gathered to resist them. Some resisted non-violently; some fought back. My belief that the non-violent resisters were more effective is irrelevant: the people on the ground are the only ones who can decide how they will resist evil.
All this to say: I will never punch a Nazi. I might waste some breath trying to argue with one, but for a number of reasons I will not be throwing punches.
I will not cheer at, or laugh at, or cheer at pictures or videos or gifs of Nazis being punched (even if I secretly believe they deserve it).
But if you end up in a situation where you need to punch a Nazi, I’m not here to judge you.
