Enough time has passed that I can finally say something without the risk of too much personal violence toward me.
In the wake of the recent (read: if we're honest, there's nothing new about Charlottesville, VA -- America has been doing that sort of thing since the mid-seventeenth century in one way or another) I kept seeing this image circulate in my Facebook feed:
All of my family were either too old or too young to fight in the Second World War. But I'm sure if called upon, they would have. Not because they were itching for a fight, but because that's what one did, even if humbly. It certainly wouldn't have been to save the Jews. Antisemitism was extremely widespread in the United States at the time, after all, and it's doubtful the average American would have willingly gone to war for the good of a people group they generally disliked and mistreated, themselves. Far more reasonable to believe they went (reluctantly) to war because they felt that they were threatened (see: Pearl Harbor).
And although the ugly revelations that the war forced into the popular consciousness did a lot to expose the ugliness of the Nazi way of thinking, most Americans didn't stop using Jews as their primary scapegoats until the '50s, when the commies arrived to be the next catch-all villains. Circle the wagons, boys, and lynch anybody wearing the color red!
So here's the question that no one really answered in the late 40s: Did the Nazis actually go away?
No.
As long as there are people in the world, the core ideas of Nazism are there. The idea that my cluster of people is better than that other cluster of people. The idea is as enduring as cancer and just as difficult to get rid of. It creates an identity politics of exclusion, and at its worst, it insists that other people aren't just inferior, they're categorically different to the point where it's okay to do anything you'd like to get rid of them -- even treating them like animals (am I the only one that read Maus in high school?!?).
Now, most of us who resist that kind of thing aren't in the Antifa crowd, willing to use preemptive violence to prevent such things for getting a voice in the body politic.
But what we have proven time and again is that when we're afraid of something, we're more than willing to look the other way or to holler unthinkingly into the slacktivist internet void, while violence and abuse continue. We're the ones who maybe grumbled about the growing Police State after 9/11... but not so loudly that it would stop them from torturing potentially innocent people without the due process of law.
The government's made of good American people, right? And good American people wouldn't torture anyone unless it's super-duper necessary, right? (Insert lessons from the Stanford Prison Ex.periment here.)
Express your opposition. Fine.
Express your anger. Great.
But one thing you really must do alongside those things is pause, reflect, and make a real plan of resistance. That's the lesson from the successful resistance of the Danes in the face of Nazism.
History has taught me to be suspicious of the "clear moral imperative" to exercise violence against someone. So here's what I'm thinking -- even though I kept seeing it on my Facebook feed -- now is not the time to go punching Nazis.
It's not the time for the indiscriminate and often unjustly meted out violence of online vigilantism. It is not the time for doxxing and assaulting Nazis, not, primarily, because those things are illegal (law and justice being only tenuously parallel, at best) and often misfire, but because we actually need to win.
It's always the right time to resist Nazis, but you can't do that by utilizing the methods and tactics they use. Trust me. I know the history. What effectively resists Nazis is the calm, selfless, and above all humble action of unbreakable kindness.
Yes, kindness.
How's that? you ask. How is kindness supposed to work in the face of what we saw in Charlottesville?
Kindness is unflenching and resolute. It doesn't make a hero of the man who punches a Nazi or even the one who makes himself more anxious and less effective by boldly posting his indignation on Facebook. Instead, kindness makes a hero of the sort of men and women who in the '50s and '60s offered firm resistance not only to the active and passive racism of segregated America, but also to the impatience of those who advocated taking up violence against this racist country itself -- burning it to the ground.
See, what I'm suggesting is that we take the cue from those who actually fought the Nazis effectively. Those folks who didn't have a Facebook feed but were forced to stand in very firm and real and costly ways against the very thing they perceived to be destroying humanity, against the very thing they feared. They put their lives on the line for a better, kinder world. They were the people who dared to believe that you don't have to be violent to resist the violence. That the only path to peace is, well, peace. Because, let's be honest here, if there's one take-away lesson from the Second World War, it's this: Violence can stop one tyrant, but it's never stops violence. Violence is only the solution in the short term. If you're building a world, it doesn't build much.
Now is not the time for punching Nazis because punching Nazis is too easy. It is perhaps a bit more cathartic than the piffling fart of a (possibly self-congratulating) Facebook post, but it does not require nearly enough of us, and it doesn't really work.
What is more important: To be seen as Righteous by other people, or to finally see an America where scapegoating of any kind is quickly called out for the Evil that it is -- where gentleness and humility become the publicly extolled virtues they never yet have been?
Now is not the time for punching Nazis -- and I'm fairly certain it's never time to punch Nazis. But regardless of whether I'm right or not, why don't we forego the Outrage News Cycles that make it possible for us to have conversations about racism, only to forget them the next day when the moon does something cool? Racism, violence and cruelty happen every day in a myriad of ways. Let's stop being surprised by Evil and name it where it really lives -- deep in the hearts of each one of us. Let's acknowledge that we're all susceptible to it, because, well, our own hearts are as twisted as the next person's. So what we're really going to do is link arms with the imperfect person next to us and make this work in humility and kindness.
Let's notice the casual racism that continues to keep people of color in bondage. Let's think about the ways in which our own indifference allows so many kinds of injustice to continue. Let's ask ourselves how we can step beyond internet indignation to effect real change.
Because until we do that we will always be punching Nazis, and we will never be at peace.
In the wake of the recent (read: if we're honest, there's nothing new about Charlottesville, VA -- America has been doing that sort of thing since the mid-seventeenth century in one way or another) I kept seeing this image circulate in my Facebook feed:
All of my family were either too old or too young to fight in the Second World War. But I'm sure if called upon, they would have. Not because they were itching for a fight, but because that's what one did, even if humbly. It certainly wouldn't have been to save the Jews. Antisemitism was extremely widespread in the United States at the time, after all, and it's doubtful the average American would have willingly gone to war for the good of a people group they generally disliked and mistreated, themselves. Far more reasonable to believe they went (reluctantly) to war because they felt that they were threatened (see: Pearl Harbor).
And although the ugly revelations that the war forced into the popular consciousness did a lot to expose the ugliness of the Nazi way of thinking, most Americans didn't stop using Jews as their primary scapegoats until the '50s, when the commies arrived to be the next catch-all villains. Circle the wagons, boys, and lynch anybody wearing the color red!
So here's the question that no one really answered in the late 40s: Did the Nazis actually go away?
No.
As long as there are people in the world, the core ideas of Nazism are there. The idea that my cluster of people is better than that other cluster of people. The idea is as enduring as cancer and just as difficult to get rid of. It creates an identity politics of exclusion, and at its worst, it insists that other people aren't just inferior, they're categorically different to the point where it's okay to do anything you'd like to get rid of them -- even treating them like animals (am I the only one that read Maus in high school?!?).
Now, most of us who resist that kind of thing aren't in the Antifa crowd, willing to use preemptive violence to prevent such things for getting a voice in the body politic.
But what we have proven time and again is that when we're afraid of something, we're more than willing to look the other way or to holler unthinkingly into the slacktivist internet void, while violence and abuse continue. We're the ones who maybe grumbled about the growing Police State after 9/11... but not so loudly that it would stop them from torturing potentially innocent people without the due process of law.
The government's made of good American people, right? And good American people wouldn't torture anyone unless it's super-duper necessary, right? (Insert lessons from the Stanford Prison Ex.periment here.)
Express your opposition. Fine.
Express your anger. Great.
But one thing you really must do alongside those things is pause, reflect, and make a real plan of resistance. That's the lesson from the successful resistance of the Danes in the face of Nazism.
History has taught me to be suspicious of the "clear moral imperative" to exercise violence against someone. So here's what I'm thinking -- even though I kept seeing it on my Facebook feed -- now is not the time to go punching Nazis.
It's not the time for the indiscriminate and often unjustly meted out violence of online vigilantism. It is not the time for doxxing and assaulting Nazis, not, primarily, because those things are illegal (law and justice being only tenuously parallel, at best) and often misfire, but because we actually need to win.
It's always the right time to resist Nazis, but you can't do that by utilizing the methods and tactics they use. Trust me. I know the history. What effectively resists Nazis is the calm, selfless, and above all humble action of unbreakable kindness.
Yes, kindness.
How's that? you ask. How is kindness supposed to work in the face of what we saw in Charlottesville?
Kindness is unflenching and resolute. It doesn't make a hero of the man who punches a Nazi or even the one who makes himself more anxious and less effective by boldly posting his indignation on Facebook. Instead, kindness makes a hero of the sort of men and women who in the '50s and '60s offered firm resistance not only to the active and passive racism of segregated America, but also to the impatience of those who advocated taking up violence against this racist country itself -- burning it to the ground.
See, what I'm suggesting is that we take the cue from those who actually fought the Nazis effectively. Those folks who didn't have a Facebook feed but were forced to stand in very firm and real and costly ways against the very thing they perceived to be destroying humanity, against the very thing they feared. They put their lives on the line for a better, kinder world. They were the people who dared to believe that you don't have to be violent to resist the violence. That the only path to peace is, well, peace. Because, let's be honest here, if there's one take-away lesson from the Second World War, it's this: Violence can stop one tyrant, but it's never stops violence. Violence is only the solution in the short term. If you're building a world, it doesn't build much.
Now is not the time for punching Nazis because punching Nazis is too easy. It is perhaps a bit more cathartic than the piffling fart of a (possibly self-congratulating) Facebook post, but it does not require nearly enough of us, and it doesn't really work.
What is more important: To be seen as Righteous by other people, or to finally see an America where scapegoating of any kind is quickly called out for the Evil that it is -- where gentleness and humility become the publicly extolled virtues they never yet have been?
Now is not the time for punching Nazis -- and I'm fairly certain it's never time to punch Nazis. But regardless of whether I'm right or not, why don't we forego the Outrage News Cycles that make it possible for us to have conversations about racism, only to forget them the next day when the moon does something cool? Racism, violence and cruelty happen every day in a myriad of ways. Let's stop being surprised by Evil and name it where it really lives -- deep in the hearts of each one of us. Let's acknowledge that we're all susceptible to it, because, well, our own hearts are as twisted as the next person's. So what we're really going to do is link arms with the imperfect person next to us and make this work in humility and kindness.
Let's notice the casual racism that continues to keep people of color in bondage. Let's think about the ways in which our own indifference allows so many kinds of injustice to continue. Let's ask ourselves how we can step beyond internet indignation to effect real change.
Because until we do that we will always be punching Nazis, and we will never be at peace.