Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
I have been off the sugar soda band wagon for some time.
In my hey day, I was up to SEVEN cans/bottles of Pepsi a day. I now have none each day, and I rarely splurge on some soda. I drink ginger ale from time to time as part of a mixed drink, but again, infrequently.
I know people who have given up sugar. My friend Chris did this last year, and my sister just decided to go off it.
I am making progress, but I am not off it. I am using reduced sugar or no added sugar almond/coconut milk in my morning coffee. I do have a granola bar every morning loaded with sugar (like eating two cookies my wife says - 11g sugar) and occasionally sweet and salty bar (7g sugar). But beyond those things, I try not to have sweets in the house too often or at all. I try to "treat" myself to a Butterfinger or a donut very infrequently. There was some Christmas candy, but that's mostly gone. I do like dark chocolate (11g sugar per third), but I eat it over four days or more and not every day of those four. So, I am reducing, but I can reduce more. I have cereal a few times a week in which a include a sprinkle of Cap'n Crunch (I KNOW!). We buy the real sugar dressings and ketchup.
I am not where I want to be yet, but the reducing is a work in progress and there is progress.
Anyway, it's been a while since I posted an xkcd comic.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1701.31 - 10:10
NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #573 - Kieron Gillen's Best of for 2016 - Musical Monday 1701.30
Hi Mom,
This one's a bit of a beast to load, but it's worth it.
One of the greatest things about the Internet and the social media rich world we live in right now is something like this. So here's this author I respect, Kieron Gillen, and Kieron is BIG into music.
I subscribe to Kieron's newsletter (and you can, too, here: Kieron Gillen's Word Mail) and earlier this month he sent his playlist for 2016.
I love discovering new music, and though I knew some of these tracks, I did not know all of them. I suspect that this will be the experience for most people.
Gillen admitted that this list is no real order. For instance, when discussing the Solange track at #22, he wrote that he had no good reason why this one is not in his top ten. I would have to agree.
I might go through and make my own top ten for a future Musical Monday because I very much favor the Solange track, Shura, DJ Shadow, Blood Orange, Frank Ocean, Mogwai, FKA Twigs, CHVRCHES (and NOT only for the McKelvie in the video) and a few others.
But here's a treasure trove (and only slightly late as it's really Tuesday as I type).
Why top 40? I always wondered where that 40 number came from? Why not top 50? Or Top 20?
Who decided it would be a Top 40? Was it a space issue? Only so much room to print the list?
Funny though, he only has 39 tracks. So I added one to round off to 40. Gillen mentions that miscount in his opening remarks.
I reprint Kieron's comments about some of the songs among the list.
Enjoy.
We need new music and great art now more than ever.
Track 40 - my pick
Moby & The Void Pacific Choir - Are You Lost In The World Like Me (Official Video)
So a change from usual. Previously it's always been 40 tracks – for the totemic British Top 40 analogue. It's always been relatively researched, with me working on a much larger document, doing some due diligence and trying to remember what stuff actually did come out, etc. Plus lots of serious consideration of the order.
Not this year. This year it's just what's ended up in a playlist, arranged roughly. I probably won't even be writing something about every single entry, as to avoid the eternal procrastination I've blocked out an hour or so from my schedule to write it, and whatever state it's in is the state I send it out in.
Heh. In a real way, this has never been more like a “here are 40 or so tracks I dig” than ever. Anything below the Top 10 rapidly becomes on a level. I'm just throwing my hands in the air, arranging the playlist, and getting writing.
The rules remain. 1 track per artists. Artists who have multiple tracks I love gets one picked and boosted. Artists who collaborate with multiple people can have multiple places (So in another year, Robyn could get it for her solo work and her work with Royksopp). It has to have been ACTIVE last year in some way, so singles that released in 2015 and only came to my attention in 2016 when they dropped on an album would get in – especially stuff which only was late in 2015. And “tracks” doesn’t mean “Any bit of music” not just “Singles” though it usually does.
In terms of themes? Generally more that you can dance too, less that only my inner Belle&Sebastian kid could dance to. It was a hellish year, but music-wise, even for someone who doesn't follow it nearly as closely as I used to, it was pretty magical.
And, yes, I laugh that despite all of the above, we've basically ended up with 40 tracks anyway. I'm tempted to throw one in just to round it off, but THAT WOULD BE CHEATING.
39) Pet Shop Boys - The Pop Kids
I like a lot more than the position – it just seems a tonal opening to the piece, and was forwarded to a bunch of friends. “This is basically you and Jamie, isn't it?” Well, no, but I wish it was.
38) Radiohead - Burn the Witch
37) Anne-Marie - Do It Right
36) Akira The Don - Stranger Things
35) Croatian Amor - An Angel Gets His Wings Clipped
It's the end of the world as I know it and AGGGGGHHHHHHHAUNTOLOGICALDEATHINSKYMYEYESAREONFIRESOMEONEPUTOUTMYEYES.
34) Sharon Van Etten - Not Myself
33) Super Furry Animals - Bing Bong
Came on the radio, and made me laugh, and took forever to work out – oh, obviously – it was the Super Furries. Which led to a week long Super Furry relapse. Pop Music! Bing! Also, Bong!
32) Hannah Diamond - Fade Away
31) Pale Spectres - Your Boyfriend's Girlfriend
As far as I can work out, the only 'orrible 80s indie style record in the list. I've changed.
30) Jenny Hval - Secret Touch
29) De La Soul (feat. Snoop Dogg) - Pain
28) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Jesus Alone
27) FKA twigs - Good to Love
26) PJ Harvey - The Wheel
25) Noname - Diddy Bop
24) Mogwai - Ether
23) DJ Shadow (feat. Run the Jewels) - Nobody Speak
22) Kilo Kish - Hello, Lakisha
Discovered via Twee Tsar Charlotte's end of year playlist, and this just makes me want to see a new very complicated and smart musical.
21) Swans - Finally, Peace
Listen to the whole album, but skip Frankie M which is oddly terrible.
20) Drake (WizKid, Kyla) - One Dance
As I am old and live in a box and spend 95% of my life listening to a single playlist to try and finish a fucking 5 year comic, I managed to avoid listening to this until the day after it had gone off number one. It's got a good beat and I can dance to it.
Heh. Late in the year, I went on a big rant on twitter about how Discover's algorithm, for me, is terrible. No matter how much pop music I listen to, it just gives me 90s indie band B-sides. Among this, a reader said that this has been put on her playlist three or four times. It is a pop record which is basically reciting the wikipeida history section of the Clitoris entry. The middle-section where there's a heartfelt hailing of the history of 3D imaging is a particular wonder.
The lesson is: I should just follow random people's Discover playlist rather than using my own. So I did.
17) Solange - Cranes in the Sky
Listening to this I can't work out why this isn't in my top 10, and then I remember that I haven't actually organised these in any serious way. On every level, wonderful.
16) Vanishing Twin - Vanishing Twin Syndrome
This turned up on a friends' Discover playlist and it's an enchanting music box exploration that I know nothing about than i) I approve of the album title ii) I like it a lot.
15) A Tribe Called Quest - We The People....
The they're back and it's great whispers across the Internet was just glorious.
14) Kanye West - Real Friends
We'll learn, Kanye. Though probably not.
13) Anderson .Paak (feat ScHoolboy Q) - Am I Wrong
Rarely.
12) CHVRCHES (feat. Hayley Williams) - Bury It
AND FEAT. JAMIE MCKELVIE!
At the Thought Bubble party, Jamie asked me whether it’d be too much to play this. I basically said I’d kill him if he didn’t. In writing there’s the idea of the necessary scene than an audience will actively feel cheated if you don’t show them. Once you’ve made the promise, it’s basically the one thing that can’t be broken – at least, without giving up the audience. Jamie dropping Bury It was one
Jamie did good, and they did good, and when he followed it with Kill Vs Maim, the dancefloor bled.
11) Shura – Touch
I believe Jamie also did good when he alerted this to me. Complicated feelings pop is the best pop, or at least in positions 11 and 10 in this chart.
10) Frank Ocean – Ivy
Complicated feelings pop is the best pop, or at least in positions, etc, etc.
9) Formation – Beyonce
Not on Spotify. I remember the days when the songs which weren't on my Top 40 playlists were the hyper-underground bands. Now it's the best pop star in the world. Life, eh?
8) Car Seat Headrest - Destroyed By Hippie Powers
I was going to select (Joe Gets Kicked Out of School For Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn't a Problem) but it takes three minutes to get to the sing along bit, so probably has to be kicked out (but it’s the best sing along that Pavement never wrote. DRUGS! FRIENDS! DRUGS! FRIENDS!)
So this will do instead.
7) David Bowie – Blackstar
I feel the “would you have listened to it as much if Bowie hadn't died?” question is missing the point. Bowie wouldn't have recorded it if he wasn't going to die. It's pop's great requiem mass, and startling.
6) Christine and the Queens – Tilted
I DJed four times this year. When we DJed in France, Jamie played the English Language version of this, and everyone sang along in French anyway. Beautiful to see. I got into her at the Latitude festival that we were invited to (erk) perform (i.e. Speak) at, and immediately understood the appeal of the vision-of-pop-created-from-your-bedroom of her. Her surprise at how much she was loved was sincere, inspiring.
5) Mitski - Your Best American Girl
Instantly forwarded by multiple people upon release, Mitski swiftly filled a similar niche that Susanne Sandafor did in 2015 (and for 2016 too. It’s a good niche to be in, and a hard one to escape from.) Huge, passionate, smart
4) Rihanna (feat. Drake) – Work
Generally speaking, one track a year gets added to my “things to reach for when you really need to dance” magic chest. This was 2016's, and finds it nestling in Seth Bingo and the Silent's Girl DJ Bag Of Holding, alongside Atomic, Milkshake, Call Me Maybe, Et al.
3) Blood Orange - Best to You
For the last few years, Dev Hynes’s production has basically been my aesthetic, his aural signifiers my mood. Bojack Horseman without the jokes, and an added awful, beguiling glamour. This is wonderful. This is awful. The two sentiments chase each other. Art bondage. This is just a stunning piece of music. The moment of course comes when the song unwinds, the beats drifting apart to reform around your throat, and as you can barely breath it whispers its punchline: “I can’t be the girl you want, but I can be the thing you throw away” before there’s nothing left to say, and it transforms into a fountain of notes. When there’s nothing left to say, we’re left with music, and this understands that.
2) ANOHNI - 4 DEGREES
Depending how things go, mark this down for the Planet Earth III soundtrack.
This could have easily been the track of the year. I normally pick tracks of the year to how they speak to the mood, and this most apocalyptic and conflicted of records speaks to that shock. The music dreadfully seductive, Galadriel having decided to wear all the rings, and the skin of her foes. And above it, repeating and repeating, Anohni's delivery speaks to the response to it all – and most of all that, on some level, we must want this, or we'd do something about it. “It's only four degrees,” saying many things, but most fearfully “Hey – it's only four degrees. Think what we could do if we really tried.” It summons horrors and sounds excited about it, as we must be. We could have stopped this at any time, but we must want the world to burn. The awful fundamental choice between mild convenience and a future, we'd choose convenience every time.
It articulates the darkest part of the year. That every moment could have gone the other way, every step to the right be swapped for one to the right, that we'd deal with the hate and the harassment and the thinking of humans as things, and we could make a world where we only have to turn on the television or the twitter stream to see how monstrous we are...
We could deal with all that, and our species will still be likely done by the end of the century.
So yeah. It could very easily have been the track of the year.
1) Savages - Adore
But no, I'm not wired that way.
I played this playlist while gaming with my friend, Matt Sheret. When this came on, he was surprised to find this on it. What? This was 2016? It seems so far ago. I tell him it was released at the very cusp of January, and told him about how instantly struck I was by it, and then – as humans do – turned that unblinking seriousness into comedy, running drunkenly through the streets of London with friends, asking each other intently whether or not we Adore Life.
That was the first week of the year. And then Bowie died, and the year went the way it did.
No, I'm not a magical thinker enough to consider them connected, but the chasm between the year before that and the year that is noticeable. That few days had a certain tenor, and the rest had a dull throb.
Matt suggests that my tracks of the year is just this, and I say that 2016 was only four days long, and the rest doesn't count. I smile, and think he has a point, and start thinking of Adore as a track from another universe, a different 2016. The other awful thing about this, which we have to hold onto: it doesn't have to be like this.
The song returns to the question, time and time over: do you adore life?
It then informs you, simply: I adore life.
The word “adore” makes the song new. “Love” has been ground smooth and shapeless. To say adore is to remind us what the word signifies, its true fierceness. To adore is not easy, which reminds us to love is not easy.
The song lists at length the difficulties, and still looks at you and restates that central article of faith. Even in that first week, I was frightened and inspired by the record. In this first week, a year on, it frightens me more, and makes a greater challenge.
2016 has made it difficult to adore life. Those who hate have tried to take that away.
They can't succeed, and the record implies why. We must not confuse life as is, as life as can be. This gift we carry with us is precious and petrifying in its terrible wonder, and we must cherish that. It is the core of everything. Underneath Ragnarok skies we must find within ourselves to take each other by the hand, head out into the darkness and adore.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1701.30 - 10:10
NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #572 - It's okay to punch a Nazi
Hi Mom,
We're deep in the controversy. Lots of hate and anger flowing around our country.
This issue started up Monday January 23 when someone punched a self-proclaimed Nazi in the face,and the moment was captured in a video that went "viral."
The video is included below.
The Internet supposedly "split" in two between those who believe it's all right to punch Nazis and ones who believe that violence is never the right response no matter what we're facing.
I strongly believe in the rights of people to punch Nazis if they wish to do so. I would not choose to punch a Nazi. I do not like to punch anyone. Hurts my hands.
But Nazis abdicated their rights to be respected when they engaged in genocide. Punching is a low end reaction on the spectrum of possible reactions.
There's this standard response in debates, usually in college, that one makes a disclaimer of this kind: "I respect your right to your opinion, but I don't happen to share your opinion."
In the ten years I taught women's studies, I quickly came to the conclusion that this disclaimer is fucking bullshit.
I DO NOT RESPECT your opinion if it professes hate or violence.
I know, likewise, you do not have to respect my opinion for affirming that it's okay to punch a Nazi. I get how it works the other way.
I don't care about the hypocrisy. I know I would not like the turnabout being fair play. I understand that this opinion goes against what I usually believe and what I usually profess. I am not suggesting that the government take this position (though with the current government's flagrant disregard for personal rights, who knows what will happen). But just looking at this incident, and punching this Nazi? I am fine with it.
I do not believe that we need to tolerate those who profess opinions of hate and violence. I have no respect for such things, and I have no reason to tolerate it.
Woody Allen is right. Bricks and baseball bats works better with Nazis.
Here's three different re-posted articles along with the video of the punch.
By now many have seen the video of an unidentified man punching white nationalist Richard Spencer in the face during inauguration weekend.Much in the way that the new president's vicious campaign rhetoric gave voice to the deeper resentments of some of his supporters, the assault on Spencer seems to have offered a cathartic and even comedic outlet for those on the left who were angered by thoughts of Trumpians goose-stepping through the streets of DC as Trump entered the White House. Since the video emerged, social media users have set the footage to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and the Hamilton soundtrack, and comedian Tim Heidecker even wrote his own tune to celebrate the bashing. Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted, "I don't care how many songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I'll laugh at every one." Journalists for the New York Times and other major outlets were soon mulling over the question at hand: "Is it OK to punch a Nazi?" A website, isitokaytopunchanazi.com, answered with a gleeful loop of the attack, with one neon-yellow word superimposed atop it: "Yes."
Yet, this was more than just a morbid social-media sideshow: The attack on Spencer is part of a perennial conflict that may again be escalating. For decades, far-right extremists have faced the militant wrath of "antifas" (short for anti-fascists). With Trump's campaign having summoned all sorts of white supremacists and other trolls from under their bridges, the old war—which I first got a front-row glimpse into a decade ago—appears ready to re-ignite.
This beef goes back to before World War II, when in Europe, a nascent authoritarian movement inspired by Hitler, Mussolini, and Francisco Franco squared off against a popular front coalition of liberals and radicals. At the Battle of Cable Street, in October 1936, Oswald Mosley brought 2,000 members of his British Union of Fascists to march through London's Jewish East End neighborhood and 100,000 anti-fascists showed up to oppose them. In the resulting melee, Jews, Irishmen, Communists, anarchists, and socialists beat Mosley's men with sticks, rocks, and sawed-off chair-legs. Local women dumped their chamber pots out of windows onto the heads of Mosley's men.
Similar conflicts played out several decades later in America. In 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Communist Workers Party organized a rally called "Death to the Klan." TV crews filmed as a nine-car caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis suddenly showed up and shot at marchers, murdering five participants, though no one was ever convicted of the crime. (In 2014, one self-proclaimed participant, Frazier Glenn Miller, went on a shooting spree at a Jewish cultural center in Kansas, murdering three people. The 74-year-old had just been diagnosed with lung cancer; he said that he "wanted to make damned sure I killed some Jews or attacked the Jews before I died.")
In 1982, a street gang in Minneapolis named the Baldies began committing what they described as "righteous violence"—a term apocryphally attributed to Henry David Thoreau to describe John Brown's attack at Harpers Ferry—against neo-Nazis who had started to appear in the city. The Baldies and their opponents both adopted the fashion of British punks—bomber jackets, bald heads, boots and braces—and kicked the Nazis, quite literally, out of town. On one occasion they even collaborated with now Congressman Keith Ellison, then a law student at the University of Minnesota, to lead a protest. "I remember he and the rest of the [Black Law Student Association] were friendly with us," a founder of the Baldies told the Minneapolis City Pages. "I think they were just intrigued because we were so young and because we were anti-racist skinheads, which was weird to them."
The battles in the Twin Cities were followed by a wider spread of neo-Nazi violence. In 1988, three members of a gang called White Aryan Resistance beat a 28-year-old Ethiopian student named Mulugata Serew to death in Portland, Oregon. In 1998, skinheads murdered Daniel Shearsty and Spit Newburn, a pair of anti-racists and best friends from Las Vegas—one black, one a white Marine—in the Nevada desert. The next year, a member of the racist cult World Church of the Creator went on a shooting spree in Indiana, gunning down nine Orthodox Jews, an African-American man, and a Korean graduate student before killing himself.
Anti-fascist groups like Anti-Racist Action, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, and the Love and Rage Anarchist Federation fought back. Their members advocated "direct action" against white supremacists, eschewing legislative efforts in favor of physically preventing Nazis from organizing, distributing literature, and speaking in public. To their supporters, these groups merged the moralism of America's abolitionist tradition with the nihilism of punk rock, and boiled the culture wars down to their most primal element: vicious brawls over racism, sexism, and homophobia. The logic of their direct action was that, if a white-supremacist leader inspired someone to commit a hate crime, police couldn't intervene until after a violent action had taken place. Anti-fascists wouldn't wait. "Racism is an idea," one anonymous ARA member said in the 2000 documentary Invisible Revolution, but "fascism is an idea mixed with action. It took fascism to establish Jim Crow and before that, slavery….Anti-Semitism has been around a long time but it took fascism to [make] the Holocaust….When you cross that threshold, you negate your rights to a calm, collective conversation."
My own introduction to what anti-fascism looked like took place in South Philadelphia in 2004, where I attended a house party arranged around a half-keg of High Life in the kitchen.At the center of the gathered crew of mohawked kids was a man named Joe, whose skinny crimson suspenders strained over a swell of jiggling belly. A leader of ARA's Philadelphia chapter, Joe regaled us with a story about a stranger in a pub who'd once called him a faggot. "So I grabbed this motherfucker by the collar," he said, "and I dragged him outside." In the parking lot, Joe explained, he beat the man unconscious. The tale was horrific. But it was also surprising—because Joe was gay, it turned out, as were many of his Philly ARA comrades. He wasn't insulted by being called a faggot; he was insulted that someone would think there was anything wrong with being one.
"How does it feel!" Joe thundered, when he'd gotten to the climax of his yarn, in which he knocked his antagonist down and kicked him in the head repeatedly. Everyone laughed as Joe pantomimed his victory over the man by stomping the floor of the kitchen with his steel-toe combat boots: "How does it feel to get your head kicked in by a faggot?"
With the dawn of the Trump era, the Joes of the country may be stirring, and Spencer and his fans seem to sense it. On Tuesday, Spencer's supporters offered a $3,000 bounty to anyone who could identify the alt-right leader's assailant, and Spencer called for the formation of alt-right vigilante squads to prevent future attacks. "The ANTIFA thug who violently assaulted Spencer hid his face behind a mask," an anonymous commenter said, "but some think they caught a glimpse of his face. There's not much to go on—but let's identify the ANTIFA criminal who punched Richard Spencer."
Meanwhile, the same day that Spencer was assaulted, a 25-year-old anti-fascist was shot in the stomach during an inauguration protest at the University of Washington, allegedly by an alt-right sympathizer. New groups adopting an anti-fascist outlook such as Redneck Revolt, John Brown Militia, and the Bastards Motorcycle Club appear poised to revive the direct-action tactics of the 1980s and '90s in order to confront white supremacists emboldened by Trump. Anti-Racist Action's 20 or so chapters around the country have also promised to join the fray. The day after the inauguration, ARA's branch in Louisville, Kentucky, posted on their website:
For decades, [white supremacists] were the face of the enemy and only a minute few dared show their true colors in public. This made them easy to dismiss, easy to ignore...However, recent events have proven that the fascist ideology has not only survived but thrived…Now, their labors of hatred have been rewarded with a sympathetic President-Elect and a federal Congress that is, at best, indifferent to their evil.
A warning to those who wish to destroy what we hold dear; We will resist you in the streets, in the poll booths and in the townhouses. Whether it's in the bars, the concert halls, the conference centers or even City Hall, we will not allow a platform for your dangerous and divisive ideas. We will not allow history to repeat itself. We will shut you down everywhere you go. We will block your marches. We will interrupt your speeches. We will protest your legislation. We will be the thorn in your side. The glass in your bread. The pain in your ass.
Trump's presidency is already promising to turn back the clock on American progress in multiple ways, with women’s rights, racial justice, and environmental protections under siege. The return of the war between fascists and anti-fascists is another expression of our current political atavism. This time, given a uniquely pugilistic president of the United States, the battle may rage hotter than ever.
Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2017, 10:08 a.m.: On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, Jan. 21, 2017, neo-Nazi activist Richard Spencer got punched in the face while giving an interview on the streets of Washington. The incident birthed uncounted remix videos — and questions about the ethics of running up to a notorious hate-monger in the street and, well, clocking them. In late November, Mic's Jack Smith IV put this question to a handful of ethicists. Mic's original story appears below.
Neo-Nazis met in Washington, D.C., last week to celebrate Donald Trump's presidential victory and proclaim that their time has come. Video captured by the Atlantic shows the group using Nazi salutes and shouting "Heil!" to the president-elect's victory.
Punching Nazis, otherwise known as "fash-bashing," is part of a long, storied tradition of anti-fascist violence, carried out by communists, socialists and leftists wherever fascism has reared its head. Captain America did it. Indiana Jones did it. Even Geraldo Rivera did it once on his own talk show when a group of skinhead guests started brawling with other guests.
Since Trump's campaign became a boon to white supremacists, memes promoting aggression against the alt-right dominate Twitter, private Facebook groups and subreddits.
But is punching a Nazi ethical? More important, is it a viable way to stop fascists? Mic asked the experts: ethicists and academics who specialize in moral dilemmas and political activism.
The ethicists all agreed that no, punching fascists is neither moral nor ethical, even if it makes you feel better about the rise of the alt-right. They emphasized that anti-fascist violence often ends up empowering those regimes, and can be used as an excuse to expand fascist power — a trend that bears out throughout the history of anti-fascist violence from Benito Mussolini's Italy during World War II to Argentina in the early 20th century.
"Violence from opponents of fascist regimes usually gives more intense, overt power to that regime," said Nitzan Lebovic, the chair on Holocaust Studies and Ethical Values at Lehigh University. "In any of the cases I know, it plays right into the hands of the regime, and is used as an excuse to harshen the punitive measures against critics. It doesn't benefit those who are interested in democracy."
Lebovic, an expert on the history of fascism, insisted he did not want to comment on U.S. politics, as he's not a citizen. But he pointed to the worldwide history of anti-fascist violence, and said that in each case, violence against fascists prompted those regimes to become more violent and punitive.
Captain America famously punched Hitler in a 1941 comic.Source: Wikimedia Commons
The only time you can punch a Nazi
The only case in which punching Nazis is justifiable, according to ethicists, is self-defense.
"Things get a little bit more complicated when the question of defense arises," said Conor Kelly, a theological ethicist at Marquette University in Milwaukee. "So, while violence against another human being as a reaction to their opinions — even fascist ones — is going to be condemned as immoral, violence might be legitimate in response to violence from an 'unjust aggressor.'"
Kelly gave a list of criteria for self-defense based on Just War Theory, a Christian doctrine that draws on Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The first is a just cause, which means you're defending yourself or someone near you from violence. The next is that your motivation must be purely to mitigate the initial violence and defend the inflicted, not to cause harm. The last is proportionality, which means your violent response isn't more drastic than necessary.
Even then, the violent act would have to be the last resort. It's a high bar to clear, and Kelly, who believes that "pre-emptive violence cannot be legitimated" even for fascists, still advises case-by-case discretion.
"This list is not a carte blanche for violence," Kelly wrote in an email. "It is not saying that violence is necessarily justified if all of these conditions are met; instead, it is saying that violence cannot be justified if any one of them is not met."
In other words, the only case for getting physical with Nazis, or anyone really, is if that person is already attacking you or someone close to you.
Fash bashing is back in, well, fashion, and memes promoting aggression against the alt-right are all over forums like Reddit.Source: Reddit, Calidora Clothing
What can you do instead?
The ethicists all agreed that there are other, more effective ways to fight back against fascist groups if they try to seize power in government. The most common suggestion was to call a spade a spade, and to name-and-shame Nazis and fascists when they — and their ideas — rear their head in public.
"People have to channel their nervousness into some kind of action," said Jeffrey Seglin, an ethicist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Free-floating anxiety doesn't solve anything. But holding someone's feet to the fire can be a way of shaming someone to do what's right."
Seglin said this strategy has shown itself to be effective, as it was when a mayor in West Virginia was forced to resign after a county employee called first lady Michelle Obama an "ape in heels." While alt-right figureheads seem impervious to public shaming, even the seemingly shame-immune Trump has been asked to denounce the alt-right and his KKK supporters on numerous occasions.
What's more, violence would only beget further violence.
"If there's a policy of violence on the left, it'll escalate violence and potentially embolden the alt-right to attack with more than brass knuckles," said Elliot Ratzman, a Jewish social ethicist at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
Ratzman said he was worried that, if the left responded to the rising Nazi element in the alt-right movement with violence, it'd play into the alt-right's hands as viral videos of fash-bashing made it onto conservative media. Moderates would be alienated with the newly violent left, and the alt right would justify further violence as self-defense.
"The left, for the most part, doesn't take up guns or knives as part of their political strategy," Ratzman said. "And if you're dealing with a population that has a high instance of violent, mentally ill people or whose ideology is wrapped up with a promotion of violence, you could get people really hurt."
This photo perfectly captures the moment a fash-bashing babushka strikes out at a neo-Nazi with her handbag.Source: Reddit
Ratzman added that protest and politics are still our best opportunities to counter fascism. After all, neo-Nazis have been holding yearly rallies and organizing online for decades. The reason racists are in the news is because their insidious views have entered our national politics, whether it's a former KKK grand wizard running for governor of Louisiana or retweets and speeches from our president-elect. It's through politics that they gain power, and it's through politics that they can be defeated.
"Violence denies the possibility that people can change or transition, as if they're essentially fascist and it's never going away, when we know most people shift political opinions with the right strategic engagement," Ratzman said. "Until then, they're people with terrible opinions and attitudes. And that's not going to change if they're greeted with violence."
On Friday, Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist think tank National Policy Institute and advocate for “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” was punched in the face while bragging about the success of white supremacists in getting Donald Trump — whom they love — elected president.
That video was seen more than a million and half times. Richard Spencer has said he’s not a Nazi — even though his “alt-right” has devolved into supporting racist tendencies. Then again, here’s Spencer doing a Nazi salute.
The video has spurred a flurry of parodies and memes on Twitter.
Although the number of plays on the video and the glee with which the memes are being shared suggest many find it fun to watch someone who did a Hitler salute on stage get clocked, a serious debate over the act is going down over: If you see someone espousing the views of Adolf Hitler in public, should your knuckles meet their jaw? America needs answers, apparently. Even the New York Times jumped into the debate.
There was little substantive debate online about the ethics of punching Mr. Spencer. Twitter is not a place where minds are often changed, and the supporters and opponents of the sucker punch were unmoved by one another’s quips.
Opponents of the punch tended to say that violence had no place in political debate. Supporters tended to say the punch was funny, and more than a few compared Mr. Spencer’s attacker to famous Nazi punchers from pop culture, like Indiana Jones and Captain America.
A glance at cultural history indicates that violence towards Nazis has been something Americans have advocated for a while now.
Thankfully, the Times didn’t bury the most important hidden gem:
Mr. Spencer’s video was recorded from what he described as “a safe space.” He said he thought the attack happened, in part, because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe the question shouldn’t be, “Is it OK to punch a Nazi?” but, “If you don’t want to be punched in the face, maybe you shouldn’t preach Nazi values to the public?”
NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.
