I’ve been sitting for a few days trying to figure out what I think about punching Nazis and applauding punching Nazis, as a form of resistance. The act spoke for itself in obvious ways, and yet the glee with which the anti-fascists danced around the internet putting the video to song left me discomforted, as did the inevitable stand-off between liberals and radicals about what’s ok. As a middle aged woman with a disability, I couldn’t help but imagine Nazis punching back, not at those punching them but at those further down the food chain (because that’s how it works in the patriarchy). Do we risk legitimising that, or is the choice to commit now to the downfall of the system despite the collateral damage that will entail? What’s a radical liberal to do in such a time?
Mostly I’m getting sick of the act/react/react to the react pattern that I’m seeing become the default response. We already have two sides locked in mortal embrace, let’s not pile in behind them. Then anti-poverty writer and activist Linda Tirado finally nailed it for me, bringing in another degree of social intelligence and because she steps neatly out of that mortal embrace and reminds us to be human while we resist. She said,
Which is to say: punch a fucking nazi. But never glory in someone’s pain. Don’t participate in public rituals of humiliation with joy.
This is part of a twitter thread on what is happening with the new Administration in the US. The thread is a manifesto on resisting fascism and much of it is applicable to NZ. We don’t have Tr*mpville here, but the point about NZ is we don’t need it. Why go to all the trouble of a dystopian totalitarian take-over when you can put a smiling assassin in charge of a rockstar economy and hand it to the proto-fascists on a plate?
So please read Tirado’s words with NZ in mind too. For those of us watching the US and knowing this isn’t theoretical, what is it that we need to be doing here? I will be working hard this year to help change the government, but I’m also working towards future-proofing NZ in case we don’t achieve that. And beyond all that, there is, always, the confluence of climate change and peak oil with the changes happening politically and economically. Much of what Tirado says applies to us all irrespective of who is in government.
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