This week, following the violence in Charlottesville, Va., Wunsiedel has come back into the news. Experts in nonviolent protest say it could serve as a model for Americans alarmed by the resurgent white supremacist movement who are looking for an effective way to protest (and who might otherwise be tempted to meet violence with violence). Those I spoke with appreciated the sentiment of the antifa, or anti-fascist, demonstrators who showed up in Charlottesville, members of an anti-racist group with militant and anarchist roots who are willing to fight people they consider fascists. “I would want to punch a Nazi in the nose, too,” Maria Stephan, a program director at the United States Institute of Peace, told me. “But there’s a difference between a therapeutic and strategic response.”
The problem, she said, is that violence is simply bad strategy.
Violence directed at white nationalists only fuels their narrative of victimhood — of a hounded, soon-to-be-minority who can’t exercise their rights to free speech without getting pummeled. It also probably helps them recruit. And more broadly, if violence against minorities is what you find repugnant in neo-Nazi rhetoric, then “you are using the very force you’re trying to overcome,” Michael Nagler, the founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley, told me.
Friday, August 18, 2017
Making Fun of Fascists
In the German town cursed with Rudolf Hess's grave, they don't fight neo-Nazis, they make fun of them, holding up silly signs and showering them with rainbow confetti:
“I would want to punch a Nazi in the nose, too,” Maria Stephan, a program director at the United States Institute of Peace, told me. “But there’s a difference between a therapeutic and strategic response.”
ReplyDeleteThe problem, she said, is that violence is simply bad strategy.
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I think that in America there are a lot of people who are just angry and fed up, and who aren't really concerned with having good strategy. They seem to just want to vent their anger at the injustices of the world.
I see this sort of behavior a lot on topics of racial tensions in particular, with racism overwhelmingly being responded to by reverse racism. I see a lot of absolutist blanket statements, and a lot of failure to differentiate between certain actions, groups of people, or beliefs.
It also seems to me that often when people try to point out that this is self destructive, that it alienates potential allies and actually sets back the fight for justice and progress, they get branded as "just another racist" and their arguments get dismissed out of hand. I also routinely come across the sentiment that anyone who isn't already an ally isn't worth having as one. People in general just seem more interested in being angry and self-righteous than they do in actually working to produce real change.
I would love to see a white supremacist rally showered with rainbow gitter and streamers. Think about it! More effective, I think, than pelting them with flowers.
ReplyDelete@pootrsox
ReplyDeleteI'm actually vehemently against weaponizing glitter. A lot of people have allergic reactions of the skin to the most common metals used in glitter, and it's a nightmare if you get it in your eyes, throat, et cetera.
Larger materials like streamers and confetti would be more or less fine though. There are also time honored political protest tools like pies, bags of flour, and the like, but those can easily ruin clothing, and so should probably be eschewed.
Remember the photo of the hippie putting a flower in the gun barrel of a riot squad man? That was a defining photo. That is Public Relations. Ghandi knew.
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