In the cosmic calendar of resistance, this may well be the Era of the Punched Nazi.

This fact has caused some consternation and hand-wringing among those who see Nazis as perfect foils for their ideological posturing rather than very real genocidal extremists with a long and bloody track record. For the mainline liberals and conservatives who lament the punching of Richard Spencer, the young white supremacist activist who coined the term “alt-right,” Nazism remains a theoretical construct, an “idea” that can be debated and defeated without a shot being fired in anger. For the rest of us — for many Jews, for ethnic and religious minorities, for queer people — Nazism is an empirical fact with the solidity of iron roads leading to walled death camps.

The camps are Nazism’s endpoint; it is what Nazism is for. Nazism serves as a refuge for whites dislocated by mass society and modernity, who seek someone to blame for their anomic dread. With that in mind, we must be very explicit about what Nazism’s relationship to democracy must be, and refuse dangerous, whitewashing euphemisms when discussing it (e.g. “you support punching someone who disagrees with you”).

Such generalizing language is intellectually lazy at the best of times; here it is outright deadly. Yes, it could be said that I “disagree” with Spencer that a genocide of Black Americans is desirable, but I believe he should be punched because of the very real risk that he could galvanize such an event into actually happening. This is a fear supported by the tremendous weight of our history, and by the fact that we had to fight the bloodiest war of our species’ existence the last time Nazism came into conflict with modern democracy. To call this a “disagreement” is an unspeakable slight against millions of dead.

To be blunt: Nazism is democracy’s anti-matter. There is nothing about the ideology or its practice that is anything but corrosive to democratic institutions.

Nazism is democracy’s anti-matter.
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Fascism is a cancer that turns democracy against itself unto death. There is no reasoning with it. It was specifically engineered to attack the weaknesses of democracy and use them to bring down the entire system, arrogating a right to free speech for itself just long enough to take power and wrench it away from everyone else. Simply allowing Nazis onto a stage, as the BBC did when it let British National Party leader Nick Griffin sit and debate with political luminaries on its Question Time program, is to give them an invaluable moral victory. Like creationists who debate evolutionary biologists, the former benefit mightily from the prestige of the latter.

In using this tactic, Nazis abuse the democratic forum to illegitimately lend credence to something that is otherwise indefensible, the equality of the stage giving the unforgivable appearance of “two sides” to a position that is anathema to public decency. This is not because Nazis love democracy or free speech, but because they know how to use this strategy to unravel them.

But is it enough to say that we must meet Nazism with force because it is so terrible? It should be, morally. I would, however, add that there’s room to consider why force, specifically, is a necessary tool in these extreme times. There is a reason that it works against Nazis, adding weight to the argument that they are a special case where a normal ethic of nonviolence should be suspended.

The goals of Nazism have not changed, but some of its window dressing has. As he was being punched, Richard Spencer was showing off a lapel pin of Pepe, a cartoon character appropriated by extreme right and Nazi 4channers in their reactionary campaigns, which ultimately featured in many pro-Trump memes, some of which were retweeted by the man himself. The new exponents of modern Nazism are eager to exploit what they see as a constituency of young, tech-savvy white people whose online culture is a neat fit for them.

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4chan’s “trolling” culture is built on a perverse ideal that prizes the use of offensive speech and borderline criminal behavior as a means of becoming a stronger, superior person. If you are ever offended by something, hurt by it, or made to fear for yourself, you’re weak, a “special snowflake” who’s been “triggered” and a “lolcow” (someone you should keep hurting because their reactions will be funny). In this ethic, all emotion (except rage, lust, or mirth) is weakness, something the troll can exploit to get big laughs for him and his fellows.

This notion has been exploited to great effect by people like Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who believes “America needs more trolls.” Yiannopoulos, who himself has a history of sympathy for Nazi ideas, and who has tried to lend respectability to Richard Spencer—calling him a “bright” “intellectual” figure on the “alt-right”—has since taken 4chan on the road, so to speak, using his university speaking engagements to gin up mob harassment of transgender students. Unable to resist a photogenic Nazi, the press has treated Yiannopoulos to numerous interviews. In one with the New York Times he literally said: “I don’t have feelings.” While this is an obvious lie, it fits with the troll culture ethos he seeks to promote.

The ideal man — the Trollermensch, if you like — is one who does not feel, who sociopathically wounds without empathy, who finds humor in even the most grotesque of suffering. In exchange, you feel no pain, no vulnerability; you cannot be hurt the way you are ruthlessly hurting others.

This is the alluring promise that 4chan’s culture has made to a generation of disaffected young men who feel powerless, adrift, and vulnerable in a rapidly changing world where being a white man is no longer a guarantee of success and prestige. Be mighty, hurt others, never get hurt again. But humanity, in all its little frailties, always catches up with us in the end.

After he was punched, Richard Spencer told the Times, “I am more worried about going to dinner on an average Tuesday because these kinds of people are roaming around,” adding on a Periscope video that “I’m afraid this is going to become the meme to end all memes, that I’m going to hate watching this.” Spencer, who was proudly touting and retweeting 4chan Pepe memes and cheering right along with Yiannopoulos about the world needing more trolling, was expressing fear and vulnerability. The facade had cracked; he was no Trollermensch, just human, equal to everyone he thought himself superior to, equal to everyone he’d see dead.

Nazis have long depended on something like trolling culture to work their dark magic. The concept of the “Big Lie” is right at home in an age of ideologically-driven 4chan hoaxes targeting women and minorities, and Nazism always relied on a certain chicanery to keep people guessing about their true intentions until it was too late — an eerie lesson for the present. Nazism’s fakery, and its ability to distort reality until ordinary people could not trust their own senses, bears more than a passing resemblance to 4chan’s culture of harassment and thuggish hoaxes. But the weak point was always the mythology of superiority and strength.

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Deploying force against Nazis always revealed the lie that they belonged to a “Master Race.” And this was not just military force, mind you, but the rolled-up sleeves and bared fists of ordinary citizens who were determined to prevent the spread of fascism’s cancer. To look at British fascist leader Oswald Mosley disheveled after his rally was shut down by angry East End workers in July 1962 is to look not on the leader of a Master Race, but something considerably more ordinary and pathetic.

As I noted earlier, Nazism is democracy’s anti-matter; coming into contact with it is often destructive for our institutions because it is the personification of bad faith with malice aforethought. The only nonviolent solution is to marginalize Nazism from public life in our society — one may be free to hold these views, but not to try and spread them at the highest echelons of our public fora. When, however, someone like Spencer does come along and is being feted in the mainstream, there are no other options available to us.

The vulnerability of Nazis cannot be revealed through debate — many thinkers who lived through the Second World War, from Karl Popper, to Hannah Arendt, to Jean Paul Sartre, have been quite clear about why dispassionate discourse with men like Richard Spencer is not only pointless, but actively dangerous.

The vulnerability of Nazis cannot be revealed through debate.
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The use of force, by contrast, does reveal the shared humanity that Nazis deny. Our vulnerability is one of the things that links us all, seven billion strong, in a humane fragility. These are essential aspects of our humanity that both Nazi mythology and channer troll culture deny. Punching a Nazi, by contrast, reveals it. It reveals they are no masters, but quite eminently capable of fear, of pain, of vulnerability. And that takes the shine off; it eliminates their mystique, and it puts the lie to the idea that their ideology is an armor against the pains of modernity.

That alone justifies Richard Spencer being punched in the face on camera.

Serving up hour-long doses of Black pain for amusement is deeply irresponsible, when that pain remains so deeply real.

flickr/AHummons Photography

Last night, members of the “alt-right” and KKK gathered in Charlottesville outside of the University of Virginia for a “Unite the Right” rally, organized against the removal of a Confederate statue at Richard Spencer’s alma mater. Virginia’s governor Terry McAuliffe released a statement advising people to stay away from the rally that will carry into Saturday due to those “who may seek to commit acts of violence against rally participants or law enforcement” — a statement that sounds like it is in the best interest of the protesters.

So far there has not been any forceful police intervention. There has been no tear gas. No one has called these men thugs. Although the Charlottesville Police Department has just issued a Declaration of Local Emergency, one doesn’t need to imagine what immediate actions would have been taken if Black people stormed an area with flaming torches. We have seen what happens to protesters with the wrong skin color, even when they are acting peacefully. These men (and possibly women too) no longer even bother wearing their hoods, like the KKK once did to hide their identity. The world we live in now lets them boldly put their racism, bigotry, and hatred on display, knowing there will be little consequence for their actions.

One doesn’t need to imagine what immediate actions would have been taken if Black people stormed an area with flaming torches.

According to several tweets from people who were at the rally, pro-white chants echoed through the air, including “White Lives Matter” and “Jews will not replace us.” Meanwhile, the hashtag #unitetheright spread across social media. And then, another hashtag re-emerged on Twitter: #NoConfederate.

That this rally is taking place just weeks after a major network announced plans to create a show imagining what it would be like if the South did not lose the Civil War says a lot about the state of America in 2017.

On July 19, HBO announced its plans for a show requiring creators and writers to fantasize about slavery still existing. As the network announcement put it, the series would feature “an alternate timeline, where the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution.”

The laundry list of reasons Confederate should never have been greenlit is long, and seems self-explanatory, echoing in many ways the fight of activists like Bree Newsome to have confederate flags taken down.

Chief among these reasons is the fact that slavery didn’t just disappear when the Civil War ended; it just looks different now. Systems of oppression have been reborn in new forms, like the prison industrial complex and institutional racism. The descendants of slave owners continue to benefit from generational wealth, profiting off the oppression of Black people. The fact is, our country has yet to figure out a way to even the playing field for Black people after the dissolution of the institution of slavery.

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Confederate has subsequently been met with sweeping and justified backlash — not just for its patently problematic premise, but also because it would be executive produced and written by the creators of Game of Thrones, which has received criticism for making very little room for people of color, specifically Black characters. Moreover, over the course of seven seasons, the Black characters who have been featured have been restricted largely to the roles of servants. (Confederate would also be executive-produced by Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman, who are Black, a fact that has not assuaged concerns over the show’s direction.)

But even after #NoConfederate was promoted by activists on Twitter—including the creator of the #OscarSoWhite hashtag April Reign (@ReignOfApril) and Rebecca Theodore (@FilmFatale_NYC)—a statement was issued by producers stating that the show will go on:

“We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate. We have faith that [writers] Nichelle, Dan, David and Malcolm will approach the subject with care and sensitivity. The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.”

I have zero interest in finding out whether my legitimate outrage over such a ridiculous and exploitative premise is premature. However, there is a silver lining in all this — it was announced this week that a secret project by Will Packer (Girls Trip, Straight Outta Compton) and Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks, Black Jesus) had been greenlit by Amazon — and it essentially posits the exact opposite premise. The show will be titled Black America, and envisions what the world would look like if Black people actually received the reparations they were promised upon being freed from slavery, showing a completely fictional scenario in which Black people thrive without having to contend with the systemic hardships of white supremacy. Instead of the billionth piece of entertainment that portrays Black history as nothing more than slavery, Black America could actually uplift Black people.

In contrast to the problematic Game of Thrones producers behind Confederate, the creative duo at the helm of Black America seems uniquely well-suited to tackle this controversial topic, thanks to their experience with projects that have deftly explored fraught racial themes. I am confident in their ability to represent not only Black people and their unseen potential, but also to embody the humanity of the Black community in their storytelling.

Already, the interviews coming from the creators of Black America show promise, as they have explicitly included discussion of the dangerous impact Confederate could have on present times. Like many others, Packer and McGruder have said they won’t be tuning in to Confederate. “The fact that there is the contemplation of contemporary slavery makes it something that I would not be a part of producing nor consuming,” Packer told Deadline. “Slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”

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Many are saying there’s a double standard here: Why do we believe a show like Confederate is abysmal, whereas a show like Black America should be celebrated? The answer is fairly simple, and in many ways connects to the heinous KKK rally that’s taken place in Charlottesville.

Since reparations never happened, Black America is an actual fantasy, envisioning a world that does not exist. But America stealing Black people to have them enslaved and build their plantations, and then remaining systemically racist decades after? That’s not fiction; it’s reality. Serving up hour-long doses of Black pain for amusement is deeply irresponsible, when that pain remains so deeply real.

If you need evidence of this devastating fact, look no further than the KKK rally in Charlottesville — at the faces of its unmasked white nationalists who are calling for the death of Black bodies, and who are being protected by the government and police as they do.

Confederate asks us to imagine a world in which the South did not lose, and white supremacy won. The rally in Charlottesville — and the systemic forces protecting the white nationalists behind it — proves that we are living in it.

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