The idea that low-level violence used against awful people lowers the threshold for violence against all people (and mostly the powerless) somehow doesn’t seem to register.
Or to be fair, perhaps they feel the public humiliation of awful people is worth the increased violence towards the usual targets of right-wing rage.
I’m against this sort of thing for more or less the same reason I’m against the death penalty. In both cases there are isolated people who truly deserve it. However, the cost of giving those individuals what they deserve is paid by all of us and I feel the price is much, much higher than the benefit (and mostly ends up being paid by the poor and the powerless).
In Sweden we have a new and large brown-tinted party (Getting less brown and more mainstream each year although I dont know if they or the rest of politics is changing) with leading people who started their political career as young nazis. They became nazis during a period of street violence between nazis and black coated left. I wonder if they would have had these careers withouth the mutual group coherence support from having an actual enemy beating on you?
I would say that applies to antifa more.15 years ago I was pacifist leaning and I just wanted to be left alone, but the fascists could not allow that. They spent a year harrassing me out of my home for being trans. Ever since then I have been sympathetic to antifa and sceptical of passive resistance in the face of violence. The enlightened centrists were nowhere to be seen when this was going on, but if I thow a milkshake at a fascist they are there telling me that I shouldn’t do that.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I want to stay alive more. I just want the fascists to stop being fascist, but the fascists want me dead, no matter how nice I am to them.
This is not scientific but the fascists/nazis over here seems to do much more political murders then the left/antifa and harass in a more focused way and the left/antifa seems to harass larger numbers of people. I regard the fascists/nazis to be more dangerous to individuals and the left/antifa to be more dangerous to our political system since so manny people regard their violence as good violence.
The fascists/nazis are better at following the rules for public behaviour wich also leads to a lot of people figuring that they are allied with the police since the police hinders good people from beating up bad people in public.
There might also be something else going on. The low level nazi people seems to behave like dogs looking for a master, if an authority figure snaps an order to them they are fairly likely to follow it and even seem to enjoy it. But this is anecdotal and only checked with a few older police officers.
I realy dont know much about how this plays out in different parts of the world.
Well, if we stop humiliating fascists in public by throwing milkshakes, maybe they’ll win, and it’ll be too dangerous to throw milkshakes. In which case, the fucking hand-wringers won’t have to worry any more. That’ll be nice, at least.
Isn’t Sweden known for a few particularly high profile fascist/antifascist clashes and incidents? Stockholm 2013 and AFA in the mid 2000s come to mind. Honestly I’d rather see more milkshakes if it keeps Nazis from being bold enough to kill people like Soderburg or rob a bank to fund a Nazi revolution.
Lissen as a weird foodie I have been known to make Durian shakes.
You don’t want to do that. You want Durian Puree.
Or, if you are in North America, you can look up a local niche hunting shop and buy some skunk scent/bait. Spoiler: It smells like skunk spray, is cheap, and a few drops is going to ruin something for at least a year.
Because the threshold of violence can only be lowered once?
Every act of violence lowers the threshold towards the next act of violence, as the heinous acts mentioned above did (and much larger than a milkshake).
However, more disturbing, the implication in your response is that violence helps your cause, and only your good graces prevent you using the more effective tool. “They” used the better tool, so now we’re justified in using the tool (but less than “them”, so we’re still better).
That line of reasoning is both faulty and dangerous.
Violence in a non-war situation is wrong because it harms our cause. It galvanizes the undecided against us, and it provokes violence against those least able to defend themselves.
My view is that throwing milkshakes is a self-indulgence. We do it because it makes us feel good (because it always feels good to hurt our enemies), and we don’t actually give a damn about whether it actually furthers our nominal cause, which is to help others in our society.
If we actually cared, we’d be talking with the majority that we somewhat disagree with in attempt to slowly move them to our cause. But that’s a lot more work, and much less satisfying.
Now I’m as prone to self-indulgence as the next person. But I try not to pretend that my self-indulgences are actually beneficial to anyone else or is promoting a cause.
Oh, bullshit. People aren’t doing this in private. They are doing it out in the open, in front of cameras. They are doing it to humiliate, which is an effective tactic in fighting creeping fascism.
There’s been years of talking already. If they were listening, there would have already been a new referendum and Brexit would be a thing of the past, or it would at least have defined terms.
Throwing milkshakes is the chilly wake-up call that the Nigels need in order for people to be heard.
Do you honestly think that such tactics garner votes from people who would not otherwise have voted our way? My experience is that such tactics gain massive approval from people who already approved of us.
And that, sadly, doesn’t win elections.
And until we’re at the point of civil war, elections are how you fight fascism, or any other -ism.
And there always will be, because that’s how democracy works.
More to the point - there was an election in there, the people spoke and… they were splintered as well.
Welcome to the unpleasant reality where the majority doesn’t share our worldview (I’m assuming you’re Remain). Mostly because no majority supporting any worldview.
In which case we use the boring, but adult way of dealing with multiple competing interests: negotiation, and lots of it.
Look, certain people will always resort to violence, whether it be petty or truly heinous because the world isn’t moving in the direction they would like. But it seems self-indulgent for us to hold such cases up as admirable.
Having people get what they deserve (and the Nigel’s of this world certainly deserve a little humiliation) is trading our longer term goals for momentary satisfaction.
It’s not about gaining votes. It’s about weakening the strongmen. They gain followers by looking “strong” for the weak-minded. Ridicule, humiliation, and laughter tear down that facade of strength and reveal it as petty insecurity. This leads them to abandon the leader who no longer looks strong.
I disagree, fundamentally, with almost everything else you wrote.
There’s a clock ticking. Talking for years just gives the worst of the Brexiters exactly what they want - a crash out of the EU. And there is definitely a time to punch Nazis, preferably before they run the show.
These are fascists.
They don’t do talking.
Sometimes they just grow up.
Sometimes they can be beaten with loss of face.
Sometimes, regrettably, there needs to be violence.
