It isn't. Not in this case.

The Nazi salute is forbidden in Germany. IIUC, it can't even be depicted. Stern appears to be relying on the drapery over the arm to render it legal, but that's not the point. The point is: When Germans tell you your leader is a Nazi, listen. They know whereof they speak.

Who is as angry beyond belief.

I will go to demonstrations. I will stand in lines. And hell yes, I will be willing to take a punch.

Because democracy is an equal coin--I may disagree with you on political issues but I believe that we all are patriots.

A lot of people in the public eye today are inclined to mis-represent Stephen Decatur's toast, missing the desire to do right. Trump is only the most blatant of the current moment.

The more militant opponents of the alt-right promptly took up the word and claimed it for their banner, and you know, I'm okay with that.

The passage from the post that PNH cites that speaks to me—and the reason I retweeted it—is:

To commit violence against another human being is to commit violence against the image of God in them. To me, it is a sin. I do not believe God requires us to sin. But it seems apparent to me that the world sometimes does.

The right-wing extremists, including those who walk around with Nazi symbols or white hooded robes, coined both the phrases "alt-right" and "alt-left". It's probably not a good idea to coöpt their chosen language.

They can call themselves alt-right, but I'm not buying it -- they're no relation to American conservativism.

Likewise, I'm not an "alternate" left -- I was part of the original, liberal, left long before it got co-opted by the "neo-liberals", aka the left wing of the globalist plutocrats.

I'm going to keep asking that. It seems to croggle minds.

The people I see calling Antifa a bad thing come in two groups: The fascists&sympathisers who are using Antifa to say that the left is as violent as they are, and those on the left who have bit hard into the "non-violence resistance" bit and feel that any meeting of violence with violence is bad.

The last group is exactly who the original article is addressing.

Years ago, when watching the movie Ghandi, one scene struck me as to the degree of non-violent protest that Ghandi was able to inspire. Ghandi's forces arrived at the place of protest -- a salt plant, guarded by British militia, if I recall, and on the side of the road leading to the gates, set up tables, manned by medics -- and press. One by one, an Indian would walk up to the doors, get clubbed and beaten by the guards, and would be dragged away by the medics to their station. Then the next person in line would step forward, get beaten, and treated by the medics.

With that in mind, I hear the original author as saying that she is NOT willing to do that, but that is what it would take to protest, if it weren't for Antifa standing between her and the Nazis. She wishes it weren't necessary, and is unwilling to do it herself, but is glad that someone is.

This is not something we can rely on with our current batch of fascists. It's not impossible that they would relish the opportunity to abuse their opponents. "Lefties offering themselves up for beatings? Sweet!" Therefore Ghandi's approach would likely be...problematic.

This is not the case in the USA at present. The violent right-wing radicals do not see themselves as having anything to lose by killing those opposed to them - indeed, by contrast, they see themselves as having a great deal to gain from it. (This is due to classic bully logic - having people afraid of speaking against you works just as well as having people speaking for you). If they kill their opponents, they are demonstrating their strength, showing their power, and indeed gaining in power (particularly if they do this with no consequences from a legal and policing apparatus which appears to have been largely hamstrung, and which is, in many cases, comprised of people who support their positions).

I'd be very careful about when and where one chose to conduct a non-violent protest, these days.

I agree. It's been long said that if Ghandi had tried his protests against German occupiers, Hitler would have had him shot.

Dave Harmon @ 13:

How are the so-called alt-right not related to American conservatism? Modern American conservatism as represented by the Republican party has come to power through the related tactics of the Southern Strategy, racist dog whistles, and appealing to white resentment. Their policies have the effect of disproportionately negatively affecting non-white people. The Libertarian party fellow travellers pay lip service to social equality, while standing for social and economic policies that also disproportionately harm non-white people.

You could make the argument that the Republican party is not actually conservative on the basis of their actions and policies, but they've been claiming the conservative mantle anyway. That's not a definitional issue for "alt-right", though, but rather one for American politics.

The term "alt-right" is this generation of racist assholes' attempt at coming up with a term that's not tainted with associations with white supremacism, anti-Semitism, the KKK, and Nazism. Too bad for them that they went and associated it with white supremacism, anti-Semitism, the KKK, and Nazism. The AP has decided that "alt-right" is a euphemism that they don't want to use except in quotes or adding "so-called" in front of it, and I respect that position. I'm happy to call them what their are, and not their mealy-mouthed euphemism. But I don't think they're not related to conservatism, because, at least for what the word's come to mean in the US, they very much are.

The only possible response to fascism,the only one that works, is to confront physical force with greater force, and, when the dust settles, bring the bastards to trial. It is worth recalling that three of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg -- Schacht, von Papen, and Fritzsche -- were acquitted.

It has taken centuries of struggle by many men and women -- and a hell of a lot of them gave their all -- to achieve the precarious state of social justice that the Western world has won since 1945. This is not something that is going to be lost without a struggle. Frankly, I want to see us build upon and beyond it.

Assuming he wasn't summarily put down by J. Random Jackboot in the street.

KeithS @20: But I don't think they're not related to conservatism, because, at least for what the word's come to mean in the US, they very much are.

It has been compellingly argued, in fact, that this was their objective all along:

But note well: Donald Trump is not a black swan, an unforeseen event erupting upon an unsuspecting Republican Party. He is the end result of conscious and deliberate choices by the GOP, going back decades....

That's a dangerous thing to do unless you're prepared to back it up with potentially lethal force.

Mandela tried passive resistance against the white supremacists in S. Africa. This ended in the Sharpeville massacre and Mandela's radicalization - he then formed the armed wing of the ANC as Umkhonto we Sizwe, Spear of the Nation, to counter the violence of the state. Mandela was an armed terrorist.

The US Nazis, aided and abetted by Russian hackers and bots, are doing their very best to depict the opposition as violent 'alt-left' 'antifa' movements. These are lies and must be called such.

This is true but I am not wholly convinced. If the state will not protect us against violence, as it demonstrably does not in this administration, I do not see what countervailing powers can protect us. I am an old white man - perhaps I have to put on a suit and power tie for the next protest and hope that attracts some sympathy from the police and journalists.

I'm getting pretty fucking tired of being played.

Violence is bad...but sometimes it prevents worse things. Free speech is good...but what precisely constitutes free speech? Is violence excusable in the defense of free speech? Is a curtailment of free speech necessary to prevent violence?

Absolutes are for teenagers. Adults have to take nuanced decisions and own the consequences of them.

(Corollary: we're going to disagree. We need to learn to live with that without tearing each other to pieces.)

See, for example, the following paper, which finds, during the 1960s, the following, to quote the paper's abstract:

"In the 1964, 1968 and 1972 presidential elections, proximity to black-led nonviolent protests was associated with increased county-level Democratic vote-share. By contrast, proximity to black-led violent protests caused a substantively significant decline in Democratic vote-share."

https://www.princeton.edu/csdp/events/Wasow04092015/Wasow04092015.pdf

I checked too -- I went with Jacque's spelling, and double-checked against my own first spelling...which was wrong.

I should have known; I have one of those tricky "dha" Devanagari combinations in my name. But then, any Indian heritage/geneology for me probably comes from my Indo-European background, which is to say, hundreds of generations out of date.

And we need to figure out how to deal with those who are happy to tear to pieces those who disagree with them. (In a gentler age, I would have said "arrest them," but I'm not sure how far we can rely on this solution, these days.)

Buddha: That's really embarrassing. Gandhi is the third term in the cribsheet. ::redface:: I didn't even remember it was there to look at.

And yet, I have a couple of concerns. In practice, "punching Nazis" may get pretty ugly and sordid:

Four "black block" members gang up on what a Mother Jones journalist calls "An apparent alt-righter." They have him on the ground and they're kicking him and beating him. One black block member carries a "No hate" sign. The beating stops when an African-American journalist steps in to help the man being beaten.

I have no idea what the man on the ground did. Maybe he was a piece-of-shit Nazi. Maybe he worked for the extinction of liberty. And yet, the person I most admire in this video is the journalist who steps in to stop the beating.

There may come a time, all too soon, when we have to fight. God only knows that there are people out there itching to do evil, and that Trump will cheer many of them on, and pardon them when he can.

But if Iraq has shown us anything, even a terrible government may be better than Hobbes' bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all. When civil order truly breaks down, people will support almost anyone who promises to restore it. And the black block members kicking somebody 4-on-1 may not be ready for their right wing counterparts. There's a huge number of conservatives out there who own AR-15s and who dislike liberals, but who still believe in the rule of law. If civil order breaks down, I honestly don't know whose side they'll be on.

Honestly, I think we should hold onto the rule of law as long as we can. Work to turn out the Democratic vote for 2018. Let the Nazis and the KKK make themselves odious in the eyes of the public. Use violence only in self-defense or the defense of others, as permitted under the rule of law.

And whatever we do, let's not allow people like RH/WF decide who's a Nazi and who it's OK to punch.

so, it's hard to make common cause with someone with whom i have so little in common - even if that thing is hatred of Nazis.

When Sweden started seeing anti-fascist counter-demonstrations, there were roughly three strands of people on that side. You had the people who were there to hold placards and shout; you had the people who were there to hold placards, shout, and if needed be violent to protect themselves and the people in the first group; and then you had a very small minority who were there only to fight.

Jenny Islander @ #39:

I suspect that "I had a laser aim-point on me!" would count as "immediate threat of life" for self defense purposes, should someone painted with a red point decide to open fire. I would, personally, prefer to not be the reason for that excuse, especially if I wasn't the person being shot. It's also surprisingly hard finding air clean enough to not give at least a smidgen of a track back, in anything approaching a city environment.

Violence is bad...but sometimes it prevents worse things. ... Adults have to take nuanced decisions and own the consequences of them.

Very much agreed.

I was trying to think what more to say about this, and decided my opinion is covered by two items from the Making Light front page commonplaces.

“Peace means something different from ‘not fighting’. Those aren’t peace advocates, they’re ‘stop fighting’ advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.” (Jo Walton)

“If there is no willingness to use force to defend civil society, it’s civil society that goes away, not force.” (Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

Bearing in mind that "those who are happy to tear to pieces those who disagree with them" may be on the far-right – Nazis – or the left – anti-capitalists, animal-rights activists, climate change activists (try a 'fracking' project in the UK and see what you get) or even anti-fascists.

In the same way that pointing a toy gun at someone and threatening them as if it was real ("But I wouldn't really have shot them!") qualifies (I believe) as assault with a deadly weapon. If the target believes they are under threat, it's a threat, for the purposes of the law. (AIUI)

I sympathize with the desire, but maybe just don't?

Odalchini @43: Bearing in mind that....

Yes.

There are reasons why the laws are supposed to apply to everyone.

And be able to justify it as "self defense" -- because how could you prove it was a harmless laser pointer and not a sniper somewhere?

...i'm not interested in smashing the state, ending capitalism, or bringing about the glorious anarchic non-state. [...] so, it's hard to make common cause with someone with whom i have so little in common...

For us, it's also not that easy to make common cause with someone who isn't interested in smashing the state, ending capitalism or bringing to reality our glorious dreams of fully-automated gay luxury space anarchist utopia, but nevertheless everyone needs to do their part when the Nazis come to rally in our town. If we can all just stop trying to be precious, ideologically pure snowflakes, for a few seconds so we can deal with early onset fascist revolution, that would be really nice.

KeithS #20: OK, I'll take back "no relation"... but I'm just old enough to remember when a fair portion of the GOP was focused on economic conservativism and the status quo, and the racists had to be careful what they said. Even Nixon backed down from blocking desegregation, and had supported a civil rights bill as VP. AFAICT, the turning point was Nixon's pardon -- after that, the GOP was stepwise taken over by his former henchmen, who ran riot during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

From there we saw a progressive radicalization and abandonment of the ideas of a Loyal Opposition, and of compromise in general. That tearing down of the political community was what ultimately freed the racists (among others) to come out into the open.

That's unjust. It is problematic that some people try to conflate causes so that they can claim that supporters of cause X are also really supporting cause Y.

Most of the stories linked to a video I shot of five antifa protesters beating a right-wing activist. Little else from my two days of live-tweeting was picked up by news outlets. The beating I filmed was newsworthy, yes, but it should be viewed in the context of the rest of the day. Sunday’s violence was minimal compared with the extreme violence at April’s white supremacist rally in Berkeley. And while Sunday’s counterprotesters were intolerant of the far-right activists, the overall mood was festive. Organizers later declared the day a “victory against white supremacy.”

By focusing on scattered violence, reporters glossed over the bigger story: The Bay Area has become the latest target of fascist and other far-right groups promoting disruptive rallies across America, often in cities where they know they are not welcome.

It is problematic that some people try to conflate causes so that they can claim that supporters of cause X are also really supporting cause Y.

It's also problematic that some people and not others are expected to be pragmatic and non-ideological when called to unite in opposition to reactionary proto-fascism. As if the fascists in the middle 20th century were defeated by well-dressed conformists showing up to work on time and writing polite letters to their newspaper editors. This happens a lot: antifa breaks a few windows and bloodies the nose of somebody who went out of their way to provoke it, and somehow this is seen as morally equivalent to the SA and the MSVN.

Not at all equivalent, and pretending otherwise is a very telling move.

In the 1970s there was certainly industrial turmoil, and Scargill was somebody that any government was going to have to deal with. He picked a fight with Maggie Thatcher, and that was part of what killed off the old-style Labour. The fascist-types saw a chance, and grabbed it with both hands.

The Conservatives of today aren't those of Macmillan or Heath, though you can see the links. The only party in British politics that looks remotely similar to what it was in the 1960s is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

My biggest qualm about the line of reasoning you're going down is that it's really not easy to figure out where to stop it. If we accept showing up with clubs to bash the Nazis, then do we also accept the same thing for the alt-right? (That is, a bunch of people who are somewhere on the far right, but are mostly not Nazis or Klansmen?) The violent protests in SF a couple days ago chased off some kind of alt-right rally--were they actually Nazis? Every time someone tries to have a conservative rally in Berkeley and they get run off by an angry mob, am I supposed to try to dig deeply into their organizers' political beliefs to decide how to feel about that?

I mean, slippery slope arguments are probably too common, but it's *really* common to see people blurring everyone who supports Trump, or even everyone on the right, into that same category. Milo and Ann Coulter got violent protests keeping them from speaking in Berkeley awhile back, and they're slimy publicity hounds, but probably not Nazis[1]. The one person I know personally who is involved with antifa does not seem to me to make much distinction between actual Nazi or Klansman, and generic Trump supporter. (That's about 37% of the population from 538, and about half the voters on Election day.)

Am I also supposed to cheer an angry mob breaking up a Trump rally? What would US politics look like, if that were commonplace? Why usn't the next step right-wing goons breaking up BLM protests or pro-choice rallies in places with a conservative majority?

I think I'd rather see violent protest, actual threatening behavior (like the torch carrying Nazi/Klan types at Charlottesville), and the gang of thugs beating up the alt-right guy, and the like handled by the police and prosecutors and courts. It seems like all the other ways we can handle that stuff are likely to work our badly for us.

[1] Though I kind-of suspect that both planned speeches were at least as much a publicity stunt (announce the speech and get free publicity from the ensuing riot) as anything else.

Yes, they are, especially since they started getting weaponized. At some point, you really do need to counter with "if you let a camel stick it's nose into the tent...".

Failing to punch the camel's nose is how the GOP found itself being taken over by the Tea Partiers... so now the modern Nazis and white supremacists have a place at the table and are dragging the Overton Window, trying to recast themselves as "just a different point of view".

Insisting that we need to tolerate the intolerant is not just rules-lawyering, it's disingenuous. Liberalism may be a Big Tent including many different goals, but we still need an immune system to defend against those opposed to our basic principles.

A right to free speech does not include the right to force your views on others, and it does not include a natural right to a pulpit in your opponents' homes and communities.

Here in C-ville, we have a City Council of five members, who choose their mayor from among them as "first among equals" and public representative. The executive role is held by a hired City Manager, currently Maurice Jones.

The current mayor, Mike Signer, raised some ire with his original campaign for his Council seat, when he not only set a record for campaign funding for a Council race, but IIRC added a digit to the previously-usual numbers. Eyebrows went up further when he was chosen mayor, and when he went on to rearrange the public-comment rules for council meetings introducing a sign-up system to make the meetings "more orderly".

Now... well, things have been "interesting":

1) During the riots, it seems Signer tried to barge into the city's command center and pull a Haig, claiming authority over the City Manager and Chief of Police Al Thomas, and threatening to fire them. (He has no such authority under law.)¹

2) After the riot... the next City Council meeting descended into chaos, as the citizenry simply ignored the new rules. Wes Bellamy (the Vice-mayor)² managed to take things in hand, and turn the meeting into a public-comment session. When Signer then tried to declare the meeting canceled and left, the other councilors did not follow.

2) Since then, "someone" leaked a memo from him where he demanded "explanations" from the City Manager for a variety of things including his being excluded from a command center where he was not in fact supposed to be. (Apparently, this was preceded by a Facebook post, likewise attacking the City Manager and Chief of Police. I haven't seen that post.) Signer accuses Jones of the leak, IIRC at least two other Councilors think it was Signer himself.

3) The City Council was not pleased. They have reprimanded him, and restricted his powers as Mayor for the remainder of his term. From the article:

On August 30, his fellow councilors held a three-hour closed door meeting to discuss the “performance and discipline of an elected official.”
Afterward, Councilor Kathy Galvin said the elected officials had accepted Signer’s apology and were not requesting his resignation, a signal of the gravity of the confrontation.

I'm pretty sure that at this year's election, Signer will find that his money's no good here.

¹ The context makes it relevant that both the City Manager and the Chief of Police are black, while Signer is white.
² Also black.

it includes the right to assemble and speak your mind without being beaten up by those who disagree with you. even Nazis are entitled to that. like it or not.

My first snarky reaction to this was "we do have 'right-wing goons breaking up BLM protests'. We call them 'police' "

My second reaction was that posting such a thought was more likely to make heat than light. But then you also wrote that you'd rather see violent protest, actual threatening behavior (like the torch carrying Nazi/Klan types at Charlottesville), and the gang of thugs beating up the alt-right guy, and the like handled by the police and prosecutors and courts. As if the police had made any attempt to halt the actual Nazi violence in Charlottesville. Or as if it wasn't up to an amateur on social media to find the Nazis who put DeAndre Harris in the hospital that day.

"Let the police handle it" only works if the police will handle it. What do we do in a reality where the police are rarely part of the solution and all too often part of the problem?

http://www.npr.org/2017/08/23/545509627/armed-militias-face-off-with-the-antifa-in-the-new-landscape-of-political-protes

By focusing on scattered violence, reporters glossed over the bigger story: The Bay Area has become the latest target of fascist and other far-right groups promoting disruptive rallies across America, often in cities where they know they are not welcome.

So, I'm pretty sure disruptive rallies in cities where you're not welcome are:

a. 100% protected by the first amendment.

b. Descriptive of a lot of activism I strongly support. (Think of gay rights/trans rights rallies in very red states. Or antiwar rallies during the height of the war fever w.r.t. Iraq.)

I think when we start justifying mob violence to suppress that kind of rally, we ought to think very hard about whether that same thing won't be turned against us in the future, either by the other side or by zealots on our own side.

It also does not include the right to be the ones doing beating-up.

albatross @66: Your operative word here is "disruptive." If the "disruption" is shouting others down and waving signs, all well and good. If the disruptions become more violent, then we're back into "can we depend on the police to handle it?" territory. As C'ville & al suggests, too often: no.

The slippery slope argument is often deployed in this same fashion, as an attempt to keep people from making moral judgments about the movement, its stated goals and aims, as well as its practical outcomes, and to judge only the tactics that said movement uses. This then causes people to argue that the fast and antifa are morally the same because they use the same tactics.

In the end, there is only us. You and me. And we need to make moral judgments, and we need to not shrink away from them. We need to look, clear-eyed, at the way in which the world is evolving, complex, and contextual. I am not happy about the fact that the police will not do their jobs and protect people, but this is a fact on the ground that we need to take into consideration. And when we criticize antifa for protecting peaceful protesters, I think we are indulging in a moral cowardice.

The last one took a united planet to put down.

Samora Machel, the leader of the liberation of Mozambique, once pronounced that the time to kill a crocodile was in its shell. This one isn't in its shell any more.

We're not talking about an ordinary adversary, or even of a traditional anti-system opponent, who would change the rules fundamentally if elected. We're talking about an enemy who would throw out the rule book, declare large numbers of fellow-citizens to be outside the law and unworthy to even breathe the air, and start a process of making America white-only. They openly marched with firearms. And we are worried that defending against armed thugs is violent?

Am I the only person who thinks that there's a slight problem of priorities here? We have a Nazi movement rising to meet its Führer, and farting in his face alone, pleasant as the idea is, doesn't solve the problem. There is no reasoning with gravel, or Nazis.

What exactly are you suggesting there? If you don't care one bit about fascism and you just love violence, this is... um... NOT where you end up. Look for those people in the Marines, or the boxing ring, or as prison guards, or any number of other places. This is a long and crooked road to walk if you just want to punch somebody.

The only sense I can make of that is that maybe you're trying to draw a line between violence with handwringing, and violence without: sure, maybe sometimes it's necessary to meet Nazi boots with Red* ones but if you've already reached that conclusion before some ISO-standard observer reaches it, and you're therefore prepared (and not appropriately reluctant), then you must be a bad violent person.

If you really believe that... well, I'll be over here with the premature anti-fascists.

*Or anarchist, or unionist, or eventually, years down the road, maybe even liberal... The violence-with-handwringing brigades don't have a good track record as far as arriving in time for the battle, alas.

It seems to me far more plausible that this vandalism results from sincere people of real conviction, but imperfect discipline, rather than that it results from insincere people who only mildly dislike Nazis but just couldn't otherwise come up with any excuse to punch anyone or smash anything. (Developing strong feelings about Manchester United would seem to provide FAR MORE opportunities than anti-fascist activism, for instance.)

Also, I notice that we've now pivoted from "oh, they're just bloodthirsty" to "well somebody broke a window." That pivot makes me, personally, furious: I guess I'm supposed to wring my hands over that? And condemn the person who broke it? But at the same time, another generation of black children gets to grow up fearing white men with torches and that's, well, it's also very regrettable of course, we really do wish there was something (anything!) we could do about that... but not something (or anything) so radical as "support someone stands up to fascists, but who might also perhaps break an innocent window."

It's hard for me to see that argument made without concluding that there is a moral hierarchy represented, and in that hierarchy "terrorizing black children" is not so weighty a sin as "property damage."

Here's the thing: we know, for certain fact, that the fash are showing up with the intent of violence. That is the thing that must not be tolerated. This cool, dispassionate judgment of how the antifa conduct themselves when in the midst of a chaotic street fight is frankly condescending and bizarre. I'm given to understand by people who have actually been there this this sort of things happens fast, is chaotic as hell, and many things are not as they appear later. Cooly judging, later, who exactly crossed the line is a moral superiority dance, divorced from actual facts on the ground, which are largely unknowable. Unless you were actually there, and possibly not even then, you can't really know the provenance of the broken window or the broken nose.

I sure wasn't thinking much during these altercations. As a police officer pointed out diplomatically when I reported the latter incident, someone of my stature and health should *not* be getting into fights; I should get as much identifying information as possible, disengage, and call the police. But both times, without any clear thought, my intended response was proportionate to the original assault.

So I suppose I *am* claiming some degree of moral superiority over those who escalate things significantly.

Nobody here has any problem at all with using violence to defend yourself or others from attack. The one eyewitness report I read from Charlottesville described antifas protecting people from attack, and it's clearly a good thing they were there for that.

The issue I have, and I think several other people here also have, is using violence to shut down political rallies you find offensive or threatening, not because they're attacking you now, but because they're supporting evil beliefs and policies. That's also what I took abi's post, above, to be raising as an issue.

The recent attempts to have right wing rallies in SF, where we have footage of right wingers getting chased or beaten by angry mobs, that's what I'm concerned with. That's a really awful way for politics to work. I believe that accepting it will lead us, as a country, to some very bad places. That's why I'm opposed to it.

I'm quoting a chunk of text here because I think this raises an interesting issue:

Back in the 80s, I had several conversations with people in which they argued that because I supported the lunch-counter sit-ins in the 60s, it was hypocritical of me to criticize the abortion clinic sit-ins of the 80s. If the tactic was acceptable for one group, it must be acceptable for all. The fact that the one was an attempt to gain people's rights, and the other was an attempt to refuse people rights was ruled to be unimportant.

I think it's really important to distinguish goals and tactics.

I'm opposed to our continued military involvement in Afghanistan. I'm also opposed to someone carrying out a campaign of assassinations and bombings in the US to get us to pull out of Afghanistan. The goal is good; the tactics are evil.

I'm opposed to building a big wall between the US and Mexico. I'm also in favor of peaceful protests and voting as methods to bring about political change. People organizing peaceably and voting for a big wall between us and Mexico are pursuing a bad goal, but with good tactics.

I was encouraged to make moral judgments about tactics, but not about politics. I was told that having principles, regardless of what those principles were, was the most important thing and that it was inappropriate of me to judge people as long as they had some sort of conviction. In the intervening years, I have decided that this is fundamental moral cowardice.

I think the disconnect here is that we need to judge on both, but separately. Good ends can be pursued by bad means, and we should call out the means in that case. Bad ends can be pursued by good means, and we should call out the ends in that case.

One reason I think this is important: We can't all agree on what ends would be good, but we might still be able to come to agreement on what ends are acceptable. And that's to everyone's benefit, because it means we can have a stable political system where we decide who gets power based on votes, rather than based on who can muster more muscle or kill more people.

Sadly, these days, that service doesn't seem to be reliably on offer for its intended purpose.

Tell you what... Can you bring into existence some force (human, moral, or otherwise) capable of reducing fascist terror WITHOUT breaking any windows?

If not, then yeah, I'm willing to accept some number of broken windows. I accept that some percentage of surgeons will screw up and some number of patients will die under the knife, after all. I even accept that some of those surgeons are in it for the money, or the ego trip, instead of just to help people. And that sometimes that greed or ego contributes to surgical error.

There are limits: we* want a police force, and we accept that those police will sometimes arrest the wrong person, but we** do not accept our police shooting people of color just because they can. That's too high a price. But the odd wrong arrest? As long as it's handled without excessive brutality, and corrected quickly, it's probably just the cost of doing business. (I say this as someone who has been arrested for a crime I did not commit, without brutality, and who was released as soon as the DA looked over it. It was an error, and I wish the arresting officer hadn't made it, but the price was not too high.)

*Well, I'm ambivalent on that point myself, and I'm sure Citizen Woodyatt feels similarly, but let's say some kind of policing is okay, at least for the sake of argument.
**Hopefully including everyone in this thread, but sadly not including an awful lot of people in this country...

I think the people who fight back against the hurricane are as bad as the hurricane. If u really were a liberal you'd let urself drown

Any protection from violence afforded by condoning violence of any sort is illusory.

Are you saying we shouldn't have police forces to enforce our laws? Personally, I would love it if we could have a society that keeps order without any violence or threat thereof, but I'm old enough and cynical enough that I don't believe it's possible any time there are more than a few people involved.

But I think we're getting to "acceptable losses" territory. "Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." Some of the comments I've been seeing have been incredibly blasé about those eggs being really expensive. If the subject was "acceptable losses" in a military action, there would be a strong push against any unnecessary losses. Here, the losses are not lives (yet), but injuries, property damage, and -- perhaps most important -- social capital. It is still important to push back against unnecessary losses. If it's put as "tolerable" losses rather than "acceptable", that might shade the meaning better.

The loss of social capital is enhanced by the [profanity] right-wingers trying to apply as much inflation as possible via various media.

There's also an element of geek fallacy. Even if people are on your side, or at least share some of your goals, you don't have to accept any/all behaviour.

I would be a lot more sympathetic to that argument if I had ever seen it deployed in the form "we should do X* instead of Y because the losses likely to follow from Y are unacceptable/intolerable."

Alas, it only ever seems to exist in the form "we shouldn't do Y."

Also, do you know what makes ME want to smash a window? It's some comfortable sort saying "ah, yes, another generation of terrorized black children, that's bad... but have you seen how expensive window glass is these days?"

I am an anarchist, and so I think humanity is worth more than property. I know it's a radical notion (though it's my understanding that a sizeable minority of Christians believe something similar).

If you want to play reductio ad absurdam, I'd say that "let's smash every window in the US to show kids we hate fascism" was, well, some kind of plan. It'd certainly make a splash. I would agree with the criticism that there are ways to make the same point that cause less damage, and that broken glass can be dangerous. (That's the "let's do X instead of Y" argument, above.) Or, for that matter, the argument that that plan is basically nonsense and we should paint "nazi punks fuck off" on every window in the US instead, say (still not a sensible plan, but a step in the right direction.) I have nothing but contempt for the argument that "those windows cost over a billion dollars, while a generation of terrorized black children is only worth some implied, smaller, pricetag."

You have, regrettably, chosen to make the second argument (by implication). I don't think you WANT to be making that argument, but you have.

*At least, where X is not either tantamount to "let the Nazis terrorize black children" or something we've already tried that demonstrably will not happen, like "wait for the cops to sort it out."

Not sure I agree, but that does sound like Antifa. And I do like it for its thumb in the eye to the RWNJs.

(Here’s the link again, so you don’t even have to scroll up.)

Second, “think very hard about whether that same thing won’t be turned against us in the future”? Really? Do you seriously imagine that if the left refrains from violence now, that they will somehow avoid the violence that has been afflicted upon every single leftist movement in American history?

However, I'm very much in agreement with Devin. I would smash all the windows of the world if I could stop brown children from being terrorized by cops in this country.

Much of the criticism of antifa really sounds like the stuff I was told on the playground. "Just ignore him and he'll go away. Responding only makes it worse." It wasn't particularly true when I was six. It is very, very much not true in the current political situation. They want us to shut up and sit down, be polite so that they can ignore us. Take our beatings and go home chastened. Fuck that noise.

Much of the criticism of antifa ignores what I think are the two most important issues. The first is that the fash are inherently violent. In both word and action, they are about violence. The second point is that the cops are on their side. It's terrifying to realize that our public servants are on the side of the fascists, but it is also true. Our institutions have failed us. And because that has happened, antifa are absolutely necessary.

Does reactive violence every cycle out of control? Yes, it can. But please attend to the fact that the usual cycle is that the cops create intolerable conditions which cause this to happen. Kettling, gas attacks, and other escalations tend to come, not from antifa, but from the cops.

Then maybe "antifa" should quit beating up people who do nothing more than say things antifa doesn't like.

Pick one: glorious defenders who stand between the Nazis and the meek, or people out looking for a fight.

Some antifa beat up right-wing or perceived right-wing people unprovoked. Some right-wing people march with torches and guns. Not all. Not even most, I believe. Tarring every member of a group of individuals with a single brush born of the behavior of a subset is a thing that I am against in the name of a cooperative and diverse society.

And, as in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, the cops will use those even if the protesters are completely peaceful. And they'll lie about it afterward, to justify it to the media.

Are you familiar with the term "agent provocateur?"

I suspect that the so-called "antifa" who beat people up without provocation may not have been antifa, but were those who were trying to give the resistance a black eye.

regardless of their intentions, "antifa" has made themselves the violent counterparts to the actual Nazis. and because of their other left-leaning positions, they've become the 'left' side of this and have effectively diluted and turned this into a left/right issue. it should have been the easiest thing in the world to get Americans to side against Nazis. but no. instead, this has taken the shape of just another stupid partisan fight: "violent extremists!"

well done.

While that is not unlikely, there are people who "naturally" fall into having anti-fascist sympathies who nonetheless turn up at these things primarily in order to have a fight. Just because they're anti-fascist does not imply that they're not spoiling for a fight. But, I'd guess well over 50% chance (for each individual) that they were provocateurs, but probably not more than 90% chance.

My memory of Swedish anti-racist (well, probably anti-fascist, since I think pretty much all of the racist fuckwits who were out marching were probably perfectly fine with right-wing fascism in addition to their hatred of people who look different) demonstrators in the 90s says that 1%-3% of those turning up regularly did so explicitly to pick a fight (that would be the third strand I alluded to in #40). While I cannot speak for how things are in the US, I would be surprised if that third strand didn't exist.

It's sure nice that you know all the antifa and their motivations. /s

If left alone without any fascists to protest, antifa will eat Nutella and play Pokemon Go.

If left alone without any statue tearings-down to protest, alt-right, Nazis, white supremacists, etc. will lynch my friends of color and bomb my synagogue.

And that's not without even considering American history and the effects of the current crop of hate radio, tv stations and social media.

Hey let's be fair here: I can speak from experience and say that there is a definite minority of antifa who, left alone, would be dicks about veganism on the internet. It's not all sunshine and roses.

*Well, I'm ambivalent on that point myself, and I'm sure Citizen Woodyatt feels similarly, but let's say some kind of policing is okay, at least for the sake of argument.

For the record, I am no kind of anarchist. I see the pragmatic value of institutional democracy and orderly public processes. The furthest I'm willing to go toward endorsing anarchism is that, if forced at gunpoint to choose between anarchy and the fascist anti-democratic mob, I'll choose anarchy every damned time.

Then I recall the work of various Jews in London after WW2, when there were still fascists and anti-semites around. Unfortunately for them, a large number of young jewish men were being demobbed at the time, fresh from military training about how to hurt people.
Net result was that fascists got beaten up every time they showed their heads in public. A brutal but effective way of owning the public space, so that people who were targetted by the fascists could go about their business in peace.
I suspect the police turned a blind eye as well, since strictly speaking such violence was illegal.

So the question is, why is it okay to public be a fascists and proclaim the superiority of the white race, and how evil jews and blacks are and hint loudly at getting rid of them all?

At which point does a society say this speech is not protected? So far the main lines are to do with sex, murder and violence. If I were to proclaim the rightness of men having sex with women of any age, with or without their connent, I would expect some sort of opposition. Yet it's okay to be a fascist, and talk about how Hitler had the right idea.

But even here we have problems, the biggest being the orange order marches, where a bunch of bigoted clowns march through Catholic areas to intimidate the locals. Fortunatelty they are slowly dying away, but it is taking a long time. The impact of them is however reduced becaue of all the other things that are done to ensure that Catholics have political representation and involvement. Defeating fascists, and there isn't much difference between the orange order and fascists, takes a long time and requires resources, none of which the American government seems willing to put forward.

Nah. It was pretty tough to get Americans to side against Nazis back in the 1930s. Not only were there people like Elizabeth Dilling, Father Coughlin, and Henry Ford who argued that seeing Europe conquered by the Nazis would be better than letting Communism spread, but Americans who did volunteer to fight early fascism were later harassed by our government as “premature anti-fascists.”

I see no reason to expect a nation that was so reluctant to fight the Nazis back then to be eager for it now.

Even in the USA, freedom of speech is not absolute. There are exceptions such as fraud, libel (construed more narrowly in the USA than in the UK), and immediate incitement to violence.

I see the current discussion as about expanding the scope of what counts as immediate.

• White supremacists who march unarmed? Denying them a parade permit would be viewpoint-specific violation of freedom of speech.
• If they carry weapons in their parade, even if they don't propose to use them before the next election? That goes beyond mere speech, even if the guns are holstered and the swords are peace-bonded. Even if they're toy guns and costume swords.

Canada's laws on "hate speech" are somewhat more restrictive than provisions in U.S. laws, I think. We still have our incidents, and they've been on the rise in the last year. Last week saw the sentencing of a teenager who went on a vandalism spree last November, targeting several places of worship. And we had the disposition of four Canadian Forces members who, as members of the "Proud Boys" (self-proclaimed "Western chauvinists"), disrupted a Native-Canadian ceremony last year. This latter matter was unsatisfying to many people: the four had black marks put on their records, and will be required to take additional training and will generally be watched pretty carefully, but the charges were dropped. And their group has proclaimed the dropping of the charges as a victory of sorts. This strongly suggests that they're not really going to learn the lesson properly.

I *hope* I'm seeing a shift toward a greater variety of speech being considered as too odious to tolerate. And better enforcement. Because I really *hate* what I'm seeing in terms of people proudly proclaiming intolerance, and while I might reluctantly put up with it if it stayed as merely speech, it's drifting into violence and political events that I don't think that are ultimately survivable.

I'm the guy carrying the red flag to the antifa parade. I'm here to smash capitalism— especially imperialist capitalism— and I'm totally unwilling to let capitalists escape their richly deserved wrath, by— to take one relevant example— selectively editing their dictionary, so their definition of the word "state" is carefully crafted to give them a practical monopolization of the culturally acceptable use for force.

Further, that gay luxury space anarchism probably needs to be fully automated, or I'm likely to have some quibbles about how labor and wealth is allocated.

In any case, when it comes to facing down the Nazi mob, consider me a reliable comrade.

Love, james.

Or you would be president.

the only group likely to get less support in the US than Nazis is ISIS or al-Q.

#110. check your calendar, this isn't 1935. a lot of things have changed.

I hadn't read the linked article before (I have now), but I didn't think it was the article justifying mob violence--I think some of the posts here are.

There is a basic argument here: If there are people expressing really offensive ideas peacefully, is it okay to run them off with violence or the threat of violence?

This isn't just a hypothetical question. As I understand it, a previous round of antifa-linked protests/riots in Berkeley were carried out to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking there. Other violent protests (I don't think they had anything to do with antifa) happened to try to shut down a speech at a university by Heather Macdonald, and another such protest shut down a speech by Charles Murray.

It seems to me that this is a live issue, here and in the wider world: is it acceptable to use mob violence to shut down fascists who aren't attacking anyone, but are just speaking. How about the alt-right, which (fuzzy though the term is) sure seems to include people who aren't fascists. How about vocal Trump supporters? When someone wants to express really offensive ideas, and people on your side know that they can show up in sufficient numbers to beat those people up and run them off, should you support that?

That's part of what I read in abi's post, which I started out responding to.

no doubt. i'm not even close to thinking we shouldn't push back when they scuttle out from under their rocks. but we can push back without being aggressively violent about it. we don't have to beat up people who are merely speaking their (warped) winds.

"Secondly, what is the difference between a fascist and a racist?"

the uniform?

"Then there's the apparent desire of some law enforcement and politicians to permit fascists to gather and promulgate their ideas and scare locals into submission. "

gathering and promulgating ideas are perfectly legal. even scaring people is legal, up to a point.

Well, one issue there is the question of whether the offensive ideas are really being expressed peacefully. Milo Yiannopoulos has a history of using his college speeches to point out vulnerable students (trans students, or Dreamers) for later harassment by his fans. I’m sure he’d claim that he doesn’t endorse the harassment, but I’m also sure that’s bullshit.

The sentence Patrick picked out for the headline of this post — “If you feel safe now, it’s an illusion born of your relationship to power” — is relevant here. The Charles Murrays, Heather Mac Donalds, and Milo Yiannopouloi of the world are support structures in the machinery of white supremacy. They provided justification for the violent oppression of non-white people, safe in the knowledge that their own wealth and whiteness will keep them safe while they make life more dangerous for the people unlike them. Until now! Now, it looks like they actually have to run a bit of risk to advocate for oppression. Now they actually face some small chance of suffering the fate that they would inflict upon others. Of course they’re upset! I find it hard to feel sorry for them, though.

Fascism is a political system of "might makes right", that a strong, preferably absolute, rule is the best way for people to be governed, often combined with the idea that most people are too (dumb, uneducated, whatever) to make decisions for themselves. I would say most or all facists are racists, because they usually believe that some groups are inferior. Sometimes they believe inferior groups should be killed.

Racists are not necessary facists. They often believe that their superior group should have *more* power, but not necessarily absolute power.

This is, of course, my off-the-cuff thoughts.

... the idea that most people are too (dumb, uneducated, whatever) to make decisions for themselves.
That is a very widely-held view among liberal elites.

Now, anyone calling himself a Nazi is surely racist (and racially obsessed). But almost nobody in the US, including far-right types and overt racists, wants anything to do with Nazis.

The Charles Murrays, Heather Mac Donalds, and Milo Yiannopouloi of the world are support structures in the machinery of white supremacy. They provided justification for the violent oppression of non-white people, safe in the knowledge that their own wealth and whiteness will keep them safe while they make life more dangerous for the people unlike them.

Every political activist on Earth could make an equally-convincing case for why it was okay to use violence to shut down people whose ideas he disagreed with. (That is, not convincing at all to people not on his side.)

Consider the arguments made in the runup to the Iraq war, and then later when we were debating pulling out, where people opposing the war were "giving aid and comfort to terrorists." Surely it's right to use violence to disrupt *those* peoples' public speeches, right?

Or what about the kind of people who support criminals terrorizing our communities, and even justify shooting our boys in blue? I mean, freedom of speech is fine and all, but surely you can't feel like *that* kind of slime deserves it! They're supporting the enemies of civilization!

My not-too-informed guess is that you could get a lot more people to accept either of those justifications than the one you just spun out. Get it widely accepted, and antiwar rallies and BLM protests get shut down by angry mobs busting protesters' heads till they get the message.

Until now! Now, it looks like they actually have to run a bit of risk to advocate for oppression. Now they actually face some small chance of suffering the fate that they would inflict upon others. Of course they’re upset! I find it hard to feel sorry for them, though.

Gee, I wonder if maybe there's some reason other than sympathizing with someone why you might support keeping them from being threatened with violence to prevent them speaking in public.

When you're done justifying and normalizing using violence to shut down your political opponents, is there some reason you imagine that those opponents won't go ahead and do the same thing? Why doesn't this end up with politics largely driven by who can get the most goons to show up? Is there any reason at all to think this will make US politics work better?

The issue is that it is possible to merely be racist without being fascist, but if you are a fascist, you are racist by definition.

Odalchini #131 - whataboutery is boring and stupid, try something else.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, in England fascists were prevented from hurting people in London by their targets fighting back. Maybe the issue is that the governments in many places in the USA are too near to fascism already, thus will clamp down on any protesters no matter what, and you don't want to admit that.
Heck, what happened to that oil pipeline that was diverted through an Indian reservation?

Today's difficult question - why has the USA reverted to authoritarian rule?

My point, which of course you understood, was about the difficulty of defining fascism by categories which apply widely to non-fascists. If you've got an intelligent response to that point, by all means let us see it.

Today's difficult question - why has the USA reverted to authoritarian rule?

This article on the The Atlantic tries to answer that question: How America Lost it's Mind. It's a long, but fascinating read to this non-American who's only observed America from the outside. I think the key quote is:

But also starting in the ’90s, the farthest-right quarter of Americans, let’s say, couldn’t and wouldn’t adjust their beliefs to comport with their side’s victories and the dramatically new and improved realities. They’d made a god out of Reagan, but they ignored or didn’t register that he was practical and reasonable, that he didn’t completely buy his own antigovernment rhetoric. After Reagan, his hopped-up true-believer faction began insisting on total victory. But in a democracy, of course, total victory by any faction is a dangerous fantasy.

Oh, it hasn't yet... it's just that there's some folks who are trying to make it so, and unfortunately they're making progress.

The thing is, maintaining a democratic republic is difficult, it needs a lot of money and energy to continue protecting people from each other and from their government. This became even more so with the civil rights advances of the 50s and 60s -- that added even more structure and balance that needs to be maintained. There's always a way for people to cut corners for their own purposes -- profit, dominance, or just laziness. And every time someone does that, it chips away at the grand structure that keeps things working.

I still think the key mistake, the one that led to everything afterwards, was pardoning Nixon and Agnew. After that, the guys at the top would always know that there was an escape from justice... and while some of the henchmen involved with the Watergate did get prison terms, it wasn't enough people, or enough time, to break the cabal. And the cabal that formed from the pieces of Nixon's crew kept chipping away over the decades, claiming more executive power, eroding the checks and balances, and undercutting their opposition at every level.

For these people, politics wasn't about cooperative leadership, much less representing the masses -- it was a blood sport, where money and power were the only goals and weapons. And the Democrats didn't realize until too late how the rules had changed. That cabal within the GOP spent decades not only targeting the Democratic leadership, but also "purifying" their own party of people who thought in terms of negotiation or "loyal opposition". In both parties, they hobbled and eventually removed the specific people who were standing up to their abuse. That eventually left the GOP controlled by the extremists, and the Democrats with a sort of political "battered wife syndrome"; after Reagan and Bush I, even when the Dems had the numbers and/or the Presidency, they didn't have the leadership or resolve to reverse the GOP's structural gains. Instead, they kept trying to compromise and make deals, while their opponents just kept advancing.

But in this process, they also damaged the structure of their own party, cutting away the elements that actually represented their own popular base -- and the folks who were skilled at actual negotiations. Enter the Tea Party, with a few billionaires backing them and a successful example to follow....

clearly.

but again, i'm talking about the fact that "antifa" members have physically attacked people they don't agree with - not in self defense, but initiated the violence. and that's actively harmful to everyone's efforts to push back against actual Nazis.

Antifa isn't the lot that shows up with high-powered weapons and armor.

Fascists were the ones bringing guns and violence to a peaceful rally in Charlotte NC. Antifa were the people who stepped in between the fascists and the peaceful counterprotestors, at the risk of their lives.

Claiming that violence only begets violence is a back-handed way of allowing fascists free rein. When you disallow antifa or any counter protest from fighting back against fascist violence, you allow precisely the kind of situation that led to Heather Heyer dying in Charlotte.

Antifascist encompasses many people; some who are simply going to stand peacefully in public; some who are going to prepare for violence and fight back; and some who take the fight to any conflict just for the pleasure of it. Arguing about the justification for protecting ourselves just allows the fascists to gain more strength.

AIDS activists were very familiar with this rhetoric; ACT-UP was widely considered to be too violent or too strident, but GMHC or HRC alone could not get the political strength to make changes happen. Only when AIDS patients stood up, fought back, and acted up did the establishment take them seriously, along with the other gay and lesbian groups. The same thing is happening here with fascism, the nazis, and the white supremacists.

Don't fall for their propaganda; they're out in various states claiming that the Black Man and the Jew are to blame. If you let that slide unchallenged, they'll come for you next.

You say:

... the idea that most people are too (dumb, uneducated, whatever) to make decisions for themselves. That is a very widely-held view among liberal elites.

I think I've had a reasonable amount of exposure to both liberals and elites in my life. While I've certainly heard exasperated questioning of why poor conservatives appear to consistently vote against their own interests, I haven't heard any serious suggestions to try to keep them from making those decisions for themselves. Most of the people I know who are fighting things like gerrymandering and voter suppression are liberals, and some are arguably elite.

Can you provide any concrete specifics to back up your accusations?

I'm STILL rattled about Nazis trying to take over one of my favorite places to visit.

On the other hand, I’m an American Jew, 3rd generation immigrant from Ukraine, born right after WWII. My grandparents left what was then Russia to escape the Cossacks’ pogroms; growing up I heard stories about them, and I knew people who’d lost family members in the Holocaust, and survivors of the camps as well. The Nazis took control of Germany by perverting the mechanisms of democracy until they could use violence with impunity, and I see the same playbook being used here today.

The arguments that the Nazis are too extreme to be effective here, and that there are too few of them to take power, are the same arguments used by many in Germany in the 30s; they were wrong then, and there is a good chance they are wrong now.

Although I personally can’t go out punching Nazis because I am old and partly disabled, and would probably fall over if I swung at one of them, I have no compunction in urging others to do so. The violence inherent in the Nazi agenda (both I and my wife have been told we should be gassed) needs to be met with forceful consequences, so they know they won’t be allowed to take power with impunity.

History tells us that Nazis have already killed tens of millions of people. Should I withhold the use of force until they start mass killing again? I believe I am justified in taking them at their word (“We’re going to kill you as soon as we take power”), in the same way that an African American is justified in acting on the assumption that a White Supremacist (or Nazi) is willing to kill them, just as they’ve already killed tens of thousands.

Referring back to Patrick’s headline for this post, I don’t feel safe now, and I think I have very good reason to feel that way.

The Society for Creative Anachronism strongly condemns hate speech in any form by any officers and participants of this organization. The SCA was founded on and continues to be governed by the concepts of chivalry and honor, and strives to include and be respectful of all people, regardless of race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and politics. All participants are reminded of and expected to hold to these principles in participating in this organization and interacting with other people in person and in all forums, regardless of media.

The Board of Directors has heard the concerns of many people regarding the use of hate symbols in the SCA. The Board is concerned about this matter and has tasked the President of the SCA to immediately investigate. The President has the full confidence of the Board, and the Board will act as necessary to protect the participants of the SCA and to ensure that chivalry, honor, and respect for all continue to govern the organization.

Comments are strongly encouraged and can be sent to:

SCA Inc.
Box 360789
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You may also email comments@lists.sca.org.

This announcement is an official informational release by the Society for Creative Anachronism , Inc. Permission is granted to reproduce this announcement in its entirety in newsletters, websites and electronic mailing lists.

No context was provided for these announcements. As a non-USA sometime-member of the organization, I'm displeased by what appears to be more American centrism. And I think that a lot of the new stuff about diversity etc. would be more appropriate in some kind of declaration of principles rather than the mission statement; it isn't what the organization is about.

It took me a while to find out what was going on. It seems that the newly-invested royalty of the SCA Kingdom of Caid (mundanely: Southern California, Southern Nevada and Hawaii) have Viking personae and had chosen investiture regalia to match. Notably, the card-woven trim for their cloaks had a pattern of sunwheels as well as runes that resembled "HH".

Unfortunately, the sunwheel -- or at least the form of it that they used -- is banned from use in SCA heraldry because it's more or less the same as a fylfot, AKA swastika. "HH", I'm told, is used by white supremacists as an abbreviation for "heil Hitler".

When the problem was pointed out to said royals, they insisted that no, the symbols were appropriately period for them, and they weren't going to back down.

The mess escalated, between their supporters insisting that they symbols were historically appropriate, and people trying to get across to them that regardless, NO SWASTIKAS. WE DO NOT WEAR SWASTIKAS. WE ARE NOT HAVING PEOPLE SWEARING FEALTY TO SOMEONE WEARING SWASTIKAS.

It took some days for things to settle down, somewhat; several apologies, and ultimately said royals abdicated for the good of the organization. They requested that their supporters stop fighting that fight. The trim has been / is to be burned ("as penance"), with video of that posted on line.

I am still boggled that so many people were/are so clueless as not to grasp that notwithstanding period practise, WE DO NOT WEAR SWASTIKAS.

I am not currently active in the SCA, but I'm SCA-adjacent in my social media. I'm also on the opposite side of the continent from Caid (I'm in an independent Dominion enclaved in Aethelmearc (mundanely, Ithaca, NY). I managed to start a discussion between a Royal (different kingdom) and an Aethelmearc officer on my Facebook page on the topic. Like I said, SCA-adjacent.

There have been rumors that this is not the first time these royals have worn fylfots, and while the story is that the trim was gifted to them and they added it to the regalia there is some indication that they asked for it, not just received it as a gift.

Further complications are that the trim was a reconstruction of a pattern found in Norway in 1933 dated back to the 500's, so it's historically accurate (although the artifact was a sword case covering, not trim). However, the artifact and pattern was also immediately adopted and promoted by NSDAP at the time.

From what I've seen, it's a good-looking, complex pattern. It's popular to make (do a Google search for "Snartemo V" and you'll find tons of images of people's recreations). I'd almost like to try making it myself, simply for the challenge, but as you've said, NO SWASTIKAS. WE DO NOT WEAR SWASTIKAS. WE ARE NOT HAVING PEOPLE SWEARING FEALTY TO SOMEONE WEARING SWASTIKAS.

Either the royals had exceedingly bad judgement in their choice of historical pattern to recreate, or they tried playing clever buggers and got caught at it.

I can certainly respect someone wanting to make the Snartemo pattern; I've woven some bits myself as a challenge. But if you're gonna put it on someone's clothes, put some other diamond-outline motif in those spots! (That said, I personally would have had absolutely no idea about the HH thing.)

I think that if one plotted "number of people who strongly associate this symbol with a particular group or philosophy" vs. date/year, and integrated the curves, it wouldn't look so blippy. And Nazis and other white supremacists are still parading/marching under that symbol.

Notwithstanding one of my favorite Freefall strips.

But he also does not think it was wrong of those who were hurt by the Caid incident to be hurt, and when I put it to him that the method and timing were extremely poor if one wanted to reclaim the symbol he did not really argue.

There may be a time and a place for the Snartemo V pattern in the SCA. At this point in history, I think that place is probably in an A&S display, with a great deal of written context provided, not on royal robes without any context or disclaimer at all.

I also believe that the swastika is part of the graphic design history of the human race, and I don't think the Nazis should get to keep it. They can have the Nazi flag, but no more than that.

However, the swastika isn't going to be reclaimed in this generation, and possibly for quite a while after that.

As for the Caid trim, it's mostly in subdued red, blue, and green, with the Nazi elements outlined in bright yellow. I don't think it was accidental.

Indeed it's not, as that's how the colors were arranged in the original and the offending object was a faithful reproduction. You can find a recreated pattern here, though whether it's the precise one used I couldn't say. I found it by googling "Snartemo V band" as Buddha Buck mentioned.

Here's the clearest thing I've found about the colors.

http://spotstudio.no/randi_wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Snartemo2017Oktober1.pdf

I understand that a lot of work went into making the garment in question, and I know from personal experience that it's entirely possible to do or make something that seemed like a good idea at the time only to gradually realize that maybe it wasn't. Defensiveness can be a natural reaction. However, whether the creation and use of those garments was innocent or not, the way the royals in question handled it is not a good look for them, especially with my understanding that the SCA had already banned that particular pattern.

The SCA has always been a "the good bits" group and allowed modern sensibilities to inform their actions, so cries of "but it's historically accurate" will never fly as a get out of jail free card.

It's been my experience that the only people who rely on "but it's historically accurate" as an excuse for something that's unfair or considered wrong today are either a) people who don't want to examine their privilege or bias too closely lest they feel bad, or b) bigots. Neither is great, but at least people in the first group can eventually come around.

It was a weird experience as a Jew to walk through Buddhist temples in China and Thailand and see some things that had swastikas on them. They don't have that awful connotation there, but they certainly do in the West. I don't want the Nazis to have a claim to that symbol forever, but by that I mean that I don't want people to have to wince and then remind themselves when they see it in a non-Nazi context.

As long as the Nazi regime is still this close to us in history, and as long as neo-Nazi groups continue their claim to the symbol, I do not consider it acceptable to use even if it is "historically accurate". Perhaps a few hundred years after its hateful and bigoted use finally dies, we'll see.

Years gone by, there was a brief fad of plush "plague rats" at events. "You have the plague! Pass it on!"

One of the stalwarts of our group, "Hey You" the beggar, generally doesn't sit feast; he begs for table scraps. He dresses in rags... but they're clean rags. Technically he's Lord Hey You -- I don't know how many awards he's been given for service. There aren't a lot of low-social-class people in the organization.

Again years gone by, I remember a "celebrity slave auction" for charity: bidding for an hour of the tin-hats' time. That one got renamed quickly, because We Do Not Do Slavery. I admit that at the time, my reaction to the change was "oh, right" rather than "holy crap, yes". I was much less clueful at the time.

I'd be pleased if the swastika could be reclaimed for good purposes, but I don't see it happening in my plausible lifetime, and definitely not while there are significant efforts to use it as a symbol of a philosophy that (almost) everyone considers evil.

That is a very interesting link, not just for the colors, but for the commentary on the side.

What I found very interesting was some info about the original work, namely that it is in fragments, and parts of the pattern are unclear because of that and age. The reproductions done aren't based on the full original pattern, but rather on reconstructions done by textile archaeologists like Egon Hansen.

In fact, the large red swastika so prominently visible in the pictures of the Royal's outfits is not necessarily in the original -- the notes by Randi Stoltz note that fragment 3 "is in bad shape", and that "all we know is the size of the frame and that there must have been something in it". Hansen placed a swastika there; Stoltz' linked pattern uses a variant of a different motif in the work.

So some of the swastikas are potentially modern additions to the pattern.

By making them bogeymen, it means that well-meaning but not necessarily involved people don't realize that there are still those who actually wave that flag and blame the Jews for everything, until they show up in Charlottesville and proclaim their odious and ridiculous beliefs. It means that people can be comfortable in their unexamined racism, because they reassure themselves that they aren't Nazis. It gives the actual Nazis cover, because they're associated with being so over the top that surely no one could believe that stuff.

Or by making them ineffectual clowns, they undermine how odious Nazi beliefs and behaviors are, even though those beliefs are ridiculous and incredible.

I'm not going to stop liking Indiana Jones, Hellboy, or Captain America: The First Avenger, or the Blues Brothers, which probably makes me hypocritical on this front. I'm still not sure why I'm more likely to give it a pass in Hogan's Heroes than in something more contemporary. But something like, say, the modern Wolfenstein games leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Any thoughts? Like I said, I'm still working on how I feel about this.

Meanwhile, I think the early efforts to make Nazis into buffoons was, if not explicitly, certainly implcitly, a propaganda effort to sort of pull their psychological teeth. Parody and caricature have long been used against opponents to reduce their social stature. IIRC, the act that really cut the ground out from under the KKK was a parody, such that they seriously lost face (and credibility) when kids in the streets started chanting their slogans along with their games. ^{[Cite needed.]}

But (frex) comics and Hogans Heroes were back when WWII still loomed large in the popular imagination. The audience included members who had actually dealt with Nazis in realtime.

Nowadays, most of that generation has passed, and WWII-era Nazis are mostly known by reputation. I can see the argument that making them objects of mockery may, at this time, be counterproductive, because it makes it easy to forget how really very dangerous they can be (and have been).

I think it's a shifting frame, actually.

It was a weird experience as a Jew to walk through Buddhist temples in China and Thailand and see some things that had swastikas on them. They don't have that awful connotation there, but they certainly do in the West. I don't want the Nazis to have a claim to that symbol forever, but by that I mean that I don't want people to have to wince and then remind themselves when they see it in a non-Nazi context.

I wanted to mention more on the Buddhist / *that* motif, Japanese sub-group: local maps mark a Buddhist temple with a "swastika" (I'm trying to remember - and failing - if the rotation of the arms is actually opposite to the one historically burned into my child memory of Holocaust stories.)

The Japanese have taken to marking tourist maps with other symbols, however, demonstrating an amazing sensitivity to their visitors and the histories they bring with them from outside Japan. During the time I was looking at that news spot, I kept thinking, "Wow, they're not pushing back or saying "They just have to understand..."

Crazy(and clenching my teeth, hard, at what some other people seem to want to do)Soph

Some of the cast of Hogan's Heros had realtime experience with Nazis.

Along those lines, I inwardly wince a bit whenever I see American pols referred to as fascists or Nazis. Even if the politician has some traits in common with those ideologies, using the word short-circuits thought and nuance. It's like calling Bernie a communist or Obama a socialist. It takes away meaning instead of adding to it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591

Half hour video from the bbc about history of the swastika

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_reuMKpgow

Lindsay Ellis about satire and Nazis

tl, dw Nothing works better than Mel Brooks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE

Yes, I'd forgotten that! Also, the Nazis were a known threat that had been defeated, so there was a little extra schadenfreude to be had in turning them into silly buffoons and mindless monsters.

In our age, they are, like, a live threat, and so discounting and dismissing them seems like a Really Bad Idea.

Conveniently (or so it seems to me) eliding that, on that grand scale, the early 21st century is barely, if at all, distinguishable from the mid-20th; from the perspective they're trying to invoke, it's all part of that blip.

Oh, it's possibly not convenient disingenuousness; it could just be lousy sense of timescale - but those who have no sense of timescale have no damn business invoking timescale in their arguments.

Jeremy Leader #182: Steve Bannon, Joe Arpaio, Tom Tancredo, Arthur Jones, Louis Farrakhan, and, yes, Dolt45, are all fascists. It is perfectly legitimate to refer to them as such and to note their similarities with (and ideological descent from) historic fascism. Bannon's, for example, from Francoism, or Farrakhan's with Codreanu.