Please don’t punch “Nazis”

Walking around my house here in Nashville, a very visceral memory blindsided me.

I had been walking with Lita (I think it was north on Interake Ave N towards N 45th in Wallingford, Seattle) shortly after Trump had been elected back in 2016. Tensions in the nation were, as ever, high. This was when the first “punch a Nazi” thing was going on. Ditto for “bash a fash.”

I remember patiently explaining that, no, not everyone you disagree with, regardless of how much you disagree, is not a Nazi. And even if they were, that punching someone out of the blue in 2016 is not usually a productive action.

Perhaps if the conversation was happening 75 years before across the Atlantic I would have said something different. But given the time and place, and the fact that Nazis here in the US had little to no sway, I reached the first conclusion.

This has been going on for quite a while. It’s too easy to influence people, especially in the echochambers we’ve been wont to be constructing of late, to convince them of the absurd. You may not like Trump. Or Charlie. But I can fucking assure you they are not Nazis. Full stop.

Lita was a smart woman. Even she had been lulled into believing this and repeating it. And the internet has distilled the vitriol in the invervening close-to-a-decade to make it even more potent. To allow everyone to say these lies on the public airwaves, over and fucking over again, is poisoning the dialog.

Just as screaming “fire” in a crowded theater is not protected speech, maybe this falls into the same category.