Summary
A group of masked men with Nazi flags protested outside a performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Howell, Michigan, shouting antisemitic slurs.
Audience members were reportedly frightened and needed escorts to their cars. The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which staged the play, described the protesters’ presence as a disturbing reminder of the fear faced by Holocaust victims.
The Anti-Defamation League condemned the display. The incident follows other recent displays of racism in the area.
As a Jew I fully understand your sentiment, but it is a really dangerous thing to normalize. Everyone can change if they’re given the right kind of attention and put in a ton of work being deprogrammed. There are amazing examples of Nazis and white supremacists finally understanding the impact of their hatred. I’m not saying it’s always going to work, probably not even most of the time. But absolutes like this are not a constructive solution. Threatening death, violence, and/or refusing to even try to rehabilitate racists, bigots, and Nazis only gives them more power.
I’m convinced a good number of these accounts are divisiveness bots, running a psyop to intentionally stoke the flames in left-leaning forums the same way they continue to do on the right. I assume at least one will respond to this calling me a nazi sympathizer. It’s happened before for much less.
I don’t know what to do about this, because I also acknowledge that there are actual anti-fascist protesters being pulled into the narrative.
I’m as anti-fascist as they come, but (in addition to your points about winning people over) I also believe in preserving free speech, and acknowledge that there is a very fine line here. It’s free speech to wave a flag with a symbol on it, it’s free speech to say you think that flag represents hate speech and shouldn’t be allowed, but it’s hate speech to openly endorse genocide, and vigilante justice subverts the point of a justice system. If our justice system falls apart…we’re screwed.
Sorry dude, we’ve already tried the kid gloves. Look where that got us.
They get violent, everyone crosses their arms disapprovingly, and they come back with friends.
It got us the moral high ground of not condoning political violence, which is huge. If we respond to their violence with more violence, it won’t end in peace and harmony, it will only exacerbate the problem.
Look, not killing them is a debatable point. Not meeting their violence with overwhelming violence leads to this kind of shit
What you’re advocating is vigilantism. In a working society, if they are committing acts of violence (aka crime), you shouldn’t need to advocate “overwhelming violence” in response, you should be advocating a working police force who can arrest them, and hold them safely until they can be judged by a jury of their peers.
I feel like vigilantism is the left making an equivalent argument to the right’s “more guns = more safety”. Unless you live in a lawless warzone, you shouldn’t want either.
Yeah well apparently we don’t have a working society any more
Huge for what? Our feelings? Certainly not huge for progress since we’ve taken several steps backwards
Huge for not being proponents of political violence. Be it for the sake of history, our legitimacy as a nation, the sake of teaching our children healthy values and civics, and sure, for our feelings, take your pick. Sometimes being a good person and using alternatives to violence is much harder than defaulting to our baser instincts.
The whole idea of modern politics is for it to be how we resolve conflicts and make progress without violence. That’s the whole point. Politics is the antithesis of violence.
If you have examples of Nazi’s being beaten without political/other violence, I’d love to hear them.
The only examples I have of fighting Nazi’s are my grandfather travelling across the world from 39-45 killing them, and my grandmother hiding/getting Jewish people out of Holland while occasionally killing a Nazi in an alley. She went to a camp, but survived.
So again, would love these examples.