Despite popular belief, it’s probably better for everyone if people don’t actually punch Nazis in America simply for being Nazis.
Let me step back: I don’t support, nor sympathize with Neo-Nazis.
They’ve managed to romanticize an ideology that’s revolting in its view of human rights and its view of human beings in general.
It brought upon the world the largest, bloodiest and most vicious war it will likely ever see again. One that had to be ended with two nuclear blasts.
It crushed human beings under its boot systematically, killing off those it deemed “undesirable” based on religion, creed, status, race and political belief.
Nazism tramples on everything the Western Democracies stand for, such as freedom of speech, religion, assembly, thought and just basic freedom.
However, I don’t believe violence is the key to dealing with these tiki-torch toting morons.
They are just as protected by that same, pesky First Amendment as everybody else.
The best way to go about dealing with Neo-Nazis, in today’s hyper-linked social media based world is to allow them to put their ideas out into the marketplace of ideas, and allow them to make fools of themselves in public.
Had Anti-Fa not attacked the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville the whole thing would’ve been a laughing stock.
Think about it, these backwards people walked up to a monument with tiki-torches yelling “Blood and Soil” as if this little merry troop were going to change anything that was going to happen to the monument of Robert E. Lee, or somehow reverse “white genocide,” in America, whatever the hell that means.
The Internet would’ve memed them back into their little stormfront.com hole where they belong.
The only headline that would’ve been produced by the event would’ve been from some obscure Charlottesville newspaper reading “White Nationalists go to Robert E. Lee. Monument, Change Nothing,”
Debate them!
Eviscerate their ideology for the whole world to see, it’s not hard!
It relies entirely upon racial and religious collectivism.
Find one guy or gal who blows a giant hole into the various narratives they have for Jews, African Americans, Latin Americans, or whoever else and there you go.
Hint: That person is everywhere, all around you. It could be you.
Ethnicities and beliefs aren’t a template for every person of that ethnicity or belief and no two individuals are the same.
You might not have changed the mind of the Nazi, but you sure convinced people watching who have at least two halves of a single brain cell that Nazism is trash.
Here’s the best part, perhaps a bit more difficult in both grasping and applying: You can deprogram a Neo-Nazi.
Holy crap, Killian, are you telling me that if I hold my own enough in a (let’s be honest incredibly easy) debate, I might actually change a mind or two?
Why yes, I did.
I won’t lie, it’ll be tough to get the older Neo-Nazis to let go. It’s much harder for someone older than 30 to let go of what they’ve believed and put time into for so long.
But the young? The kids, the teens? Hell even some of the young adults?
For the most part, they only know what their family has ingrained into them.
All they need is a different perspective given to them, and new ideas to chew on over time.
Whether they accept and actually wise up is up to them and they most likely won’t.
But if you managed to turn a 14-year old, or 21-year old away from hate or manage to destabilize any support they may garner just by winning debates, offering different ideas and viewpoints than you’ve done much more than you ever would have just by slugging someone.
