I have been seeing plenty of guillhotine and mollotov jokes here, and as the title says, punching nazis.
I’ve been reading a book about nonviolence and anarchism, and he basically shows how we shouldn’t use violence, even in extreme cases (like neo nazis).
The main argument is that the means dictates the ends, so if we want a non violent (and non opressing) society, punching people won’t help.
And if it is just a joke, you should probably know that some people have been jailed for decades because of jokes like these (see: avoiding the fbi, second chapter of the book above).
Obviously im up for debate, or else I wouldn’t make this post. And yes, I do stand for nonviolence.
(english is not my first language, im sorry if I made errors, or wansn’t clear.)
(if this is not pertinent, I can remake this post in c/politics or something)
(the book is The Anarchist Cookbook by Keith McHenry, if you are downloading from the internet, make sure you download it from the correct author, there is another book with the same name.)
Fascists don’t respond to logic or reasoning, they know only violence so you should speak to them in a language they understand
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2018.1519772
Violence in a vacuum? Deplorable. Violence against a person preaching or encouraging violence? Questionable. Violence against a known fascist? Absolutely acceptable.
Fascists hide in the grey areas of free speech and often make arguments, much like this post OP, that twist ethics to support their rhetoric.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/19/544641070/explaining-again-thenazis-true-evil
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism–intentionalism_debate
You may want to investigate the original author of the anarchist cookbook William Powell. He later wanted to remove the book from publication.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Powell-American-writer
Also please do not follow any of the recipes, especially the match head bomb as they’re all a great way to lose fingers
So in conclusion, considering your original points sound similar to the historical defense of fascists, and that book looks to carry the language of fascists.
How serious is the author of that book about not getting punched?
When we had a bunch of white supremacists driving in their lifted trucks, yelling at the BLM protestors and threatening violence against them, there was no use in trying to argue with them. They were just interested in getting into a fight so they could justify using their guns in “self defense”.
That’s not the nature of my argument. You’re talking about an escalation of violence. I’m talking about preventing them from entering cultural space in the first place. I could spend days listing the proof that there are Nazis in our police and armed forces. That leftists are often the only ones targeted by police.
I’m talking about direct interpersonal conversation and action.
Those guys in lifted trucks are useful idiots.
I open carry at counter protests, I open carry at Drag Story Time. I often have to have long protracted discussions with the police when I protest. Mostly about my protect trans kids and TERF Elimination Squad morale patches and what loadout I have. I am often silent during chants at the protests I attend.
However I’ve never seen direct instigation from counter protesters like you’re describing, directed at me. They tend to focus on the vocal protestors. I stand next to the megaphone with ear pro on. I try to move slowly and predictably.
I’m not there to return fire. I’m not there to keep any peace. I’m absolutely not there to instigate or escalate anything.
This is only my personal experience and means nothing. I am not suggesting this is a useful or necessary act. I’m not encouraging anyone to do this. I never bring a concealed weapon. I always coordinate with the organizers of the event or the protest. I will happily leave if asked however I’ve never been asked before or after to not attend. I only carry at the protest and do not bring weapons into planning spaces or enclosed areas.
Edit: Since I started going a couple few have joined me. There are much more yelling contests now. But there’s no shoving or pulling or fighting over flags and signs anymore. I really hope in a couple years shit mellows out and I can chant again. “Bottoms Tops we all hate cops!” Is a newer one I really like.
…do you actually open carry at kids story time?
America sounds fucking insane.
Yes, yes we are. And it’s getting worse in many cultural groups.
This is a false dichotomy. There are effective ways to defeat Nazis beyond punching them or reasoned debate.
Violence is justified in life or death struggles where other options have become unrealistic. That’s not the situation we’re in in the West 99% of the time. Deplatforming, doxxing, civil resistance, and various other forms of nonviolent struggle all have a better track record than street brawls which have done nothing but empower fascists. In fact, the sense of fear and chaos that these events creates is exactly the environment in which fascism will thrive. Street brawls between fascists and leftists were prominent in the Weimar Republic and did nothing to stop Nazi power—if anything it made it easier for the right to unite and paint leftists as unreasonable extremists. We see similar patterns happening today.
Politics is not the same as armed struggle. We are not engaged in armed struggle against fascism in the west. Perhaps we will be but right now one of our goals should be to avoid that becoming necessary. In the current moment public relations and persuasion matter immensely. Punching Nazis achieves little other than making people lose sight of the dangers of fascism and focus instead on “extremism” from “both sides”.
And OP has done nothing to suggest they are sympathetic to fascism so your threats against them are extremely rude and unjustified.
Edit: I also should have stressed that the most important thing is to organize. People power is the real power. Collaborate with and help everyone, not just your Maoist book club or whatever. One of the ways the Fascists won in the past is by dividing people and going after minorities one at a time. If things do devolve into armed struggle, you’ll be much better prepared if you’ve got deep roots in the community.
You can mock and deride them in media of course. But when a Nazi asks about violence you always respond with language they understand.
I disagree. Fascists want to simplify every conflict this way—“They’re coming to kill you, so we need to kill then first”. By accepting the conflict on those terms, you’ve already conceded a rhetorical battle.
Leftists have rarely excelled at martial conflict. It’s not typically our strength. Our strength instead is that we fundamentally want to help people and make the world more free and just. We win by making sure people understand that. Getting into fist fights with Nazis undermines this strategy and doesn’t do anything to fundamentally undermine their power.
Feel free to debate your way out of the camps, bro.
We’re not in camps. We’re not fighting a war. Of course military violence is okay when you’re fighting for your life, but that’s not current society. This is an ideological war.
Feel free to punch your way out. You’ll find it equally effective.
That’s what the guns are for, centrist.
Not sure what guns have to do with the ineffectiveness of punching Nazis but OK.
Nazis aren’t interested in what communists have to say. A communist, for the record, is anyone a Nazi disagrees with. The only acceptable place for a communist, according to a nazi, is in the ground. If you want to let Nazis come for you, I guess that’s fine for you. When Nazis co.e for your loved ones and you Stans there like a fucking coward and let them take them because “much precious nonviolence” I guess that’s your call.
I can kick 200cm from the ground, so I’m going to use that tool to keep the world just :/
Edit OH SHIT OH SHIT 180CM not 200 I’m not Jet Li
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(transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”
And i was like, ohok and he continues.
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.
I’m not big on violence, and I don’t enjoy hitting people, but I’ve done it a couple of times and I’m always willing to throw down with nazis. If we’re not willing to defend ourselves and others, we might as well just hand them the keys and let them do whatever they want. That’s gonna be a hard no for me.
This. There are just certain ideologies that are so anti-human that the only way to deal with them is violence because they can’t be tolerated or reasoned with. Nazis know exactly what history says about them and they actively choose these hateful ideologies to believe in and follow. I wouldn’t punch a random person on the street unless they were a threat. Nazis by their very existence are a threat. That threat is not existential.
I’ve punched plenty of nazis. They try to infiltrate our punk and metal scenes and cause shit, being one of the bigger guys there who also has training, it’s my responsibility to help make sure they don’t fucking stick around.
You can try and go the pacifist route with these people, but I know from experience that it doesn’t do Jack shit, and they’ll keep coming back with their dumb bullshit, and more and more will start showing up unless you shut that shit down hard.
See the thing about the supposed cycle of violence is that it implies equal fault and innocence of both sides. It relies on toleration theory.
Toleration is a treaty, when you break it you are no longer protected by it. It is an entirely justifiable and moral act to instigate violence against fascists, because their very ideology is a violation of the treaty of toleration, and their organization is one which cannot sustain itself in the face of repeated attacks.
You often hear complaints about how enforcing internet rules against the fascists just leads to whackamole bans, but the thing is that every successive ban leaves the fascists less coordinated, less emboldened, and more isolated. There is a critical point of punitive and preventative acts where a fascist org is effectively atomized and anyone worth pulling out has been rock bottomed into a holding space where they can be rehabbed.
Peaceful methods are what can be achieved after you’ve destroyed them, either through hounding operations making it less and less possible for them to group up and act together, or by normalizing violence and intolerance against them to the extent that they are at least afraid enough to stop trying to not be sniveling cowards such as the fascist naturally is.
The true fascist is only kept quiet in an environment of fear, where they know that trying to stick their heads up will get it lopped off in short order. An environment where even peacible means of antifascism still include complete social ostracism and career destruction, and where persistent fascism is met with swift and appropriate violent rejection.
Don’t just punch the Nazis, dox them to their families and employers and communities, encourage others to be armed and ready to attack preemptively in their presence, organize around making that Nazi specifically know their rightful place is silent and afraid until they’ve cut the shit and stopped being a nazi, before someone ends up killing them in self defense.
just like violence isn’t applicable everywhere, non-violence isn’t applicable everywhere.
back in the day, nazis used to get violently run out of shows because they tried to infiltrate the punk movement and punks said “Nazi punks fuck off” and then punched them until they left.
- “Self-defense is not violence!”
- “No tolerance for intolerance!”
- you don’t want your place becoming a Nazi bar
I’ve seen too many examples throughout history of people trying to use nonviolence and do things the right way and just getting slaughtered because the other side simply does not care to be a pacifist. The world is clearly a better place because people employed violence in WWII to stop the Nazis. And street fighting in the 30’s was one of the ways that the Nazis secured their power in the first place.
Nonviolent methods are tools that are useful to have in your toolbox, and in many situations, they are more practical in achieving your ends. But there are cases were violence is more practical, even necessary, and one shouldn’t shy away from it when it’s needed. You gotta have your head in the game, the stakes are too high. A diversity of tactics is best.
The logic that violence is oppressive so it should be renounced in all cases in order to reduce oppression is idealist. You have to look at the actual evidence and material situation to evaluate what effects violence will have in a given situation.
Punching Nazis is cool and good. Just try not to get arrested for it because it’ll take you out of the action longer than it will them.
They want my wife and children dead. If they are near my family, they pose an existential threat. I will leave saving the proverbial souls of neo Nazis to others. I am interested in establishing that my family is off limits and dangerous for them to so much as look at.
Would I throw a punch at a confirmed Nazi? Without hesitation.
Some people learn to shed the racism from their heart and become better people. Some will only get so far as keeping quiet because they are afraid. There will always be severely racist people. It is just as important that they feel unequivocally unwelcome as it is to change those who will change.
If two parties are at odds with one another, and one on them is willing to use violence and the other isn’t, the violent party wins.
Non violence works when people care about what you’re going through. If the right people know and care they’ll come in and do violence for you to make it stop. Or at least verifiably threaten violence. But violence is happening whether you did it or not.
Nazis don’t give a shit about you, they’re eager for violence. They want to exterminate entire classes of people. Non violence does not work on Nazis, we’ve already seen this play out once before.
I’m in my 40’s now, but as a teenager that used to go to a lot of punk shows; I can assure you the sentiment is literal. A group of anti-nazis can give a few nazis a really bad time.
Depends on the context, and how serious and violent the Nazi. If they’re just an isolated idiot who isn’t politically active and isn’t stupid or thick-headed enough to actually follow through on their claimed beliefs, then violence isn’t really justified. They’re an idiot, but not a threat. The problem is with anymore more dedicated or crazy than that. Past that point, you immediately get to people who want to murder or enslave hundreds of millions. Thats not hyperbolic, that’s literally the goal of Nazi beliefs, and a logical extention of almost every belief that stems out of it or is adjacent to it. In theory, yes, it’d be nice to be able to talk down people like this, or use existing systems of power to force them to places where there isn’t a risk of them trying to murder or enslave people, but unfortunately, when you’re talking about groups who don’t respect human lives, the law, or anyone but their designated, arbitrary in-group, then those aren’t always viable means. This is esspecially true if that person is already in a potition of power. Basically, if someone wants to kill you, you can’t always wait for them to successfully aquire the means to do so before acting. This isn’t hyperbole or metaphor, this is literally what we’re talking about here. The problem is in drawing a line of who is an actual threat, and if there are other means to “disarm” them.
Tolerance ends with intolerance. Being nice and civil leads to things like the storming of the US Capital. If US Republicans, for example, felt no resistance then they would organize a crusade into Springfield Ohio.
It is because we live in a world of controversy and civil unrest that racists cannot simply commit massacres and lynchings like in the old days.
We have to show fangs, not bellies, to aggressive animals.
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Non-violence is a nice ideal, but just that. There’s only so much protests can do, if nazi germany had been met with non-violence, imagine what would have happened. Conversely, imagine how many lives would have been saved if Hitler had been stopped before becoming it’s leader. It’s the same thing with US politics, Trump is basically a neo nazi. This is undeniable if you read project 2025. The US is drifting further and further right, and that means closer and closer to becoming a new nazi germany. And besides all that, if someone is advocating for killing me, then I’m going to want them gone.
The biggest advocates for non-violence are white cis heterosexual men. It is the failure to recognize the multifaceted nature of violence itself. Punching a Nazi can mean that other Nazis stop looking up to them, and they stop being able to effectively organize.
You should be selective and strategic with who you punch. Typically you will want to go for leadership, or the guy who offers a connection between two groups that you consider a risk.
That being said, you should also consider that you probably aren’t going to have as much success punching a Nazi on their terms. A lot of them are into their gym and guns so it tends to be to your advantage to catch them alone when you are in a group. Sometimes the opportunity will come after one of their demonstrations when they are walking to their car. Other times, it can be useful to find where they live and work.
Punching Nazis isn’t an everyday thing but its unrealistic to claim it isn’t sometimes necessary. It works very effectively as part of a bigger picture. Alongside it, you can put stickers on their doors in the middle of the night. If the circumstances, you can do silly stuff like convincing one that another fascist is sleeping with his equally shitty wife.
