The link between entertainment and violence has always been dubious at best. Most people will be able to watch Vin Diesel stylishly off a few dozen people in xXx: Return of Xander Cage then go back to their jobs as accountants without feeling any more of an urge to strangle their boss than usual. But the circulation of a certain Captain America cover in response to the recent assault of Richard Spencer suggests that our attitude regarding violence might need a routine checkup.

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Who is Richard Spencer?

If “Richard Spencer” doesn’t mean anything more to you than two first names that work surprisingly well as a full name, he is a writer and activist who proudly advocates White nationalist views. In March 2010 he founded AlternativeRight.com and credits himself for coining the term “alt-right.” In late November 2016, The Atlantic circulated a video of him speaking in Washington D.C. at the annual conference of the National Policy Institute. An enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, Spencer is seen passionately praising Trump’s electoral victory using symbolism, terminology, and style that is overtly authoritarian. One can judge for themselves on this point, but it’s hard to watch the video without getting a strong whiff of Nazi.

Video courtesy The Atlantic.

Fast forward to January 20th, 2017 — Inauguration Day. Spencer was caught in another video, and also on the receiving end of a masked man’s fist. The political and social tensions that have defined the transition from former President Obama to his successor were no doubt going to hit a peak on Donald Trump’s inauguration. But the response of many regarding the assault on Spencer implies a level of inevitability, acceptance, and comfort with political violence that must be challenged.

Video courtesy @TheeCurrentYear.

The response

It should be acknowledged that of course the response to this event is varied and unless Nate Silver weighs in on it, we can’t even be 71.4% sure of what public opinion is.

This article is a response to a specific collective opinion that seems to be well subscribed to on social media that can be loosely summarized as, “Talk shit. Get hit.” That includes everything between “If you’re Richard Spencer, you should expect to be punched,” to, “It was good that someone punched Richard Spencer.” If you don’t fall somewhere between those two goal posts, this article is not addressing you directly.

Social media celebration

Between the Twitter hashtags (#DearSpencer, #PunchYourLocalNazi, #PunchMoreNazis2017), the Reddit thread pushing 5251 upvotes, and the viral meme of mixing the video with amusing editing and sound effects, it’s safe to say this event was made for internet shenanigans.

For the Street Fighter fans.

If mildly clever wordplay is more your style, try the Reddit thread. Admittedly most are just variants of “alt-right hook.”

This response is unavoidable in today’s internet and like with most popular memes, odds are you’ll stumble on a couple examples that you find pretty funny. It is a little funny. But surf the memes long enough and they begin to shift from “making light of” to “lightly suggestive of.”

Lindsay Ellis, best known for this gif of hot dogs being thrown at her face, and also a semi-famous internet film critic weighs in on punching Nazis. Side note: watch her YouTube channel, it’s legitimately one of the best film channels on the internet.

Tacit approval and blind eyes

The next step down is a sort of stoic Clint Eastwoodesque non-committal disapproving approval. These responses take the following form:

“Well I don’t condone violence, but you won’t catch me shedding a tear when a Nazi gets punched.”

It would be pretty strange to get upset that Richard Spencer was punched. Unless otherwise specified, I assume you don’t know him, I assume you’re not an admirer of his, and I assume you’re not so skittish about violence that the video disturbs you. Typically I’d also assume that you don’t condone violence, but apparently these days that is a point that people feel they need to clarify.

Responses like this are strange to see on my social media feeds when mere months ago those same feeds were full of outrage about a man who sucker punched another man at a Trump rally and disgust towards those who failed to condemn it.

Clip courtesy Esquire.com.

This is not to suggest that the man being sucker punched above is anything like Richard Spencer, only to illustrate that to many of those claiming to condemn this sort of political violence, the who is a lot more important than the what.

Weak condemnation

Not all responses were positive, but a fair amount of the condemnation was indirect and tepid. For instance, The New York Times published this article:

The article is serviceable. Though it’s not a news article, it fails to establish itself as an opinion article. Its headline asks “Is it okay to punch a Nazi?” but doesn’t dare ask the question itself, choosing instead to pass that buck off to the nebulous “internet.” And while it does takes the time to explain the significance of the Pepe meme, and goes as far to refer to the masked man as “attacker” and “assailant,” it fails to clearly name the crime that was committed — “assault.” Establishing that is left to Spencer, the word only ever being used on his own Periscope video embedded in the article.

The framing of the entire article is so ponderous that any reader who had come to it wishing to answer the headline with “yes” would not have a difficult time reaching the end without finding a single cause to change their mind. In other words, the article gets no facts wrong, but also doesn’t have any point worth making. A think piece that doesn’t ask you to think.

What would Captain America do?

Nick Spencer (no relation to Richard), current writer for the Captain America comic book, came out much stronger:

Digging deeper into his Twitter page, N. Spencer makes a few important points. He expresses his opposition to mob rule and the importance of legal process. In the face of criticism that he’s unsuited to write Captain America if he doesn’t understand that the character was created to punch fascists, he retweeted an article that included a few frames from Captain America #275 where the hero expresses the importance of protecting free speech, even of Nazis, and the wrongness of violence in non-wartime.

However, when it came to hate speech, he faltered. Just a little bit. Responding to the accusation that his, “support of hate speech is disturbing.” he was quick to clarify:

“I don’t support hate speech. I just also don’t support vigilante violence.”

Foundations in free speech

For something as foundational to the country and the constitution, the First Amendment certainly sparks a lot of controversy these days. The first sign that somebody is barking up the wrong tree in this debate is when the phrase “hate speech” is invoked.

I, hate speech

As fair a point as N. Spencer made, he avoided making a deeper point that is important to explain at times like this. It doesn’t matter if it’s hate speech. To quote Khizr Khan, “Have you even read the United States Constitution?” The First Amendment does not have an escape clause for hate speech, nor has it ever been ruled an unprotected form of speech by the Supreme Court. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, so to take this just a little farther than N. Spencer, no I too do not support hate speech, but yes I’m supporting R. Spencer’s right to hate speech and I can do that unironically without agreeing with a single word that’s ever crossed his lips.

If you throw the first punch, you are the bully. You have committed assault. You are the violent criminal. You are the fascist.

The right to free speech is sometimes called the supreme right by which all other rights are derived. Whether or not that’s really true, a cornerstone of modern civilization is that individuals and groups are allowed to publicly express any opinions they like. It doesn’t matter how offensive. It doesn’t matter how angry or upset it makes others. It is important that everyone’s right to offend others, and get angry, and argue is protected because if we can’t fight with our words, the fight becomes one of flesh, steel, lead, and bone. If you throw the first punch, you have committed assault. You are the violent criminal. You are the fascist. Consider the following exchange (the second is a response to the first):

Observe how much more popular this Tweet was in comparison to the one it was a response to.

Sidelining the discussion about whether or not racism, sexism, bigotry, and xenophobia are views, what exactly is @cindasmommy implying here? That if you as an individual know someone to be racist, that you should just punch them? My grandpa was racist. No need for a jury of peers, conviction, and sentence, this is something that an individual can decide and execute and not only be in the right, but be an internet hero for. If you don’t think all that paperwork is necessary, consider a point made by Ken White on popehat.com:

“We have social and legal norms, including ‘don’t punch people because their speech is evil, and don’t punish them legally.’ Applying those norms is not a judgment that the speech in question is valuable, or decent, or morally acceptable. We apply the norms out of a recognition of human frailty — because the humanity that will be deciding whom to punch and whom to prosecute is the same humanity that produced the Nazis in the first place, and has a well-established record of making really terrible decisions. You — the bien-pensant reader, confident that sensible punchers and prosecutors can sort out Nazis from the not-Nazis — will likely not be doing the punching or prosecuting. The punching and prosecuting will be done by a rogue’s gallery of vicious idiots, including people who think that Black Lives Matter should be indicted under RICO and that it’s funny to send women death threats if they write a column you don’t like.”

To circumvent the legal system when establishing crime and punishment and to condone vigilante justice in its stead is to transfer power to whomever has the greatest capacity for violence.

Dangerous precedents

Failing to draw the line at violence not made in self defense sets a dangerous precedent. By cheering and glorifying this masked sucker puncher, we create new would-be “heroes.” What happens next time when Richard Spencer is walking with a few of his White national buddies, and a group of people armed with masks, cell phone cameras, and internet fame on the mind come with clenched fists to #PunchYourLocalNazi?

What will be the consequences when someone draws a knife? Do you really think none of these White nationals exercise their Second Amendment rights? What happens when a someone with a credible claim to self defense unholsters a gun? How will we feel when three people lie bleeding on the ground, one of whom was just some bloke walking to the grocery? What would happen in cities across the United States if a White national who shot an ethnic minority was let off by a judge because they have a black eye and viral Twitter video that is ruled sufficient evidence that they were defending themselves from assault? What if there is no video the second time, only the conflicting accounts of unreliable witnesses?

So you’re a pacifist?

This article’s tone might imply that violence is wrong in all circumstances other than self defense against direct and imminent physical threats. In other words, that violence is an unacceptable tool for political change.

It’s far easier to write an article about why a single specific act of violence is wrong than to give a detailed and water-tight account for exactly when and where violence is acceptable. Most Americans would acknowledge that violent revolution has led to good outcomes in the past, including in the liberation of their own country. And while there is at least some literature that suggests peaceful revolution leads to better and more durable positive outcomes, one cannot deny the power in violence to change society, and I am unwilling to completely write it off as a tool for change.

But if you want me to condone an act of political violence, you’re going to have to do better than sucker punching Richard Spencer and running away. A decent start would be a set of clear policy demands, a target that can deliver those demands, an initial non-violent attempt to get those concessions, and taking off the mask. Spontaneous unaccountable violence is worse than unproductive. It is escalatory.

Conclusion

As the son of a Vietnamese immigrant and White American, it wouldn’t have been that long ago that many would have considered my parents’ relationship obscene. Go back a little farther and a majority may have found it offensive. Terrifying. Unnatural. And they might have gotten away with expressing that violently. It’s easy to look back on that world and be glad we’ve moved past it, but it’s much harder to know how the people of the not too distant future will look back on us. What will we outgrow that seems normal now but will seem barbaric to our better selves? How will the history students of 2117 judge your Twitter feed?

How will the history students of 2117 judge your Twitter feed?

I am by no means suggesting that White nationalism is simply ahead of its time and that in mere decades we will be ashamed of how we feel about Richard Spencer. The point is that a consensus on the non-negotiability of freedom of expression, and an agreement that the one who throws the first punch is in the wrong is what protects all of us. And this is most important for the most offensive, most disgusting, most hated, and sometimes most vulnerable members of our society. The half-breeds, the heretics, the radicals, the degenerates.

Spencer insists that he is not a Neo-Nazi, but to get bogged down in that discussion is to miss the point. There’s no easy way to say this, but the fact is that it’s legal to be a Neo-Nazi in this country. It’s legal to call someone a nigger or cunt for no reason other than hating how they were born. And it’s good that these rights are protected by the law. It doesn’t matter if the speech he gave in the video at the top of this page was done in an S.S. Uniform with a Hitler ‘stache Sharpied on his upper lip.

You don’t need to be sad that Richard Spencer was punched. If you own a restaurant, you don’t have to offer him your service. If you’re Jack Dorsey, you don’t have to give him a Twitter account. You don’t even have to like this article. You just can’t punch me for writing it.