Punching Up, Punching Down, Punching All Around

Jesse Ewiak in reply to Tod Kelly says:

First of all, I don’t care what Sean Hannity says, @tod-kelly. But, I do care that yes, the Right can help distort the views of people. That’s how we ended up with nearly three decades of liberals being seen as limp writed sissies who hated America by not just conservatives, but the median voter. It’s why BIll Clinton had to kill a mentally ill person, slam an obscure black rapper, and promise to make sure no black woman with kids ever got too much in welfare.

To show we weren’t wimps.

So, if the choice is either spend it like the years 1984-2004, where we sat in a corner asking the Republican’s to stop hitting us or for the Republican’s to be showing videos of scary liberals punching abhorrent people, I’ll take the latter.

Secondly, I think this is the real disagreement. You think Richard Spencer has no power. If somebody punched Richard Spencer ten years ago, I’d largely agree with you. I might still argue the only good Nazi is a punched Nazi, but I’d understand your argument.

But, in a world where Steve Bannon is the lead adviser to the President, to act like the racist right isn’t in ascendance makes you sound like a character from an updated version of It Can’t Happen Here.

All right though, I’m a terrible, horrible person who is helping Donald Trump win a 2nd term for being OK with Richard Spencer getting punched. By the way, I never said it should be Legal to punch a Nazi. I simply said it’s always Right to punch a Nazi. I fully support the person to punch a Nazi to get a jury of his peers so everybody can know he punched a Nazi.

However, I have a simple question for you and @stillwater, how big does the alt-right/white nationalist/whatever nice name we’re using for Nazi movement have to be before punching does become OK?

For example, take this story – https://louisproyect.org/2015/03/16/the-mighty-atom/

“Shortly after a huge Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in February, 1939, the Mighty Atom found himself walking through Manhattan’s Yorkville German section on a business matter. He stopped in his tracks at a sign in bold letters posted on a building’s second floor: “NO DOGS OR JEWS ALLOWED!”

He stared at it for a while before inquiring of a passerby, “What the hell is that?” He was informed that a Nazi Bund meeting was being conducted upstairs. He went across the street to a paint store, where with a three-dollar deposit, he rented an 18-foot ladder. Back he came and opened it beneath the sign. Returning across the street, this time to a sporting-goods store, he purchased a Louisville slugger baseball bat—a “Hank Greenberg Model.” He parked it in the doorway beneath the sign.

He went up the ladder, tore the sign down, and tossed it into the gutter. The operation had not gone unnoticed. Several of the Nazis looked out aghast from the second-floor window. The action which followed was in the best tradition of a Popeye cartoon. Before the Atom could climb down from his high perch, the entire Bund assembly had come charging down the stairs into the street.

The Mighty Atom was shaken off his ladder, but he came up bat in hand. They came at him singly and in numbers, frontally and encircling; all to no avail. “It wasn’t a fight,” Joe said later, “it was a pleasure.” He sent eighteen of them to the hospital in various stages of extreme disrepair. He sustained a black eye.

Hauled into court on a charge of aggravated assault, mass mayhem, and so forth, a bedraggled but surprisingly cheerful Joe Greenstein stood meekly and alone before the bench, his only compatriot the “mouse” under his eye. A white-haired judge looked solemnly down as the charge was read. The jurist could hardly believe that the mild, little man before him could have perpetrated such an assault. Then, he surveyed the victims before him, a veritable parade of broken joints, purple contusions, and awkwardly plastered and wired limbs. The battered Aryans filled half the courtroom.

“You mean this little man . . . did that . . . to all of them?” the judge inquired in disbelief.

“Yes, Your Honor,” nodded an eyewitness police sergeant. “Them that ain’t still in the hospital.”

The judge turned his attention to the defendant. “Mr. Greenstein, these are serious charges. Do you have anything to say?”

“Yessir, Judge.” The Atom brightened. “Every time I swung the bat it was a home run!”

Quietly, the judge inquired of the sergeant what had provoked such a clash. “Them’re Nazis, Your Honor,” the officer whispered. “They went after him.”

“NOT GUILTY! CASE DISMISSED!” The judge banged his gavel.

“But, Your Honor . . .” the Bund’s lawyer protested. “I said, case dismissed.” The gavel boomed again with finality, and the judge retired to his chambers.”

Now, obviously, in hindsight, we can say that was the right thing to do, because ya’ know, actual Nazi’s. But, if the same story comes out in 2018 when the alt-right/etc. shows no signs of dissapating and is only growing with a wink and nod from the modern conservative moment, are you going to tut tut the guy who beats up a meeting for the “White Nationalist Society” that has a sign outside that says No Blacks or Gays?

I just want to know the number where Nazi’s go from side group of no consequence to actual problem for future reference. Because obviously, to you, 200 or so people at a conference center in DC is too little. I’d hope you think the 20,000 that filled MSG for the German American Bund was too many. I’m just looking for the number in the middle.Report