I saw the video in this diary: www.dailykos.com/…
At the end of an otherwise very funny Weekend Update skit Tina Fey says, of any future Nazi rallies, “Don’t show up. Let them scream into the empty air.”
When she said there should have been that tv sound effect there of breaking glass, screeching tires, a machine gone haywire….WTF?
This is wrong for a couple of reasons:
1. While the organizers of the Nazi/Klan rallies welcomed people “showing up”, hoping for violent conflict, they’re also happy to control public spaces unchallenged. Imagine if that torchlight parade had occurred without challenge. The Klan used to march in the tens of thousands in this country. Pretend to ignore that. To paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in white supremacist rallies, but they are interested in YOU. If they find themselves shouting into empty air, they’ll proceed to find venues that offer more resistance. And, as the commenter below points out, some of that “empty air” they’re already shouting into is the airwaves, the media. This has been effective. The best tactic is to dismantle their monuments, but that is necessarily going to be accompanied by counter-protesting when they do “show up” to defend them.
2. Telling people “don’t show up” is disrespectful to the people who did show up in Charlottesville. Those people showed physical courage in showing up and one, Heather Heyer, died doing it. I’m trying to muster the same courage to show up when they come again. Every protest movement will face the potential for one of its participants being violent. And every protest movement facing an undemocratic regime will have to reckon with government provocateurs. You think our government didn’t try to sow the Civil Rights movement with violent saboteurs? Another tactic undemocratic regimes will do is to amp up the violence to produce militant opposition. They then kill civilians to draw out the fighters. To wit: “Bloody Sunday”. Or “Braveheart”, for that matter.
I think most participants at political websites get irritated with prescriptions of what they should be concerned about and how they should behave. Is Antifa to be condemned or tolerated? Why is no one condemning Islamic terror? Why are you writing about this-or-that when we are faced with global warming? Or vice-versa. Tina Fey offered one of those prescriptions for behavior that went beyond irritating; it was obtuse and offensive.
Thank you for your comments and constructive criticism. I’ve added two of my responses to the main body of this post. I hope that’s not against the rules, or simply gauche.