If someone else has posted about this, pardon me I missed it.
The NYTimes had a great op-ed yesterday by Moises Velasquez-Manoff about how Germans have been effectively dealing with Nazis.
www.nytimes.com/…
The main takeaway is that laughter is stronger than sticks.
While meeting the fascists head-on might be appealing, it’s not the best response.
“I would want to punch a Nazi in the nose, too,” Maria Stephan, a program director at the United States Institute of Peace, told me. “But there’s a difference between a therapeutic and strategic response.”
The problem, she said, is that violence is simply bad strategy.
It just eggs them on:
Violence directed at white nationalists only fuels their narrative of victimhood — of a hounded, soon-to-be-minority who can’t exercise their rights to free speech without getting pummeled. It also probably helps them recruit. And more broadly, if violence against minorities is what you find repugnant in neo-Nazi rhetoric, then “you are using the very force you’re trying to overcome,”
Non-violent protests are simply more effective:
They found that in over 320 conflicts between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent resistance was more than twice as effective as violent resistance in achieving change. And nonviolent struggles were resolved much sooner than violent ones.
To honor fair use, I’ll keep the rest short and make the usual suggestion to read the entire article (link above).
Other take-aways:
- Non-violent protesting in the face of violent protesters requires training. It’s more than just showing up. MLK and crew prepared themselves back in the 60s.
- Be prepared to be beaten. The point is to show that one side if violent and one side is not. If you’re not ready for it, don’t show up.
- You know what they’re going to do. Take advantage of that and take their power away from them. For example, the Germans turned a fascist march into an “involuntary walkathon” and sponsored each participant to fund “a program that helps people leave right-wing extremist groups”. With a sign showing the fascists how much they raised for a program that the fascists would hate.
Overall love trumps hate. And laughter can help get you there:
By undercutting the gravitas white supremacists are trying to accrue, humorous counterprotests may blunt the events’ usefulness for recruitment. Brawling with bandanna-clad antifas may seem romantic to some disaffected young men, but being mocked by clowns? Probably not so much.
Peace. And good luck counter-protesting.
Now, to see if I can get in touch with the local counter-protesters to start an “involuntary walkathon” here.