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.)
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.