Before their recent transformation, the Seattle Weekly ran an editorial titled âDonât Punch NazisâYet,â arguing that we have not reached a place where violence is an answer to fascismââyet.â [Eds. Note: The Seattle Weekly is/was the Seattle equivalent of the Mercuryâs sworn enemy, Zippity News.]Â Citing vehicular homicide in Charlottesville, throat-slitting on passenger trains in Portland, and gunshots on the University of Washingtonâs Red Square, others argue, as Primo Levi once wroteâand Incubus once sangâSeattle Weekly, if not now, when?
The debate about punching Nazis isnât new, as Mark Bray explains in Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. The âhandbook,â which is really more of a textbook, describes how older Jews in the mid-1930s often criticized younger Jewish anti-fascist organizers who were âcopying the Nazi violence which we loathe and detest.â Their criticism did little to prevent the rising tide of fascism and the ensuing genocide. Our way of remembering this period, unfortunately, appears to be repeating this dead-end debate.
If weâre going to keep this up, can we at least start talking about, as one organizer tabulated, âthe 97 percent of anti-fascist activity that doesnât involve a violent confrontationâ?
Brayâs Antifa is a good place to start. The handbook offers readers their first âtransnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English,â and, according to Bray, their most comprehensive. When reading, itâs quickly clear that violence is a final tactic treated as self-defense, and itâs something antifa organizations quibble over, too. Reducing the entire range of anti-fascist activityâwhich is overwhelmingly nonviolentâto the question of a punch is far more dangerous than a fistfight.
When we focus on punching Nazis, we fail to celebrate nonviolent anti-racist organizing (which always was anti-fascist, according to historian Robert Paxton, who argues that fascism âfunctionallyâ originates in America with the KKK); to laud the activists who convince private venues to reject white supremacist clients; and to think about the implications of doxxing white supremacists.
As he lectures on the history of European postwar antifa up to todayâs antifa organizers in the Pacific Northwest, Bray touches on some of these things, as well as anti-Nazi punks, Italian feminist witches, and how the alt-right recruits dudes who like My Little Pony. (Seriously.) The latter half of the book reads like a Jehovahâs Witnesses pamphlet, but instead of offering a Q&A about eternal salvation, Bray poses and answers questions such as âAre Anti-Fascists Anti-Free Speech?â (His short answer: Fascists arenât entitled to free speech, so nah nah nah.)
Itâs unclear if Seattle Weekly will be able to update their âdonât punch Nazisâ stance. That paper, as weâve known it, is now dead. But while we mull over the precise moment when âdonâtâ becomes âdo,â Antifa urges people to organize against fascism before it organizes against us.
Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
by Mark Bray
(Melville House)