Stop calling these thugs Nazis.
Just stop it. They aren’t Nazis, they’re pretenders. They’re supplicants and sycophants of hatred, pretenders to righteousness, liars and thugs, they are the face of everything abhorrent about society, reveled in ignorance.
They are vile, they are failures of our better angels, they emblematic of all the failures of the American dream. But they are not Nazis.
If you haven’t watched Vice New’s powerful, incredibly important report from Elle Reeve (@elspethreeve) embedded with Cantwell and his Radical Agenda group , I strongly encourage you to.
HBO has made it available to us free here.
Listen to rhetoric for as long as you can stomach him. Listen to him claim that he will, and this is a direct quote, “…fucking kill these people if we have to.” Listen to him after the murder of Heather Heyer as he celebrates the death as a win, ““I’d say it was worth it, the fact that nobody on our side died, I’d go ahead and call that points for us…I think a lot more people are going to die here…”
Watch him as he removes many, many weapons from his person and proudly flaunts his capacity for violence and murder to a visibly shaken Reeve. This is the face the Alt Right wants you to remember, but let’s look at who Chris Cantwell, noted White Supremacist really is:
This is what they are, personified in the face of Chris Cantwell, noted White Supremacist, cowered in fear at the idea of being treated like Americans, subject to rule of law.
This is also who he is, screaming and wailing after being maced.
“We are going to fucking kill them.” someone says to him as he writhed on the ground, “I promise you, we’re going to fucking kill them.”
Now, I’m going to break one of my own rules here and mention myself. I’ve been maced in a protest. I’ve been pepper sprayed by police while wearing visible Press credentials, I’ve been maced by Black Bloc anarchists for the same reason. Unpleasant is not an adequate descriptor, to say the very least.
To speak in language that would offend Chris Cantwell, noted White Supremacist: I’ve literally, with my own eyes, seen little girls take that particular violence with more balls than him.
I’ve seen violence first hand. In 2013, I came within millimeters of a kill stab to my left leg, puncturing my femoral artery, which I still walk with a limp from. I’ve been shot with rubber bullets, and I’ve been shot at with live bullets. I’ve experienced violence first hand and I’ve known violent men. Chris Cantwell, noted White Supremacist and his ilk, are cowards and pretenders.
However, that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. A frightened cornered house cat is more dangerous than a docile lion. Fear makes animals unpredictable and they must be stopped, and Chris Cantwell, noted White Supremacist, is terrified.
But here’s why I won’t say that he is a Nazi:
I will not allow for the legitimizing of their fetishization of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich to empower them. I don’t care about “hurting their feelings” or about unfairly labeling unmasked worshipers of hatred. I have no fear of their retribution, or no interest in allowing them to cower behind the First Amendment. I proudly name them enemy.
But they are not Nazis. They are the American Radical Right, they are every bit the terrorist organizations they claim they want to protect us from. They are cowards and thugs, hiding under the Fuhrer’s bedskirts. They are ignorant to history, to science and to fact. They are the Alt Right, Neo-Nazis, the White Nationalists and the White Supremacists, they are the MAGA movement, the Birther movement. They are Identity Evropa and the Aryan Nation, and they are the Family Research Institute.
Divided they are nothing, nobodies, losers and traitors, while uniting them under the label of National Socialism emboldens and empowers them, legitimizing their cause under a single banner.
I reject any aide to America’s enemies and you should too.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
” They’re supplicants and sycophants of hatred, pretenders to righteousness, liars and thugs, they are the face of everything abhorrent about society, reveled in ignorance.”
And you are an emotionally juvenile child.
Refusing or not, for whatever reason, they are nazis. By calling them that we don’t give them strenth. They are allready networked with eachother. For example last year the founder of the Traditionalist Workers Party visited Greece as a guest of the nazi (not neonazi) Golden Dawn, and before the Charlottesville rally the GD website had an extensive article on him. He is not the only American nazi that is connected with them. They are connected, they are strong (not sure about numbers but they have money) and we need to act, globally
They should do what CPUSA does and fly under the radar and sugar-coat their hatred with socially acceptable sounding rhetoric.