My grandfather was a generally peaceful man. He was a gardener, an EMT, a town selectman, and an all around fantastic person. He would give a friend - or a stranger - the shirt off his back if someone needed it. He also taught me some of the most important lessons I ever learned about violence, and why it needs to exist.
When I was five, my grandfather and grandmother discovered that my rear end and lower back were covered in purple striped bruises and wheals. They asked me why, and I told them that Tom, who was at that time my stepfather, had punished me. I don’t remember what he was punishing me for, but I remember the looks on their faces.
When my mother and stepfather arrived, my grandmother took my mother into the other room. Then my grandfather took my stepfather into the hallway. He was out of my eye line, but I saw through the crack in the door on the hinge side. He slammed my stepfather against the wall so hard that the sheet rock buckled, and told him in low terms that if he ever touched me again they would never find his body.
I absolutely believed that he would kill my stepfather, and I also believed that someone in the world thought my safety was worth killing for.
In the next few years, he gave me a few important tips and pointers for dealing with abusers and bullies. He taught me that if someone is bringing violence to you, give it back to them as harshly as you can so they know that the only response they get is pain. He taught me that guns are used as scare tactics, and if you aren’t willing to accept responsibility for mortally wounding someone, you should never own one. He told me that if I ever had a gun aimed at me, I should accept the possibility of being shot and rush the person, or run away in a zig-zag so they couldn’t pick me off. He taught me how to break someone’s knee, how to hold a knife, and how to tell if someone is holding a gun with intent to kill. He was absolutely right, and he was one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever met. He was never, to my knowledge, violent with anyone who didn’t threaten him or his family. Even those who had, he gave chances to, like my first stepfather.
When I was fourteen, a friend of mine was stalked by a mutual acquaintance. I was by far younger than anyone else in the social crowd; he was in his mid twenties, and the object of his “affection” was as well. Years before we had a term for “Nice Guy” bullshit, he did it all. He showed up at her house, he noted her comings and goings, he observed who she spent time with, and claimed that her niceness toward him was a sign that they were actually in a relationship.
This came to a head at a LARP event at the old NERO Ware site. He had been following her around, and felt that I was responsible for increased pressure from our mutual friends to leave her alone. He confronted me, her, and a handful of other friends in a private room and demanded that we stop saying nasty things about him. Two of our mutual friends countered and demanded that he leave the woman he was stalking alone.
Stalker-man threw a punch. Now, he said in the aftermath that he was aiming for the man who had confronted him, but he was looking at me when he did it. He had identified me as the agent of his problems and the person who had “turned everyone against him.” His eyes were on mine when the punch landed. He hit me hard enough to knock me clean off my feet and I slammed my head into a steel bedpost on the way down.
When I shook off the stunned confusion, I saw that two of our friends had tackled him. I learned that one had immediately grabbed him, and the other had rabbit-punched him in the face. I had a black eye around one eyebrow and inner socket, and he was bleeding from his lip.
At that time in my life, unbeknownst to anyone in the room, I was struggling with the fact that I had been molested repeatedly by someone who my mother had recently broken up with. He was gone, but I felt conflicted and worthless and in pain. I was still struggling, but I knew in that moment that I had a friend in the world who rabbit-punched a man for hitting me, and I felt a little more whole.
Later that year, I was bullied by a girl in my school. She took special joy in tormenting me during class, in attacking me in the hallways, in spreading lies and asserting things about me that were made up. She began following me to my locker, and while I watched the clock tick down, she would wait for me to open it and try to slam my hand in it. She succeeded a few times. I attempted to talk to counselors and teachers. No one did anything. Talking to them made it worse, since they turned and talked to her and she called me a “tattle” for doing it. I followed the system, and it didn’t work.
I remembered my friend socking someone in the face when he hit me. I recalled what my grandfather had taught me, and decided that the next time she tried, I would make sure it was the last. I slammed the door into her face, then shut her head in the base of my locker, warping the aluminum so badly that my locker no longer worked. She never bothered me again.
Violence is always a potential answer to a problem. I believe it should be a last answer - everything my grandfather taught me before his death last year had focused on that. He hadn’t built a bully or taught me to seek out violence; he taught me how to respond to it.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk recently about how, after the recent Nazi-punching incident, we are in more danger because they will escalate. That we will now see more violence and be under more threat because of it. I reject that. We are already under threat. We are already being attacked. We are being stripped of our rights, we are seeing our loved ones and our family reduced to “barely human” or equated with monsters because they are different.
To say that we are at more risk now than we were before a Nazi got punched in the face is to claim that abusers only hurt you if you fight back. Nazis didn’t need a reason to want to hurt people whom they have already called inhuman, base, monsters, thugs, retards, worthless, damaging to the gene pool, and worthy only of being removed from the world. They were already on board. The only difference that comes from fighting back is the intimate knowledge that we will not put up with their shit.
And I’m just fine with that.
(via johanirae)
In light of the great Nazi punching meme going around right now, I want to remind everyone that the people who were filmed socking Richard Spencer were members of AntiFa or another organization aligned with AntiFa. They were dressed the way they were to obscure their identity and were trained, prepared, etc. to risk and face arrest, pepper spray, violent police force etc. They weren’t just any random person.
We all should want to rearrange a Nazi face but please remember that AntiFa resistance is trained to take these actions while protecting themselves and others from law enforcement. The best thing many of us can do is to support and assist these people: by not identifying them, by not implicating them, by covering their movements and not putting ourselves or others at-risk while they are working.
Punch a Nazi today, but recognize that AntiFa and aligned organizations might fight for everybody but they don’t go into these situations as everypeople. A clear understanding of their actions, goals, and the risks of their work is paramount to their safety and success.
thank AntiFa for their hard work and commitment today by donating their legal defense fund
(via skymurdock)
(Source: chinesekleptocracy, via lathori)
-random applause that eventually encompasses the entire cafeteria
-skipping classes to go to your friend’s lunch periods
-”come with me i dont wanna go alone”
-not knowing who you’re singing happy birthday for
-“hey if i pay you will you go through the line and get me something”
-knowing your id number so you can actually eat
-only wearing your id during lunch period
-that ONE security guard
-”what’s even for lunch today”
-HOLY FUCK IT’S CHICKEN NUGGET DAY
-those girls who chill in the bathroom doing their makeup
-fights = dinner AND a show
-”hey what lunch do you have this year” “b” “damn i’m in c”What the fuck does any of this mean why is there a security guard in your school what
America, you ok?
No, we’re not okay. What do you mean you don’t have security guards in your schools other countries? We don’t even just have security guards, sometimes we have actual fucking police officers.
U gotta go through a metal detector to enter the building in a lot of public schools
And yet many kids carry weapons in their pockets or purses to keep safe.
In my hs a girl brought in a can of pepper spray in her panties behind a belt cause she had been threatened to be attacked (i know cause she was attacked and sprayed the whole dam hallway, during lunch actually). Also culinary kids were allowed knives in their bags.
(via littlestartopaz)
“I understand there’s been some confusion online as to whether it’s ever right to punch a Nazi in the face. There is a compelling argument that all speech is equal and we should trust to the discourse to reveal these ideas for what they are and confidently expect them to be denounced and crushed out by the mechanisms of democracy and freedom.
All I can tell you is, from my perspective as an old English socialist and cultural liberal who is probably way to the woolly left from most of you and actually has a medal for services to free speech – yes, it is always correct to punch Nazis. They lost the right to not be punched in the face when they started spouting genocidal ideologies that in living memory killed millions upon millions of people. And anyone who stands up and respectfully applauds their perfect right to say these things should probably also be punched, because they are clearly surplus to human requirements. Nazis do not need a hug. Nazis do not need to be indulged. Their world doesn’t get better until you’ve been removed from it. Your false equivalences mean nothing. Their agenda is always, always, extermination. Nazis need a punch in the face.
(And the argument that such assaults allow Nazis to get more attention doesn’t work so well when they were already going live on a national television network, because this is where we are now. This is how normalised their presence in our culture is.)
Glad we got that cleared up.”
- Warren Ellis, in his latest issue of Orbital Operations, to which you can, and should, subscribe.
SEE A NAZI
SMACK A NAZI
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
[video]
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I was on the phone with my 7-year-old cousin and can i say that i have a newfound respect for him like damn
He has pokemon sun and his team??
Nothing but wishiwashi and incineroar
Like what the fuck
How in the shit
He BEAT THE GAME with this team
5 fish fucks and an angry ass cat
I’m scared of him and his five fish
How??
I asked and all he said was “I believe in them” he’s gonna be the purest badass when he grows up
(via windbladess)
some quality advice right here ^^
(via windbladess)
i want you to understand that the fact people are saying “it’s wrong to punch a nazi” isn’t something that sprang out of nowhere.
this is what happens when we tell minorities that they cannot speak too loud. that kneeling during the national anthem is “disrespectful.” that protests are riots, that any form of civil disobedience is suddenly too much to handle. when we say that anger is “fighting fire with fire,” when we silence the efforts of minorities by poking holes in the manner of protest. this is what happens when we let people believe in ideas like reverse racism, like anti-male discrimination. when the idea that they are losing the upper hand is the same as hurting them.
this is what happens when we humanize nazis in cute documentaries. when we have “talk shows” where each side is “represented” and one side shouts down the other. this is what happens when we say that the true way to protest is silent, to “just take the high road”. when we treat inhumanity and cruelty as just another “opinion.”
we understand when captain america punches nazis without asking if they’re really just “misunderstood.” we know instinctively, like him, that they’re bad. but for some reason there’s this horror when real people become as violent as real nazis. how awful we are! “lowering” ourselves! we’re just as bad!
this is a vicious cycle of silencing and gaslighting. that feeling that you get when someone says “when you’re mean to the other side, you’re just like them,” that’s what it feels like to be gaslighted. that nausea, that unfairness you feel crawling up your throat. that’s when you refuse to shake hands with your bully and being told by your teachers that you’re just as bad as he is.
it’s bullshit. it’s a lie they tell you so you keep your voice down and your hands still and you don’t make a fuss. it’s a lie so they can ignore you because one person screamed too loud or broke their rules - and one person will always break the rules. it’s the lie that calls feminists militant, it’s the lie that claims black people are thugs and violent, it’s the lie that lets them ignore everything. and if it’s in place, if it’s happening anyway: ignore it. some people need to be punched in the face. i don’t mean there’s no place for discussion. but when someone believes in the eradication of a people based on religion, you punch them in the face. this isn’t a moment for moral relativism, about how two wrongs don’t make a right, about fire with fire, about bullshit. this is me, and my morals, and realizing some things aren’t going to be solved with polite pleas.
listen to me. i’m 5′2″ and if someone gives me the chance, I will punch the ever loving shit out of a nazi.
(Source: inkskinned, via slyrider)