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I’m noticing a trend of people thinking this Spencer punch was some random street event?
He was being interviewed by media, I believe Australian news, about his political ideology. This was not just some periscope or YouTube video that got released where the person recording was pretending to engage Spencer as a distraction tactic for someone else to attack him. And the interviewer’s presentation of him during the interview as a mild-mannered intellectual with reasonable ideas that remain unchecked was dangerous as hell, and gave him a recruitment platform.
That punch was literally meant to deny him the ability to keep talking in that moment. To end that interview. To end his recruiting.
Caption: “We have to get serious. We have to get serious about security protection or we can’t have a public movement and if we don’t have a public movement then we are not going to win, period” -Richard Spencer, 22 January 2017, via AltRight.com’s YouTube channel, which I will not link to for obvious reasons.
That punch: Sending the message that hey, you thought it was safe to come out in today’s political climate but we can and will check your ass every time.
“WHY THROW A PUNCH THOUGH? JUST PROTEST HIM” Seems to be the biggest response I’m getting.
In the above referenced video, Spencer discusses how he’s largely ignored those who came before and didn’t take them seriously. He mentions being confronted by protestors, being silly stringed, there being chanters, etcetera at events they’ve hosted and on the streets that they’ve just essentially wrote off as inevitable minor opposition as a result of White Guilt (yes, he actually blames that).
In the above screenshots from his video, as a direct result of the punch, he now says they need to be rethinking the seriousness of their opposition.
After spending this election year getting called essentially a ‘hot white supremacist’ by media including Mother Jones (not kidding), and being presented as a fairly mild mannered intellectual who just has a few “controversial opinions”, Spencer started to feel more comfortable seeing he and those he associates with were received pretty damn favorably by the press and white America/whites worldwide as a result of these pieces, and has made a number of public appearances and speeches in addition to the large blocks of quoted, uneditorialized, interview space he’s been granted.
Because he didn’t feel threatened to go out in public. Because his bigotry was not being checked by those media outlets, and was instead being normalized and disseminated to the masses on both the left and right. Because he viewed protesters as a non threat motivated by white guilt. Because the same coded language him and his buddies use is being echoed by this current administration, which people are replying to criticisms of protests against with “well shut up, he’s president now, get over it” and so he thought he was free.
So why the punch?
Because free speech is not a right from anyone but the government. Because his bigotry needed to be checked and forced back underground and he was not afraid of protestors, of chanters, of those who covered swastika and Pepe graffiti and stickers. Because questioning if an entire group of people are actually human and deserve to be treated as such is *not* a valid question that deserves consideration, despite how many times y'all want to quote Voltaire.
*Screams* anti-fas purpose is NOT to convert neonazis to becoming anti fascists! REREAD THAT STATEMENT TIL YOU GET THAT.
They aren’t interested in being viewed as nice and comforting and reasonable to fascists! Their purpose is to send the message that fascists *won’t* be tolerated!!! That their ideology is not just another legitimate viewpoint that deserves protection and understanding!! That’s why they aren’t tiptoeing around trying to make friends with neo-nazis by having polite conversations!! Thanks!!!!
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