Fight nazis with non-violence

It’s a horrifying fact that our president won his office by courting and fueling white rage. He and his chief policy consultant, Steve Bannon, are heroes to the white nationalists who precipitated murder in Charlottesville last week. To my way of thinking, the blood of the Charlottesville murder is on both of their hands.

It’s despicable that it took the president two days to lay blame for this heinous violence at the feet of ultra-right thugs and their white nationalist ideology. Obviously, tragically, Trump did not want to alienate his base of support. That’s a disgusting thing to consider, but it is true.

For Bannon, white nationalism is not a side project—he has spent years spreading the pernicious lie that America’s true heritage is white and European, and spreading fear that Western civilization is under attack. He made Breitbart “News” into the alt-right movement’s most powerful tool via fear-mongering and hate-mongering. That is precisely why Trump made Bannon his right-hand man. It was Bannon who helped craft Trump’s message of fear and hate, and it was Bannon who helped orchestrate the 2016 Trump rallies that frequently turned violent.

With the sudden ascendance of the alt-right under the Trump/Bannon regime, we now have nazis marching in our streets. And in Charlottesville, as in Sacramento, we witness them facing off against armed and armored anti-fascist foot soldiers.

I understand the Antifa movement’s motivation. There’s a part of me that would love to bash some fascists’ skulls in, too. But that’s not the best part of me. And we need to confront this demonic uprising with our best selves.