You know what happened the last time we were up against Nazis? We murdered those motherfuckers, and the ones we didn't we threw in irons.
Right, because Nazism and white supremacy didn't exist until this weekend post-WW2, right? /s
You think there weren't people speaking out against Hitler?
What? Did I claim that or did you invent it out of a lacking counterpoint? I did not even mention Hitler. o.0
You think there wasn't an alternative? You think the reason Hitler and the Nazis' hateful ideology won out was simply that they put up a better argument?
No, it was because force and coercion was used to psychologically condition a populace in such a way as to incentivize isolating minority groups via scapegoating. That has nothing to do with what I said though. What I said was that blindly and ignorantly responding with more violence does not help the anti-Neo Nazi movement, it does the exact opposite by making both sides appear to be on equal footing to ignorant audiences who only see the conflict as 'kale eating liberal hippies vs good ole southern boys'.
Those audiences then respond by either ignoring the conflict entirely or they hear the dog whistles from the right and side with them without knowing any better. You need to tip them your way instead. They will not care about your message until you can get the audience to redefine their tribe to include the aggrieved first. THEN they might care. You have an uphill battle in this regard from the outset since most folks in the middle don't have the luxury of being informed on nuanced topics and the right thrives on this ignorance by sewing distrust of academia. Further, statistically most in the middle are already white, lower middle class folks. Right wing messaging naturally caters to the lower/middle class aspect since the alt-right's ideology is built on racial resentment premised on economic fears, so they have their talking points hones to a fine point already. The fact that the audience is mainly white means there are already social/racial bubbles that overlap with the Neo Nazis.
In other words, folks in the middle are ALREADY predisposed to tilt towards the alt-right so long as it can disguise its Neo Nazi foundation. Your (our) side needs to first make the audience in the middle re-draw its tribal boundaries to favor us and make them receptive to our message and THEN they can be positioned to empathize and align their views. By meeting the Neo Nazis with idiotic violence (like some moron randomly punching Spencer in the face), we alienate ppl who we should be easily converting to align with us. Sure, it feels great to see Spencer or his ilk get clobbered, but it feels way worse when the narrative gets turned on its head and suddenly we have to find ways of defending assaulting someone for their expression of free speech.
Historical Case Study: Malcolm X did not 'win' even though he fought physically and violently to defend himself. MLK 'won' by doing the exact opposite because he first conditioned ppl to erase the boundaries in their social circles and re-dreaw them in his favor (by appealing to their religious views) and THEN he offered up reasons for his audience to empathize. If your message is 'our rights are being trampled', then letting audiences see that with their own eyes is all the messaging ya need. If the *other side's message* is 'they are violent anti-American uppity black criminals coming to take something from you', then the approach Malcolm X took is antithetical to his success. Hence we celebrate MLK's birthday and not Malcolm X's. MLK's approval went from mid-teens or low 20's up to above 90% due to his tactics.
The implication is horrifying, but only as much as the truth - treat this ideology as worthy of consideration and debate and they will gain followers, and they will eventually overtake you. Just look at Trump.
Ideological battle rarely has anything to do with convincing the other side. It's a battle over the folks in between that matters. They have little or no ideology and only pay attention briefly so you need to make a good, intelligent first impression. You need to stand back and let the Neo Nazi right alienate them and make sure the audience is conditioned to be receptive to your views. Mindlessly flailing around with more violence does not serve a purpose other than to make you vent and feel better.
I'm not about to advocate that we start literally killing Nazis, but fuuuuuuck no I will not start talking to them. If they want to recognize the error of their ways they have to sort that out for themselves first. We have too much shit to do to concern ourselves about reaching out to the poor white supremacists.
Talking to whom? I never suggested we reach out to try convincing Neo Nazis et al that they are wrong. Read first, and then reply please.