Edelweiss, Edelweiss …

Posted by Sappho on August 14th, 2017 filed in News and Commentary, Race

I meant, this weekend, to talk about the Google memo, following up my earlier posts with a discussion of gender differences and nature/nurture.

Then #Charlottesville happened.

Heather Heyer, paralegal and champion for others, is not the first person to be killed, within the past year, by white supremacists. She joins Army veteran Ricky John Best and Reed College graduate Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, killed for defending a fellow train passenger. There was also the unarmed IWW organizer who was shot and critically wounded outside a Milo Yiannopoulos speech in January. And don’t forget Richard Collins III, the black US Army lieutenant who was stabbed to death in May.

Still, if Charlottesville isn’t a brand new thing, it is an escalation. Neo-Nazis with torches surrounding a church while worshippers, many of them black, were still inside. Neo-Nazis with torches marching to a college campus. Neo-Nazis with helmets, shields, and assault rifles confronting peaceful counter-protesting clergy. A young man “infatuated by Nazis” ramming his car into a crowd of protesters, injuring many and killing Heather Heyer.

This isn’t free speech. Free speech doesn’t show up with its own private militia and start attacking people.

I’ve heard some arguments that this crowd shouldn’t be called Nazis. Some of it is well meant. “Calling them Nazis suggests that they’re foreign to this country,” some say, “but you can’t say #ThisIsNotUs and ignore our own history of violent white supremacy.” “Don’t call them Nazis,” say others, “because you have to face that these are your friends and family.”

But Nazis, too, had friends and family. And I won’t counter bothsidesism and whataboutism with some generalized responsibility for a white supremacist past. I’ll counter it by naming exactly what these white supremacists, here and now, have done and are doing. And if you assemble with torches and an accompanying militia to march, geared up in swastikas and T-shirts with quotes from Hitler, shouting “Blut und Boden” and “Jews will not replace us,” then you’re a Nazi. And, as the granddaughter of a man who died fighting the Axis in WWII, I’m going to name you as such.

Mike Godwin, creator of Godwin’s Law, said today

By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I’m with you.

I’m with him.

Jewish partisan song Shtil di Nakht sung and lyrics.