I’ve read it. I’ve also read Hannah Arendt, Umberto Eco, and other scholars of fascism.

But if you’re just going to assume my criticism of fascism is based on a fiction series made by Disney of all fucking companies, then I’m not going to waste my time discussing these things with you.

When I got banned from reddit for saying we should normalize punching nazis, it was from before this regime took hold, when it was still a foreboding storm cloud on the horizon. It was maybe 2023 or 2024, when an innocent black man was beaten to death by cops, and a photograph circulated of a dude who wore a nazi armband to the man’s funeral.

I’m sorry, but if you think the appropriate response to that is anything other than to use physical force to chase him away and teach him never to pull that shit again out of fear for what will happen to him, then I just can’t agree with you.

The Allies in WWII didn’t defeat the nazis by being nice. I recognize the situation isn’t comparable, because there’s no coalition of global superpowers capable and willing to depose the current regime in the US, and no ragtag band of rebels has the resources or backing, let alone the organization or the experience, that it would take to stand against the government, and any escalation would spell disaster for the last remnants of hope there are for an electoral offramp from this madness. But that’s simply not the context that I was posting in.

Feel free keep handling fascists with kiddie gloves, but that treatment is what enabled them to seize power in the first place. Not because people were treating them too harshly. Neville Chamberlain would like a word…