A little less than a year ago, liberals everywhere celebrated the assault of neo-Nazi soy boy Richard Spencer on the streets of Washington, D.C. Spencer was there for Trump’s inauguration, and as he was being interviewed by a reporter, an unknown member of Antifa ran up and punched him in the face.
[WARNING: The following video shows a man being punched in the face. If you don’t want to see a man being punched in the face, don’t click on the following video.]
Richard Spencer is a nobody with a minuscule following, yet a lot of libs have insisted on elevating his profile because they think it hurts Trump. They want you to believe that all Trump voters are like him, so they thought it was great that he got clobbered on camera.
I don’t like Spencer, and all that alt-right MAGA frog crap makes me nauseous, but that masked Antifa coward was both morally wrong and tactically stupid to attack him. It’s wrong to hit people for saying things you don’t like, and it’s dumb to turn a Nazi wannabe into a free speech martyr by using violence against him.
If Richard Spencer is trying to shove you into a boxcar to Treblinka, by all means, defend yourself. But if he’s just standing on a street corner, being a flabby nonentity pretending he’s the return of the Master Race, leave him alone. He’s literally not hurting anybody. He’s pathetic. He’s nothing.
A year ago, a lot of people who should know better were saying some really stupid things about this attack. Here’s one perfect example:
As American as apple pie. pic.twitter.com/WQ4z2UgWts
— Gerry Duggan (@GerryDuggan) January 21, 2017
That’s right: Some fictional tough guys beat up some fictional Nazis in some works of fiction, and that means it’s okay to run around beating up unsightly nerds as they give interviews about their stupid Pepe pins.
But after these vigilante fanboys got done exchanging high fives and hashtagging #PunchNazis, they didn’t have a good answer when I asked why this isn’t okay:
Indiana Jones punched Nazis, but he also shot Muslims in the middle of the street. If one is acceptable behavior, why isn’t the other?
I don’t think either one is acceptable. Somehow, that makes me both a racist and a Nazi sympathizer.
All of which leads me to a similar incident earlier this week, involving another scumbucket being assaulted by another member of the public. Here’s Harvey Weinstein trying to leave a restaurant in Arizona and being confronted by a fellow patron:
[WARNING: Bad words.]
This was initially billed as “Weinstein Gets Punched,” but the guy barely gave him a slap. It was more of a pestering than a punching. The dude might as well have knocked Weinstein’s hat off, or given him a Wet Willie.
Still, I’ll admit that I got a momentary visceral thrill as I watched this creep being inconvenienced when he dared to go out in public. “Well, he had it comin’,” I thought. “Somebody finally did something.”
Then I checked myself before I wrecked myself, because that gut reaction is not something to be celebrated. We shouldn’t be encouraging this behavior. In the parlance of the social justice warrior: This is not okay. Don’t normalize it.
Because one day, that could be you. If you do or say something that somebody else doesn’t like, you could find yourself the target of an outrage mob. You could be doxed, or stalked, or even physically attacked by somebody you’ve never met in your life.
And it won’t matter whether you deserve it or not. Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.
Whether it’s tormenting FCC chairman Ajit Pai or taking a stand against “$#!++y Media Men,” taking matters into our own hands rarely works out well for anybody. The primal urge to see a hated enemy being punished is inside all of us, but it’s no way to run a society.
Don’t hit. Calm down.
Please.
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