When is it better to laugh at Nazis, and when is it better to punch them? When white supremacist Richard Spencer was punched in the face after Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington, DC, earlier this year, such strange ethics were debated.
In the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, one story from Germany emerged as a potential tactic.
In Wunsiedel in Germany, neo-Nazis march annually to the grave of Rudolf Hess. Since 2014, the Bavarian town has used ridicule as a weapon against the neo-Nazis, turning the march into an "involuntary walkathon", with local businesses and residents donating €10 for every metre marched to EXIT Deutschland, a group that helps people leave right-wing extremist groups.
Such responses require a level of coherence and organisation. There is a specific and contained nature to the Rudolf Hess Memorial March in Wunsiedel, as opposed to the unwieldy emergence of a hodgepodge of far-right individuals, groups, and racist movements in Trump’s America, both online and off.
It is almost impossible to police individual responses in emotionally heightened scenarios, such as what happened in Charlottesville.
And an emotional response, seen in the desperation of those trying to shout down the ugly white supremacy that has taken to the streets, is inevitably to fight back by any means necessary.
On Ken Early of Second Captains' excellent podcast last week with Dr Mark Jones, author of Founding Weimar and an expert on the impact of political violence and the growth of fascism, they discussed the complexity of meeting fascist violence with anti-fascist violence.
While many might find countering violence with (generally much more muted) violence emotionally satisfying, it can also allow the far-right to claim victimhood, when they are in fact the original aggressors.
Stance of victims
The immediate response of many white supremacists was to adopt the stance of victims. Some appeared in online videos crying, and talking about how they fear for their safety. Looking for empathy might seem like an odd tactic for those who seem devoid of it, but if people want to manufacture their oppression, then what better way to do so than stoke their own fake victimhood? What better “win” would there be for these (mostly) men, than to martyr one of their own?
We have already seen the American president draw false equivalence between the actions of Nazis, KKK members and white supremacists, and those who are fighting their hate. He is of course wrong, but that “many sides” argument does resonate with people who don’t take to the streets, are apathetic to the issues, or quietly harbour anti-equality sentiments.
We have seen it resonate in terms of the Black Lives Matter rights movement, even though protesting against police brutality is of course nothing equivalent to the racist police brutality that unfolds in America.
How can people contain themselves, and use humour as a weapon? How can people on the sidelines ask those on the frontline to do so? There is no overarching anti-fascist organisation, and Antifa is a collection of autonomous groups globally, and a loose term used to describe those counter-protesting fascist, Nazi, white supremacist – and so on – groups around the world, but primarily in Europe and the United States.
Humour can allow us to avoid confronting a very unfunny reality
The emergence of the racist, anti-Islam far-right movement Pegida, which originated in Dresden and is spreading sporadically across northern Europe, including to Ireland, in conjunction with the anti-immigration group Identity Ireland, has also been met with anti-fascist protestors.
Humour has been a powerful tool in undercutting other right-wing campaigns, such as the widespread ridiculing of Lolek Ltd, aka the Iona Institute’s viral video efforts against marriage equality, which were effortlessly parodied.
Humour has also been widely used as an effective tool against the hate group Westboro Baptist Church, whose protests are met with counter-protests parodying their offensive placards.
Emotional distance
But utilising humour does require a sort of emotional distance, something that is hard to conjure when things are so heightened, and the stakes are so high. We would all like to think we would take the peaceful, detached and calm high ground, but I can’t imagine not being susceptible to meeting violence with a certain level of physicality were such hate as we saw in Charlottesville happening on Irish streets. It’s easy to ask people to come up with jokes, but it’s hard to tell them when things are so serious.
Humour is, however, therapeutic. At pro-choice rallies in Ireland, it is clearly seen in many of the colourful placards and signs. It is a coping mechanism, and a powerful way of defusing situations that are otherwise deadly. But it also runs the risk of undercutting the seriousness of what is unfolding in America right now.
Humour also deflects, and allows us to avoid confronting a very unfunny reality. I’ve seen videos of people with brass instruments drowning out racist marches effectively, but sometimes, we run the risk of portraying things as a laughing stock when they are anything but. Early on in Trump’s election campaign, he was widely ridiculed, laughed at, and not taken seriously. Now look at him.
But when it comes to humour as a weapon, I can't help thinking about how it potentially chimes with that famous Margaret Atwood quote: "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."