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| Pretend Zack Sabre, Jr's opponent here is fascism, and you'll know the best way to deal with it Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Nazis and White supremacists and other scum and villainy have oozed to the surface of modern society. They've crept to the forefront because Donald Trump's "leadership" has allowed it to do so. Even though he's purged one White supremacist influence from his White House, Steve Bannon, and is thinking about banishing an actual former member of a Hungarian Nazi group in Sebastian Gorka, Trump's naked denial of blaming these warts on the ass of humanity for their ills and continuing to send them smoke signals that it's okay to operate in America continues unabated. Even as he shifts from Breitbart/InfoWars-informed hysterically fascist to a more neoconservative view of running the ship, he opened the tube of toothpaste and squeezed it all onto the counter. These asswipes are out in the open and they're not going back into hiding so easily.
So how do you get rid of a Nazi? How do you make them afraid to show their faces in public again? Well, some neoliberal slacktivists and Hollywood ignoramuses like Tina Fey suggest doing nothing, ignoring their fascist asses so that they go away when no one is there to pay any attention. That strategy is not only lazy, but it's ineffective because it assumes the problem is only contained to all-talk, no-action anime avatars who quote Mein Kampf behind anonymity on social media. Even if those were the only Nazis around, they're still online, harassing women and minorities, making their experience less than safe.
No, the real Nazis are the people parading in Charlottesville, VA with tiki torches at best and in full fatigues with semiautomatic guns at worst. They don't care if you stay at home or not. Hell, they're planning on it. Adolf Hitler himself knew that Nazi Germany only arose thanks to the apathy from the establishment during his rise to power. He said, "Only one danger could have jeopardised this development; if our adversaries had understood its principle... [and] had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement." Hitler knew that if he'd been met with resistance, real resistance, his party would've folded, or at the very least become a part of post-war German society and not the only component. Thankfully, antifa1, short for antifascists, realize this and showed up in Charlottesville. The actions of those rallying under this banner, several different groups and unaffiliated persons, saved lives. Their actions in Boston drowned out people rallying for "free speech" for hate groups.
Direct action against evil works, and honestly, I can't believe people in pro wrestling fandom don't see that. Wrestling is conflict that draws from reality, even if it's kayfabed into being nothing more than a stage show on, pardon the pun, steroids. However, the lessons it teaches are that you cannot put down a threat by doing less than what it's promising to do if left unabated. You have to meet that threat with equal or escalated force in order to put it down. Wrestling is built on that principle that direct action works, and wrestling is at its best when it draws from reality. Furthermore, in the process of meeting threats with direct action, in the best told stories, escalation into gimmick matches always is built around dealing with specific threats. Rampant interference leads to steel cages. Unbridled thirst for violence leads to street fights. I don't know what leads to a TLC match, but hey, no one ever accused WWE of being the company with the best told stories. But I digress.
The notion that evil can be met with logic and reason and a magic version of "peace" that doesn't reply on hitting people back when they first attack2 is laughable. Mainstream wrestling companies warn you not to try "this" at home, but honestly, while that's good advice for mimicking wrestling matches outside of a trained or safe3 setting, you should definitely adopt the lessons from wrestling stories to heart, with discretion, of course. I wouldn't say that acting like a modern WWE "babyface" is good because most good guys in WWE are awful people, thanks to Vince McMahon's antisocial and fash-leaning filter he puts on his stories. But you definitely need to hit violence with force. Direct action works to dissuade evil from growing, because bullies are greedy cowards who scatter when they get hit in the mouth by those who would rather not have their meager place in society swiped from them.
1 - Antifa is not a group. Antifa only means you're antifascist. You cannot have antifa movements without fascists, dummies.
2 - Believe me, these goons and ghouls hit first, they always do, even if it's under the cover of night with the protection of the authorities. Just because they've just been granted release to be out in the open doesn't mean they haven't been assaulting vulnerable peoples for decades, even centuries now.
3 - I do believe that some people can self-train to be a wrestler. It's just not the path I'd recommend or say has the best success rate, y'know?