MARK BRAY

The question is: What is the relationship between neo-Nazis and their victims? What is the relationship between fascists and the rest of society? Is the goal to create a set of abstract rights that allow them to coexist, or is the goal to struggle against them and prevent them from being able to organize? That’s a fundamental question. It’s a political question that divides civil libertarians from many leftists and anti-fascists.

Speech has never defeated fascism.

I don’t think that scholars and writers can stand on the sidelines when it comes to fascism and Nazism. There is nothing good to be said of them, and they need to be opposed. I didn’t want to simply write a history that would give people a sense of what happened. I wanted to bring the voices of anti-fascists who have been confronting these heinous ideologies, these heinous groups for decades. I wanted to bring their perspectives, their experiences, their outlooks, their successes and failures to readers in a way that encourages them to learn from them and apply some of these lessons to their own struggles against their local neo-Nazis or fascists.

The question of violence needs to be situated historically. So, in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, part of the problem is that, across the political spectrum, many people did not take this threat seriously until it was too late. By not confronting them with their fists, they ended up having to confront them with tanks. And so, today, anti-fascists have drawn the historical lesson that because neo-Nazis and fascists are violent, because they have a documented tendency, not only in the past, but today.

The term "terrorism" usually is used in a way that essentially legitimizes state violence and police violence. Historically, the greatest sources of violence have come from states and have come from their armies and police, but is not labeled terrorism. So, I think, instead of thinking in terms of the sort of seemingly neutral concepts of terrorism or violence or body counts, let’s also think in terms of politics and context.

The Trump administration cannot accept the fact that what they refer to as "terrorism" is predominantly a white nationalist threat in this country. And they cannot accept the fact that their attempts to simply shine that lens onto the groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and therefore implicate Muslim and immigrant communities, is actually, even by their own standards, misguided, in terms of the raw amount of damage and destruction caused through these kinds of unwarranted attacks.

The term "terrorism" usually is used in a way that essentially legitimizes state violence and police violence. Historically, the greatest sources of violence have come from states and have come from their armies and police, but is not labeled terrorism. So, I think, instead of thinking in terms of the sort of seemingly neutral concepts of terrorism or violence or body counts, let’s also think in terms of politics and context.

Speech has never defeated fascism.

The Trump administration cannot accept the fact that what they refer to as "terrorism" is predominantly a white nationalist threat in this country. And they cannot accept the fact that their attempts to simply shine that lens onto the groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and therefore implicate Muslim and immigrant communities, is actually, even by their own standards, misguided, in terms of the raw amount of damage and destruction caused through these kinds of unwarranted attacks.

I don’t think that scholars and writers can stand on the sidelines when it comes to fascism and Nazism. There is nothing good to be said of them, and they need to be opposed. I didn’t want to simply write a history that would give people a sense of what happened. I wanted to bring the voices of anti-fascists who have been confronting these heinous ideologies, these heinous groups for decades. I wanted to bring their perspectives, their experiences, their outlooks, their successes and failures to readers in a way that encourages them to learn from them and apply some of these lessons to their own struggles against their local neo-Nazis or fascists.

The question is: What is the relationship between neo-Nazis and their victims? What is the relationship between fascists and the rest of society? Is the goal to create a set of abstract rights that allow them to coexist, or is the goal to struggle against them and prevent them from being able to organize? That’s a fundamental question. It’s a political question that divides civil libertarians from many leftists and anti-fascists.

The question of violence needs to be situated historically. So, in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, part of the problem is that, across the political spectrum, many people did not take this threat seriously until it was too late. By not confronting them with their fists, they ended up having to confront them with tanks. And so, today, anti-fascists have drawn the historical lesson that because neo-Nazis and fascists are violent, because they have a documented tendency, not only in the past, but today.