WHEN RESPONDING TO NEO-NAZIS

It’s so easy to deplore neoNazis. They are both ridiculous and contemptible. Their ideas — a term I use loosely in this context — are both laughable and evil. Neo-Nazis are the very scum of the earth, the result of a glitz in the DNA sequence. Everybody sane or moral, or both, has no time for them. They are miserable dullards carrying a knapsack of ignorant hate.

Do I need to add they are not popular? That they have no real standing anywhere in the Western world, nor are they in a century likely to have. So let us all deplore them, signal their outcast status, mark them as pariahs, condemn (again) their utterly bankrupt pseudo ideology, and have done with them.

One other matter that is not so evident, though, and which in fact may need pointing out, is that the existence, and even occasional protest presence of so vile a mini-tribe, does not in itself sanction others to dip into violence and thuggery, in the name of demonstrating against them. Put in plainer terms, calling your group anti-fascist doesn’t mean you’re thereby licensed to use fascist means.

Indeed, with the recent Montreal protest in mind, if one were to look at the film of that event — without sound — and asked to identify which of the two groups was the “fascist” one, the result might be uncomfortable for a lot of people. Equally surprising might be the revelation that progressive protesters can appear quite at ease violating democratic norms when, to them, it is seen to serve a “higher” cause.

For example, since the days of the anti-globalization protests, we have all seen and watched with much complacency, the destructive, menacing, riotous behaviour of the so-called Black Bloc. They showed up in Seattle nearly two decades ago, wearing the full black costume, always masked, almost always looking for direct confrontation — actively harassing police, smashing windows, hurling rocks and smoke bombs, tipping police cars or setting them afire, and worse. They were in Quebec City, and they’ve inevitably showed up at every major meeting of the IMF or world leaders.

The word from the larger numbers who also attended these protests, but who did not act violently, was that the Bloc, or the anarchists who aped them, did not “represent” the full movement. They were outriders, or were “hijacking” otherwise peaceful protests. But asked to directly disavow the violence of the masked marauders, there was always a slide into weasel words. I well remember so many Canadian “progressive” leaders rabbiting on about supporting “diversity of tactics.” Which was of course their way of keeping fealty with the violent shock troops while avoiding all responsibility for them. It was their cute way of offering sly support for violence that generated publicity while not locking themselves into overt approval.

Occupy Wall Street offered a neat reprise of the same tactic. There was the recent event in Montreal, where a bunch of antifas worked some considerable havoc. I’ll give a sample from three news reports of the actions of the counter-protesters and ask, in all seriousness: If this is anti-fascism, what is fascism?

“Fireworks were thrown and smoke bombs were placed in garbage cans, as well as a rolling dumpster, as police and demonstrators clashed in encounters on nearby streets.”

“Some protesters … threw chairs taken from the terraces of restaurants in Old Quebec.”

“At least two journalists were attacked by demonstrators, and in one incident, damaged camera equipment.”

Pictures from various newspapers and newscasts will show the ugly scenes. Meantime, the actual far-right racist group spent much of their protest cowering in a garage and hiding from the rampage of those who came to protest them.

It should not need to be said, but the existence and public presence of a group that all agree is both contemptible and malevolent is not in itself some free pass to those who wish to oppose them, to act like thugs, to beat people up, to attack news reporters, to hurl smoke bombs — and in every particular play the very part of fascist behaviour they are claiming to counter.

Nor will it do — as one of the leaders of the counter-protest did — to drag up that hoary old excuse that the street thugs were a “fringe element” that “hijacked” the protest. As far as I could tell from the news, they were, in fact, the protest.

When Prime Minister Trudeau issued his statement about the Montreal event, he was clearly referring to the far-right elements:

“I am proud to be Canadian, I am proud to be a Quebecer, and I am proud to stand with millions of Canadians who reject the hateful, harmful, heinous ideologies that we’ve seen in dark corners of both the Internet and our communities from time to time.”

It was the right thing to say, as far as it went. But it would have been ever so much more forceful, and not a little brave as well, to condemn any group (even if ostensibly from the progressive side of the agenda, and hardly hiding in the “dark corners of the Internet”) that has made a habit of violent protest, street mayhem, and property destruction for nearly two decades now.

We should all guard against neoNazism. But we should equally guard against a near twin, Black Bloc, which dips into every protest with fondness for fists and semiriot.

This latter element we have seen both more frequently and more numerously than — to end on a high note — the other bunch of losers who spent much of their protest hiding out in a parking garage. Which should we worry about more I wonder?