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The Simmons Voice

The Student News Site of Simmons University

The Simmons Voice

The Student News Site of Simmons University

The Simmons Voice

Punching Nazis? Maybe okay. Being passive aggressive on Facebook? Definitely not okay.

By Kaydee Donohoo

Staff Writer

Earlier this week I was very passive aggressively called out on Facebook for “throwing my support at an article that extolled the protester who punched Richard Spencer,” because apparently the “hypocrisy” of everyone’s reactions was what made the first week of Trump’s presidency “disheartening” and not the “recent policies.”

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Source: Facebook

 

The worst thing about this week was the reactions? You sir, are extremely privileged and would certainty care more about the “recent policies” if they affected you more.

First of all “throwing my support” was posting a humor article from Odyssey. It’s not like I got a tattoo that says in fancy cursive “I love punching Nazis.”

I shared that article because I loved how it was written, more than any opinion it was actually stating.

I’m playing around with the idea of being a comedy writer and thought daaaaang this article is very well executed. When you want to pursue something you note good examples of it, you follow people you admire.

I thought, “Yeah! I’ve got to share this because it’s a good article.” I just didn’t realize we had to hide any potential viewpoints by saying “thoughts on this?” before posting anything slightly… controversial.

Honestly, I didn’t even think  enough about this article to label it as controversial.

Neo-Nazi? Bad. A well written article calling the punch heroic? Good…. I didn’t think it had to be more complicated than that.

When did “nonviolence” become a huge condition for being a good person? I get that Gandhi was a really cool guy. I even read his autobiography for fun in high school. Isn’t there more than one way to be like Gandhi? Maybe being Gandhi doesn’t work for every situation.

Yes violence is bad if there isn’t a justifiable cause for it. But that doesn’t mean it has to be against everyone else’s moral code all the time. And there are very few people who don’t believe any cause is justifiable. That’s why we have war. That’s why we go to war if someone starts a war with us. That’s why murder isn’t really murder if the other party is coming at you with a knife.

This was one punch and run that was very public while the cameras were rolling. It wasn’t a giant group stalking one person and senselessly beating him in an ally.

Nonviolence doesn’t always work. A protest works because enough people showed up and had to get attention. If enough people get together there’s going to be a variety of behavior. Someone might get attention a different way, and that is 99.99 percent of the time not a bad thing and is sometimes necessary.

When that guy from my high school commented on my humorous article post “this is what the Alt right will use against you,” it honest to goodness flickered in my mind, “oh, shoot he’s warning me that he’s the ‘alt-right,’ and is just waiting to make his views more known.”

I cannot live in a world where anti-Trump people are against other anti-Trump people for arbitrary reasons, and suspecting that not being anti-Trump enough is being pro-Trump. That would be chaos, because we need to stick together if we have even the slightest chance of all surviving.

“Is it okay to punch a Nazi?” Sure, yes, maybe, I don’t know, I don’t really care to be honest. People have to decide for themselves, or never decide unless they come face to face with a Nazi-punching opportunity and have to think in the moment. The answer could very well be “depends on the circumstances and the situation.”

The focus of what’s “moral” in that event should be everything he is standing for, and what we need to do to make sure society knows his views are not okay.

Someone already punched him and can’t un-punch him. What if this (even IF it was morally wrong) was an important jumping off point to get Neo-Nazi scum back into hiding?

This is also just a huge distraction from real news. We need to pay attention to all the terrifying signatures Trump has just given out and form a plan of action.

Oh, and if you are the guy on Facebook who made the post I referred to, I’d like to say you must have really gone out of your way to read an article I wrote for my college and never personally posted online afterwards.

Don’t think this is the “next move” in a passive aggressive posting war. It was never my intention for you to be reading this. This is for my college to contemplate how simple issue should not be dividing us up right now. Some of us think punching a Nazi is okay, and some of us don’t. We’re going to have to agree to disagree and move onto more important issues.

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    Faustina MitriAug 29, 2018 at 5:32 pm

    Being bullied is hard. And some schools don’t want to do anything until the person getting bullied has committed suicide!!

    Reply