this whole latest incident with some fascist getting killed reminds me how we on the left really need to get better at talking about violence.

we so often solely and only have one singular narrative about violence ("violence is bad") that underlies nearly everything that we go on to say regarding it.

it's not a narrative that has done oppressed people any good i'mm'a tell you that right now.

we say, "property damage isn't violence, so you can't call us violent if we're doing property damage"

we say, "how many people have killed in the name of antifascism recently; the right kills people and we don't kill people because we're not violent like them"

if someone came and painted a swastika on my house, burned a cross on my lawn, damn straight those are violent acts.

my comrades who spend so very much time and energy insisting up and down that property damage, inherently and always, is not violence, who does that serve.

and when it comes to directly interpersonal violence, again, what is it serving to insist that the REASON we are justified and they are not is because they are violent and we are not.

it was very clearly that mindset that informed the immediate reaction to the recent shooting of a fascist. up and down and all round, people clamoring to insist this person Could Not Really Be One Of Us because x y or z. didn't speak right didn't act right, we don't do violence.

but y'all, there is a loud, angry, armed, growing contingent of fascist white supremacists who are extremely happy and willing to do violence.

they show up routinely, openly declaring their intent to do violence. they kill us. they broadcast their desire for genocide proudly.

you laugh at liberals for being like "i'm gonna vote SO HARD nobody will ever vote as hard as i have" but how in the fuck do you expect to reconcile in your minds, "antifascists don't do violence" with "we are going to stop the armed nazis who are intent on murder".

how do you expect to support your comrades, if and when they engage in violent defense against genocidal murderers there explicitly to do harm, if you have spent years loudly and insistently declaring that our position of moral superiority is BECAUSE we don't Do Violence.

how do you expect to support people who have been living under violent genocidal colonialism, under repressive murderous brutality, if they decide that violence is how they want best to fight back against their oppressors?

instead of categorically making sweeping statements about the morality of violence, writ large, maybe we should start examining who that violence is used against and to what ends.

if there is already, widespread and all round, violence being used to oppress, subjugate, terrorize, and you categorically declare that Using Violence Is Wrong, you're telling a lot of us to roll over and die.

you're telling a lot of us you'd watch us get gunned down, quietly.

i'm jewish, i'm black, i'm trans, i'm disabled... if some nazis rolled in and decided they wanted to murder ME, i sure hope that i have comrades who would be like, hey, this is a good time for violence rather than after the fact debating whether or not i was REALLY their comrade.