“And then Richard Spencer got punched in the face, right? Which was an amazing moment in comedic history…because, I don’t know if you know, Richard Spencer was being interviewed and in the interview he was asked about his Pepe the Frog badge. So he was trying to explain a meme and then out of nowhere, a hero came along…and punched him in the face, instantly turning him into a meme. It was like casting a spell.” 1 Aamer Rahman, comedian, “Is it really OK to punch Nazis?”
Brian Massumi, ‘Histories of Violence: Affect, Power, Violence–the Political is Not Personal’
“What concerns me is […] the very distinction between good and bad feelings that presumes that bad feelings are backward and conservative and good feelings are forward and progressive.” 7
Sara Ahmed, ‘Happy Objects’
In other words, pleasure is a binding agent for both “the Left” and “the Right.” Pleasure makes social movements grow and expand. It increases resiliency, curiosity, a sense of connection, wholeness, and togetherness. Pleasure is what makes visioning other worlds and the futures we want possible. Until we can wrap our heads around the fact that white nationalism also organizes bodies and affective relationships through pleasure, our counterstrategies that rely solely on debate, logic, and condescension will never be vibrant enough to reach and/or compete <sup>8</sup> for the communities white nationalists are targeting, nor with the narratives of belonging (and not belonging) they are peddling. Trickery, pranks, comedic mockery, playful sabotage, strategic and snarky shaming, and other forms of mischievous culture jamming are all a part of anti-fascist pleasure politics. These political practices are informed by sensibilities that interrupt the mainstreaming of white nationalism, amplify our worldbuilding imaginations, and reorient bodies towards a more somatic relationship to the worlds we are working to create.
Emily Gorcenski, an anti-racist activist describing being attacked by white nationalists during the torchlight parade, in Documenting Hate: Charlottesville
“[P]leasure evokes change—perhaps more than shame. More precisely, where shame makes us freeze and try to get really small and invisible, pleasure invites us to move, to open, to grow.” 13
Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
- Aamer Rahman, “Is it really OK to punch Nazis?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKICKcMU3MU
- Interview with Alicia Garza. United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, Episode 2 Season 4, “Not All White People” on CNN (May 5, 2019). https://www.cnn.com/shows/united-shades-of-america.
- “Histories of Violence: Affect, Power, Violence–The Political is Not Personal. Brad Evans Interviews Brian Massumi.” Los Angeles Review of Books (November 13, 2017). https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/histories-of-violence-affect-power-violence-the-political-is-not-personal/#!
- Many have written about how Grace Lee Boggs often began meetings with, “What time is it on the clock of the world?” emphasizing the necessity of ongoing critical reflection in our movement work, by integrating practices of interconnected self-consciousness. Scot Nakagawa and Tarso Ramos ask “what time is it?” in their important essay, “What Time Is It? Why We Can’t Ignore the Momentum of the Right.” Political Research Associates (July 14, 2016). https://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/07/14/what-time-is-it-why-we-cant-ignore-the-momentum-of-the-right/
- “Histories of Violence: Affect, Power, Violence–The Political is Not Personal. Brad Evans Interviews Brian Massumi.” Los Angeles Review of Books (November 13, 2017). https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/histories-of-violence-affect-power-violence-the-political-is-not-personal/#!
- “The goal of white nationalism is not to spread hate but to seize the State using bigotry to build mass movements and to build power and fear.” Eric K. Ward, Executive Director of Western States Center, quoted from his talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODRhNDUEG8
- Sara Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” The Affect Theory Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 50.
- If You Don’t They Will often encounters the (ineffective and at times condescending) strategy of “changing their individual hearts and minds,” which ignores and minimizes the reality that white nationalists are dedicated activists committed to their cause and social movement (just like we are). As Cristien Storm often says in our workshops: “They couldn’t ever change my mind or make me believe in white supremacy; why would we think we could change their minds? It is not always about facts and data, it’s emotional.”
- Emily Gorcenski, Documenting Hate: Charlottesville. Frontlines, PBS Propublica Documentary, August 7, 2018.
- Anti-Semitism is a binding agent between the wide range of disparate white nationalist groups, in which Jews are the perceived “common enemy” responsible for manipulating the policies, social movements, and communities that supposedly victimize white nationalists. For more see Eric Ward’s “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” http://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/skin-in-the-game-how-antisemitism-animates-white-nationalism/ and Scot Nakagawa’s “Antisemitism is Racism,” https://www.racefiles.com/2019/01/13/antisemitism-is-racism/
- As a white identity politics movement, white nationalists are working to continually redefine “whiteness” in contemporary contexts; anti-fascist and anti-racist organizers need to understand “whiteness” as a contested category and recognize the inextricable ways white supremacy is embedded in and gives meaning through other categories of social difference, including gender, sexuality, class, and religion. We need to contest “whiteness” in order to smash it.
- Scot Nakagawa, “Three people in the last week have complained about being harassed after pissing off potentially violent right wingers […] Here’s how I’ve made a joyful life in spite of the haters…” Facebook, January 10, 2019.
- adrienne maree brown, “Introduction,” in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Oakland: AK Press, 2017), 21. As this piece goes into its final stages of revision, we eagerly await adrienne maree brown’s new book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.
- brown, 22.