"There are few responses to white supremacy quite as pernicious and paralyzing as the vapid demands to “fight hate with love,” a sentiment which was shared by the President and self-professed liberals alike. Such arguments erase the fundamental role of white supremacist violence (whether institutional or interpersonal) in the creation and perpetuation of the United States, and thereby shift the conversation from systems and oppression to individual choice and compulsory nonviolence. Consequently, the inherently genocidal goals of white supremacists are overlooked in favor of a view that equates them with the very people they seek to destroy. The message to those of us actually targeted by fascists is clear: let the Nazis threaten, attack, and kill you, or you’re just as bad as them...
This reduction of love to mere sentiment betrays its very nature. Love that is not grounded in the humanity of those it claims to love is anything but. Love is not a mandate; love is a choice.
Neither is love inaction, silence, or complicity. Love does not stand down in the face of terror. Love does not demand silence in the face of injustice or submission in the face of oppression and its attendant brutalities. Real love proves more expansive and powerful than previously imagined when tested by the specter of death...
To fight hate with love necessitates an understanding of what that hate truly is. The hate we are facing is not the product of some biological essentialist factionalism or misunderstandings born of innocent ignorance — it is the legacy of the violent ideologies that form the foundation of these United States and that have organized the global distribution of power for more than 500 years."
Love is easily one of the most uncomfortable states of being.
FB: "The message to those of us actually targeted by fascists is clear: let the Nazis threaten, attack, and kill you, or you’re just as bad as them."
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