The chances are that if you are watching any type of YouTube video, whether it’s political or otherwise, you’ll come across a comment that contains the word ‘feminazi‘. It’s become so ingrained into YouTube culture and society, this derogatory term used against women fighting for equal rights has become nothing more than a passing phrase used in light terms rather than receiving the backlash it deserves. We regard this word as nothing more than people expressing their dominance over women and as an insult but still continue to use other terms like ‘alt-right’ to describe the new, emerging kind of white supremacy, neo-nazism.
Amidst all of the commotion of the Trump Inauguration and the many Women’s Marches across the globe, Shia Labeouf created the now widely recognized #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS live stream, designed to last Trump’s full four years in office, in which the alt-right leader Richard Spencer was being interviewed on, when he was punched in the head by a protester who disagreed with what the fascist was preaching.
Outrage broke out on social media and news stations alike with people defending Spencer often with empty statements like ‘we should respect other’s political opinions’ and ‘violence is not the answer’.
The moment the general public defend and try to justify the reborn Nazism as ‘a different political opinion’ it no longer becomes a question of non-violence, but justifying having genocide as a political opinion.
The definition of the word ‘fascism’ is as follows: “a form of radical authoritarian nationalism or a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism.“ Yet the alt-right movement, who have had videos and photos of its members doing the Hitler salute taken and have recently opened a campaign for the man who punched Richard Spencer to be killed, offering a bounty for whoever completes the job, along with the conservative, racist media refuse to accept that the alt-right is a fascist movement and we have accepted this into our daily lives.
This is not normal.
“All Nazis are bad” should be one of the most unanimous political views and yet here we stand in 2017 with an ever-growing mindset of anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist views with a President of the most powerful countries in the world being backed and encouraged by the modern KKK and seemingly not one of the politicians influencing our lives has yet to speak out about this issue.
We cannot continue to allow a thinly veiled disguise of a new extreme national organization when there have been countless people who have died and sacrificed themselves to prevent such an organization like this from rising into such glory and power once more, in which these movements allow more and more people to be discriminated against for their creed, color or religion. In such a pivotal time for both politics and the world, where the tide can either go in the direction of change and progression or into the unknown waters of all-out war and conflict, this generation cannot make excuses for those that seek to bring destruction and terror to people’s lives. We cannot allow such a large mass of people to be subjected to discrimination once more, we need to stand, and stand tall. We need to name these people for what they truly are: Nazis.
