By Harold Rook
Hello, comrades! After reading a LOT of Krompkin and Marx, watching popular BreadTube channels, and eating some weird paint chips that fell from the ceiling of a condemned building near my house, I have decided to become a part of Antifa. After mingling with fellow leftist revolutionaries in a Starbucks and determining what flavor I should make my soy latte, we put on our black clothes and took to the streets, protesting the racist capitalist imperialist misogynist classist police state that we are currently living under. While marching and carrying a sign saying “RESIST FASCISM”, my fellow Blackshirts took to the streets, scaring away the Nazi-filled roads by destroying windows and swinging clubs in every direction. By the end of the day, I welled up with pride as I looked back at our town, covered in broken glass and ambulances coming from every direction, knowing that this was how to resist fascism. Unfortunately for me, not everyone shares my revolutionary spirit; evil Nazis lurk behind every corner, so I am always vigilant. What has been my current priority is an issue that demands direct action: hate speech. It is everywhere! Therefore, I have since been trying to rally the masses, attempting to show that we, as a society that has “free speech”, have no tolerance for intolerance.
The funny thing is, though, some people claim that hate speech IS a form of free speech. Ridiculous, right? These people are simply apologists for the fascist Drumpf dictatorship, who can’t see the obvious truth that we need to spread tolerance…BY FORCE! In fact, just being in any way supportive of Drumpf is in itself being complicit in fascism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the capitalist system that oppresses us. But having any dialogue with these racists is harmful, even detrimental, to your physical well being. Why, there was one time where I was directly exposed to such hate, seeing MAGA drones perusing just outside my house. Putting on my big-boy mask, I prepared to confront them and show those evil conservatives that THESE ARE OUR STREETS. There was just one slight problem: I forgot my headphones. Headphones were essential for my mission; how else was I supposed to drown out their dialogue while shouting every horrid curse in the book? Nevertheless, I am never one to back down, especially when the first conservative I went up to is a short, quiet girl who spoke in a respectful manner.
After hurling the correct labels of her being a neo-Nazi homophobe that should be afraid to be in public, I asked how is it that she, and her fellow conservatives, can categorizes everyone on the left as a communist that would send dissidents to gulags. And get this: she said that I, the guy covered head to toe in black and with a bike lock in tow, was endorsing fascist methodology in politics. What drivel! Before I can snap back by calling HER the fascist, a Jewish man wearing an Israeli flag as a cape comes up to us to see what is going on, and I wish I had my headphones on. The flag triggers me; how is it that someone is allowed to show support for the Zionist-occuppied nightmare that is Israel when they are stealing the land from the righteous Palestinians? Taken aback, the man responds that antisemitism is on the rise in Europe and America, and that he, in fact, supports a peaceful two-state solution, if only the current Palestinian Authority, Hamas, didn’t endorse antisemetic violence. He then showed me Articles 7 and 32 of The Covenant of Hamas, saying that it was a concern of his and thus led him to support Israel. I was forced to listen to him, and muttered under my breath that Hamas should keep bombing Israel. Just having the flag out was supporting violence, so it was only right that I should advocate for the continued violence against Israelis, military or otherwise. My final encounter with a bigot was with an elderly black woman, and boy, if there was any time I would need headphones, it was then! I asked, no, DEMANDED to know how she could possibly support the Drumpf presidency. And get this: she cited STATISTICS, saying that Reuters found that black unemployment under Drumpf was only 5.9%. She also mentioned how the orange man was possibly the most LGBT friendly president in history, but at that point, I shut down. I ran back to my house, attempting to process what I just heard.
Where were my headphones when I needed them? How could I possibly respond to their dialogue? Can’t they see that they are supporting a literal fascist? Or, maybe, just maybe, was I in the wrong? Was me using violent intimidation going too far? Could it be that I should maybe approach people of a differing ideology in good faith, and not label everything they say as hate speech? Hmmmm…NAH! I got better things to do, liking going back to that condemned building and eating those tasty paint chips!