Winning the Good Fight against racists
Is fighting fire with fire the only way to go when tackling the far right?
Fun fact: I am the same age as white supremacist Richard Spencer. We both would have been in the same year at school, watched Quantum Leap before bedtime and probably had a Nokia brick at university. But while Spencer was espousing that the European Union should be made into a white racial empire and advocating violence against ethnic minorities, I was listening to Cornershop. Why am I talking about this goon? Well, Spencer is most famous for being punched. Imagine that being your biggest claim to fame? Maybe he carries a business card that says “views-so-repellent-they-made-me-famous-for-being-lamped-to-the-tune-of-Blue-Monday”. I don’t know the guy really but I can guess he isn’t a fan of Brimful of Asha. (If you want to know more about Spencer, Gary Younge interviewed him here.)
But Spencer is a bit more than a twat who got twatted. He represents a line in the sand, the point where words become violence and the moment when an audience empathised more with the puncher than the punched. In this episode of The Good Fight, called ‘The One where a Nazi Gets Punched’, black investigator Jay Dipersia re-enacts the Spencer punch to great effect. Jay (played by Nyambi Nyambi) then muses: “Is it alright to hit a Nazi unprovoked? I was always taught not to throw the first punch and never instigate.” And today I will mull over the same question, especially as last week I looked at the tragic consequences of unresolved anger.
For those who’ve never seen The Good Fight it’s a legal drama series that was a sequel to The Good Wife. There’s two differences between the shows: Julianna Margulies (lead in The Good Wife) does not appear and The Good Fight is firmly based in the Trumpian US where race issues are always at the forefront of every episode. The conduit the show uses to examine our age of extremes is a Chicago law firm (which employs Jay), called Reddick, Boseman whose USP is its African-American ownership and management structure. It’s not a company that has a small office above a chicken shop like in the UK but a massive glitzy firm that takes on all types of law cases (bollocks, right?) that began with the raison d’etre of taking on police brutality. The show is unique for constantly being prescient and for incorporating social media trends (such as the Nazi punch). It’s savage on Trump, the idiots he installs into positions of responsibility and how democracy has been quickly eroded. It’s also ridiculous. Before I was a journalist I worked as a solicitor’s clerk and court is never this interesting - before smartphones we used to watch daytime TV a lot. It’s also tiresome how the characters care about office politics so much. As a freelance homeworker, though, I do enjoy watching frazzled suits arguing over the size of their offices.
We don’t have a show like The Good Fight in the UK. But then racism doesn’t exist here, according to the Tories. That whitewashed report has angered me so much but then what else did I expect from a government led by a man who uses the term letterboxes to describe the burqa and then employs POC to defend the indefensible? Maybe I should punch Boris Johnson…
I walk home from school. The light is green. I cross the road. The car horn is loud. I ignore it. The men shout paki at me. I walk home. The tears are uncontrollable.
Anyone non-white living in the UK can reel off the times they have been racially abused and confronted by people goading them into conflict. My list is long and acts as a type of mental scarring that burdens me with feelings of not belonging and believing I’m somehow second rate. Some people suffer from imposter syndrome when embarking on a new project but I feel like a fake in the street, in the pub or even answering my door.
The racism I experienced in my childhood was normalised and it made me feel inferior. In my darkest moments I wonder what I could have done differently to not feel like such a victim now. What if I had had agency? What if I had hit back? What if I had run towards the car and knocked loudly on the window when my two abusers were high fiving?
Answer: it wouldn’t have ended up well. Two large men with a car for a weapon would have easily killed me and my schoolbag. The better question is how can we defeat racists?
Jay’s answer is to punch them.
Reuters 13 years ago reported on a strange phenomenon in Japan where an entrepreneur had set up the first smash room which he hoped would be booked by angry businessmen. When they entered the so-called ‘Venting Place’ participants would throw crockery at a wall and pay for each item they smashed.
It’s the kind of cultural oddity that was mocked by Clive James On Television (an unfunnier and at times racist version of the aforementioned TV Burp) that spent far too long talking condescendingly about a gameshow called Endurance - those crazy Asians! The Japan torture porn format was pretty much ripped off by I’m A Celebrity - those crazy white people!
Nowadays, a lot of Japanese offices have rooms where stressed out executives can strike pillows with baseballs and hit punch balls. This trend is often categorized as anger management but it’s not something that should be dismissed as a silly trend for one simple reason: it works.
Feeling angry is perfectly normal. Healthy even. But leaving those feelings to fester is storing up trouble for the future (as discussed last week) and can mean that the anger comes out in different ways: snapping, passive aggression or simply rage.
And in a controlled anger workshop I’ve hit a baseball bat against a pillow shouting about what was causing me to feel angry. It felt good. It actually felt like revenge.
After being scared of water, I finally learned to swim because I thought it would be essential with a young family, particularly on holiday. My mother was frightened of swimming, despite being from a coastal part of Malaysia, and wasn’t great at encouraging me.
The place I now swim is very important to me as after the Brexit vote it was where I was racially abused by a dog walker. Despite this incident I vowed to break a pattern of avoidance and instead embraced this beautiful semi-rural part of London especially because it had a beautiful lake only a short train away from my flat (I’m lucky to live near the train station too).
I really wanted to punch that guy. But it’s not my style. I’m not Jay.
Mind you it’s not Jay’s style either and that’s why the scene is so exhilarating. His character in previous episodes faces up to violence a lot and puts himself into dangerous situations investigating cases for the law firm. He’s practically a pacifist.
The action takes place in a voting booth where Jay and his colleagues are representing the Democratic Party in an attempt to prevent electoral intimidation. Before a band of far-right Trump supporters turn up, they argue self-knowingly with their Republican counterparts. One of which surprisingly helps Jay by pretending the Nazi slipped rather than being punched - problematically this character seems to represent the Republican’s more centrist wing. Does that exist anymore?
After the punch and an accusation of doxing, Jay breaks the fourth wall by addressing the viewer (which is a first time for the show) mentioning Overton’s Window. The political term is explained here but is very prescient in the UK especially with how the Tory party have cynically shifted post-Brexit policy and rhetoric from the ‘acceptable’ to the reactionary.
This monologue is controversial and this piece argues that the show itself is advocating violence through its use but I think that’s too simplistic. Just because some characters are pushed towards breaking the law that isn’t in itself a recommendation to throw the first punch.
I do believe you should throw the first punch. But by punching a pillow. Acting out your anger this way is more productive than punching a Nazi, although sadly, it’s unlikely to yield a million views on YouTube and a hero status. Spencer getting whacked could’ve gone so wrong and Jay was lucky to have a witness who took his side.
Instead you’re likely to get hurt, arrested and imprisoned. Worse still this is what your modern-day Nazi wants: he wants to portray the anti-racist as the aggressor.
I’m all for punching a Nazi. As long as it’s in the safety of your bedroom.
Another way of beating the racists is to argue your case eloquently like David Lammy does here. Apparently Black MPs have extra duties including explaining history to Jean from Essex.
Yesterday BBC 6Music spent an entire day playing only pop music (which was a revelation to me as I thought I was listening to Magic FM). However, Steve Lamacq saw it as a chance to dust off his Aphex Twin records and feature various forgotten Britpop bands, such as theaudience and My Life Story. Very Fast Show Indie Club.
Tell you who is a bona fide pop star: Dizzee Rascal. Next week I’ll be looking at an episode of Newsnight where he took on Jeremy Paxman. You can see it here.
The week after I’d be looking at New Towns and a film starring John Simm called Boston Kickout. Its plot is explained here. Locating a copy will be tricky…