White nationalists and neo-Nazis exchange insults with anti-racist counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Emancipation Park during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
“Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky., and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” — Ida B. Wells
“The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a plea to the oppressor’s conscience.” — Robert F. Williams
In order to self-defend, groups targeted for violence by white supremacists have to first acknowledge in ourselves that we are worthy of defending. Those of us who experience the daily damages of white supremacy and desire its end deserve a world without it.
Our beings and our bodies are not empty things intended to labor in service to a nation that refuses to protect us. A rejection of liberal mythology — the untruth that those who have fallen victim to the atrocities of this nation’s past and present were simply necessary fodder — is an act of preservation and protection for anyone who chooses to strive for liberation. It’s an act that has been increasingly necessary for some time in an increasingly hostile United States. Our future depends on our understanding of self-defense and how it’s applied to the constant crises unfolding around us.
The failures and asininity of party politics should be plain to an exhausted movement against white supremacist violence. Accommodationist brands of politics like centrism and moderatism, which are seen as occupying the “left-leaning” flank of the right-centered political spectrum, have…