No one deserves to be punched. Don’t stoop to that level

The sucker punch delivered to Nazi and white nationalist Richard Spencer on camera last week was wrong. There is never an excuse for violence.

Richard Spencer, leader of the alt-right movement, was punched in the face at the Trump inauguration. No one deserves to be punched. (Pic: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

I would like to start off by declaring that I don’t like Nazis. I would have thought that making such a statement isn’t necessary, but there are enough people in the world who think that Hitler’s ideologies were spot on, so declare I must.

I also don’t like violence, of any kind, under any circumstances.

And so I must condemn the sucker punch delivered to Nazi and white nationalist Richard Spencer just hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as US president last week.

The punch, which occurred while Spencer was being interviewed by a journalist on camera, has been publicly celebrated as a well-deserved smack against a person whose political views are ideologically despicable and dangerous.

Spencer is a person who openly hates women, Jewish people and migrants. He upholds caucasians as a “dispossessed race” and has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing”. Whatever that means.

But as much as he deserves that whack to the face, the online celebrations are doing more harm than good. Because if we excuse this punch, then what happens when someone whose opinion is more palatable is attacked? What happens if white supremacists attack Jewish people? Such a thing would be denounced, as it should be.

If we excuse or minimise the attack on Spencer, even though it is very hard to pity him, then we simply allow and condone a space for mindless violence, and when has violence ever unequivocally solved anything?

The line over who “deserves” to have violence inflicted upon them will simply get more blurred.

Just days after Spencer was sucker punched, a writer from popular show Saturday Night Live (SNL) tweeted that Trump’s 10-year-old son, Barron, will be “this country’s first homeschool shooter”.

Whatever you think of Barron’s father — and I think very little of Trump’s politics — Barron is just a kid. He didn’t ask to be placed in the public eye and mocking him achieves nothing but make the attacker look small and petty. The SNL writer has rightly been suspended from the show.

Barron Trump looks on as his father is sworn in as the new US President. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, there is no excuse to ridicule his son. (Pic: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP)

Former first child Chelsea Clinton sprang to Barron’s defence, posting on her Facebook page: “Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does — to be a kid. Standing up for every kid also means opposing POTUS policies that hurt kids”.

As former First Lady Michelle Obama said late last year: “when they go low, we go high”. It’s a difficult mantra to live by, especially when so much hatred is being perpetrated.

But the moment we excuse violence against one type of person or mock innocent children, then we open the flood gates for everyone to be victimised.

The progressive cause is so much more than a simplistic ideology war between the left and right.

Right now, across the world, the likes of Trump and Spencer are threatening the safety and security of whole groups of people, simply because they are different to those in power.

I abhor Spencer and the wave of hatred and discrimination he has unleashed on innocent people. He is someone who believes that it’s perfectly fine for his supporters to give the Nazi salute during his public talks. But as the well-worn statement urges, we must rise above and “play the ball, not the man”.

Delivering a sucker punch to Spencer won’t change his ideas or remove the hatred he has for so many people. All it does is energise his supporters.

Mocking children does nothing to help people who need help.

What these two unrelated incidents reveal is the temptation to indulge in some schadenfreude, especially during such an uncertain time. But we’re not going to dissolve prejudice and discrimination through violence.

We cannot set our moral guidelines by those whose morals are detestable. Because if we do, then we all lose.

Alana Schetzer is a Melbourne-based journalist, writer and editor