Usually I’m very disheartened when we have Nazis in town, because it seems like our response as a city is to just stand there not knowing how to respond. My idea — a stupid idea — was that we needed a song that was catchy and fun to sing that tourists could also get in on, and we could just Casablanca it up whenever they came to town. But that meant writing a song, and all I could come up with was: Go home you Nazi fucks / Go home you sad little men / Go home Nazi fucks / Go home Nazi fucks, and don’t come back again” to a kind of “Good Night, Irene” tune. It’s no “John Brown’s Body,” and it commits the Beyoncé sin of rhyming a word with itself, so I disregarded it as an idea.
Councilmember Suara orders chamber gallery cleared after disruptions by a dozen loosely organized white supremacists
But tons of people have been up to stuff! You can listen to state Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) on City Cast Nashville talking about white nationalism and Christian nationalism. State Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) has anti-Nazi swag and a ton of good information on how to combat white nationalists. If you just want catharsis, Phil Williams went and told the current crowd of Nazis in town that they seem sad and stupid right to their faces. Metro Councilmember Jacob Kupin has been keeping an eagle eye on these guys and seems to know where they are in town before they do. And when those assholes tried to disrupt the Metro Council meeting on Tuesday, Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda cussed them out. (I have half a mind to get a print of this picture by the Nashville Banner's Martin B. Cherry to hang on my wall for inspiration.) A downtown bartender fist-fought with them. And a special shout-out to the local antifascist Twitter accounts that were revealing the identities of these guys left and right.
I’m not sure we’ve worked out 100 percent what to do when Nazis show up, but I feel good that we’re figuring it out. You know who’s not, though? Our Republicans.
OK, listen: In order to talk about what’s going on here, I’m going to have to use a term that, if you know it, you either think of it as a funny weird insult from South Park or you might think it’s a word worth coming to blows over. So let me be clear: I don’t think a person’s parents’ marital status matters to who that person is. And I think it’s stupid and terrible (and a little funny) that kids can be so negatively impacted by it, and I, in general, don’t like the word “bastard.” However, there’s a kind of stock character in literature and thus in movies and television of the bastard, and I think it would be useful in our present situation to think some about the bastard.
The idea is that the bastard character is a kind of chaos agent in a story. He appears and either: Everyone knows who he is but pretends they don’t, and he is pissed that he can’t take his place in the family and thus is a pain in the butt to his father, who can’t publicly acknowledge him; or no one knows who he is, but because of his actions, either by being so strongly aligned with his father or so diametrically opposed to his father, everyone begins to realize whose son he is. And there’s tension in the story about what it might mean for his father to acknowledge him. How will that affect the man’s wife and the family he made with her? If the man has a good reputation, what will it mean when everyone finds out he abandoned a woman he got pregnant? Sometimes the bastard is at the center of the narrative, and sometimes the character doesn’t play a main role, but just shows up to illustrate that one of the main characters is majorly deceptive about his true nature. And like I said, you can usually recognize the bastard, because either he’s super pissed-off for reasons that are initially hard to understand or because he acts as if he has some ownership of or authority over things that seems outsized for his seeming status.
The same day Lee signed two pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, a sign featuring a swastika and hate speech appeared near Fort Negley
In the drama of our state, the Nazis are the bastards. They show up here acting like they own the joint. (A group of out-of-towners that includes Canadians told Metro Councilmember At-Large Zulfat Suara to go home. Motherfuckers, she is home. You’re the tourists.) They seem very angry and eager to piss off everyone around them. But also — and this is the part I want you to notice — these dudes are hell-bent on making very clear their resemblance to our Republican lawmakers. They sent the governor a public thank-you note. Now this iteration of white supremacists has been standing at the courthouse steps requesting that people honk if they support our new law to allow the death penalty for some child rapists. One of the main reasons they’re here is that our state does shit that matches their Nazi agenda. If their ideas are welcome here, why shouldn’t they be?
We’re still at the point in the story where the man with the bastard son is trying very hard to pretend the kid doesn’t exist, that there’s no family resemblance, and so the man has no responsibility to or for the son and the son’s actions.
Examining the history of white supremacy in Nashville, modern far-right hate groups, and Williamson County as a seat of right-wing politics
Do y'all remember Prospero going:
Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,
Then say if they be true. This misshapen knave,
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power.
These three have robbed me, and this demi-devil
(For he’s a bastard one) had plotted with them
To take my life. Two of these fellows you
Must know and own; this thing of darkness I
Acknowledge mine.
We’re at the point where some Republican lawmakers can understand that not dealing with the Nazis in our midst could lead to our ruin, but not where they’re willing to take responsibility for making them feel welcome here.
