antifainternational:

Ohhhh this is an interesting point you raise, Anon!  Before we get into it it, we’d like to remind everyone that we think there is far too much emphasis on antifascists employing violence.  While “antifa violence” grabs 99% of people’s attention, it likely amounts to 1% of the antifa work that gets done, which leads to an extremely distorted perception of what antifascism looks like in reality.

That said, we’d be lying if we said we didn’t believe that physically defending communities from genocidal bigots isn’t part of anti-fascism, which bring us to your message, Anon.  On the one hand:

Sure, why would we listen to fascists about what methods are effective at stopping them? Also, was Hitler talking about just punching him and his fascist pals or literally eradicating them?  

On the other hand, things go a bit sideways when you look further into the quote in question.  That particular quote was taken from a speech Hitler gave in 1933 at the first nazi Nuremberg rally, as recorded in the 1934 book Die Reden Hitlers am Reichsparteitag 1933. Here’s a translation of the relevant passage:

“And so, I established in 1919 a programme and tendency that was a conscious slap in the face of the democratic-pacifist world.  [We knew] it might take five or ten or twenty years, yet gradually an authoritarian state arose within the democratic state, and a nucleus of fanatical devotion and ruthless determination formed in a wretched world that lacked basic convictions.

Only one danger could have jeopardized this development — if our adversaries had understood its principle, established a clear understanding of our ideas, and not offered any resistance. Or, alternatively, if they had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.

Neither was done. The times were such that our adversaries were no longer capable of accomplishing our annihilation, nor did they have the nerve. Arguably, they furthermore lacked the understanding to assume a wholly appropriate attitude. Instead, they began to tyrannize our young movement by bourgeois means, and, by doing so, they assisted the process of natural selection in a very fortunate manner.

From there on, it was only a question of time until the leadership of the nation would fall to our hardened human material.The more our adversaries believe they can obstruct our development by employing a degree of terror that is characteristic of their nature, the more they encourage it. Nietzsche said that a blow which does not kill a strong man only makes him stronger, and his words are confirmed a thousand times. Every blow strengthens our defiance, every persecution reinforces our single-minded determination, and the elements that do fall are good riddance to the movement.”

For some perspective, here’s what the audience that heard this speech looked like:

(photo: nazis at the 1933 Nuremberg Rally)

So, from this quote, Hitler is telling his audience of nazis that he thinks they could have only been stopped if people early on either didn’t offer any resistance or paradoxically annihilated the nazis “with the utmost brutality” early on.  The one thing Hitler tells his audience of nazis would not stop them is what German society did - used “bourgeois means” to try to stop them. We take this to mean polite debate + a reliance on the state/law enforcement/the legal system as a way to stop the nazis.

This quote was first documented in English by Daniel Guérin in his 1939 book Fascism and Big Business.  It’s important to note that the quote as presented there (pg. 107) with an accompanying quote from Goebbels:

If in the beginning, when the Hitler bands were still weak, the workers’ parties had answered them blow for blow, there is no doubt their development would have been hampered. On this point we have the testimony of the National Socialist leaders themselves.

Hitler confessed in retrospect: Only one thing could have broken our movement — if the adversary had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed, with the most extreme brutality, the nucleus of our new movement.”

And Goebbels: “If the enemy had known how weak we were, it would probably have reduced us to jelly … It would have crushed in blood the very beginning of our work.”

When you take what Hitler said to an audience of adoring nazis alongside with Goebbels’ quote, it becomes clear that there was a consensus among nazi leaders that absolutely smashing them in the beginning would have stopped them.

So back to your thesis: Hitler cleverly said this to make antifascists choose the tactic that wouldn’t work (”violence”) + the quote didn’t mean punching nazis; it meant slaughtering them.

On the first point (and not to get all Marshall McCluhan-y on you): context matters and Adolf Hitler speaking to an audience of thousands of adoring nazis is quite different from, say, modern-day nazis tweeting or a child telling his parents that the worst punishment they could give her is to make her eat dessert.  We think it’s unlikely that he would say what he said to cleverly trick anti-fascists into trying to eradicate the nazis when that wouldn’t work, especially when you factor in Goebbels saying the same thing; especially when you factor in that a key reason the nazis themselves succeeded was because of how willing they were to murder their opponents without hesitation.  The nazis knew that extreme political violence would work in a bourgeois society, just as they knew it would have worked against them if it had been employed before they were too powerful. 

On the second point - that Hitler was referring to levels of street violence much more severe than some punch-ups as a way to stop the nazis - well, you’re probably right about that.  By the time he gave that speech, there had already been gun battles in the streets of Germany between the nazis and the antifascists and hundreds had been killed on both sides.  We think Hitler was saying that antifascists didn’t react with adequate levels of violence early enough in the development of the nazi movement and by the time they did, the nazis were strong enough to respond in kind.

But let’s come back to this century for a second: over the last few decades, anti-fascist physical self-defence has rarely gone beyond punching nazis.  The paltry number of dead fascists stands as testament to this (off the top of our heads:  the 2020 shooting of a Patriot Prayer supporter in Portland; the 2013 assassination of two Golden Dawn members in Athens; and then we have to go all the way back to the 1992 shooting of a white supremacist in Portland allegedly by a SHARP skinhead).  Yet last year alone fascists murdered at least 325 people. 

So the real question is probably why antifascist physical self-defence has not escalated to the same extreme levels of violence coming from fascists? There’s probably a few reasons, like antifascists being more integrated into their communities than fascist loners/losers; antifascism not sharing fascism’s penchant for openly exhorting and fetishizing violence; antifascists tending towards appropriate and reasonable levels of physical force in a self-defence context  and having a larger arsenal of non-violent tactics they’re more likely to rely on than resorting to violence. 

And then there’s the notion that antifascist tactics at-present simply work - but don’t take our word for it!  Just ask alt-right has-been Richard Spencer:

BTW, if you’d like to read a great essay on anti-fascism and violence, we’d highly recommend Anti-Fascist Practice & Impossible Non-Violence by Natasha Lennard; see also Logan Rimel’s essay My “Nonviolent Stance Was Met With Heavily Armed Men.”