The Ones in Suits Are the Dangerous Ones

Nazis come in every shape and size. The loud ones are easy to identify—combat boots, rock concerts about racial purity, fists for students who look insufficiently local. Genuinely dangerous, but at least visible. You can see what you’re dealing with.

The ones in suits are worse. They operate from behind, presenting themselves as reasonable people who simply understand the concerns of confused, frightened citizens and happen to have solutions ready. They write the speeches the boot-boys repeat. They provide the intellectual scaffolding that makes violence feel logical, even inevitable.

The German initiative Kein Bock Auf Nazis—roughly, no appetite for Nazis—put out a list of practical responses that holds up better than most calls to action: don’t look away when something is happening in front of you, remove propaganda when you come across it, start something yourself instead of waiting for an institution to move. None of it is dramatic. All of it matters. Fascists rely on the calculation that getting involved costs more than staying quiet. Disrupting that calculation, in whatever small way is actually available, is the entire point.