Eleven Nazis.

On the crime of doing nothing in the face of evil.

CW: rape

Audio recorded by me.

He showed me how to break a man’s clavicle bone from a prone position, if the man was on top of me. He was my height, 5’8,” wide as a barn door, and one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. He always called me Ms. Eleanor even though it made me laugh. He was older than me by about 20 years, and though he would admit he didn’t move like he used to, he proudly noted that he could still kick a punk’s ass if need be. He didn’t say it to brag. He said it the way a teacher offers up a metaphor, or a coach offers up a drill.

He still worked as a bodyguard, and since he looked the part he’d sometimes get roles as such. He drove a black town car and would sometimes come pick me up from the studio and take me to lunch. We’d talk about growing up Jewish, weirdest or most annoying celebrities we’d met, favorite bands - tho this conversation could get heated. He’d ask me in that avuncular way how my dating life was going, and remind me that he was always just a text away if I needed anything, including disposing of a body - which he said in that way that is both a joke and very much not.

When he was growing up, he used to go into Prospect Park in New York and pick fights with skin heads. One sunny LA afternoon he told a story of being just shy of 20, walking home from a gig as a door guy at some slummy club, he heard a woman scream. He went towards the sound and saw three men gang raping her. He made a quick calculation in his mind - he was younger then but he was also smaller. He had no idea whether or not these guys were armed. He told me that he looked down the street, he looked down at his shoes already pointing away, and he imagined just leaving. And I’ll never forget what he said: “But how the fuck do you live with yourself? If you see that, and you walk away. It would’ve been like I’d raped her too.”

He went on to tell me that he ran towards the guys like a bat shit berserker, flailing his arms around like propellers just to see if he could hit anyone. He figured it would make it harder to shoot him too in case they were armed. They weren’t. He got a couple of nasty blows to the head, a kick to the ribs, and some other busts and bruises. But he also did what he came to do. He made contact with at least two of the guys, and because he never hit the ground and just kept screaming and flailing, they got the hell out of there. He said the woman wasn’t there when the dust settled. She must’ve run away while he was flailing, and if he ever saw her again he didn’t know it.

The gang rape at Cornell is despicable on so many levels and I’m not here to go through it all again. But one fact that I think some folks are unaware of is that there was a group chat. A group chat where two of the men alerted friends that they could come rape this woman. Some did. Others didn’t. But those who didn’t go also didn’t stop it. They did nothing.

I think we often times ask how rapists can do what they do. But I think a larger question is how those who know it’s happening can do nothing? And that’s not to say it’s just one thing. The violent cultures that lend themselves to the cruelty and brutality of rape can not be boiled down to one problem. Yet I do think that one of the things we don’t discuss enough is how we are programmed to detach, to disconnect from problems that either don’t affect us or that we aren’t directly perpetrating.

As a teenager I would pick up trash when I was out walking the dog. A few people would thank me, a few never said anything, but every now and then someone would ask “why are you doing that?” I would simply reply that it was an eye sore, that it was dangerous for animals, for kids, and that no one else was bothering to do it. People would always take the last comment as an accusation. And while I didn’t mean it as one, I didn’t not mean it as one. They could’ve come helped. They could’ve started to do the same. As far as I know, I was the only person to ever bother to pick up trash in my neighborhood.

The things that my bodyguard friend and I have in common are not an inflated sense of saviorism. It’s not because we’re religious and think it’ll get us in upstairs. It’s not because we want bragging rights or accolades. Most of the work I do today that is akin to but much larger than picking up neighborhood trash is done either in small groups or anonymously. But it’s done - because we feel a mutualistic connection to people, to place. We feel that if given the opportunity to stop a violence, to mitigate harm, or to restore, we must take it if we can. That it is not enough to say well, I didn’t create that violence, I didn’t inflict that harm, I didn’t contaminate. To use such a deflecting defense in the face of violent wrongs is to be a coward and a criminal - regardless of what any law book says.

There’s a saying from Eastern Europe: what do you call a guy at a table with ten Nazis? Eleven Nazis. And to quote Chris Hedges, we do not fight fascists because we think we will win. We fight them because they are fascist. My friend knew that it might go fucking horribly for him when he rushed those three guys. And he knew that the goal wasn’t to restore this woman’s faith in men, to have her feel indebted. The goal was simply to fight the wrong, to try to end it. Because it was wrong. And because he could do something.

I knew already at the age of fifteen that me picking up trash was not saving the world. I know now that the small acts that I can do are not enough. But it doesn’t mean they don’t matter. I do not do them because they’re a cure-all. I do them because even if all I can do is live in opposition to the architects of oppression, that is the only way that I can actually live.

I do not believe that we will win. And I think we have already lost so much. I think we will lose more. And I think we will die without a Utopia outside our window. But before we die, how should we live? And how should we teach and inspire others to live?

What dignity is there in living detached, in always saying it’s not my problem, it’s not my place, not my fight, not my fault? I say there is none.

The men on that group chat that did nothing - they are at the same table. They are without dignity, without decency. They create harm by allowing it. And I think we gotta frame shit like that more often, and shame those who claim “I didn’t do anything.” That excuse is not good enough because it is not good. It is not just. It is in fact, a big part of the problem.

Here’s to all my people running like loons into the night, picking up trash, building worlds in corners, restoring, mitigating, and standing in the fucking way of evil, who know that it is their problem because they see it, they know it, and they can’t, they won’t, do nothing.

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