People keep saying we should listen to fascists

These people are wrong. Inspired by a spectacularly wrongheaded piece in Holland’s most prestigious daily newspaper, I wrote a long debunking of the writers’ naive views on the matter. I could, and maybe should have, sufficed with this one quote from Buenaventura Durruti:

Or, in a pinch, done a “search and replace” on the famous Sartre quote on antisemitism:

You can literally fill in the words concerned citizen instead of any mention of anti-Semite in that piece and end up with a strong contra-indication of having to listen to the wave of populist hatred and stupidity flooding our planet: Trumpites, Brexiters, PVV-scum or German nationalists, all of them act like 4-chan trolls. Because that’s in large part who they are, of course.

In the article I linked to above I decided to give the writer some more than that, however. Partly because she seems to genuinely believe what she is saying, and partially because what she is saying is so heart-breakingly stupid, naive and shortsighted that it is hard to believe that the writer is a very highly regarded specialist in International Law.

Why is it, that people are unwilling to consider the possibility that maybe the loud and angry voices from the extreme right are not to be listened to, not to be understood, not to be reasoned with?

Why is it that people have this incredible idea that these people are saying anything even remotely worthwhile, when they’re spewing their vile hatred all over every damn social medium ever developed?

Why is the above not clear, even to otherwise brilliant folks?

It boggles the mind.

Anyway: can we stop that shit already? Can we collectively decide that we are done with the populist bullshit? Done with mainstreaming fascism? Done with giving them a voice on television and in newspapers? Done with doing the things the people of the Weimar Republic kept doing until it was too late?