Princeton Patch has now confirmed that a white supremacist rally did in fact take place in Princeton this past Saturday afternoon, August 29th. Don’t miss the neo-Nazi video embedded in the article, “Youth in Revolt.” Apparently, the spirit of Leni Riefenstahl never quite died.

Unfortunately, the rally is (like so many things) increasingly being seen as a law enforcement matter, and the police, fixated by definition on matters of law enforcement, are now pursuing the thought that the people participating in the rally lacked a permit to march down the street or through Monument Park, and should have had one. Law enforcement’s idea of a solution to the rise of neo-Nazism in Princeton is to set up a Permit Raj: demand that activists get permits to exercise the privilege of assembling, marching, chanting, or holding signs. And make sure to demote those activities to the status of privileges in the process.

It doesn’t take much effort to figure out where this is headed. If today the police or the municipality makes this demand of neo-Nazi youth groups, tomorrow they’ll make it of partisans of Palestine solidarity, the anti-war movement, or migrant defense groups. People in Princeton hate some of us as much as they claim to hate Nazis; half of them equate Palestinians with Nazis. Unleash that hate and tie it to a permit regime, and we become collateral damage of the treatment supposedly intended for them.

Neo-Nazis march in Princeton once every blue moon. We make a point of marching here every week or every month. If permits become the norm, we’re the ones who’ll suffer, not them. The rise of a Princeton Permit Raj would in fact be a victory for the Nazis, not their antagonists. It would, granted, make the expression of Nazism harder, but would also in the process make overt antagonism to it harder. What we gained in peace and quiet through a permit regime, would soon be lost in lassitude to it. But peace and quiet is the last thing we need under the circumstances. Same with lassitude.

Milton’s Areopagitica

I wish people would learn the lesson that Milton taught us back in 1644. You can’t regulate your way out of ideological conflict. You can’t wish that the other side didn’t get off its ass, or stop it from doing so. You have to get off of yours. There’s no point in putting regulatory obstacles in the way of their protesting, or marching, or assembling. Regulations of that kind are a weapon against the most politically active and justice-committed members of a society. You’d only wield them against someone else if you doubted your own capacity for initiative of your own–your own commitment to what’s right, your own will to resist what’s wrong.

There’s no reason for doubt. There’s just a reason for a re-doubling of initiative. That’s what I’ve been saying here all along. It’s a mistake to think that anything much has happened or changed. A bunch of Nazi kids have organized a march through a small swatch of town. Big deal. So can we, through a bigger one.