elilla, quarantined on Nostr: I do not recommend "just run away" as a self-defence technique btw. I think people ...
I do not recommend "just run away" as a self-defence technique btw. I think people who recommend this are used to like, bar fights or domestic violence, not to political hatred. Not enemies. You may run from a drunk, but running from the enemy is a hard task. If they have a gun, how are you going to outrun it? If your enemies are likely to attack you with guns, you should change your life situation _before_ having to run away, and in the meantime you should have guns yourself, and be ready to shoot first. If they don't have a gun and you're trying to run away, presumably they're stronger than you, therefore fitter, and/or in greater number. Getting away is inherently harder than catching up, you have your back exposed, are you sure you can outrun all of them?
In the majority of cases when you're attacked out of political hatred the best defense will be offence or deescalation. It can be very hard to decide when it's better to pick one or another—and I've made mistakes on both directions. But I can't remember a situation I was in that I could have avoided by running.
Now when I say offence I mean being vicious, I don't mean overpowering them that's seldomly possible, I've never fought an enemy weaker than me: I mean vicious. This worked because of how the psychology of harassment works; they're not in for a duel or combat, they're in for the thrill of power, as soon as the situation gets challenging they fold. Every single time Nazis around me have hurt people, without exception, they were in big numerical majority and targeting nonresisting victims.
It's very hard to survive unharmed if you're attacked by a group of enemies committed to political hatred. The one strategy I've seen work is: the closest of the enemies was promptly maced, and all of the defenders drew weapons simultaneously. This made the enemy fall back and call for support. "Fuck, this is dangerous, this is serious, I can get hurt I can die". That's not the mood that Nazis wanted to be in when they went out harass people.
When doing martial arts for self-defence people tend to imagine a situation like, one on one, no weapons, no rules, which technique will win? Nobody will ever know, because this situation doesn't exist, this is a fantasy. If you're fighting one on one no weapons you're in a sports ring, and then there are rules. If you're not in the ring you're on the streets, and then you also have rules. Much bigger, stronger rules than the ring. For example, I've been "defeated in combat" by teenagers multiple times in Brazil, like tiny wiry little guys when I was at peak strength, that in a ring I could probably fold with one knee strike, maybe. But robberies have one unspoken rule: if I react against the teenager, I'm buying a fight with the druglord he's serving, and within the week my entire family will be burned alive inside truck tires to be made an example of. Pretty big fucking tournament rule. I did not run away either, how would I?, I could have been shot, people get shot all the time, at least one big BJJ bro died at my uni for resisting a robbery like that. Whenever robbed in Brazil I did whatever the Heck the teenager wanted me to do, and I would again if I was in the same situation. If I interacted with them at all it was in the most deescalative, cooperative way I could offer.
Where I live now, the strongest combat rule is the rule of law. It's a police state, there's cameras and hidden mics everywhere, police does DNA tests and fudges evidence on a whim, and every damn person in this fucking country is a snitch including prisoners, criminals and antifas. As a result, the chances of the enemy having a gun are relatively low, and moreover, everyone is terrified of escalation. So when a Nazi hits my head with a metal bat and in response I draw a knife, the calculus he's making is not "can I kill this tranny before she gets close", it's "fuck this got real, this maniac is still coming, if I kill her I get twenty years". That's when they run. When a big soccer hooligan comes intimidate me and I spit on his face and flash the pepper spray, he's not thinking "is my jet kune do able to beat her long guard flicker jabs", it's "fuck this is some crazy psychopath I can get hurt", he was expecting me to be scared so he's thrown off his rhythm, and gives up.
I've successfully ran away from danger before, but "running away" here looked more like putting myself in a safer environment—moving from the sidewalk to inside a shop, merging with the crowd in a protest, taking a taxi. But this was never possible like, during an attack. Better than running is avoidance; it's great to learn situational awareness, to always consider escape routes, to learn to discreetly and deescalatively not have people behind on you the streets. A few times I have taken a taxi rather than tram out of pure gut feeling, probably unnecessarily, but after a single time where my paranoia turned out to be correct, I learned to err on the safe side.
In the majority of cases when you're attacked out of political hatred the best defense will be offence or deescalation. It can be very hard to decide when it's better to pick one or another—and I've made mistakes on both directions. But I can't remember a situation I was in that I could have avoided by running.
Now when I say offence I mean being vicious, I don't mean overpowering them that's seldomly possible, I've never fought an enemy weaker than me: I mean vicious. This worked because of how the psychology of harassment works; they're not in for a duel or combat, they're in for the thrill of power, as soon as the situation gets challenging they fold. Every single time Nazis around me have hurt people, without exception, they were in big numerical majority and targeting nonresisting victims.
It's very hard to survive unharmed if you're attacked by a group of enemies committed to political hatred. The one strategy I've seen work is: the closest of the enemies was promptly maced, and all of the defenders drew weapons simultaneously. This made the enemy fall back and call for support. "Fuck, this is dangerous, this is serious, I can get hurt I can die". That's not the mood that Nazis wanted to be in when they went out harass people.
When doing martial arts for self-defence people tend to imagine a situation like, one on one, no weapons, no rules, which technique will win? Nobody will ever know, because this situation doesn't exist, this is a fantasy. If you're fighting one on one no weapons you're in a sports ring, and then there are rules. If you're not in the ring you're on the streets, and then you also have rules. Much bigger, stronger rules than the ring. For example, I've been "defeated in combat" by teenagers multiple times in Brazil, like tiny wiry little guys when I was at peak strength, that in a ring I could probably fold with one knee strike, maybe. But robberies have one unspoken rule: if I react against the teenager, I'm buying a fight with the druglord he's serving, and within the week my entire family will be burned alive inside truck tires to be made an example of. Pretty big fucking tournament rule. I did not run away either, how would I?, I could have been shot, people get shot all the time, at least one big BJJ bro died at my uni for resisting a robbery like that. Whenever robbed in Brazil I did whatever the Heck the teenager wanted me to do, and I would again if I was in the same situation. If I interacted with them at all it was in the most deescalative, cooperative way I could offer.
Where I live now, the strongest combat rule is the rule of law. It's a police state, there's cameras and hidden mics everywhere, police does DNA tests and fudges evidence on a whim, and every damn person in this fucking country is a snitch including prisoners, criminals and antifas. As a result, the chances of the enemy having a gun are relatively low, and moreover, everyone is terrified of escalation. So when a Nazi hits my head with a metal bat and in response I draw a knife, the calculus he's making is not "can I kill this tranny before she gets close", it's "fuck this got real, this maniac is still coming, if I kill her I get twenty years". That's when they run. When a big soccer hooligan comes intimidate me and I spit on his face and flash the pepper spray, he's not thinking "is my jet kune do able to beat her long guard flicker jabs", it's "fuck this is some crazy psychopath I can get hurt", he was expecting me to be scared so he's thrown off his rhythm, and gives up.
I've successfully ran away from danger before, but "running away" here looked more like putting myself in a safer environment—moving from the sidewalk to inside a shop, merging with the crowd in a protest, taking a taxi. But this was never possible like, during an attack. Better than running is avoidance; it's great to learn situational awareness, to always consider escape routes, to learn to discreetly and deescalatively not have people behind on you the streets. A few times I have taken a taxi rather than tram out of pure gut feeling, probably unnecessarily, but after a single time where my paranoia turned out to be correct, I learned to err on the safe side.