In fact, whenever you mention that Trump’s “very fine people” defended the Nazis, you’ll always get people—even proudly anti-Trump people, good liberals who want to be sure that no matter what we do in this struggle against facism, we always play fair—who rush in to take on the fascist framing uncritically, and let you know that well actually Trump was defending the non-Nazis that marched with the Nazis, not the Nazis themselves. It’s a distinction we are meant to find meaningful; a sort of indestructible exoneration offered to supremacists and their allies.

Revealingly, the exonerations that these sorts of fine distinctions allow are never extended to demonstrators whose cause is justice rather than supremacy. In fact, whenever supremacists commit acts of violence against demonstrators for justice, the blame for the violence gets attributed to all those who march for justice, not to the supremacists responsible or to the underlying injustice that made the demonstration necessary. This is a state of affairs that makes it impossible for a demonstration for supremacy to ever be considered intrinsically violent, and impossible for a demonstration for justice to ever be considered intrinsically peaceful. A litmus test for institutional supremacy if ever there was one.