A day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, something beautiful happened. Yes, the organised women’s marches on Washington, and pretty much every major city in the world, but not just that. Upon giving a video interview, the white nationalist alt-right leader Richard Spencer was sucker-punched in the face.

I don’t consider myself a violent person, but the video of this ‘dapper white nationalist’ with his Hitler Youth haircut and Pepe the Frog lapel pin getting punched in the face captivated me. After I finished watching the original video for the tenth time, I moved on to a remix where he was being hit to the rhythm of DMX’s ‘X Gon' Give It To Ya’ (a great song for punching fascists if there ever was one), which occupied me for another ten minutes.

After that I was disappointed to hear that he was actually hit again within a few minutes, but no one caught it one camera. At that point it felt reasonable to ask myself: is it okay to be this happy when another person gets punched in the face?

Words like ‘fascist’, ‘white nationalist’ and ‘neo-nazi’ are thrown around quite liberally by people on the left against racist, authoritarian and far-right politicians and activists. I admit to doing this. But everyone who is suddenly clutching their pearls and crying 1984 needs to understand who Richard Spencer actually is.

The self-styled ‘alt-right leader’ first broke into the mainstream media during a conference of white nationalists, where he greeted Trump’s victory with a nazi salute and the comments, “We won – America belongs to white men now.” Otherwise, he’s primarily known for such hits as “Are Jews people?”, “What is wrong with black genocide?” and “Heil Trump! Heil victory!”.

Richard Spencer and his fans are a danger to most minorities, but they have made an explicit attempt to bring anti-Semitism into American mainstream politics. Though he doesn’t classify himself as a neo-Nazi (who would?), his constant use of Nazi terminology (‘Lügenpresse’, or ‘lying press’ is a favourite)  and anti-Semitic imagery of  Jews as inhuman ‘golems’ does this for him. If it walks like a neo-Nazi and quacks like a neo-Nazi, it’s probably a neo-Nazi.

Still, while it seems the majority of people share my joy at seeing this person hit in the face, there have been clear dissenting voices. Stefan Molyneux, the internet’s favourite ‘libertarian’ ‘philosopher’ (if Ayn Rand had a child with a box of dogmatism, it would look quite like him) was outraged. “Listen to his goddamn arguments! They won’t kill you! They’re just words!” he said. Some people on the liberal left had a similar reaction. Instead of punching people, even horrible people, we should confront them with arguments and counter their hate-speech with speech of our own. That’s the landmark of a liberal democracy, right?

Well, sure. I probably wouldn’t have punched Richard Spencer in the face myself.  Punching fascists isn’t a long-term solution, but I don’t believe that any amount of ingenious counter-speech will turn a fascist around. It seems unlikely to me that the Holocaust could have been prevented if Jews had all been well-versed in logical and reasoned debate. No amount of ‘Dear Sir, would you kindly acknowledge that the skull-shapes you base your racial science on are in fact mistaken, here’s a peer-reviewed journal article and a helpful graph’ will change the mind of someone like Richard Spencer.

Fascism is the politics of hate, not ideology – and emotions are notoriously hard to argue with. So the choice isn’t between stopping fascist speech either by arguments or by violence. The choice is merely between stopping fascist speech or allowing it. Whether the state should have the power to interfere is still understandably a controversial question – but we shouldn’t be under the illusion people like Richard Spencer will stop advocating for ethnic cleansing if we ask them nicely.

‘Yolocaust’ isn’t satirical – it’s deeply disrespectful

Still, is it right to be personally happy about violence? What a lot of people need to understand is that for Jews and other minorities, the joy of fascists getting punched is not just sadistic (although it is a little bit of that), but one of self-interest.

“Being Jewish marks a state of constant vigilance, since the tide of history could at any moment turn against us again.”

Given the choice, Richard Spencer would have me and my family dead in a heartbeat. He wouldn’t think twice and certainly not write a column about it. Seeing a person who wants me dead getting punched and widely ridiculed gives me hope that he won’t succeed.

This hope is not nothing. While it might be seen as paranoia, the increase in racially-motivated harassment and hate-crimes after Trump’s election, and the Goldman Sachs country-club ghouls that now rule the most powerful nation on earth, is a source of immense fear for millions of Jews. That’s the reason the women’s marches and ACLU’s winning verdict against Trump’s Muslim ban were so important. While a fascist getting punched has nothing like the actual significance of a worldwide movement of resistance, it is symbolically important to those who fear they might be their victims.

Plus, it is just undeniably pretty funny.