Alex Wagner

And I think so much about nonviolent civil protest as being sort of born in that era.

And you write in the piece, all of the protest, all of their protest was civil and nonviolent.

Nonviolence didn't mean passivity.

It was a strategy intended to reveal the brutal contrast

between the tactics of the oppressor and the experiences of the oppressed.

Nonviolent civil protest was met with rank incivility, which is to say the hypocritical way in which we presently understand civility and incivility is nothing new.

So help me understand it through the lens of this moment where you're saying don't ask us to be civil.

Do you think that the work of those freedom fighters and those civil rights activists in the 1960s sort of in the gate of civility was the wrong strategy?

I guess I'm trying to square what happened before in that context with what you're talking about now.

To that end, I mean, the idea of opening the door to incivility, to not be constrained by the notions of civility that are basically thrust upon, you know, dissenters in this present political climate.

I wonder how you think about that in the context of the Charlie Kirk assassination, right?

I mean, it feels like uniformly elected Democratic officials, you know,

mourned his Kirk's death, even if they did not celebrate the ideas that he put forward.

And it was complicated, right?

It was complicated to figure out a way to disagree with the ideas that he stood for and promoted and resolutely stand against murder and assassination.

How did you think about those events in the context of, I guess, believing these uncivil times are going to call for and result in uncivil actions?

Yeah, and I think that that, you know, when you talk about it in that framework, it makes total sense, right, that J.D.

Vance, on one hand, memorializing Charlie Kirk, can call for civility as he is part of an administration that is dragging people into ICE detention centers.

targeting blue states and cities, trying to disappear trans people from society.

All of these things are incredibly violent things.