Am I Gonna Have To Write About Nazis Every Week?

Can’t a fella just watch people beat each other up without Nazis interrupting?

The guy on the right wants to be anywhere else right now.

I swear that this newsletter is not going to turn into The Nazi Report. I have interests beyond writing The Week in Modern Nazism. But what can I say? There’s a lot of Nazi News, and just last week, in this newsletter, I declared myself to be on Nazi Watch. Yay?

Anyway… onto my new and frustratingly regular feature, I Did Nazi This Coming!

I’m a mixed martial arts fan. That may surprise many of you, but as a kid I was both a Bruce Lee fanatic and a watcher of boxing. I was born during the heyday of Kung Fu movies and grew up during a time when boxing was regularly on network television. Muhammad Ali was still floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee when I was a kid, and I grew up in the Mike Tyson era. In my adolescence, I took various martial arts classes, until I settled into Wing Chun Kung Fu, Bruce Lee’s original style. Wing Chun is one of the only martial arts styles that was developed by a woman named Ng Mui. She was a Shaolin nun in the 1700s in China. She named the martial art after her student, a woman named Yim Wing Chun.

Michelle Yeoh played a fictional version of Yim Wing Chun in the film Wing Chun.

When the Ultimate Fighting Championship began in 1993, it had more in common with an actual Tyler Durden fight club than a sport. If you were looking for it in a video store, you’d be more likely to find it next to those “Faces of Death” tapes than in the sports section. But then regulation came in and cleaned it up and the skill of the athletes went up dramatically. I began watching the UFC in the 2010s, when the UFC entered the mainstream. They went from the now-defunct Spike TV channel to Fox Sports to the mothership of sports networks, ESPN. That is where they reside now, although there is talk of a move to Netflix. In other words, things are going very well for the UFC.

Like athletes in all combat sports, many of the UFC’s fighters are rough around the edges, to say the least. They curse. They say things that are sexist and xenophobic. Some cross all the way into bald-faced homophobia. I have sort of accepted that some of that comes with the territory of beating people up for a living. Between grueling training sessions, you may not be spending a lot of your recovery time reading Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality.

Amanda Nunes, my favorite UFC fighter BY FAAAAAAAAAAR!

Let me be clear. There are many people who fight for the UFC who are not that way, including some of their most heralded champions like Daniel Cormier, Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, and Demetrious Johnson. They all seem like regular dudes who fought mixed martial arts because they had tremendous skill at it, not to prove their manhood and not to put anybody down. The UFC also had the first openly gay combat sports champion. (This is a little-known fact that should be well known!) Amanda Nunes is a retired UFC fighter from Brazil and she holds that significant distinction. She was the best. Also, I’m not trying to say that the UFC has cornered the market on these “rough-around-the-edges fighters.” Even in his heyday, the great Muhammad Ali sometimes went too far in promoting a fight. Most ignominiously, Ali called his opponent Joe Frazier, a Black man, “a gorilla” as a part of his trash talk to him. Ugly stuff.

But in recent years, the UFC has gone from “rough around the edges” to “rough from edge to edge,” and the edges are beginning to smell a little fascist-y. The UFC’s brand and Donald Trump’s MAGA brand are now one in the same. UFC president Dana White and Donald are good friends. Dana White and UFC Commentator/famous-Trump-softball-interviewer Joe Rogan were both at the inauguration. What that means is that the UFC fighters who trafficked in saying awful things before are now backed by Donald Trump AKA President Awful Things.

Okay, now that you know about my genuine but complicated love of combat sports and the gross political evolution of UFC, we're ready to talk about last week. It's a doozy. Let's go! Last week, up-and-coming UFC prospect and Arkansas resident Bryce Mitchell had some things to say about all this new fangled 2025 criticism of Hitler. On the first (and hopefully last) episode of his new podcast Bryce had some thoughts about all of us lefties being too hard on Hitler.

Here’s a selection of some of Bryce’s actual quotes. I highlighted the “good parts” if you just want to scan through them. They are truly despicable.

Hitler was a good guy based on my own research, not my public education indoctrination.

I really do think before Hitler got on meth, he was a guy I'd go fishing with.

He fought for his country. He wanted to purify it by kicking the greedy Jews out that were destroying his country and turning them all into gays. They were gaying out the kids. They were queering out the women. They were queering out the dudes. You know where the first [INSERT SUPER AWFUL AND TIRED SLUR FOR TRANSGENDER PERSON] surgery in the world was? It happened to be in Germany before Hitler took over. You know the books that everybody makes fun of Hitler burning? You know what the books was? Queer books! Hitler burned queer books because Hitler didn't want a bunch of queers destroying his nation. They can not produce children!

When he got on meth and turned on Russia, I believe that's when he kind of went full nutty. And I don't think he was just like the best dude ever. And when I say I'd go fishing with him, I'm not saying he was the most trustworthy dude, or I'd love him or whatever. But at some point in Hitler's life I don't think he was that bad of a guy. I really don't.

Was Hitler perfect? No. But he was fighting for his people. Okay? And he wanted a pure nation with people– You know what the Jews was doing? They was charging interest. Christians aren't allowed to do that. These Jews were controlling his country, bro.

Here’s Bryce on the subject of the United States putting Japanese American citizens in camps during World War II.

I'm telling you, we put those [INSERT AWFUL AND TIRED SLUR FOR JAPANESE PEOPLE] in camp because we had to for the safety of this nation, and you bet your ass we'd do it again if we had to. It was a different time, brother. It was a whole different time.

Whew! In the spirit of not being a “grammar Nazi,” I’m gonna let the occasional lack of correct verb conjugation go, in an effort to focus on the important things here. Literally the only thing I can even sort of agree on in Bryce’s rant is, “Was Hitler perfect? No.” Although that is considerably understated, to say the least. And remember, incredibly, this is Briyce’s attempt to cut Hitler some slack. Bryce is basically saying, Hitler only genocided the Jewish people because they wanted everyone to be gay! Come on, guys. You gotta admit Hitler had a point!

No, I don’t.

Even his cohost tries to feebly pushback, but the look on his face says, Damn. I’m about to go viral for all the wrong reasons.

Once again, we have the irony of a heterosexual, cisgender, man criticizing gender-affirming care when he himself goes out of his way to affirm his gender. Bryce asked the UFC to let him wear camouflage shorts when he fights. I guess they make him feel like a real manly man.

If you have followed Bryce’s UFC press conferences, then this isn’t all that surprising. Bryce is a flat-earther, doesn’t believe in gravity, is against seatbelts, is anti-vaccine (of course), and believes COVID was a government plan. My apologies to the Arkansas public school system. I’m sure this isn’t 100% your fault. Bryce has since apologized because OF COURSE! In a classic Instagram apology post Bryce said, “I’m definitely not a Nazi, and definitely do not condone any of the evil things Hitler did.”

Notice how Bryce cleverly said that he doesn't condone “any of the evil things Hitler did.” But how does Bryce define “evil”? In his apology, Bryce admits that “a lot of people died in the Holocaust,” but he doesn’t mention Jewish people, gay people, or transgender people. Is killing those people part of the “evil things Hitler did”? Are we really going to divide Hitler’s accomplishments into “evil” and “not evil”?

But I could give less than a shit about Bryce’s apology. To paraphrase the great Maya Angelou, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them the twelfth time. The most troubling part of this is Dana White’s response to it all. After calling Bryce stupid and dumb repeatedly, White was asked if he would reprimand Bryce in any way, White responded:

That's the beautiful thing about this business. For all of you that hate Bryce Mitchell, you get to see him hopefully get his ass whooped on global television," White said. "What do you want me to say about it? You know where I am with free speech. We're disgusted by it. I think he's literally one of the dumbest human beings.

Fucking totally feckless.

For those of you who don’t speak DanaWhitese, I’ll translate. “No. We won’t be punishing him because a big portion of our fighters and fanbase agree with what he said, AND Bryce is still making us money. But I promise you if our fanbase changes significantly or Bryce stops making us money, then we will cut him immediately… after I run the numbers one more time.”

Once again the “spree feech” argument allows grown men to be cowards and hide their true beliefs. Dana White would sooner suspend an athlete for not wearing UFC approved apparel during a fight than for an antisemitic, homophobic, racist, transphobic rant. Remember I said Bryce had to ask for permission to wear camouflage shorts in his fights. Apparently, he needs no permission for hate speech.

I have to believe that one day white men in positions of authority will understand what actual “free speech” is. Once again for people in the boardrooms, freedom of speech in the United States of America was set up by the founders to prevent the government from limiting the free speech of the people. It has zero to do with Americans talking to other Americans. The UFC is a corporation, they can reprimand fighters who are jeopardizing their brand identity. The reason why Dana White doesn’t want to reprimand Bryce is because, behind closed doors, White knows that what Bryce said is a part of the UFC’s brand identity.

The UFC’s brand identity has shifted to the extreme right. It didn’t used to be this way. There was a period pre-COVID where UFC fighters were crossing over into popular culture. Ex-UFC champion Ronda Rousey was in major films and on the cover of magazines. UFC champion Jon Jones was looking like a young Cassius Clay. Ex-two-division UFC champion Conor McGregor was known worldwide. But then Ronda lost. Jon Jones never met a controversy he didn’t lean into. And Conor decided to be too much like young Mike Tyson. (To say Conor’s star has fallen is to say Hamlet had an identity crisis.) In their wake, the UFC has seen no athlete crossover like they did. Instead, the UFC has been part of efforts to drag mainstream culture further and further right, to shift the frame so that the (facist-y) fringe is now center-stage. For more on this, see how much better the musical guests were at this recent Trump inauguration season versus the last one. The first one in 2017 featured little known singer Chrisette Michele and hasbeens/never-really-wases, 3 Doors Down. This time legitimate Snoop Dogg and Carrie Underwood were more than happy to lend their names and talents to Trump. It is especially sad given that Snoop Dogg had gone out of his way to call out rappers supporting Trump in 2017.

And that brings us to the platform upon which you are reading my words right now. Recently, someone asked me how I felt about Substack CEO Chris Best’s piece about free speech. Feel free to read it yourself. Suffice to say, when you cite Elon Musk—especially post-Hitler-salute Elon Musk—as an avatar of “free speech” you’ve lost your argument with me, Chris. And when you give examples of six people who you, Chris, think are doing a good job of “free speech,” and only one of them is not a white person, then I start to see how you see the world. The algorithms of the Internet have always prioritized white people’s perspectives over the rest of us. And specifically, Black folks in this country don’t get the same benefit of free speech that you have seen in your overwhelmingly white list, Chris. The people who are the most punished by the algorithms aren’t famous or noteworthy, like those on your list. I have no beef with most of the people on your list. I just wish in your big ”spree feech” piece you understood who actually needs the support the most.

I totally understand why my reader wanted to know my thoughts on this. Here is what I told them:

I live in America. This land is stolen from Indigenous people. My ancestors were considered property. Our economy requires undocumented labor to keep prices down, yet the leaders of our economy demonize undocumented people. If I get caught in the hypocrisy of the powers that be in this country, then I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. I have to figure out how to navigate this system the best I can, given the skills and avenues presented before me. If Substack throttles my work or edits it, then I will move somewhere else, as I did with Facebook years ago.

The United States of America is in the midst of a hypocrisy of horrors. We all have to navigate it to figure out how we get through, if we get through. There are many choices we will have to make to figure out which way to go. Some big and some small. This weekend is a big UFC pay-per-view. I’m not buying it. Due to the UFC’s alignment with Trump (and Dana White slapping his wife), I haven’t bought a UFC pay-per-view in over a year. Due to Target and Amazon pulling the plug on DEI initiatives, my wife and I have had to tell our daughters that we can’t shop there. From the look on their faces, they would rather I take away their oxygen.

In this era, we all have to start somewhere and do something. We all individually know what we are capable of. Do something. Speak up. Shop small businesses. Volunteer locally. Block traffic. Argue with those who are wrong if you have the interest. Organize a general strike. Stop supporting things that don’t support you and what you believe in. Run for local office. Use your job skills to help someone’s righteous cause. Don’t support anybody who is afraid to take a stand against Nazis. Take more walks.

Okay, I may be talking to myself with that last one.

Inspired by @sewingthroughfog’s IG video last week, tell us what you are doing to stand up to this current era of America. Big or small. Don’t be shy.

Who’s with me?

You’re With Me

The Who’s With Me? tour begins next week.

The “Who’s with Me?” stand-up comedy tour begins next week on February 13 in Washington, DC at The Kennedy Center. There are still some tickets available if you are in the area or know someone who is. Buy them (or tickets for any of my stand-up shows) at wkamaubell.com.

A bunch of founding “Who’s with Me?” subscribers are redeeming their free tickets for that show. I look forward to meeting you all at the meet and greet.

If you can’t make the DC show or any others, here are some fun things to watch. I was in New York City this week, and I did a bunch of press, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Sherri Shepard Show. Both were fun in very different ways. Check out the segments below.

February Office Hours

Our February Office Hours are happening on Thursday 2/27 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET. Join me and a special guest to celebrate Black History Month.

Please welcome Kahlil Greene to Substack!

Kahlil Greene is here on Substack to make us smarter!

Over the course of the last few years I have connected with and followed a bunch of righteous, funny, and educated creators on Instagram and YouTube. Kahlil was one of the first. He does amazing short-form videos about hidden histories. He’s a Yale grad, a Peabody winner, and he calls himself the Gen Z Historian. And I’m not jealous at all. Not one little bit… I swear.

Subscribe to his Substack History Can’t Hide.