Indiana Jones would want me to punch Nazis

After the race riots last summer, Nikesh recalls heading into Castle Park looking for a fight. An out of character response he’s been trying to make sense of ever since.

Hope Is Around The Corner 31st July, 2025

Nikesh Shukla

What possessed me, last August, a week after racists attacked a hotel housing refugees, minutes after we occupied Old Market so thoroughly that the fash didn’t show up, to walk into Castle Park, after dark, looking for a fight? I walked into the park, my fists clenched and cocked at my hip, looking for a racist to attack me so I could punch them back.

Unhinged behaviour, I know. But give me grace. What my friend later referred to as me going vigilante, was in fact me being unable to process my worst fears coming to light. 

So many of us gathered that night, comrades from all over Bristol, either they had been part of various movements for years, vocal online or new to the cause, having seen the horrific videos of racist violence in Castle Park from the week before. Whatever brought us to Old Market, to stand in front of a law office specialising in immigration cases, to protect it from the fash, it didn’t matter. We were there. We showed up. We shouted. We are many. You are few. We are Bristol. Who are you?

That night, I needed to explode. I had been in such a state of hyper-vigilance for so long, with nothing to deescalate my racing pulse, my million-miles-an-hour thoughts, my inability to enjoy simple things. In the week between Castle Park and Old Market, I wasn’t listening to music while I walked down the street, because, who was round the corner?

I joined WhatsApp groups. I held open spaces for people to talk. Nothing quietened the rage that consumed me. I signed my kids up for self-defence classes. I struggled to explain to them why. They were asking us questions that felt unanswerable, like, if we are deported, would their white mother be able to come with us or would she be made to stay here? 

It reminded me of the cost of this constant mental load. What does it keep us from doing, saying, being? How do we self-censor and disappear because of the very real fears in the air? How do we stand up and fight back and protect our loved ones? 

As writer Toni Morrison said so eloquently, ‘the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being’.

That night, in Old Market, it was incredible to see so many people come together. But it didn’t quell my nerves. If anything, I needed to explode. Which is why, having chanted and shouted and watched, having made sure everyone got home, and walked past a couple of post-protest dance-offs, I realised I wasn’t done. I stepped into Castle Park, looking to punch a Nazi. So Indiana Jones would be proud of me.

The next thing I remember clearly is that I was at home, with my family safely tucked in bed. I sat with the feeling that I had chosen violence, and tried to work out where that came from. That feeling has sat in my throat for a year. It was easier to manage when it just made my chest heavy. 

This June, when UKIP held their cute little mass deportation ‘protest’, I went, as did a few hundred other people. I was surprised, I guess, at how few turned up to see them off. I was surprised that not as many people as last year turned up. It felt slightly more eggy this time. I witnessed the UKIP leader openly do a Nazi salute. I got into a physical altercation with someone trying to goad me. I, and many other people got racially abused. And that familiar state of hypervigilance re-lodged itself in my throat.

I’m not a violent person. I took up boxing as a method of self-defence, so I know I’m tasty. I’ve even found myself leaning into the ‘always punch Nazis like Indiana Jones’. Maybe I went looking for it because I’ve been scared this was going to happen for years, and now it’s happening, the only way to face it is head on. You know? Like Michael Rosen said in We’re All Going On A Bear Hunt. You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it. Oh no, you have to go through it. 

Maybe I think that, in a profession like mine that’s all gaslighting columns, social media comments and coded language, that violence, at least, can’t be misinterpreted. Maybe rage is all I ever had and I’ve run out of words. I don’t know. The more I try to rationalise the fact that I went looking for a fight with racists a year ago, an irrational reaction, the more I have to remind myself that racism itself isn’t rational, and there isn’t a rational way of dealing with an irrational violence. 

Maybe I need to give myself some grace. I keep saying what I did was unhinged, to protect myself. But I imagine some of you reading this might empathise, or at least have found yourself in a similar position. I see you. 

When it comes down to it, in my attempts to rationalise my irrational violent panic response, I forgot the thing that made that entire day a clarifying one. I wasn’t alone. And that’s something rational and tangible I can hold on to. We are many. They are few. We are Bristol.