What is the role of the enforcer in the game. Why is it important?

“I think it’s important. Obviously fighting is a part of the game, it’s engrained in the sport. The role of the enforcer is needed. They keep the peace on the ice. They make sure star players don’t get taken advantage of and I’ve been an advocate of that forever. I think if you watch a game where there isn’t a player that keeps the other team nervous, there are players that take runs at players. There are dirtier hits. The play gets more chippy.
And if there is a player there that is a fighter, they would calm that stuff down. There wouldn’t be as many borderline hits, there wouldn’t be as much scrums or chippy play. The role of that enforcer definitely calms the play down and keeps the play honest.” – John Scott

We used the theme of Enforcers to discuss the role of violence within the recent political landscape. Enforcers arise out of the inadequacy of the rules in the game, thus enforcers act as a deterrent to further violence and abuse of star players. Political violence and the discourse surrounding it operates similarly, as if one group becomes violent than it maybe necessary for others to as well. We wrote this song after the events at Charlottesville, where a young woman was murdered in the streets by an Alt-rightist. The song is a reaction to those events as a call to arms, to stand against the violent advocates of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-democratic sentiments.

As of late enforcers have been going out of style, Hockey has changed and the rules have become more stringent. In the current political landscape, the norms have become more polarized but the rules have not changed. Hate speech has increased and so to have threats to visible minorities. Why even the President of the United States, the leader of the de-facto liberal order was unable to condemn these attacks, as many of the position held by these crypto-fascists were also shared by the administration. So in a world, where the state doesn’t adequately enforce rules regarding the harassment of visible minorities and gives credence to crypto-fascistic nationalism at an executive level. The norms of pluralistic discourse have changed, the white nationalists are on the street, they are advocating for the ethnic cleansing of our fellow brown and black human beings, and we are expected to sit back and discuss the merits of whether or not they deserve to exist? Our answer is no, deterrence is needed and there is no room for reasonable conversation when someone is willing to denigrate the value of a fellow human being.