zlacker

>>aspenm+(OP)
Blaming the boogy man of White Nationalists, Russia, or outside outside agitators is a way to shift blame by politicians and an easy scapegoat. Amusingly the governor of Minnesota, and a big city MN mayor blamed vandalism & lootingrioters as being the work of people who were all from out of state, thereby parroting Trump's same line (or he theirs).

They (not Trump of course) had to walk it back when it turned out not to be true.

Is there some outside groups posing as others, possibly, but to blame a majority of problems on them is just BS.

>>bruceb+K5
The problem is antifa has become the new boogy man for the GOP, and they've been pushing this narrative extremely hard. It's apparent they've identified their enemy, but this approach has me worried that "First they came for the antifa..." might not be far off.

I see a lot of mischaracterization of what is a category, not a group. From what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism, and somewhat characterized by people willing to take direct action.

>>epakai+ho
Some of their direct action includes running up behind people and striking them with a bike lock across the back of their head for the crime of voting the "wrong" way.

>>at_a_r+Vo
You're just doing the same thing again, using a vague "they" to extrapolate from cherry picked examples onto an amorphous mass, without even bothering to dress up the dissonance between that and "bike lock", singular.

>>mellow+5y
> an amorphous mass

No mass is 100% identical though, so "you can't use some individual actions to project on the group they chose to be part of and that chooses to accept them" really just makes the concept of groups useless.

"No, that specific action wasn't covered by our shared intent, so obviously we will accept responsibility for it" is something I believe pretty much everybody will agree on after the action has happened and has resulted in negative feedback. Had it produced applause and achieved the goal of the group, they would have celebrated it.

>>luckyl+EJ
> "you can't use some individual actions to project on the group they chose to be part of and that chooses to accept them"

You certainly can't cherry pick them (one instance of violence versus billions of instances of peacefulness, for example), apart from "group that chooses to accept them" not applying here.

> Had it produced applause and achieved the goal of the group, they would have celebrated it.

Had there been anye instances of violence by people calling themselves antifa, those seeking to defend the ongoing, systematic violence would have invented instances of violence of people they call antifa. See how that works, or rather, how it doesn't?

>>mellow+W41
True, if it was billions to one, I'd probably agree with you. It's not though, not being peaceful is pretty much one of the core defining features of the black bloc. And let's not go down the road with claims of "all the other instances are Nazis or undercover cops trying to hurt the movement". I have serious doubts regarding the Nazis (I knew a few people in Antifa circles back in the day and you don't go unnoticed with your shit just because you wear a black sweat shirt, like every sub-culture they have lots of Shibboleths), and the undercover cops are mostly observers, not instigators (though I'm sure they will take part in riots if it helps their cover or their case).

> See how that works, or rather, how it doesn't?

My point is that disowning a member's actions when they aren't considered favorably post factum is what pretty much every group does. If Antifa/black bloc were actively promoting non-violence, that would be a different issue, but this rather sounds like the Daily Stormer saying "we don't condone violence wink wink" when another one of their goons snaps and shoots up a mosque.

>>luckyl+n91
> It's not though, not being peaceful is pretty much one of the core defining features of the black bloc.

If the black bloc was all of antifa, it would just be called antifa. Outside the black bloc, direct action covers a lot of things, from just organizing all sorts of things (not just protests), art and being loud, to vandalism and even violence.

Just take all the sorts of things that were done in human history while claiming it was for freedom, both bad and good. Does that make any person doing thing X in the name of freedom responsible for what a person doing Y in the name of freedom? You can call those people a "group" all day long, but that doesn't mean they're actually a group in the sense of voting on their values and actions.