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.
It's pitiful that this is the best boogeyman the right can come up with in 2020 and it's extra pitiful that - like everything else they project - it's just them telling on themselves.
https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/08/eric-clanton-takes-3...
smart enough to learn to code or to polish a pitch to a vc, but lacking any critical thinking skills or morality that would cause them to reflect on their position in society.
flocking to the right at the first hint of something that does reflect these truths.
supporting fascists because you're scared or uncomfortable is even worse than supporting fascists because you're a bigot imo
Naming yourself "the good guys" doesn't mean anyone who opposes you is bad. It's like if someone said disliking 'Make America Great Again' means you don't want America to be great. Or opposing the Patriot Act makes you not a patriot.
You know this, everyone else reading this knows this, stop pretending we don't.
And that's the problem.
This story is natural clickbait because you have literal fascists claiming to be anti-fascist, which is an obvious contradiction.
But if Antifa is just anybody who is against fascism then violent anti-fascists are Antifa. You can't say they're not when they actually are against fascism. And without any official leadership to disavow the advocation of violence, now your label is tainted by violent evildoers and you get to enter the grab-bag of boogymen for whenever somebody needs one.
So when you say 'From what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism' - what does that mean? America doesn't have any serious fascist groups - from what I can tell the ruling powers are decidedly corporatist and the first alternative philosophy seems to be light/moderate socialism. Second is maybe libertarianism.
So who/what do you think the anti-fascists are opposing, and what would they espouse if they ever decide there are no fascists for them to define themselves against?
How he didn't get 7 counts of attempted murder is beyond me.
The fact that nazis exist doesn't invalidate it. Again you probably know this so I'm not going to bother replying further.
"However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."
So no, I really, truly have no clue what you're getting at. Like as far as I can tell you're saying "being willing to punch a Nazi makes you a Nazi". Which, like, no.
Corporatism was inseparable from fascism in Italy and Germany. The exploitation of the profit motive is one of the primary reasons that so many people overlooked the atrocities.
Fascism is the reason so many companies like IBM, Hugo Boss, L'Oreal, Koch Industries, Audi, Porsche, Adidas, BMW, and countless other extant corporations have dark histories from supporting the German extermination camps to utilizing their slave labor to build their products.
I consider an organization on their tenets, under which Black Lives Matter is completely fine.
KKK for example isn't.
Right-wing terrorism has no redeeming kernel of decency, nor does it have a productive movement behind the (few?) bad actors.
No, you don't, or you would consider a religion that endorses literally infinite amounts of torture for anyone who disagrees with them to be violent. There's also its attitudes toward homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22), slavery (Exodus 21:7), murdering people for working on saturdays (or maybe sundays?) (Exodus 35:2), and touching pig remains (Leviticus 11:7), among others.
Quoting a few key sentences from Wikipedia:
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. [0]
America doesn't have a serious lobby that believes in those things. There isn't a lobby that is serious about autarchy, there isn't a lobby calling for complete mobilisation and there isn't a lobby calling for a one party state. Apart from maybe the anti-facists I don't know of a lobby promoting political violence. The war and imperialism stuff is possibly true, but that isn't a new thing in American politics - America has been at war my entire lifetime and mostly in the same set of middle eastern countries.
The only link between fascism and American politics is that Trump is popular in the Republican party and is happy to stand up and say that the globalism pendulum has swung too far. That is a tenuous link to fascist ideology.
But to some extent I do agree with you, otherwise I would still be a Christian which I'm not, for the fact that any belief that subjugates moral philosophy and reasoning to interpreting holy text will always have blind spots.
Either way, I apologize if it distracted from the point I was trying to make, that all organizations, good or bad will have bad actors, but what's important is identifying which organization can be fruitful and which is inherently bad.
Maybe we will disagree on a few there.
Sure, people that disagree with your viewpoints lack critical thinking and morality. Painting people who disagree with you as immoral idiots just sounds like you're not able to defend your beliefs.
This is the definition of the word, no matter how much lefists try to whitewash the term and shift the overton window.
Corporatism was also inseparable from the political systems in the UK and the US though, wasn't it?
People start with moral intuitions first and work backwards to find reasons. Fallacies, ignorance, and sloppy thinking is quasi-deliberate, to satisfy a priori values of what is sacred and what is profane, who are the good people and who are the bad people.
Wikipedia points to many resources about Antifa movements, starting from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa
And you only care to pick one narrow definition.
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.
>> Naming yourself "the good guys" doesn't mean anyone who opposes you is bad. It's like if someone said disliking 'Make America Great Again' means you don't want America to be great. Or opposing the Patriot Act makes you not a patriot.
Your reply:
> Like as far as I can tell you're saying "being willing to punch a Nazi makes you a Nazi".
ok
In the UK, the British Union of Fascists organised a march in London in 1936 and were countered by ten times as many people organised by anarchist, communist, socialist and Jewish groups. The ensuing violence sent an extremely clear message that fascism is not welcome in the country.
>> Antifa literally exist to use violence upon people who don't share their politics
Your reply:
> Using violence to achieve political goals is not in itself a "hallmark of fascism".
Agreed. But I didn't write that it was.
You live in the UK. How would you compare the IRA of the 1920s with the provos in the 1980s? Would you say they're the same group? They have the same name.
I know a number of people in various countries who participate in Antifa action and who, while definitely left of center, are by no means anarchists or communists, and not even close to Marxists-Leninists or whatever other hard-left groups there are.
It’s funny to me that now they are a target, people are trying to play down their involvement in the political landscape the past few years.
I’ve watched them shut down speech, aggressively block events from happening, attack people in MAGA hats, there is so much hate pouring out of them that they are more fascist than anti-fascist.
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?
> 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.
Please elaborate. Please don't just re-quote yourself. You know, follow the guidelines and engage in good faith. I did, it why I asked a genuine clarifying question which you seemed to ignore.
I've gotta say, the NRA has been getting closer to fitting this.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals?cycle=2012&id=d00000...
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/us/nra-details-plan-for-a...
No, you did not address GP in good faith. And GP did address your question by quoting himself: the problem is not "fighting against the bad guys", the problem is whom you consider the bad guys. Anti-fascists calling themselves such in no way means that everyone they oppose is actually a fascist.
In my experience (as a mainsteam left person) Antifa consider anyone not on the hard left to be either 'fascists' or 'bootlickers'. Everyone else I know who has had any contact with Antifa has had the same experience. Many Antifa people would say this is an accurate view of anyone who does not share hard left political views.
I did. Please don't presume to know my thoughts.
> Anti-fascists calling themselves such in no way means that everyone they oppose is actually a fascist.
This doesn't address my comment, nor is it what GP said. Id suggest you reread their comment. And mine.
I'll break it down:
> Antifa literally exist to use violence upon people who don't share their politics
This is overbroad. Many people don't share antifa politics. I don't. They don't threaten me with violence. Something is missing here.
> which is one of the hallmarks of fascism
So this is only sensical in an overbroad generalization of antifa to mean "violent left wing people who are violent towards anyone not suitably left wing", which isn't antifa under any reasonable definition, and is an entirely circular argument.
So yes, please: explain.
You got it backwards.
The only definition from that page that is not related to some extremist marxist/anarchist movement is this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism
And even that one uses the logo of the Antifaschistische Aktion. None of the other historic Antifascist movements described in that article are in any way relevant today.
Today, "Antifa" is synonymous with "Antifaschistische Aktion".
As someone more eloquent than me put it: Christianity had it's chance to rule the world; we call it the Dark Ages for good reason.
Why is it important for you to filter some definitions out?
> And even that one uses the logo of the Antifaschistische Aktion. None of the other historic Antifascist movements described in that article are in any way relevant today.
There are historical reasons that explain why Antifa caught up as a name, what logo activists use, etc. The abbreviation did not change, it still stands for "anti-fascim actions" today, or "Antifaschistische Aktion" in German.
But you are saying Antifa is synonymous, ie. equal to "Antifaschistische Aktion", not for what the words mean, but in a literal way, to restrict the definition. No matter how the name came to life, the spirit behind it is broader that the name; nowadays it is a perfectly fine shortcut for anti-fascism.
I mean, dictionaries tend to agree on this one:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/antifa
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.
Their original goal, of a rights advocacy group has turned into a partisan dividing tactic.
Supporting one party over another is not an act of fascism. They promote the GOP because the GOP supports their goals. Do you think it's reasonable to expect them to promote the other party while that party actively works against them?
They promote a stronger police presence in schools, but they also support the right of teachers to be armed and able to defend against attackers. In other words, they support teachers being able to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. Whether you agree with that or not, the 2nd Amendment is a decidedly libertarian idea. Fascism is authoritarian by nature. Promoting one of these is mutually exclusive with promoting the other.
Regarding police in schools, I don't see how that fits with Wikipedia's definition of fascism: a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy. Perhaps we're operating on different definitions.
I also wouldn't think poorly of the NRA for just it's change in how it donates to candidates if they weren't performing illegal coordination and also promoting Republicans candidates even if their opponent was aligned with their 2nd Amendment stance.
Police presence in schools is just a step into a strong regimentation of society IMO. And the 2nd Amendment is far too vague to be considered libertarian. We could debate all day over what the intent was, or how it can be interpreted.
Frankly I don't see why that's relevant. My point is that the amendment itself has become a partisan issue. The GOP and the NRA agree on their interpretation of the amendment, while the other party opposes them. Why would you expect two allies to support their mutual opposition instead of each other, and how does not doing so equate to fascism?
> performing illegal coordination
Political corruption != fascism, and it is certainly not unique to it.
> the 2nd Amendment is far too vague to be considered libertarian
I disagree, but I can see how some interpretations of it (that it's meant to arm militias which are agents of the state) could even be considered authoritarian. However, the NRA advocates for the interpretation that says people should have the means to overthrow their government if necessary. I'm having a hard time seeing how that aligns with fascism.