Right-wing terror is a feature of daily life in present-day America. Ostensibly spontaneous violence incubates in the same ideological ecosystem as organized reactionary political associations.
Tribute to victims at the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in Pittsburgh. (photo: Wikimedia)
Robert Bowers, the man arrested for a rampage that killed seven at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, was seemingly steeped in the ultra-right’s internal online debates, blaming Jews and Muslims for what he sees as the “certain extinction” toward which Americans and “Western Civilization” are supposedly headed. Right before the killing spree, Bowers posted on Gab, a social media platform used by white nationalists, that he “can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” singling out HIAS, a pro-refugee organization that Tree of Life supports, as a particular villain.
Bowers is a believer in “white genocide,” a white-supremacist delusion that holds that demographic and social changes in the US and other countries—such as immigration, an increase in multiracial children, multiculturalism and feminism — are all part of a plot to exterminate the white race.
A massacre in El Paso left 20 dead, and the suspect appears to have posted an anti-immigrant manifesto immediately before the rampage that echoes white-nationalist talking points on the supposed threat of the “ethnic displacement” of white people; it warns against “race mixing,” and refers to immigrants as “invaders.”
Meanwhile, hate crimes in America rose by 9% in 2018, the fifth consecutive year of increase and a trend that so far continues into 2019. The most frequently targeted groups were black, Jewish and LGBTQ people; almost all the hate-based murders were carried out by white supremacists and misogynists, and none were attributable to leftists.
Fascists march in Charlottesville (cc photo: Tony Crider)
This is the backdrop against which conflicts between fascists and antifascists must be considered, particularly as the movements on the vanguard of the American right are implicated in violent attacks of their own.
The Proud Boys are a group of violent neo-fascists who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-transgender people. Violence is in the organization’s very DNA. Their initiation rituals involve applicants being beaten by people in the group, as well as prospective members “serv[ing] the ‘cause’ . . . by engaging in a physical brawl with members of ‘antifa.’” In October of last year, after a New York City lecture by the organization’s founder, Gavin McInnes, a mob of Proud Boys was captured on video beating several men while yelling homophobic slurs. Ten Proud Boys were charged in the assault, and two have been convicted.
Patriot Prayer is a violent, radical right-wing group. In 2018, Patriot Prayer members were arrested for assaulting multiple people in Portland. On August 3, Portland police arrested six members of the organization, including its leader, Joey Gibson, for attacking antifascists on May Day; the group has also been caught on video planning assaults.
The Three Percenters are an armed anti-migrant group; one of its most well-known leaders, Chris Hill led an armed protest against the construction of a mosque. Earlier this year, three men tied to the group were sentenced to a combined 81 years in prison for plotting to bomb Somali and Muslim communities in Kansas.
American Guard, which the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a hate group, has members who previously belonged to the KKK. Brien James, who founded American Guard in Indiana in 2016, is alleged to have punched and stomped a man to the brink of death at a party for refusing to “seig heil,” and has boasted of being “tried for attempted murder and multiple batteries and hate crimes,” as well as having a Joint Terrorism Task Force file “a mile long”; in 2006, he was part of a group that beat up a rival fascist in front of the latter’s wife and daughter.
Antifa activist, Portland (cc photo: Old White Truck)
Antifascists organize to try to stop these movements as one prong of an effort to build a more equal world. “Antifa” refers to one set of tactics used to physically confront such groups; Cornel West says that antifa saved his life and those of other nonviolent protestors resisting the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
Maximillian Alvarez, a writer and PhD candidate who organizes with the Campus Antifascist Network, says that contemporary antifascists “rely on collective, autonomous, grassroots power to disrupt, expose, block and overwhelm fascist gatherings.” He describes people engaged in antifascist practice as taking the view that
staying put is fatal while violent extremists take bolder action and banal institutional powers conspire more brazenly against us in the shifting terrain of our increasingly extreme moment; to resist surges in far-right extremism while constantly moving to build popular support for a progressive dismantling of the material and cultural conditions that engender it—this is the core of any antifascist politics worthy of the name.
Historian Mark Bray (Boston Review, 11/29/17) explains that while the overwhelming majority of antifascist action is nonviolent,
they take fascist ideologues at their word when they threaten to murder immigrants. The antifascist conception of self-defense amounts to an argument for the minimization of harm to marginalized communities. The best way to accomplish this, antifascists argue, is to stop white supremacists from taking even the first step toward building power rather than waiting for them to show up at someone’s house with baseball bats.
This goal, Bray says, is usually accomplished through a wide variety of nonviolent methods—
actions which tend to fly beneath the public radar. But when such tactics fail, as a last resort antifascists are willing to physically shut down a Klan rally—even one that is “law-abiding.”
Thus the qualitative differences between antifa and the uber-right could hardly be more stark. The latter preclude debate by dehumanizing the majority of people in America (and on earth) who aren’t white, male, straight and cisgender, and by enacting threatening violence against women and minorities because of who they are. Yet when the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, the Three Percenters and American Guard rallied in Portland, Oregon, last month—at least in part, it would seem, in an effort to encourage the government to curb left-wing dissent by classifying antifa as an “organization of terror“—mainstream media repeatedly suggested that these outfits are analogous to antifa.
USA Today (8/17/19) used vague language to obfuscate the nature of the conflict, describing explicit racists and explicit anti-racists as “competing groups” who “faced off with heated, verbal exchanges,” engaged in “political skirmishes” as “protesters and counter-protesters battled.”
Fox News (8/17/19) applied the same phony balance in its headline, “Portland Mayor Praises Police After ‘Largely Peaceful’ Day of Far-Right, Far-Left Demonstrations.” Using “far” as a modifier for both factions makes them sound like they are mirror images of each other, rather than one group of people that wants to promote violence against some of the most vulnerable in America and another that wants to stop that from happening.
The first sentence deployed the same trick:
The mayor of Portland, Ore., said Saturday night that his city had avoided the “worst-case scenario” after members of far-right groups and far-left members of antifa held dueling demonstrations in the center of the city that lasted for hours on end.
The article implied the conflict was between forces that are similar because they are on the fringes of opposite ends of the political spectrum, “dueling demonstrations” rather than people attempting to prevent fascists from building their movement to murder, assault and oppress women and minorities. Similar gatherings in Portland had, the piece noted, “erupted in clashes,” as if these “clashes” can be best understood as a depoliticized force of nature, like a volcano, instead of violent groups bent on dehumanization meeting pushback when they hold public events to spread their message.
The Boston Herald (9/3/19) had a veneer of both sides-ism, saying in an editorial that “antifa and various far-right groups have continuously clashed on the streets of Portland, with escalating violence” and that any form of “violent and disruptive behavior cannot be normalized by our politicians.” (Opposing all forms of “disruptive behavior,” of course, means opposing all protests.) Yet it’s clear that in this article, which focuses on the antifa presence at Boston’s so-called “Straight Pride Parade,” the Herald wasn’t committed to moral equivalency between violent right-wing bigots and those who are fighting back against them: The article strongly implied that antifa is a more urgent social ailment, arguing that “our elected leaders need to call out antifa for what they are: a hate group,” without saying the term “hate group” should apply to the “Straight Pride” organizers, or any of the anti-minority, anti-women outfits that gathered in Portland; nor do the authors specify which demographic people using the antifa tactic supposedly hate, presumably because no such demographic exists.
The “conservative journalist” in CNN‘s headline (8/16/19) is Andy Ngo—described by Jacobin (8/16/19) as a “right-wing provocateur” and “the most dangerous grifter in America.”
Equation of antifa with its antagonists is a problem that unites conservative and centrist media. A CNN report (8/14/19) obscured the qualitative differences between violent racist, misogynist formations and those who oppose them in its headline, “Portland Braces for Dueling Protests: What We Know.” “Dueling protests” implies that the groups confronting each other are equivalent, though the article eventually noted that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers one side to be “a mix of white supremacists [and] neo-Nazis.”
The article’s lead referred to “multiple far-right and extremist groups” planning to attend, and its fourth sentence said that Joe Biggs, formerly of the right-wing conspiracy website Infowars, “has posted he wants the protest to ‘put an end to domestic terrorism,’ specifically left-wing antifascist extremists known as antifa.” The word “extremists” does not appear in quotes, so CNN appears to be endorsing its use.
Applying the term “extremist” to both antifa and the far right only a few sentences apart sends the message that they are substantively the same. Likewise, when CNN reports, “There are fears that the rally will attract many right-wing extremists, as well as antifa counter-protests,” the suggestion is that there’s as much reason to fear antifa as the violent fascists.
A New York Times article (8/17/19) criticized Trump for saying that antifa should be designated a terror organization by writing that Trump “did not mention any of the right-wing groups, although both they and antifa have a history of using violence against their opponents.” In this formulation, attacking people with the explicit goal of trying to subjugate the vast majority of the country and the world that is not white, male, cisgender and straight is indistinguishable from confronting such attacks.
Such framing obscures what ought to be made obvious: that there is a stark difference between groups who see violence as tool to make the world a more racist, misogynist, transphobic and homophobic place, and those who defend against such violence.
Is it time to raise the possibility that the media outlets in question are sympathetic/supportive of and to the white-supremacist? If the media outlets in question continuously pointed out that the far right groups’ goals were the subjugation and elimination of the majority of the people on this planet, as opposed to antifa whose only goal is the opposition to this white-supremacist goal, then readers could and would conclude that the media outlets in question were opposed to the white-supremacist goals. There failure to do so, raises the question, are they racist who support the white-supremacist’s goals? If the answer is yes, then they need to be called out and exposed every time.
The question of their motives aside, the end result is the same: this false moral equivalency and mealy-mouthed bothsidesism posing as objectivity/neutrality which we see from the media, pretty much categorically on this issue (fascists vs. anti-fascists), is hugely beneficial to fascists, and harmful to anti-fascists.
And honestly, I can decide what’s worse- that mainstream media is helping fascists and white supremacists deliberately, or that they are helping them through sheer incompetence and negligence. But again, the end result is what matters, and the end result is the same regardless of their intentions.
If you knew anything about Fascism, you would know that it is anti-Capitalist in nature. If “Antifa” is labeling Capitalists, Fascists–in order to justify attacking them–perhaps, there is an ulterior motive. Oh, wait. Do you know who else is anti-Capitalist? Comnunists! And those red flags they wave? Communists! Woah! It’s almost like the whole Antifa gimmick is just a lame rebranding of Communism in order to make it more palatable in light of it always leading to oppression and genocide.
This is the kind of nonsensical, ahistorical and politically illiterate take that’s been tied apart too many times and in you many venues for anyone to sincerely believe.
You’re a fucking moron, Majd.
https://www.heritage.org/index/
Here is the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index. The United States is #12. Above the United States, you’ll find Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK …
A number of those countries have invested heavily in social programs, and their policies are considered way too “socialist” by many in the United States. One can hardly claim that the Heritage Foundation has a left-wing bias. I presume you are against fascism because you are in favor of liberty. OK. Please explain how this is possible, then.
If you can take time out from your propaganda tour to read the dictionary, you’d know that the very definition of fascism is the fusion of corporate/wealth and government.
The Bush family made their fortune supporting and banking Nazi German businesses.
What is probably the best and most useful definition of fascism was constructed by Marxist theorist Georgi Dimitrov in the 1920’s :
” Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of the financial capital… Fascism is neither the government beyond classes nor the government of the petty bourgeois or the lumpen-proletariat over the financial capital. Fascism is the government of the financial capital itself. It is an organized massacre of the working class and the revolutionary slice of peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in its foreign policy is the most brutal kind of chauvinism, which cultivates zoological hatred against other peoples.” — George Dimitrov
Over the years the liberal capitalist /right wing and a few of their pet “Marxists” have tried steer that definition away from themselves, onto something, or someone else. Historically fascism has been a reaction of liberal capitalist societies to severe, otherwise intractable crises. The finance sector of capitalism is, and has always been understood to be, the most extremist reactionary division of capitalist society ..If capitalism were an ancient mezoamerican cult, the finance sector would be its priests demanding more human sacrifice as the solution to drought
Lol, this is quite the string of non sequiturs and falsehoods you’ve put together here. Due mostly to historical and geopolitical contingencies, communism has indeed been opposed to fascism. But communism has also been coupled with fascism, so the two are not necessarily opposed. And indeed, one can and most antifa members in fact do embrace the negative position of opposing fascism and white supremacy/nationalism, without adopting any positive political ideology- including communism. One certainly CAN be a communist and an anti-fascist, but one can just as easily be an anti-fascist but not a communist, or even a communist and a fascist.
Honestly, you may want to look up and read a bit about these concepts before sticking your foot in your mouth again.
Are you really going to argue with a dictionary definition?
Real Talk!
Do “white supremacists” have a 1st amendment right to freedom speech and freedom of assembly?
Do Antifa have the right to unilaterally declare open season on anyone they deem to be a “fascist”?
How is assault, rioting and looting by Antifa legitimate protest tactics?
1. Antifa is not a government organization, what antifa does cannot constitute a violation of anyone’s free speech: the 1st amendment grants one protection from government interference or consequences for speech, not interference or consequences from other private citizens (like antifa members).
2. Antifa doesn’t assault, riot, or loot, this is an alt-right “alternative fact” which you’re parroting uncritically. Antifa does, however, defend themselves and others targeted groups/individuals from violent fascists. Indeed, this is sort of, you know, THE POINT of antifa.
Antifa is indeed on the streets to violently suppress freedom of speech.
In democrat enclaves like Portland the police stand by and allow Antifa to run amuck and attack people to stifle their free speech.
Are the police part of the government?
The police are ordered by democrat mayors to stand-down and these mayors who ARE government officials are colluding with Anfifa to prevent the 1st amendment free speech rights of others.
As far as claiming that Antifa doesn’t loot, riot and assault, that is just a blatant lie and your lie can easily be debunked by anyone with a computer willing to Google Antifa’s nefarious activities.
Start by Googling the incident where 3 Antifa terrorists were arrested for the gang assault on Asian journalist Andy Ngo in Portland.
Mr. Ngo was hospitalized with a brain bleed.
Antifa is still not a part of the government, and as freedom of speech entails freedom from government interference, this assertion remains completely bogus. Private citizens cannot violate your freedom of speech, only the government can, because freedom of speech is literally defined as freedom from GOVERNMENT interference, not interference from other citizens.
And its funny that you should bring up Portland, given that various members of the Portland’s police force has been exposed as being associated with or assisting the white nationalist groups. So you got that one wrong too.
And Andy Ngo is a liar and a conspiracy theorist, HIS claims are the ones that have been debunked. Not that you have the intellectual integrity to acknowledge that fact, but it remains a fact nonetheless.
Seriously, have you made a SINGLE accurate assertion at any point on this board? Like, even just once? It looks like you have a talent for stating the literal exact opposite of the facts. You need to go and actually do your homework before coming here and spouting trivial and proven falsehoods.
“Antifa doesn’t assault, riot, or loot, this is an alt-right “alternative fact” which you’re parroting uncritically. Antifa does, however, defend themselves and others targeted groups/individuals from violent fascists. Indeed, this is sort of, you know, THE POINT of antifa.”
OK. That’s fine. Almost… The only problem with that is that when I commented on a blog that I supported, though I didn’t vote for, the French president in my country, you have these antifa morons starting to lose their temper, jumping into infinite loop and asking me repeatedly “what about the nazis? what about the holocaust? what about Robert Faurisson? are you defending him? No? Well, why do you support free speech? If you support free speech, you support holocaust denialism!”.
Result: Defending free speech is not an option in the online climate created by antifa in France. Chomsky is a fascist for them. What’s happening is that you simply cannot have an online conversation without these people systematically diverting the discussion to the the nazi genocide, bossing everyone around into confessing “Yes, the gas chambers did exist”, because if you simply want to keep silent and avoid that kind of useless conversation when it’s off-topic, then you’re a holocaust denier.
This has gone too far.
My position: Yes, the gas chambers did exist. And you know what? I do not give a damn any more, because I’m fed up with this bullying. Tone down the bullying and we’ll have sensible discussions. Until then, feel free to call me a nazi if it makes you happy and gives you a hard-on.
Result: A one hour “my auto-confession moment” where a campaigner for direct democracy is forced to answer the “do you believe in gas chambers?” question. At 41:47. “What the hell is that question?!?!” was his reaction. He now is “officially” an antisemite in antifa circles and mainstream news outlets…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMtmZQ4lb2g
Antifa punching journalists also occurs in France. Andy Ngo is therefore no surprise to me. Though the French journalist antifa punched, Vincent Lapierre, is arguably more a “nazi” than Andy Ngo is…
If antifa wants to punch nazis, fine. That’s fun. I’m not a humanist enough to care about people being hurt or even killed. But, seriously, there’s no point in letting a society stoop so low to the point where you have to start a phrase with “I believe in gas chambers” before even having a discussing with these antifa punks.
And yes, antifa historians do not have a clean slate either when it comes to rewriting history about world war 2 crimes. The summum of ridicule has been attained in the article on a crime called the Foibe Massacres in Italy during World War 2. Massive psychoanalytic bullshit by antifascists to justify rewriting history when it suits them, in a nutshell:
http://usagespublicsdupasse.ehess.fr/linquietante-etrangete-de-lhistoire-sur-lusage-des-foibe-dans-litalie-contemporaine/
(And no, I do not believe that it’s comparable to Auschwitz, which is the “attack” that is typically leveled by antifascists when people point out that they are off-limits…)
So yes, antifa does not “assault”, “loot” or “riot”. That’s a fair point. But intellectual terrorism is not exactly the way to run a society. Here’s a “nazi” journalist not being assaulted but reeducated:
https://www.facebook.com/lengadocinfo/videos/acte-xii-toulouse-vincent-lapierre-agressé-par-les-antifas/282134325794367/
Seriously…
Fine. Antifa is wonderful. Tell that to the 78 year old lady with a walker, in Hamilton Ontario, who had one of these heroes in her face, stopping her from crossing the street, while screaming “Nazi scum” in her face.
Are you really this much of an uninformed asshole?
Is it time to raise the possibility that the media outlets in question are sympathetic/supportive of and to the white-supremacist? If the media outlets in question continuously pointed out that the far right groups’ goals were the subjugation and elimination of the majority of the people on this planet, as opposed to antifa whose only goal is the opposition to this white-supremacist goal, then readers could and would conclude that the media outlets in question were opposed to the white-supremacist goals. Their failure to do so, raises the question, are they racist who support the white-supremacist’s goals? If the answer is yes, then they need to be called out and exposed every time.
Dear Media:
As soon as your headline begins with, ” What we know,” I have found that frequently, you know very little , and often misidentify people and groups. When I look back at American history, I am often amazed that Watergate even happened. Maybe major media needs to hire reporters from that time period—–as they did seem to KNOW a lot and truly investigated. A FREE PRESS wouldn’t be making up so many opinions without actual proof. Of course with so few media outlets not owned by corporations– actual -news is hard to find!
It’s not only the corpress and the elites they represent that condemn antifa; they also are castigated by some in the “non violent resistance” for not conforming to rigidly Gandhian dogma.
Force – “violence” – is a fearsome choice, and one that demands intense discipline and strategic acuity.
But when that choice is in the context of defending oneself or others from physical harm or worse, it is a morally valid one.
Great article ! One point– anti-fascists should not let themselves be tagged by the ambiguous word “antifa” that can be turned around and twisted… The term “anti-fascist” has the great advantage of clearly delineating the opposition as “fascist”.
Agreed, allowing or encouraging the use of “antifa” as opposed to “anti-fascist” is unfortunate, and the difference is not as trivial as it would seem- “antifa” obscures the fundamental disparity and lack of equivalence. On one side are fascists, and on the other side are anti-fascists. And there can be no moral equivalence between fascists and those who oppose/resist fascism.
Who makes the decision to brand a person or group a “fascist” and violently assault them for exercising their 1st amendment rights?
Seems like an awful lot of power and rife with massive potential for abuse.
Why doesn’t Antifa fight Communism?
Is it because they’re violent Communists?
Over 100 million people were killed by Communist regimes over the last 100 years and right now Communists in Hong Kong are murdering and imprisoning protestors…
People decide for themselves whether they want to adopt fascist beliefs or join a fascist group, and they decide to intimidate, harass, and assault targeted minority groups- and potentially have to deal with anti-fascists defending such individuals as a result. You can’t outsource responsibility for the decisions of fascists to others, certainly not anti-fascists- how absurd.
And antifa doesn’t fight communism because they’re anti-fascists, not anti-communists. Evidently you didn’t know this, but that’s what they’re called “antifa”, short for “anti-fascist”, they are NOT called “anticom” short for “anti-communist”.
Sort of a sorry redbaiting attempt here, you should probably leave this topic to people who have at least some vague clue what they’re talking about.
No it doesn’t. Actions speak louder than words and calling yourself Anti-Fascist while committing fascist tactics just proves how much in denial and lying you Antifa fools go through to justify your fascist tactics.
You clearly did not read the article. Besides, name some actual fascist actions taken by antifa. Counter-protesting a white supremacist parade/demonstration? How is that fascist.
In fact if you HAD read the article you would have learned that when we are talking about proactive violent tactics, it is a VERY tiny minority of the so-called antifa groups that gets all the media attention on both the corporate MSM “left” and of course at the rightwing places where you obviously get your “news” – but the numbers, the official stats, tell a different story when comparing violence from the right vs. the left in the United States.
Furthermore, if you had learned American history, you’d know that it is the right, and more specifically white supremacist right that has continually held all the real power in this country. Sometimes they were Democrats and now they are Republican voters, but the media is doing a horrible job of actually showing the situation and accurately depicting the balance (or huge lack thereof) comparing the types and amount of violence – as well as the long history on one “side” – because they are sensationalist.
So again, I ask you to provide some examples of “fascist” actions taken by leftist or left-leaning counterprotesters.
Finally a little thought experiment. Do you think that the way the media is covering Trump is fair or accurate? Then why do you think how they cover the right/left “balance” in violence would be too? And for the last time, if you had read the article, you’d know that the MSM is unfairly inflating (not the opposite as right wingers claim) the role of Antifa in American political or race/religion-based violence. Why do you think that is?
Sorry my father isn’t around to find out that when he got his leg blown off fighting the Nazis, he was being a fascist, too. Go figure.
So opposing fascism is fascism? Lol. How’s that work then?
When reading Gregory Shupak’s interesting analysis, it reminded me of accounts of street fighting that occurred between the Nazis versus the Communists and their allies of late Weimar Germany. Centrist Social Democrats of the time, controlling the media, characterized this as a regrettable bipolar phenomenon, when actually the “roten strassenkampfer” (Red Street Fighter) was a defensive reaction against attacks by the fascists on minorities (especially Jews), labor advocates, and the left. How many lives and injuries were saved by their actions is not clear. These antifascist activists were far outnumbered, and received little or no support from the then respectable Social Democrats. But many of these same Social Democrats later found themselves in the same concentration camps as those to their left. As Mark Twain said, history does not repeat, but it often rhymes.
Communists calling themselves “Anti-Fascist Action” is like Nazis calling themselves “Anti-Communist Action.” While technically true, it’s very misleading and both ideologies are evil.
The misinformation under the title “Majd” is breath-taking. Who is sponsoring this nonsense?
So you have a problem with his exercise of free speech, with expressing his opinion? You may be a fascist. Hell no, you are a fascist, but too self absorbed and ill informed to realize it.
Weimar-era social democrats did not support them because Communists had made multiple attempts to overthrow the government and frequently cooperated with the Comintern. There were plenty of anti-semites in the Party, as shown by the continued presence of Karl Radek (himself a Jew but a purveyor of anti-semitic conspiracy theories). Peasants, easily the most downtrodden class, were also looked at with great disdain. This was a group almost as totalitarian as the fascists they fought. Don’t get romantic about them!
Antifa does nothing to improve the lives of the disadvantaged, or anyone else. They’ve convinced themselves that they’re soldiers on the front lines of justice, but really they are just playing dress up fighting straw men, all the while fetishizing needless disruption and control. They make progressivism look ridiculous.
Yeah!! You tell them!! All 300 of them mostly up in Oregon and Washington!!! They’re soldiers on the front line!!! (of right wing provacateurs who parachute or are bused into cities like Portland) What if antifa decided to hold a parade/free speech rally in Tennessee or Mississippi? Yet they don’t – because they only come out to protest when right wing groups travel to their cities and try to cause trouble or say “in your face” to communities that are in many ways targeted by the Trump (and previously Obama) administration’s actions.
You, and the American political right, and the so-called “liberal” MSM are intentionally blowing up and conflating Antifa’s, a TINY minority, activities with a whole bunch of different “progressive” causes.
Why? When is the last time one of them killed someone anyway?
I’m not sure I understand the point you’re trying to make, but I’m certainly not “conflating” antifa’s activities with progressive causes. I’m arguing that their activities *undermine* progressive causes, while serving no constructive purpose whatsoever, and should be opposed on those grounds.
Unfortunately, none of the things you did say were actually true. Antifa absolutely does “improve the lives of the disadvantaged”, especially by directly intervening to protect targeted minorities during white supremacist rallies and marches (see the many accounts of them doing precisely this in Charlottesville during the “Unite the Right” rally that ended with Heather Heyer’s death at the hands of a white supremacist). Helping defend disadvantaged and discriminated groups against white supremacist fascists who seek to harm them certainly qualifies as “improving the lives of the disadvantaged”.
And as Heather Heyer’s death, and the many other deaths at the hands of white supremacist fascists, conclusively disprove your ludicrous assertion that antifa fights “straw men”- your “straw men” are out there KILLING people. So much for “straw men”.
There is no difference because Antifa uses fascist tactics to accomplish their goals, with 90% of the time attacking people for being simply Conservative who are not Right Wing extremists. Antifa are hateful individuals no better than Domestic Terrorists so stop making excuses for them.
No one has been attacked for simply being conservative. Antifa has defended themselves and others against white supremacists, at explicitly white supremacist rallies, marches, and functions. So if you’re not a white supremacist and you’re not assaulting anyone, you have no issues with antifa.
You’re simply parroting debunked conspiracy theories here, maybe try using Google and educating yourself with actual facts.
You little uninformed twit. Never attacked anyone for just being conservative? How about the 78 year old lady in Hamilton Ontario, trying to cross the street to attend a conservative party rally? The lady was using a walker no less, the bimbo hassling her was screaming “Nazi scum” at her and blocking her way.
That’s just one example, there are dozens more.
The little scutbag sure ran off quickly enough when the police were called though. Big brave Antifa fighters.
‘… and by enacting threatening violence against women and minorities because of who they are. ‘
Are fascists attacking women because they are women? Hardly. Their ideology on sex roles may be sick to the core, but I very much doubt that they march in the streets to attack women because they are women.
Trying to smuggle this kind of claims into the antifascist struggle can only undermine the credibility of the arguments.
Thank you, thank you , thank you! I have been waiting so long for someone to expose the deliberate ignorance in equating Right/White/Nationalist factions with the unfortunately ill-named “Antifa”. Anti-Facist is better but somehow incorporating the tenant of protection of citizens from violent groups espousing their expulsion or extermination would be even better- alas, Guards of the Democratic Republic doesn’t really roll off the tongue… When replying to rabid commenters about the “violent left” with actual statistical data on Ideological Homicide, with the thumbs down, no reply silence from the white right fascisti, my parting thoughts are to always remember: “Antifa” only comes out to fight the Fascists- everyone else need not worry.
Fuck off low IQ biased antifa loving loser.
LOL with an intellectually sound argument like that, how could anyone possibly disagree with you?
Yeah KC, I too somehow missed the logic and factual references that Cr used in his subtle thesis — I guess I’m just not as high-IQ as he is!
The author put western civilization in quotation marks. As if western civilization were something that never existed.
Antifa and fascism are one in the same. I am still waiting for the Nazis to show up after 3 years. I am not holding me breath. Liberal version of a Nazi is a old lady with a walker trying to cross the street.
You don’t need the media to see that Antifa is equivalent to fascists. They may be communist in ideology but they tout authoritative fascist tactics to assert their warped world view. Just visit Portland and take a look around youtube. The videos are unedited and show that Antifa in act and deed act just like Nazi Brownshirts. The authors defense of these fascists because they might not be as extreme as other fascists is utterly ridiculous.
Ah yes, I remember when they broke into people’s homes and murdered them into their sleep, or burn down their places of worship, or advocated for the wholesale genocide of entire ethnic groups. Wait a second, no they didn’t! The anti-fascists have not ever advocated for the destruction of entire peoples because of some made up conspiracy theory about the “Great Replacement” of the “White Race”. They are absolutely not the equivalent of the Sturmabteilung (SA, Brownshirts). By the way, the same sort of thing happened in Weimar Germany where the Brownshirts went out and attacked and murdered political opponents, but when they fought back? “We were being peaceful!” “We were defending ourselves!” “Look at the violence of the other side!” It was a classic tactic of Goebbel’s design to inflict major amounts of violence on the other side and once they fought back, cry victim and seek sympathy from the undecided people of Weimar Germany who would only see what Goebbel’s wanted them to see. In fact most of the violence and murders in the street fights was being done by the SA (Brownshirts).
The anti-fascists are a response to these guys. They come to the defense of everyone that has been threatened in the last few years by White Nationalist/Supremacists. While these Neo-Nazis go and commit acts of genocide, which is what they are, against people in El Paso and The Tree of Life Synagogue, the anti-fascists have been out and about to stand up to them. So no, they are the equivalent of fascists. Hell, they even have medics being their front lines that make that EVERYONE, not just their members, but members of the fascist groups, get the medical attention they need. If they were a fascist group, they would not have those medics, they would just leave people to die.
Yes, they use violent means. But does violence automatically make them bad? No. It is the motivations behind them. Otherwise the Sons of Liberty, the group that started the Boston Tea Party, would be labeled a fascist group for their tactics. Also, a good chunk of the anti-fascists are nonviolent. The whole of the fascists are inherently violent. Their entire ideology promotes a “warrior culture” and to fight and cause violence.
Yeah, there are some legitimate criticisms of the Anti-fascist movement, one of which is that they are violent. But the fact of the manner is that the acts and scale of violence that they commit compared to the fascists is much smaller.
In short, no, Anti-fascists are not the SA (Brownshirts), they do not go out and murder entire groups of people based on their ideology. Yes, they do commit acts of violence, but more often than not, they are provoked into action by the fascists. If you would like to have an intellectual conversation about this, may I ask for a civilized debate with no name calling or personal attacks? I am being dead serious about this. But at the same time, since I have presented my thoughts, you have every right to challenge them and I will be fine with that. But I honestly do hope that we may leave with giving one another something to think about.
Surprised and saddened by all the tools parroting the anti-fascistfascist bothsidesism and false equivalence.
Violence is often a useful and necessary reaction against violence and it is morally justified in that case. It doesn’t make you “just as bad” or “evil” as those you defend yourself against.
It constantly amazes me how stupid people can be.
If you want to see how stupid you actually sound, try making your same ridiculous statements about Antifa and Fascists being just as bad as each other by substituting ‘Allies’ for ‘Antifa’ and ‘Nazi Germany’ for ‘Fascists’.
I have to say that this is a tough-call for me personally, since I don’t believe in physical violence in all but the most exceptional situations, (primarily self-defense from a violent attack). I’m glad that the ‘antifa’ * protestors are confronting the right-wing nuts, and I feel they have the moral right to physically protect themselves, but not to initiate violence. And I don’t know that I entirely agree with the Weimar Republic/Nazi Germany analogy, or the idea that violence against these right-wing groups will help quell them — they seem to revel in that atmosphere and it probably energizes them. The Communists were fighting the early Nazis in the streets of Germany in the 1930’s and it apparently had little or no positive effect, as we sadly know. Also, the political situation in 1930’s Germany was a lot more extreme than here in the present-day US, so the breeding ground for fascism was a much more fertile.
* The website spell-check won’t let me spell this without the single quotes.
You’re argument would be much more compelling if it didn’t use the astroturf SPLC as a crutch.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/the-southern-poverty-law-center-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-liberalism
I’d like to point out that 11 people were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue.
Fantastic truths! Thanks for using the term “antifascist” not the fake “antifa”.
When I see the term “antifa”, I know that the editors/writers are pro-fascist. It’s a propaganda trick of manipulating language to make 98% who DON’T support fascism, sound as evil as the actual fascists.
Hey, Jew. Nobody believes you. Your side is losing ground faster than you realize, because you’re stuck in an echo chamber of social media censorship. When you realize what has happened, it will already be too late.
Do you really think *all* or even *most* Jews (whether you know if they are practicing or not) are aligned politically? What “side” are you talking about anyway? The side that correctly understands the history of the West, including the fact that the United States of America has *always* been a “melting pot” by the very choice of the founding fathers?
You’re full of empty veiled threats….I hope. Anonymous incels and cowards like you often turn into mass shooters and race haters. Clearly you’re trying to imply some kind of second holocaust is coming with this post – but given the fact that you have very little if any understanding of American history, how are you going to differentiate between who stays and who goes when it is indeed “too late”?
Pathetic really.
Peewee McGreal is a wiener
Advocates of viewpoints I agree with are good. Their violent attempts to suppress viewpoints of people I disagree with are not equivalent to violent attempts to suppress my viewpoints.
Antifa has made its own reputation.
You little uninformed twit. Never attacked anyone for just being conservative? How about the 78 year old lady in Hamilton Ontario, trying to cross the street to attend a conservative party rally? The lady was using a walker no less, the bimbo hassling her was screaming “Nazi scum” at her and blocking her way.
That’s just one example, there are dozens more.
The little scutbag sure ran off quickly enough when the police were called though. Big brave Antifa fighters.