What a privileged pile of horseshit.
It’s so obvious you completely believe these fascists who keep KILLING PEOPLE pose absolutely no threat to you.
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It’s understandable, given the amount of time you spend here fretting over what the antifa “scum” (to use your term) might do than worrying about what the fascists and alt-right and their allies in various governments are doing. Dilutes your disclaimers a bit.
Antifa are not instigating those street fights in 99% of the cases – that would be groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. And those police escorts are (in Portland and elsewhere) often sympathetic to the fascists.
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I completely agree with the 2nd half of this sentence, ‘purely’ reactive is a bit of a stretch though, that’s only part of the story.
This isn’t true at all, the same people would still be there protesting at economic forums, setting bins on fire and throwing shit through McDonalds windows.
they’ll keep doing their thing regardless, mostly their thing was being pathetic and laughable. a far bigger impact on them would be removing the fascist apologist from office. another positive impact would be avoiding direct conflict. peaceful resistance is far more effective.
This is projection on your part, I’m really not responsible for the uncharitable assumptions and poor reading comprehension some users in here repeatedly engage in.
utter bullshit, of course they pose a threat, I just disagree about the best strategy to address that threat.
Oh sure—if there’s one thing that rabid, newly empowered fascist movements are known for it’s “peacefully disbanding when nobody shows up to oppose them.”
Pretty sure anyone who ever lost a family member to fascist violence or faced credible threat of same wouldn’t describe it as a laughing matter.
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I’ll gladly refer anyone to your comment history here to disprove that statement, which is nonsensical and misunderstands what the term “projection” means.
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That is fair, however, pay attention to this research:
To begin with, they argue that the first thing to do is focus on banning the small clusters of hate group members that form. This is easier, since there are far more of them, and it’s these individual clusters that help provide the resiliency that dilutes the impact of large-scale bans. In association with this, the platform should randomly ban some of the members of these groups. This both undercuts the hate groups’ resiliency, and, because the total number of bans is relatively small and randomly distributed, it reduces the chance of any backlash.
Their last suggestion is that platforms encourage groups that are actively opposing the hate groups. Part of the reason that people form these insular groups is because their opinions aren’t welcome in the wider society; groups on social networks allow them to express unpopular opinions without fear of opposition or sanction. By raising the number and prominence of groups opposed to them, a platform can reduce the comfort level of those prone to white supremacy and other forms of hatred.
I think you should internalize the bolded part, at least for online efforts.
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But, don’t you see, that opens the door to people becoming (to use the McCarthy era term) “premature anti-fascists”, AKA Commies and socialists out to destroy “free” market capitalism. That’s the long-term threat that establishment conservatives and Libertarians are really worried about, even as they pay grudging lip service to the present danger posed by those groups whom the antifa oppose (again, in most cases non-violently unless attacked).
Another effective way to destabilise fascist and racist groups, by the way, is to put in place undercover agents like “Ben”, who infiltrated Patriot Prayer. Once you sow the seeds of paranoia in a right-wing group, they’re paralysed in terms of operational efficiency and (due to their nature) start going after each-other as potential traitors. When this happens it’s a gratifying spectacle.
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I’m happy to support the work of groups opposed to fascism as long as they don’t engage in violent confrontation and associate themselves with revolutionary communist imagery, symbolism and rhetoric.
I think in the US there’s a big difference between those on the far left versus right. The far left mostly invoke communism and Stalin ironically - as a meme. Very few literally want to see the US turn into a Soviet dystopia. To contrast, those on the far right would unironically and literally love to see Hitler rise from the dead and continue where he left off.
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Actually yes, this is exactly what’s happened for most of the modern era in western democracies, small groups of the far right were always there in the background, and mostly everyone laughed at them and they had no impact on anything. The difference now is they’ve been emboldened by proto-fascist and populist enablers, the main focus should be on removing the normalisation of their rhetoric and justifications by removing those reactionary enablers from office (if the original antifa had practised this and allied with the social democrats, instead of being complicit in the rise of Nazism, maybe we never would have had a Nazi Germany?).
Of course, there was a reason I said ‘mostly’. I’m in favour of any tactics which minimise the occurrence of such events, such as avoiding direct physical conflict.
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Except when they and their allies occasionally come to power.
This is one of those times.
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For the most part they’ve borrowed the symbol of the 1920s/30s Rotfront mainly as one of anti-fascism rather than a hearkening back to the KPD (which I doubt most of them know about). But “moderate centrists” would also likely object to the use of the Iron Front logo most Portland antifa use. As for actual Stalinists, they haven’t been seen much at any protests, antifa or otherwise, since International ANSWER bungled the anti-war protests during the Cheney Regency in the early 2000s.
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Yeah. You believe it’s moral to ask people targeted for death to just please hang tight while we do nothing to stop people who are trying to murder them.
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Actual successful revolutionary socialists didn’t want to turn Russia or China into a dystopia either, but that’s exactly what happened!
Thank you. I just really savor these moments. The blend of herbs and schadenfreude…
ETA: For full effect
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Dear me, why don’t you just stop? I don’t even know where to start. Many people in this topic try to argue with you on a rational basis, but your - sorry, not sorry - bullshit boils down to ‘this tiny fraction of political extremists pose a danger to society, as a whole’. Fuck that noise. I live in Europe, and we had self-identified anti-fascist groups who killed other people. But let me give you a heads-up: THE PEOPLE WHO CURRENTLY MURDER POLITICAL OPPONENTS ARE NAZIS. Not the other way round. Since decades now.
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Did you stop reading at this point? I directly address this immediately after!
The mentality that we’re still living in the 1990s, when neoliberalism-driven inequality and climate change were not major issues and when there were enough people still around who’d lived through the 1930s and 40s, is one of the primary reasons we’re in this mess.
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