Their capacity isn’t an official one. But what they are doing is training police, providing prosecution services, law enforcement databases, evidence collection, etc. They help shape the attitude and actions of police departments. So, your local police department is being heavily influenced by the ROCIC or one of it’s counterparts around the nation and that’s why this report is important.
7 Likes
I know, I use a pen knife to loosen one corner, or scrape the ones that are designed to be hard to remove.
13 Likes
It isn’t surprising that is the slant of the report. Antifa is a reactionary movement with no centralized leadership and not even a common coherent ideology other than “anti-fascism” which means different things to different people. This means their behaviors differ from protest to protest, area to area. Some of that behavior deserves condemnation. Some of their behavior deserves praise. But from the “establishments” view, it’s all/mostly bad. They don’t like challenges to authority.
Of course the nationalist groups who have become emboldened now have an actual faction who wants to face them in the streets, and they are going to ramp up their reactionary movement against them. But unlike Antfa, I can’t think of a single one of their actions that should be praised, only condemned.
If there were no white nationalists, there would be no need for antifa. I guess they are like an immune system, which some times gets confused and attacks what it shouldn’t.
10 Likes
A very apt description. A friend of mine who does participate described himself and his mates as “the white blood cells of the democratic body”
6 Likes
What, the rational alternative to fascism is communism?
The rational alternative certainly wasn’t voting for centrists who sided with the Nazis and voted for the enabling act, giving Hitler the power to commit his atrocities (killing their own party in the process).
Edit: My history has shown me to not be a fan of M-L, and preferring to support something more like Kropotkin’s anarcho-communism (which would be the closest philosophy at the time).
10 Likes
That was certainly the trick that the Nazis pulled in Germany: if you weren’t supporting the NSDAP, you must be supporting the Communists. And if you opposed the Communists, it only made sense to support the group that was out there actually fighting them in the streets.
Hell, it was the same trick Stalin pulled. Anyone who opposed Stalinism or Communism must, by definition, be a Fascist or a tool of fascism, and any right-thinking person who wanted to fight Fascism must side with the Communists, their mortal enemy.
6 Likes
It’s the central tenet of fascism. Identify and demonize the “other”. Anyone not against the “other”, must be one of them.
6 Likes
Points 4 and 5 in Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism:
- No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
- Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition
12 Likes
Careful. Reactionary has a different meaning in politics (especially left wing politics), which is far-right traditionalism.
I know that’s not what you meant, but I have been confused in the past when it is used in a more ambiguous sense.
13 Likes
Would a small paint scraper work in that instance?
3 Likes
For example, the Nazi Horst Wessel song makes clear reference to capital-R “Reaktion” as one of their enemies. The reactionaries mentioned were those who wanted to return Germany to the (not-so-great for liberals and progressives) conservative past.
10 Likes
I have no idea to be honest. I usually just put stickers over them in a way that obscures any groups name and contact details.
Usually in my case mans the two times I have come across fash stickers in Oxford. I have a pocket in my bag full of “St Pauli fans gegen rechts” stickers that don’t see much use.
11 Likes
Fair point, there is a lot of loaded language and coded words. I am not sure what the more “neutral term” one should use is.
Really? That kinda sounds like an urban myth like drugs or needles in candy.
1 Like
Actually, it’s a practice by some groups. I know in the UK some TERF orgs have been putting stickers in women’s restroom mirrors with razors behind them. One trans woman cut herself trying to remove one.
12 Likes
Don’t act like criminals if you don’t want to be classified as such, pretty easy concept.
1 Like
Does boot polish taste nice?
18 Likes
15 Likes
Especially the crimes of being a poc, gay, queer, trans, Jewish, or any other non-white arrangement. In certain environments, that can get you killed. Better to do your best to blend in, stay inconspicuous, and be glad it’s not your head being broken into pieces. Right? At least until it is. But when you go into the darkness, you can rest easy knowing you were well behaved, for your kind..
17 Likes
