I’m certainly OK with drawing a distinction between “violence against people who are actively promoting genocide” and “violence against people who happen to have the wrong skin color/sexual orientation/religion.”
Even if you believe both are wrong, it’s totally bogus to deem them morally equivalent.
The other problem is that antifa tactics are doomed to backfire – I really feel most people have a terrible understanding of history, it was, in part, both censorship of Hitler and violence against the Nazis (which escalated to murder) that helped DRIVE their popularity.
They ended up making Hitler look like an oppressed, brave voice, and then their early thuggish tactics were not held up to scrutiny because the opposition had also embraced thuggish tactics…
We have learned the power of peaceful protest in the years between Nazi Germany and now – this is not to naively assert that at some point, you may be required to resist with force, but boy, you had better be sure you are right at the edge of some major societal calamity before you go down that path.
And Trump is not Hitler. He’s 
…but the structure around him is now being tested to see if it can keep an authoritarian in check. I suspect it will, if this past year is any clue…
True, except if your true motivation is to thuggishly acquire more power outside of democratic means.
If you use violence to acquire a position of power, rather than political democratic means, or through social persuasion, we have a problem…
So in some sense, I guess I’m suggesting there’s a more insidious danger about antifa and their affiliates.
When I see the shit they pulled in Hamburg… I don’t see moral heroes, I see people who just want to burn shit, set fire to cars, and intimidate the general public… I don’t buy the “we’re fighting fascism out here” business.
I would like to move to the universe you live in, where Republicans in Congress and the executive cabinet have expressed anything but undying fealty to their new orange master. (And no, McCain, Corker, and Flake wringing their hands and shouting “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” whilst speeding for the exit does not constitute “keep[ing] an authoritarian in check”.)
You and they don’t get to decouple the word Nazi from genocide and slaughter of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, dissidents, intellectuals and anyone who didn’t meet the grade physically, mentally or racially.
Anyone self-identifying as a Nazi doesn’t get to choose buffet-style from the Nazi past.
Any Nazi is in favor of violence and genocide. It’s just their nature.
An alarming number, you say? Yes, I agree, that number should be MUCH bigger.
Nope. The cracks are showing, and the US is currently on life support, waiting for the doctor to call time of death. These are all the last twitches from the nervous system.
You could start on Wikipedia. Anarchism is not anarchy. It is a specific political philosophy that has been around for 150 years.
There is an anarchist agenda just as there is a fascist agenda, a communist agenda, a capitalist agenda and so on. The core of any of these is “how do we bring our philisophy into power”?
I try not to have enemies. 
Oops, I must have lost the thread. I thought the question was who’s side were the anarchists on in the Spanish Civil War.
that’s probably easier for you.
From that article:
In another moment that has catalyzed Antifa members, Trump in February 2016 told a campaign crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to “knock the crap out of” protesters holding tomatoes, adding, “I will pay for the legal fees, I promise, I promise.”
Not all antifa are anarchists, either. It’s more of a pan-leftist sort of thing.
Lots of anarchists and anarcho-communists amongst them, but they’ve also got a fair few straight Marxists.
A big part of the problem there was that the German Communists refused to cooperate with German Social Democrats (on orders from Moscow), because they thought Hitler would take power, and promptly drive Germany over the cliff, leading to a revolution they’d be sure to win.
It worked… poorly.
Sounds a lot like someone currently in the White House
dude. really?
yes there are lots of racists at fox news. and yes as matter of policy they are cultivating hate for the sake of ratings –
but really?
facts matter.
i can’t even believe this is a conversation - but let’s try some parallel set construction.
white supremacists advocate for genocide. most white supremacists identify as white, but most white people are not white supremacists.
isis advocates for violent jihad. most of their members identify as muslims, but most muslims are not violent jihadist. ( thank goodness really since 1/4 of all people on earth are muslims )
there are some failings in this comparison of course.
there are some who would say most white people in the states are complicit in white supremacy because by and large white people in the states do nothing to end the structures that support it.
muslims by and large don’t support isis, et al. muslims are in fact bearing the brunt of isis atrocities. members of the muslim faith are on the front line, not only physically fighting isis, but working politically to end the conflict, and trying to build bridges to stop more people from choosing that path.
isis and violent jihadists are losing. i’m not certain the same can be said of white supremacy.
not when people refuse to look at the actual facts of the situation.
not when white people can’t even agree on the simple fact that nazis are bad and must be stopped.
This, right here, is where you’re literally equivocating. You’re equating Nazis to Muslims. It’s a recursive equivocation, too, because there’s significant overlap between the Muslim-hating group and the actual Nazis.
If you had stopped at simple pacifism, I don’t think your arguments would be as offensive as I, and obviously others, have found them.
You don’t seem to understand the problem. Heather Heyer’s murderer in Charlottesville was worked up to the act by the hate speech of other Nazis. That’s the outcome of listening to Nazis.
There do seem to be a lot of self identifying centrists and liberals here whose arguments are basically false equivalence. No, taking the position in the middle does not make you right when one side literally wants to inflict violence on someone because of who they were born as. If I punch someone who wants to kill me that does not make me equally to blame.
I don’t know if I was lucky to see that side of them in 2004, when I also experienced what the far-right thought of me in a life threatening way.
