Obligatory -
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Antifa are anarchists, but not all anarchists are Antifa. It’s complicated when the people punching Nazis dress the same as the people smashing shop windows.
Say, is there a place where I can get a copy of this “anarchist agenda”?
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I might ask you if you love your enemies.
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Over the years since we beat the Nazi’s into a simpering pulp of regret.
While fighting Nazi’s Americans have agreed to rationing of commercial goods, mass conscription, and mail censorship.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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Patton’s 3rd Army were on the side of the (Spanish) Republicans?
This thread is a discussion of antifa’s approach to dealing with Nazis, not a debate about every action of a very loose collection of groups with a wide range of ideologies. FWIW antifa groups have also provided spaces for refugees and helped with disaster relief. It’s possible to support some actions by some groups without giving blanket approval to all.
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Because my government believes that going to fight for Rojava makes you as much of a terrorist as going to fight for ISIS. You can thank successive British governments being allies with Turkey for that. There is also plenty of left wing opposition to Islamist extremism and support for moderate forms of Islam if people actually bothered to look.
Also, there’s more to Antifa than punching fascists and I support them in other ways because I am disabled (because of fascists). It’s a “united we stand, divided we fall” issue, and I never felt any sense of unity with liberals when I went to them for help.
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On the irrational point: it isn’t even that fascists are simply irrational- plenty of people hold irrational positions, and can be talked down from those points when shown why they are irrational.
Fascism is intentionally irrational, from the get-go. Showing a fascist the inconsistencies of their arguments is futile, because they are already aware of it.
Daryl Davies has never talked a fascist down from their beliefs, it is something they have to do for themselves. What he does is offer kinship to folks in spite of their hatred of him, and hope that through this connection- not debate, that the folks he reaches out to have a change of heart.
He’ll also be the first to tell you that sometimes a Nazi needs punching.
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Meanwhile, the U.S. government steadfastly refuses to categorise all groups that advocate for ethnic cleansing* as terrorist organisations. Doing so would place the onus of defending anti-fascist protestors or counter-protestors from white supremacists away from the antifa and back on local law enforcement (whether local law enforcement likes it or not).
Somehow I think many of those wringing their hands over the antifa would have a problem with this.
[* including those that call for the forced removal of members of an ethnic group from one part of U.S. sovereign soil to another]
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Pretty much only one of those groups pose a threat to humanity, though, when given to tools to be a threat. White nationalists (most likely) just killed 3 people with package bombs. Timothy McVeigh killed around 300 people in Oklahoma. Neo Nazi skins have regularly committed acts of violence against minorities and anti-facsists for decades now. We know it’s wrong about Muslims, BLM, and Jews, because those aren’t groups whose sole reason for existing is to ensure their supremacy over others. white nationalists exists explicitly to ensure their supremacy over others.
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Wow. I think I need a Coke.
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But history gives us the problem that the Nazis came to power entirely legally, though these very means. We know this. Imagine a 9/11 size event under a Trump or even more virulently right wing American government.
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Yes, yes, and Rosa Parks was a just a poor tired lady, too.
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Sounds like an apt description of Antifa.
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This, above all the N Korea button-pushing, constitutional fuckery and moral acquiescence of the moderate right, scares the shit out of me.
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It should. In Germany, they took full power via a fire in the Reichstag. Post-9/11 it was enough of a power grab, imagine it under a government even more right leaning than W’s - not to mention that at the same time, right wing governments are pushing through all sorts of illiberal laws (Poland, for example).
There is the somewhat anti-populist and somewhat anti-democratic views of liberalism (democracy within constrained limits - but who gets to decide what those are). I’m not sure I agree with this analysis fully, but it’s got some food for thought on a constrained democracy, given the current rise of extremist, right wing populism:
https://blog.oup.com/2018/02/rise-extremist-populism/
But I guess it all depends on what you lay down as the core of the system - the blog entry points to current German Basic Law for example, as one that centers human rights and dignity.
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So we’re OK with certain forms of violence occurring in a civil society, and outside of wartime?
I’m not sure I’m buying this.
Also, if you check out some of the antifa affiliate pages, an alarming number of them are Marxists.
And to short circuit the typical objection – yes, I’m talking about REAL antifa affiliates, and yes I know they aren’t all the same, but some variation in terms of degrees of affiliation with Marxism (or some abhorrent variant of it) or in terms of degrees in a belief that violence is necessary, that doesn’t undermine the general themes that draw people to this group… there are also non-violent, totally friendly, Nazis out there, who will smile at you and calmly explain how they NEVER support violence… doesn’t make their affiliation with that disgusting movement any less reprehensible.
We also know, through a historical lens, that extreme political polarisation is a marker for increased political violence – doesn’t matter which end of the spectrum you fall on…
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