Don’t play the knockout game.
But when some swastika bearing fuckwit starts yelling at, say, a darker skinned woman with a head scarf about getting out of his country, I’ll want to try and break this thing up. So that the shouty priveleged guy can’t hurt the person. Since fascists seem to hurt a lot of people. Since that’s what their whole philosophy is.
There was no mob.
That is not what happened.
A nazi.
Wearing a swastika armband.
Claiming to be armed.
Invades an urban neighbourhood.
Screams murderous nazi bullshit at everyone he meets.
Neighbourhood watch is alerted.
Confronts nazi.
Speaks to nazi.
Nazi continues murderous bullshit, throws a banana at the antifa.
Nazi gestures towards himself, antifa steps forward.
Nazi raises a hand, antifa delivers justice.
OMG somebody flip the fucking record over please
I was going to have to ask…
So you agree with both indefensible messages?
You are asking if violence stopped fascism? Yes, it is the only thing that worked.
Damn. If that’s the way it went down, then more power to whoever knocked that asshole out! I need to watch the video now cause I can get behind that. Fuck intolerance, but people proclaiming and spreading violent intolerance, please someone who’s tougher than me, punch those MFs out! (crap! as long as they’re ideologically aligned with me…)
I’d say just walking around with a Nazi armband (and obviously not in costume) is reason enough to get punched out.
And fuck any narrative spewed by Nazis. Those cockheads will poor me like toddlers regardless; why give a fuck? Their ethically bankrupt narrative has no fucking currency.
IMO, while police racism is rife, and there’s tacit approval for a bigot free-for-all from the highest level, such direct, grassroots responses as this are the only thing providing any meaningful chilling effect on these douchebags.
Obviously, it’s less than ideal for vigilante violence to be the biggest deterrent to rampaging gangs of Nazi thugs, but almost as obviously, actions like this are meeting a need the authorities are not.
This is where you’re at, America.
Well intentioned white Americans are more concerned about punching Nazis than they are about doing anything that productively addresses the issue of racial injustice.
You are in the late stages of a fascist revolution. There is no realistic possibility of a legitimate federal election while the fascist GOP remains in power. Eleven million undocumented Americans are at immediate risk of persecution. The police, the border patrol and the military are all being massively expanded.
There is no possibility of anything getting better until the fascists are removed from power.
Wake up.
Incidentally, that was a downtown neighbourhood and antifa were there in minutes. They didn’t drive in from the suburbs. Antifa is a primarily working class and lower middle class phenomena, and not at all monotone.
The basic story here is that the American working class are not going to just quietly stand there and take it while fascists threaten to enslave and kill them.
On the bright side, the fascists have no idea how much of a sleeping giant they’ve awoken.
But the workers need help.
The reason why the working class aren’t constantly in the streets is related to the reason why they don’t vote as much as the liberal commentariat thinks they should: they are already heavily oppressed, and most of them are too busy staying alive to spare resources towards political struggle.
Protest is expensive, and the working class are broke.
For sure, if someone is being a racist asshole I think it’s our civic duty to call them out on it, right then and there. Hopefully the public shaming, recognition of their assholism, that their behavior isn’t ok in the society I want to live in will be enough. But when it isn’t, I’m hard pressed to even walk that (injured) person to their car (I live in sonoma county ca, a weird mix of no one would dare to be publicly racist, and some deeply hidden/not so hidden racist attitudes - that might have been ‘my’ trader joes…) I don’t try to do that because I apparently look like a biker or something and that scares people, I should, but I guess my own privilege/power ‘alienates’ me. I’m really a pretty nice - if ignorant guy.
No, I didn’t expect that from you (and was snarking on that). Guess I should have added a /s tag. I don’t post here nearly often enough for it to have been assumed.
Okay, no problem.
Not really the time and place for subtle or edgy humour, though.
No, no, no.
As a much better person than I stated, “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”
I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, turn these assholes out, make them known publicly, make them persona non grata. It has been shown with the pizza nazi, corporations won’t deal with people like these.
These people do not represent me or the large majority of the US; do the have a significant minority? Yes sadly they do, but punching them in the streets is not going to help.
The ITG in all of us would love to be on the front lines, but reality sets in. Most of us have family, and lives to maintain. I will sacrifice my ease but I can’t say I’m willing to sacrifice my children’s stability and chance for a better future.
No, I was explicitly not asking that. I was asking whether the specific tactic of attacking random fascists just for being visibly fascist was productive or counter-productive in preventing the spread and rise of fascism. But as @Wanderfound has pointed out elsewhere, that is not what happened here, so my question was pretty pointless. (That’ll teach me to watch videos before commenting on the associated thread,)
Spain and Greece both saw peaceful transitions to parliamentary democracy, and Portugal’s Carnation Revolution was essentially bloodless.
Really?
And as far as Portugal goes, if this timeline is at all accurate, it appears not to have been bloodless and certainly would not have succeeded without a genuine and believable willingness to use violence.
Ultimately of course, any coup or other regime change only succeeds because it has the support of the population (or at least can persuade the other side that it has). Mere violence isn’t enough so I’ll grant you that.
Yes? I’m not an expert in this area, but as I understand it, the Falangist regime was abolished by its second and last head of state (Juan Carlos) in favour of a constitutional monarchy (coincidentally headed by Juan Carlos): it was not overthrown by violence. The subsequent coup six years later failed without loss of life after JC refused to endorse it and the armed forces declined to support it. Likewise, the Greek junta appears to have collapsed from within after it lost the support of the military in the wake of Turkey’s invasion of northern Cyprus.
I think it’s fair to describe the Carnation Revolution as essentially bloodless: the only shooting seems to be have done by the Estado Novo side, and there were few deaths. But you’re right that it would not have succeeded if the anti-government armed forces hadn’t made it plain that violence was a real and immediate option.
No derailing or off-topicing intended… but I like the sound and feel of that phrase “caterpillar picker”, what does it mean? (Is it meant in the sense of “warehouse forklift operator”?)
