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supergee1. There is no such organization as Antifa
2. I’ve been an antifascist all my life. The only reason I wasn’t a premature one is that the war had already started when I was born. Lopping a few letters off the end doesn’t change anything.
2. I’ve been an antifascist all my life. The only reason I wasn’t a premature one is that the war had already started when I was born. Lopping a few letters off the end doesn’t change anything.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 03:38 pm (UTC)We have at least 2 credible reports of politically motivated attempted murder in the US in the past year, from people categorized as left. One person did a competent job of shooting police people, apparantly in reaction to police shooting of innocent black people. The other one shot up a baseball practice involving Republican elected politicians, without managing to quite kill any of them.
I'm not saying either of those were associated with any organization, let alone Antifa. They weren't; if they had been, I'd have heard it, even as news averse as I am. They simply make the point that violence in support of the "left wing" tribe is not unknown even in modern times.
What's worse is that polarization had reached such a point that many ordinary middle class folk of my acquiantance, not at all prone to violence personally, and generally understanding intellectually that political violence is a bad thing, nonetheless expressed sentiments like "too bad he didn't kill the guy" or similar.
In that climate, violent organizations are a reasonable development. When you don't think the democratic political process will ever solve your pressing issues, violence is in a sense a reasonable response, particularly if those issues are themselves life threatening. I'm white, and too old to be drafted into whatever war the Republicans decide to start to prop up their sagging popularity. I'm not looking at friends or family dying because of the US medical system. I'm not long term unemployed, trying to survive on next to nothing, with no prospects for improvement - even as executive compensation continues obscenely high. The cops aren't in the habit of shooting people like me. I can wait for democracy to fix things. But perhaps because I grew up in the sixties, I can understand why people might choose otherwise.
What I absolutely cannot condone is terrorism in support of political obejctives. And my definition of terrorism is killing random people who are at worst complacant beneficiaries of the system, and most likely fellow victims. I don't subscribe to the "folks I disagree with are terrorists; folks on my side are freedom fighters" crapola. But the urge to shoot a plutocrat - it's a bad idea, and we don't need an atmosphere where this is acceptable behaviour. But I'd find it a lot easier to pardon than e.g. someone shooting their spouse's paramour, having caught them in the act (a traditionally pardonable behaviour).
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 01:30 am (UTC)Okay, but doesn't Antifa call for an end to baseless violence? No - there isn't any Antifa to do this.
But SURELY Antifa is in support of the rule of law! Well... the empty set is a subset of any set, so I suppose you could say that Antifa belongs to the set that supports rule of law, but you could simultaneously say that they belong to the set that REJECTS the rule of law, because, again, "empty set".
Trying to equate persistent, powerful groups of people such as exist on the right wing, with an undefined non-entity that isn't even "leftish" per se, but can be called leftish because it's opposed to mostly right wingers, is what the right wing hopes will happen.
It shouldn't happen. There's no valid comparison.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 02:40 am (UTC)I have no idea what people claiming to be/speak for/be part of Antifa are claiming about the whole organization. I'd be unsurprised if they claimed to be larger than they really are. I'd also be unsurprised if they claimed to be smaller. Even mainstream politicians aren't known for honesty, let alone those pursuing political ends by illegal means.
Note that I'm not making any claims about whether or not "Antifa" is persistent, powerful etc. - or just 2 or 3 wingnuts in the Seattle area.
But neither is supergee making such claims - he claims complete nonexistence.
And that's what I'm contesting. We have enough lying out there, and the original post, as phrased, appears to be yet another statment of falsehood.
FWIW, after making the above posting I learned that some sources are claiming that Antifa is a KKK-scale or maybe even IS-scale organization, and thereby excusing right wing organizations for which there is credible evidence of significant size. (In their minds, if the other tribe does bad things, their own tribe is allowed to be equally bad.) Of course from where I sit these are the same people that gave us the pizza restaurant conspiracy, that one of their believers got arrested for "self-investigating" with weapons. I.e. they routinely make up stories out of whole cloth, if they can't find any scraps or rags to exagerate. But this time, they have scraps to base their ediface on, and we need to not deny the existence of those scraps.
Unless of course we agree, that the other tribe's misbehaviour excuses us from moral or ethical restraint. And that may be a fine thing, if we are tribes in a state of intermittent war with each other, punctuated by occassional truces. Last I heard though, some at least of us had what used to be called a more "advanced" view on social structure. (Hint - warring tribes cannot and do not successfully join together in realistic democracies; they are all about group power and group goals, and things like universal suffrage make no sense at all - except perhaps within the tribe itself.) We can be a collection of tribes, held together (loosely) by some kind of federation, or we can be a modern democracy. We can't be both. Or of course we can be a collection of tribes not held together at all, except by blood feuds and grudges.