Statement

[supergee]

1. 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.

Comments

[arlie]

Bluntly, I am not following these news stories - which are in any case not plentiful. There were news stories some time ago, which no one contested, placing people calling themselves antifa somewhere on the west coast (seattle?) doing bad violent things and known to locals, who were communicating on places like dreamwidth in response to expressions of surprise from those who briefly noticed. But I only noticed them via dreamwidth.

NOW suddenly - and quite possibly on the same blog - there is "no such thing as antifa".

No one has posted anything that explains this, so I'm concluding that it's a "true believer" and/or "member of our tribe" kind of thing. I presume the earlier stories have been re-explained as "fake news".

FWIW, snopes.com has plenty of articles debunking various claims about antifa - but also refers to "antifa activists" as doing various things. If they were to define antifa, it would probably be as something like people "who have been showing up to counter white supremacist rallies, sometimes violently". (The quoted text comes from http://www.snopes.com/2017/08/17/are-antifa-and-the-alt-right-equally-violent/ - which specifically refers to 'alt-left' as "a made-up term probably meant to refer to 'antifa.'" It sure sounds like Snopes doesn't question their existence.

[johnpalmer]

Just checking to make sure. You *do* know if one person states that there is no such ORGANIZATION as Antifa, that talks about an ORGANIZATION. That's very different from saying there is no such *thing* as antifa. Are you seriously having trouble making this distinction? It's been made twice now.

[arlie]

Yes, I am. I understand that according to your religion, any statement about antifa is either "fake news" from your political opponents, or a claim that antifa does not exist (or at least "is not an organization"), from right thinking people, which includes, in your opinion, both members of your tribe and disinterested seekers of truth.

I suggest reading http://www.snopes.com/antifa-flyers-call-for-the-murder-of-white-children/ While debunking an especially egregious claim about antifa, Snopes makes statements like "The New York City Antifa Twitter account said that the flyer was 'fake as a three dollar bill'" Snopes also quotes @NYCAntifa as saying "there is no such group called the “national antifa front.” there is only one national group in the US and it is the Torch Antifa Network. And I can only think of one antifa group that uses the term “front” – and none use the term “national,” which in the context of our work has a far right connotation"

So what we have is one public front with antifa in its name claiming multiple antifa groups, and snopes not questioning this.

Now of course you might also say there is no such organization as the SPCA. And you'd be right, if what you mean is that there is no *single* SPCA organization. There are, instead, a job lot of animal protection organizations with SPCA in their names, along with other animal protection organizations without that recognizable tag. They share roughly common ideals, while disgreeing on details and/or organizing seperately because of locality. Also, SPCA seems to be a category name - when I googled "SPCA Silicon Valley" I got "Humane Society of Silicon Valley" as my first hit. And of course it's quite possible that some of them are in fact scamsters, trading on the well known name to collect donations that do not in fact benefit any non-human animals - or anyone at all except the scamsters in question. (Sham antifa groups would most likely have rather different aims.)

After doing far too much research, I'm unsurprised to find no single organization representing everything called "antifa". That's a lot different from their being no such organization. Unless of course you want to claim that even though the New York SPCA is constantly spamming me, there's no such organization as the SPCA.

Another example while we're at it: the Baptists seem seem to schism at every opportunity. There are more Baptist organizations than anyone but a member, or a religion researcher, can possibly keep straight. No such organization as the (a) Baptist Chruch? ROFLMAO

[johnpalmer]

Ah.

Yes, I am. I understand that according to your religion, any statement about antifa is either "fake news" from your political opponents, or a claim that antifa does not exist (or at least "is not an organization"), from right thinking people, which includes, in your opinion, both members of your tribe and disinterested seekers of truth.

So: you're either a troll; dishonest; or stupid AND rude.

I stopped reading right there. You are not discussing things in good faith. Perhaps you have a "religion" that dictates what your opponents believe, but *I* don't, and I regret engaging with you as if you were holding a discussion in good faith.