But they're partisan hacks, and AntiFa apologists, so it's ok./s
Who else dreads this year?
- Thread starter Cherico
- Start date
The one thing I don't get about Antifa is how exactly the logic of them claiming they fight fascists therefore anyone they attack is a fascist works. If I called myself an antiracist and started attacking people it wouldn't suddenly make everyone I attacked a racist even if I got lucky and attacked an actual racist from time to time. It wouldn't be so odd if it wasn't repeated so often by people defending them which includes news people.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Row row fight the power? I think they just want something to fight and feel good about it.
Like you know this guy is scum so don't feel too bad about doing anything to him including very illegal acts so treat him like a aggression dummy.
Like I get why Antifa does it, they directly benefit from saying everyone they beat up is a fascist and thus get cover for it. It's other people using that argument that raises eyebrows because while I don't doubt that some of them don't mind having someone beat up their political rivals while claiming they're fascists, it doesn't explain why so many other people go along with it.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Not in my backyard? No understanding of what acceptance of that can do when it's against people they don't like?
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
So in the simpsons Trump gets hounded by the squad. In 2020 could it be video editted as propoganda to show the reality of the worst days for the squad?
Define "so many other people", because from what I've seen the only people who repeat antifa's bullshit are either antifa sympathizers or the kind of hateful dipshit that does enjoy seeing people they dislike get beaten. And while people like that are certainly very loud and very visable online, I don't think they're actually all that numerous.
Comrade Clod
Gay Space Communist
Personally i'm just of the opinion that Antifa (not like its an organisation but whatever) have distinctly less deaths attributable to them (Are there any?). Which makes them prefferable to assholes like that Unite the Right movement where someone drove a car into a crowd.
I can't really say about people irl because simply put I'm not an American nor living there so anyone I talk to is unlikely to know much about the subject if at all. As far as I've seen, it's been journalists who were sympathetic towards as well as others online. That there are that many at all and in relatively prominent positions like journalists at that is what's surprising to me.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
well, for now anyway. Not that it's for lack of trying. Plenty of "assaulting random people in the street" and "firebombing the wrong government agency"
No it doesn't. Both groups are shitty assholes and need to be stopped before things get worse, constantly pulling the argumentum ad Heyer to go "but, but, but they're worse" is frankly just a distraction tactic to try and draw attention away from antifa's misdeeds. There is a line, and both groups have gleefully and willfully crossed it, trying to say that one side is fractionally worse serves no valid point but to try and distract people from the fact that the other side is still past the line.
And no, antifa is an organization. Do not try that "it's a tactic, not a group, everyone who is against facists is antifa" shit, it's nothing more than a transparent attempt to draw a moral equivalence between believing facists are wrong and getting into street fights.
That's true, there is a lot of....I wouldn't call it sympathy exactly, but a lot of deliberate non-condemnation coming from the media.
Comrade Clod
Gay Space Communist
I'm serious does it even have a leadership?
Are there even any recognisable figures directly associated with it rather than vague support?
Local cells certainly have leaders and organizers, and even if they didn't, you don't need leaders to be a definably organization. You'll just be a poorly lead and non-standard one.
For example, BLM and Occupy both lacked any kind of central leadership or recognizable backing, but both were distinctly identifiably groups anyway.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
it has branded cells with icons and shit.
Comrade Clod
Gay Space Communist
Congratulations you have grasped basic human social organisation.
I'm asking if it has a leadership. Hell even a central organising figure like Spencer. You can call Antifa a tactic, a phenomenon or a movement, those are all accurate insofar as none require an organised leadership. They are not however an organisation because what the people in Chicago calling themselves Antifa believe and say compared to a group in Houston or New York could be entirely different things and no pull whatsoever with each other.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Wasn't there a recent one about someone brainwashed with anti ICE rhetoric they decided to Molotov cocktail an immigration office except they were bad at it?
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
the funniest part of that comedy of errors was that it wasn't even ICE, that office had nothing to do with illegal immigration.
You don't need to have a central leadership structure in order to be an organization, there is such a thing as decentralized leadership, which is what antifa has with each cell doing it's own thing and sometimes communicating or coordinating with other cells.
Why are you so invested in saying they're not an organization?
The more relevant factor would they have a shared ideology.
Antifa has plenty of organizing figures like Spencer. They just aren't CNN's pet Nazi, so you don't hear about them, and the equivalent to Spencer on Antifia's side aren't as heavily connected (by the media) to Antifa as Spencer is: they're "legit" heads of groups like professors, public speakers, and Nonprofit organization heads, who just so happen to have strong Antifa connections, unlike "illegitimate" public speaker and nonprofit head Spencer, who has (sometimes extremely tenuous) connections to organizations, or so often random individuals, who commit violence.
Like, the equivalent of Richard Spencer for Antifa is someone like Owen Jones: does public speaking, pushes the ideology, and does fundraising for them. Its just that Richard Spencer is connected to every act of violence that happens, no matter whether he condemned it or not, while someone like Owen Jones is treated as blameless for violence he specifically calls for.
Its anoying that people keep calling large, organized, well funded, politically connected armed gangs "spontanious, random violence, and totally not an organization". But a random nutter deciding to get violent and kill someone who had no connection to any organization and did his violence with no support at all is part of some vast, right wing conspiracy.
I'm sorry, but I consider the vast, organized army far more dangerous than random lone nutters. The organized army can, and actually does, wield political power. Them not killing people is much more a sign of their immense power that they don't need to, rather than a moral superiority.
I'd argue it's simple cowardice, much as it is for the other side. Remember how the actual violence dropped off right after Charlottesville, right after something happened that clearly showed everyone there that there were actually consequences to what they were doing, that this wasn't just a bit of free for all rough and tumble punchy time, it was something that had serious risks attached? The second they something to fear beyond "I might get punched while I'm running around punching people", they crawled back into whatever cesspool they'd previously crawled out of, and they stayed in there for a long while.