Antifa - freedom fighters, necessary evil, terrorists?

Post Reply New Topic

It's a cut and paste because you've seen it on a website and can point us to it or because he said something you disagree with without misspelling every third word?

Also - waving the black and red block doesn't make their political beliefs any sort of secret, unless it's not the claim that their communist which is bothering you. If that's the case you'd need to tell us what he's got completely backward, either to constitute it as a hate rant or why he's wrong to hate communism - whichever is applicable.

I also think the far-left "street action" wouldn't be such a problem if it didn't feed off the political reality that the true left are not allowed any kind of legitimate political representation in our money-dominated two party system. In an era where the political right labels any kind of government provided/assisted universal healthcare system "communist", and even Democrats shut down solutions that would be considered center-right anywhere else in the world, a lot of people feel hopeless. When the rich keep getting richer even as the poor get poorer, the radical-left at least see the real culprit. Their "solution" may be horrible, but at least they see reality. The radical-right would rather make up whimsical conspiracy theories rooted in the same old 20th century nonsense that just refuses to go away.

So in other words it's a legitimate move, by the current politically disenfranchised, to overthrow the corporatists, neocons, and neolibs in the more authoritarian/plutocratic strata of the center?

I'm going to perhaps microscope in on the Mark Blythe view of this:

The west is getting radicalized, ie. left and right, and getting spun towards demagogues on either end by carrying the weight of a salary class whose been proclaiming the moral superiority of globalism, all the while the working class are watching their spending power vanish, their hourly income even get cut in half, and they're sliding from middle-middle or lower-middle class down toward or past the poverty line while the salary class keeps going on their merry way, signing global trade deals, and living quite comfortably for it.

I think there's a valid grievance to be had there, at least to the extent that such measures to gain cheaper labor, 1st-world fast-track the developing world came with no backup plan on how things would be done differently to keep the west from economically and culturally imploding.

What I don't see though is how, in any way shape or form, AntiFa is anything more than an inarticulate reaction of the worst kind - ie. instead of discussing the economics they're out looking under rocks for nazis or people who they can fashion into calling nazis. If they have any major successes in taking us where they'd want to go it would be the kind of Egyptian darkness that's being enjoyed in Venezuela right now. I mean, could the same disgruntled people get behind Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, et. al. on UBI or some other measures to keep the poor and increasingly automation-displaced from essentially starving to death or losing every appendage and boil-free stretch of skin from untreated diabetes?

It seems like we do have some very critical issues to be discussed here, unfortunately we're too busy right now trying to hash out what constitutes a communist or fascist. The week before that we were too busy talking about what constitutes a male, female, or - if somewhere in between - what the appropriate categorization is. Our ability to stay on message with the country's emerging economic issues has been truly awful.

A few days ago, while I was on a Percocet-induced spell of insanity, my argument for Antifa was that we should accept all enemies of the biggest enemy in the room, and that refusal to do so equated to siding with the biggest enemy in the room.

Yeah, that was a big load of BS on my part.

Add in that I knew very little about Antifa until a couple of days ago. Now my opinion has changed. I now soberly believe Antifa and white supremists should be isolated on an island, armed, and forced to battle it out without getting anybody else involved. Make it a worldwide pay-per-view event, and it could result in a budget surplus for the USA.

I would join the protest