Antifa. Anti-fascist? WTF?

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RE: your link.
Was anyone actually hurt?
From what I read it was a case of people fearing they were going to be hurt.
Please clarify.

I don't see the same problem here in Australia.
To the contrary.
The problem we have here is the far left acting like thugs.

Alt. right are considered social misfits, by and large, even by most moderate conservatives, I believe.
I don't think the same can be said about the "alt." left, from a left-wing point of view.

Conservatives over here don't initiate physical aggression that I am aware of.
They generally create rational dialogue, disseminate information about the anti-social behaviour of the far left, which in turn puts a spotlight on left-wing fascist activity and hopefully influences public opinion to combat the problem.
Time will tell if this is enough in countering thuggish behaviour here.



So taking the law in your own hands (breaking it) is something of which you are comfortable?

Many conservatives here in Australia feel the same way about the far left due to their engaging in intimidation and worse.
Physical attacks, death threats against primary individuals and their families, etc.
Far left-wing activists here in Australia are running amok.
But encouraging other anti-social behaviours will only encourage the escalation of more anti-social behaviour, surely.

As I have said, I am a pacifist and an intellectual.
If I let my inner reptile gain dominance, I will be the ultimate loser.
And society will have lost a very precious gift.

Yes, politics determines the distribution of power and removal of choice.

For example; when a government enacts and enforces a law, it's deciding who will be targets of police violence.

No, different politics have different effects on the world.

All politics is violence because the government is violence.

In a democracy the government is meant to be the legitimate form of violence. If someone kills someone the government uses violence to capture them and then hold them against their will.

Don't know much about Antifa but they come across as an online bogeyman for some who will claim any crowd at all behaving how they don't like are them.

The behaviour of some online people who are against antifa, including on here, make me question whether they are really that much of a problem tbh.

Antifa is short for Antifascist Action, an anarchist group of which many, if not most, people espouse far-left political views.

If one goes by comment boards and social media, it's as if there's nothing between left anarchism and fascism.

I cannot support them or the fascists.

I misunderstood what was said earlier.

Last edited by Pepe on 13 May 2019, 3:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

I know what the name is meant to stand for but they are such an online bogeyman that it is hard to see them as a significant thing tbh.

I misunderstood you earlier.
I can see where you are coming from now.
But your way of thinking is rather foreign to me.
"Less conventional".



Edit:
You may have been a little mischievous to the following extent:
The thread I initiated was talking about Antifa which is perceived as a violent activist group.
This established the initial context/definition of the term "violence".

You then introduced a couple of questions I found odd.
In hindsight, I could speculate that the intention may even have been an attempt at mischievousness.
But to be sure, that is a "long bow to draw", so it will maintain the status of an inconclusive/unverifiable intellectual construct.

End of story.
Move along, people.
Nothing to see here.

Difficult to be opposed to Antifa when the opposition is literal fascists.

I think their ideology is sometimes somewhat simplistic, but in the grand scheme of things we need people who are prepared to stand up to fascists. Similarly, I don't like much of what Winston Churchill stood for, but given that he gave Hitler and Mussolini a good kicking, history has to remember him somewhat fondly.

I'd also note that attempts to characterise these people as "left-wing fascists" are equally as simplistic - as shown by the complete failure of anyone to actually draw any pertinent similarities between antifascism and fascism. There are meaningful criticisms to be made of these groups but "they're like fascists" is not one of them. Likewise, I think it's quite telling that there is a strong degree of overlap between "people who are opposed to ethnic nationalism being compared to fascism" and "people who are happy to compare antifascism to fascism".

Sometimes the people they are opposed to are fascists but the majority of them are just right wing/centrist. They even attacked a Bernie Sanders supporter because he had an American flag which they considered fascism.

They can be violent thugs without being fascists. There's no irony in pointing out that radicals who are worried about being assaulted by their opponents tend to prepare themselves for the potential need to engage in violence. Perhaps if the far-right weren't so violent their opponents wouldn't find themselves needing to be prepared to deal with violence.

This.

In America fascists are killing people on the street. I support the right to life, so I support self-defence against fascism.

Having said that I think the use of overt violence has to be proportionate to the immediate threat. And generally I'd say the anti-fascist movement in contemporary America has done a good job of that. I'm aware of many people who have been killed by fascists, but none who have been beaten to death by anti-fascists.

We don't have Antifa here in Australia since it is, I believe, a uniquely American organisation.
Correct me if I am wrong, please.
But we have people like those in Antifa who do exactly what you have said.

People who have this mindset are demonstrably anti-freedom of speech and thought of even moderates simply because they believe in a differing set of principles.

I think it safe to say that most, if not all members of Antifa embrace self-righteousness, virtue signalling and are addicted to their biological chemicals which create emotional gluttony.



Disclosure:
There isn't a great deal of study in this area at this point in time.

May I suggest: Rather than talking about the number of murders that the alt. right have perpetrated in America, people supply sources/links?

I don't disbelieve what people are saying, but evidence speaks stronger/louder than unverified words.

Recently there was a link supplied which indicated that violence by neo-Nazis was inevitable had their not been intervention.
When I drilled into the article I discovered that ultimately there was no physical harm.
And it is unverifiable that it would have eventuated without this intervention.
There was "only" the fear of possible harm.
It seems the media were up to their old alarmist tricks in that instance.

BTW, I am aware of lone wolf supremacist murders.
How prevalent are group attacks by neo-Nazis?

Also, let me once again emphasise that America is not Australia and that social conditions vary in degree.

Quite the contrary, I believe. Antifa is a European communist guerrilla organization that goes all the way back to WWII. Its infiltration into the US is extremely recent.

It's wrong to call something "American." There's no such thing as an "American."

The vast majority of Americans don't deserve the "k."