So what does antifa want to cancel? They say it's fascism. Is that good? On its face, sure. In terms of execution.....not so sure.
Why fight fascism? Here's a snippet of a conversation between a father and son before the son went to Charlottesville for the unite the right rally.
Quote:
The North Dakota newspaper The Forum published a letter from Pearce Tefft in which he recalled a chilling exchange about free speech with his son, Peter, shortly before Peter headed to the rally in Charlottesville. “The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech,” the younger Tefft reportedly said to his father. “You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven.”
I can't even imagine my own son uttering such a thing.
Quote:
[In] Germany...fascists were able to take over governments through legal rather than revolutionary means—much as the alt-right frames its activities as a defense of free speech, Fascists were able to spread their ideology under the aegis of liberal tolerance.
Liberal tolerance. Wow. That's just like when some folks said that all the Qanon stuff should just be out in the open for all to see. Liberal tolerance, folks.
Sure. Kind of the penultimate example of turning something on its head. "We tolerate fascism and white supremacy!!!" "We tolerate dangerous and unfounded accusations of pedophilia!" Yay freedom!
Quote:
In his Atlantic piece, Beinart notes, “When fascism withered after World War II, antifa did too.”
I'm reading about the incidents in the Northwest now. The antifa folks were focussing on the right-wing and nazis. They were not duscccussing BLM. They weren't interested in BLM.
They did explicitly say they wish to cancel fascism. So what's the problem?
Methods is the first answer. Violence and destruction don't really work. (In my opinion. I didn't beat my son. My husband doesn't beat me.)
But what does work for the right is to capitalize with propaganda. Turn the public eye away from them and onto.....BLM!
Of course. And so they did.
Quote:
But even on the militant left, the movement didn’t occupy the spotlight. To most left-wing activists during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, deregulated global capitalism seemed like a greater threat than fascism.
Quote:
Trump has changed that. For antifa, the result has been explosive growth. According to NYC Antifa, the group’s Twitter following nearly quadrupled in the first three weeks of January alone. (By summer, it exceeded 15,000.)
This is from 2017. It makes sense that Trump would spend so much time talking about antifa. He wants credit. It's huge. The biggest ever. Everybody knows it. You know it. You know it. You know it.
Lightbulb time.
Quote:
Antifascists call such actions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable minorities, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But Trump supporters and white nationalists see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacramento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counterdemonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed.
The left and the right are fighting each other and both are using violence. And it seems to have ticked up quite a bit under Trump. He likes this. Just like he liked the Capitol mob. He loved it, in fact.
And still, it's not BLM. BLM is not doing the organizing. BLM is not the group who went to the unite the right rallies.
BLM wants police to stop shooting women while they sleep at home. BLM wants police to stop shooting men who are on their own property with their own guns protecting their own selves according to our Constitution.
I never rejoiced in Spencer or Yiannopoulos getting attacked. I thought it was stupid and wrong and just gave them more attention. Which it did.
Didn't know this:
Quote:
Portland offers perhaps the clearest glimpse of where all of this can lead. The Pacific Northwest has long attracted white supremacists, who have seen it as a haven from America’s multiracial East and South. In 1857, Oregon (then a federal territory) banned African Americans from living there. By the 1920s, it boasted the highest Ku Klux Klan membership rate of any state.
Quote:
Now, in the Trump era, Portland has become a bastion of antifascist militancy. Masked protesters smashed store windows during multiday demonstrations following Trump’s election.
Ah, territory battle as well. Interesting.
Quote:
What’s eroding in Portland is the quality Max Weber considered essential to a functioning state: a monopoly on legitimate violence. As members of a largely anarchist movement, antifascists don’t want the government to stop white supremacists from gathering. They want to do so themselves, rendering the government impotent. With help from other left-wing activists, they’re already having some success at disrupting government. Demonstrators have interrupted so many city-council meetings that in February, the council met behind locked doors.
Hmmmmm. Disrupting government. Isn't that poking the Deep State in the eye? Oh wait, I keep forgetting. The fascists actually like government and just want to take it over. Gotta remember that!
Quote:
Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like never before.
Soooo....
Is it waning now? Is antifa now attacking the Biden government? Is it retreating?
Seems like since the right wing groups are still talking March 4 and martial law and taking over the government and bringing Trump back...antifa still has current raison-d'etre.
Should be interesting. And I would not at all be surprised if the Biden Administration arrests antifa members. Not at all.
There's a lot more yet to be learned about antifa, and about how it's being used by others for the sake of their own power. :hmm::tea::meditating::pc::ok::flame::peep: