Portland antifa attack fellow counter-protestor carrying American flag
107 replies, posted
Well you can see that people who engage in antifa have intellectual diversity by simply understanding that antifa isn’t an ideology akin to syndicalism, or M-Leninism or any other leftist ideology.
We aren’t talking about whether or not anti fascist action works. I’m saying that antifascist action isn’t a political faction. The efficacy of antifa is a completely different argument.
You missed my point.
Just because there is diversity in a group does not stop it from making it a political group. That requirement is way too stringent as most of the time a lot of people don't even know what specific 'version' of their preferred side of the spectrum they are on. Anything short of a group of poli-science majors would, by your definition, not count as a political group just because they don't all agree on 'M-leninism' or whatever.
People judge groups on their actions, and the actions of this movement have turned into a chaotic clusterfuck of violence and intimidation centered around a vague area of the political spectrum.
I will ask again, since you didn't answer; Why is it such a bad thing to ask that people don't show up swinging blunt objects with no impunity like they are some sort of divinely ordained moral crusaders?
It is an ideology though, it's a bunch of people coming together around a set of principles, ie an ideology.
You can say it has no leadership all you like, but if that's the case then it needs a form of communal policing against these types of people, which antifa groups never do, you always just see a bunch of people standing around watching and not doing anything.
Your ‘point’ is inconsistent with the facts and you’re also trying to pin me down into a separate unrelated argument like some sort of gotcha, so no, I won’t give you the pleasure of arguing whether it’s okay to hit random unrelated people because it obviously isn’t, I never said that, it’s nothing to do with what I’m saying, and more over, its not anti fascism.
Antifa can suck my big white veiny dick, just a mask for anti-americans to hide behind.
If anti-american is anti fascism then i'm anti-american
When you have a commonly shared rhetoric, an agreed upon time to gather, march under the same flag, and share a certain dresscode, you're an organization all in but name. Sure, there may not be leadership, but there sure as hell isn't any internal policing. All I want is at least some fucking accountability, and it would certainly do themselves good to pursue that.
It ain't but it's a problem when anyone who disagrees with their methods is a Nazi.
leaderless, formless, organization-free attempts towards political action means you have zero control over the optics of anything you do. PR is a thing, and acting like a few idiots can't hurt the overall perception of said political action is straight up in opposition of the truth. frankly i would be absolutely livid to see some idiots fucking shit up for the rest of us, they're as much enemies to the cause as the fascists are, because they're handing the keys to the narrative right over to them. defending it with "there is no group, so you can't judge a group by their actions :^)" is a farce: people are going to make judgements based on what very much so appears to be a group regardless of what you say. if you don't want people doing that, it is absolutely necessary for there to be some formal organization in order to deal with the idiots giving out slander-fuel with every beating they hand out to some poor schmuck who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Those people don't exist. It's a caricature created to discredit leftists.
Leaderless movements will always be infiltrated by the fringe if you don't actively fight against it.
literally doesn't matter when there's no formal organization trying to wrest back control over the narrative from the hands of those who created the caricature. no matter how many forum posts or tweets or whatever people make on that, you're only ever going to convince the few who are already in those political circles. regular joe and jill schmo aren't going to go out of their way to investigate because their lives aren't mired in politics. they're just going to see what the media has to say, and when there's no dedicated PR person or figurehead to go to for comment, they've got free reign to make the narrative how they want it or how someone with ill intentions towards your cause might want it.
Hi, I'm left-leaning as all fuck. Those people exist and trying to deny them existing is only hurting the left.
Blac bloc is a tactic that is primarily associated with and used by the radical anti-authoritarian left. Anarchists, autonomists and militant anti-fascists. Its purpose is both anonymity and to present the bloc as a unified mass of people. Typically, the black bloc is the frontline of a longer march with a broader selection of political organizations and individuals, where people who don't want to take part in the black bloc can join the marching blocs behind it. So for one, this blac bloc should be sort of adverse to symbols in the first place, although banners and flags often play an important part in the early stages of a bloc formation. But after all, I don't think it should be an expectation that anti-nationalists should have to walk side-by-side with nationalist symbols. I would say it is foolish in general to walk within a black bloc if you're not part of it as it is an inherently risky tactic.
If you attack people who don't deserve it then you should get shit for it, but it isn't always practical to police your comrades in the field. (Honestly, this incident is by itself an example on how trying to do so only ends up escalating the situation). Rather, it would in most cases be more practical to talk it over afterwards in a safe spot, but you'd never hear about that in the news. I think if militant activists can work a little bit more on their own patience and caution, walking a fine line without letting it turn into outright complacency, unfortunate incidents such as this won't happen as much.
Indeed. Organizations don't need leaders and roll calls to exist. If they regularly meet and plan together on what to do and all identify themselves with a specific brand, they're an organization. And it's not like these are just groups of random people who happened to arrive on the same day at the same place. They organize through sites like Facebook and Reddit and such.
And using the argument that "Antifa" just refers to Anti-Fascism and is therefore anyone and everyone and not at all referring to any organized body, you're being disingenuous because it does refer to specific groups. Just as Femen doesn't referral to all feminists but specific ones, Antifa does actually point to specific collective groups who coordinate, share methodology and iconography, and self-identify. There are other anti-fascist organizations that do not use Antifa branding and prefer much more sane methods, which is why people don't complain about them.
Hi, left-leaning, I'm not interested. Those people don't exist.
the internet allows for instant communication between different local groups, the capacity to organize with extreme precision, the capability to coordinate a message and push that message across a country as vast as the United States and beyond with a force hitherto unseen, and yet it is all squandered. i don't know why it has been squandered the way it has, it almost seems like nobody wants to actually take up the responsibility required to have a truly effective political movement. leaderless movements bring out the absolute worst aspects of anarchism: a lack of focus, no control over optics, mob mentality, and total lack of self-policing. already, a few acts of violence caused by those participating in antifascist action has damaged the concept of it in the minds of many Americans, people who likely completely agree that facism is bad. they'll never see the good side of it, though, there's nobody to show them it.
leaderless, organization-free movements will hands-down go down as one of the worst possible ways to handle political movements in history, and i hope the lesson is learned sooner rather than later.
Got it, I haven't been called a nazi and facist for not agreeing with violence againist nazis and fascist.
They do, this forum has even had users do that.
So you would hope people in such groups will self-correct after the fact? I do not see how stopping the guy next to you when he's attacking what appears to be a bystander and telling him to chill out is in any way impractical. It is precisely in such moments where patience and caution fails that the trigger-happy dudes with blunt instruments should be reined in by the sane people around them, if such people actually are around in the first place.
Such people, if not stopped in the moment, are detrimental to the optics of the whole thing (and to honestly quite innocent people who are also potential allies) and there is little to lose from trying to calm them down. It is also important to note there is a very thin line between complacency and collaboration, given this fact.
Proactive measures to stop such things from happening again are quite simply not enough.
Violent confrontations happen quick, and people around might just not always know what lead to the fight. Most people will only react quickly enough to deal with the aftermath. It is thus better to act proactively, and to do so in the field would mean calming down the confrontation before it even leads to a fight.
They're not your everyman, they're the radical left coming out to pick fights with the radical right.
You are actually downright blind and most likely brainbruised. They are all over the internet. hell even our forum had/has some. Hell, I got called alt-right/nazi for think The Last Jedi was trash, and that wasn't even anything political.
How to undermine the level of discourse and contribute nothing with one snarky comment.
So uh... what if it's well, a literal false-flag operation? Not to say that the guy who was beaten was an actor, but the people who beat him up were sent in to cause shit?
Yeah no, there's a lot of extreme left people out there. Hell I see the communist society at my uni plastering pictures of lenin and castro all over the place (which allowed by the uni for some reason despite the fact that if you did the same with pictures of hitler you'd be kicked out of the uni).
The extreme left is alive and well I'm afraid.
All the more reason for antifa to engage in self-policing and, consequently, the removal of masks. You can't infiltrate and cause shit if there is actual accountability.
Every single time Antifa does some stupid shit this gets brought up
And every time nothing ever comes of it
Crazy reactionaries who label ordinary people Nazis don't exist, says man posting in a thread about crazy reactionaries beating a man for carrying an American flag.
What's the catch, it doesn't count because they didn't explicitly call him a Nazi when they said his flag is fascist?
"Antifa" is just an excuse to run around and smash shit at this point.
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