Let’s talk about Antifa.

[MalignantTrinket]

One hell of a first post right there.

Years lurking for E30 tech tips, and shooting the political s**t gets me signed up lol. It happens, I guess.

All of which, including the nazis, are left wing ideologies

The murderous ideologies all have a lot in common, but they can't all be conveniently lumped into a left or right bin. The spectrum along which the extreme right and extreme right lie is, contrary to most people's perception, NOT a straight line with a left end and a right end. It is a circle, with the extreme ends curled up and connected. This diagram sums it up pretty well.



The lunatic fringe "sides" have much more in common with each other than they do with any of the mainstream political organizations and the people in them. Every time the lunatics get into power, it is with promises of utopia. Utopia always seems to require a lot of dead people, because you know, it's just one more little group of undesirables that are ruining everything and need to be dispatched. "Last one, I promise! Well, OK, also that one, and that one, and now that I think about it, that one too."

[gwb72tii]

All of which, including the nazis, are left wing ideologies

[Exodus_2pt0]

One hell of a first post right there.

[MalignantTrinket]

So I was in a coffee joint the other day, one of those sort of "hipster" ones with quirky trinkets and whatnot displayed all over. In one counter spot, there were some big pins of Mao, seemingly big patriotic ones (or replicas). Seeing that got me thinking about how ridiculously bad history lessons are, or at least how lop-sided they are.

If this place had Hitler pins on display, they would be out of business within 2 days of it being front-page news. Yet, for whatever insane reason, displaying images of Mao is considered OK, "ironic" and even in many circles, an affirmation of one's progressive cred. When I clicked into this subforum and saw this thread up top, I noted that OP mentioned that Antifa is made up of a bunch of "progressive radicals", of which a large cohort are self-proclaimed communists.

Anything and everything under the sun is decried as fascist and worthy of violent resistance these days. One of Trump's goons mis-stated some statistic as being 88% (versus 84%) and it literally made front-page news as being a dog-whistle to white supremacists and fascists. Now, unless I am mistaken, the main objection to fascism is that it has murderous results. Right? All-up, fascism killed a LOT of people, most of them 100% deliberately (ethnic cleansing, political purges, because-we-can intimidation). It is SO bad that anyone even suspected of harboring sympathy to fascism is fair game for harassment and violence from today's resistance.

OK, so where on earth am I going with this?

Back to the Mao pin and Antifa having a HUGE cohort of communists in it, all claiming to be fighting for the forces of good. Let's go over some basic historical facts from the last century. The three largest body counts:

Hitler: 17 million
Mao: 50-80 million (they weren't quite as good with the bookkepping as the Germans)
Stalin: 23 million

These are widely considered the most horrific figures in history, in terms of actions, and especially in terms of deaths. One is a fascist. Two are communists. The fascist's count was almost 100% deliberate and the result of technologies specifically created to exterminate human life. The communists easily dwarfed that with starvation alone (someone PLEASE try to make the argument that "oops" makes it OK), and then when you add in the genocides and purges of "undesirable social elements" it is right up there with the Fascist. Communism's murderousness exceeds that of fascism by a wide margin, with documentation proving it beyond any possible argument to the contrary.

Antifa runs around "fighting fascism" because it proved to be a murderous scourge (note that I agree about that part, less so on whether we actually have fascists in any serious number existing today), while having a huge internal element full of people who are avowed lovers of an even MORE murderous ideology. People with the slightest suspicion of sympathy to fascism are harrassed, yet people who are openly pro-communism are somehow running around with some sort of claim to the moral high ground, and the other "lovers of human life" are right there next to them fighting the good fight? Sorry, it makes no sense, and anyone with a 7th grade understanding of history wrote Antifa off the second they saw who all was comprising it. The political left has gone so far off the rails that you can actually walk down the street in a Mao or Stalin shirt and expect to both NOT be harrassed and in many places receive a high-five. The facts of reality are that those are as bad as wearing a Hitler shirt if any of the same metrics of "badness" are applied uniformly.

I will give Antifa one point at least. Back in Hitler's time, the communists and fascists were duking it out as mortal enemies. So there is some sort of historical consistency there, I guess. Had the communists won-out in Germany, even MORE people probably would have died, but I guess it would have been "all in the name of progress" since the inevitable famine would not have targeted the Jewish population specifically. So if random people on the street, who may or may not be fascist sympathizers, are worthy of receiving physical violence, then I hope that the non-communists in Antifa wise up and start throwing some punches at the communists next to them. You and your family are more likely to end up dead (probably from starvation) if those guys get to run things.



The socialist cohort, when judging by history, is not all that far behind the fascists either. South America has a lot of unmarked mass graves from the glorious push toward socialist utopia, many of which are being dug right now.

[frankenbeemer]

what i'm trying to put down here is that i've never done or seen anyone do either of those things in the course of taking direct action.

Poll (with n = 1) conclusively proves Antifa is good.

[z31maniac]

what i'm trying to put down here is that i've never done or seen anyone do either of those things in the course of taking direct action.

the media's portrayal of what antifa does is unsurprisingly inaccurate.

How is it inaccurate? Or are you now trying to intimate that actual footage of Antifa, trashing businesses that never supported the big Cheetoh to begin with, is false/doctored/state actors?

[frankenbeemer]

no it wasn't... he literally just said "nobody likes you". that's not an argument.

Nope, just pointing out Vincent Brick provided a 3 person poll that included his mom and dad while you were worried about the Rasmussen Reports bias. I thought you'd be amused by that.

[decay]

Not a logical fallacy but a rebuttal.

no it wasn't... he literally just said "nobody likes you". that's not an argument.

[decay]

Now change that politically motivated graffiti for tossing trash cans into Starbucks windows or tossing piss bottles and you'll be able to get a reasonable guesstimation on how the general public perceives those actions. They're not the same.

what i'm trying to put down here is that i've never done or seen anyone do either of those things in the course of taking direct action.

the media's portrayal of what antifa does is unsurprisingly inaccurate.

"art/vandalism for a political cause" is much more in line with what i've done with our local group, and a lot of the time we'll do something like rent a uhaul pickup, throw a generator and projector in the back, and put messages on the outside wall of a government building- you can't even call that vandalism, as there's no property damage involved.

at this point, i've spent 10x as much time arguing here on r3v about what antifa really is/does as i have actually taking action myself, and the closest i've come to breaking the law is saying "fuck you, make me" when a cop told me to move back from their security cordon around a group of proud boy assholes that showed up to the memorial of a girl who'd been murdered by a white supremacist. i got hit, but not arrested, for that.

other than that, my locality has been quiet, and we/i have done exactly what i said we would in the absence of a threat- went back to our lives.

i don't know who you think the movement consists of, but we all have lives, jobs, relationships, and hobbies (in my case, vehicles and music)- like, are you imagining a george-soros-funded resistance cell occupying some abandoned building and storing a cache of piss bottles? because that's not what's happening.

[frankenbeemer]

Bullshit. I'm an American and I like Antifa, so does my 70 year old father in Ohio, so does my 65 year old Mother in Michigan. Stop telling lies, it's literally just you, other fascists, and those who have been misled by right-wing media who don't like Antifa.

Props to you, Decay, you are about the only reasonable person I have seen in these last several pages. For the sake of this country, more people need to take a very serious stand against the rise of fascism in America.

ok, now that we've heard "logical fallacy: appeal to popularity" and "contrarian ackshually", let's have the actual "data".

Not a logical fallacy but a rebuttal.

[cale]

Now change that politically motivated graffiti for tossing trash cans into Starbucks windows or tossing piss bottles and you'll be able to get a reasonable guesstimation on how the general public perceives those actions. They're not the same.

[decay]

That's vandalism with a political message.

It's not just a political message.

ok, fair point. i don't agree that it's wrong or unjustified, because i care more about the residents of new orleans & mississippi & puerto rico & (insert_natural_disaster_locale_here) than i do about clearchannel's property rights, but i get where you're coming from.

[MrBurgundy]

disagree. it's political messaging, because it's pointing out that the tax dollars we all pay to fund FEMA weren't, and still aren't (sorry puerto rico) being allocated or utilized properly.

That's vandalism with a political message.

It's not just a political message.

[decay]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize not explicitly condemning mass murder was indicative of some hidden motive to target antifa. Murder is wrong, he was a horrible person. Satisfied? Now are you done bringing up topics for the sole purpose of trying to diminish me as a participant in this topic?

if i were trying to diminish you as a participant, i'd just put you on ignore.

is it fair to say that what people complain about is what they care about?

Ps vandalism

disagree. it's political messaging, because it's pointing out that the tax dollars we all pay to fund FEMA weren't, and still aren't (sorry puerto rico) being allocated or utilized properly.

[cale]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize not explicitly condemning mass murder was indicative of some hidden motive to target antifa. Murder is wrong, he was a horrible person. Satisfied? Now are you done bringing up topics for the sole purpose of trying to diminish me as a participant in this topic?

Ps vandalism