Let’s talk about Antifa.

[decay]

Ots kinda hard to lock down since it says it started in the 30's and another says isnt funded by anyone, but I'll try.

both of those statements are true. do they not fit a narrative you're hearing somewhere else?

I like my guns, dont support Democrats, but I believe anyone should be able to assemble, racist or otherwise xoesnt mean mean you have to give them any attention( I believe these types meet up just for the attention and to ruffle feathers) and you all give it to them.

see, this is what i was trying to accomplish with this thread. we're on the same page everywhere except for the right to agitate grieving people with racist vitriol; if i have to play by the law, then that's an incitement to violence, and i've already provided a link about how that isn't protected speech.

at the end of the day, i think this is a discovery process for these basement-dwellers. they're learning that real life isn't like the internet and you can't show up to counter-protest the murder of a girl who hadn't even gotten to show up at her first day of college without expecting to catch an ass-kicking because "muh free speeches say i can troll IRL".

Going from that I believe in a smaller government that doesnt overwatch and control people so much and i want a ton more personal freedom

welcome to the main tenets of anarchism; only difference there is we tend to live our lives outside of any government interaction at all, where possible.

[Mediumrarechicken]

both of those statements are true. do they not fit a narrative you're hearing somewhere else?



see, this is what i was trying to accomplish with this thread. we're on the same page everywhere except for the right to agitate grieving people with racist vitriol; if i have to play by the law, then that's an incitement to violence, and i've already provided a link about how that isn't protected speech.

at the end of the day, i think this is a discovery process for these basement-dwellers. they're learning that real life isn't like the internet and you can't show up to counter-protest the murder of a girl who hadn't even gotten to show up at her first day of college without expecting to catch an ass-kicking because "muh free speeches say i can troll IRL".



welcome to the main tenets of anarchism; only difference there is we tend to live our lives outside of any government interaction at all, where possible.

Actually hate speech is legal under the constitution, as long as you arnt inciting violence. You coming to want to beat these people down isnt them inciting violence, it's you. You can be the bigger man and take the high road and ignore them, much like I dont go to clinics and raise hell because I dont believe in abortions.

[MrBurgundy]

lmao this is so good.


ANTFA is made of socialists/communists

you said it

THOSE ARE THE MOST FASCIST TYPES OF GOVERNMENT LOLOL


Like you know that "Nazi" is derived from national socialist, right?

[decay]

lmao this is so good.


ANTFA is made of socialists/communists

you said it

THOSE ARE THE MOST FASCIST TYPES OF GOVERNMENT LOLOL


Like you know that "Nazi" is derived from national socialist, right?

i guess the (hi) identifying myself as an anarchist went over your head.

too subtle for your grasp of the english language, apparently.

(yes, i am going to start making fun of idiots who type without reading.)

((also, some african dictatorships would like a word with you.))

[MrBurgundy]

I don't care what you identify as... I was talking about ANTIFA.

too subtle for your grasp of the english language, apparently.

The irony

[mrsleeve]

Most people, Liberals and Millennuals in particular have no idea what Fascism is, I have pointed this out may many times over the past decade. Let alone what a Nazi is

[Flying Potato]

antifa isn't homogeneous. as the image says, some are anarchists (hi), some are socialists, some are communists.

some lively debates can happen on the subject when we happen to be gathered together- strangely, they stay a lot more civil and less mouth-frothy than this thread has. it's almost as if we've learned to settle our differences civilly and unite under some common goal...

A group of people who think alike in the same physical space, versus random strangers with a huge range of political views in an internet forum. I think that's sort of the difference. Probably the "same physical space" part, mostly. People are generally a lot more civil when coming together to have discussions within swinging distance. Generally.

As far as my general opinion about Antifa, which I believe that the thread originally asked for opinions of, I am generally not in support of it. I'll start with line items I guess, since this graphic seems to be some sort of high level summary of the OP's views. Keep in mind that I am trying to be respectful here, and that my statements are about Antifa in as much as it is a group, not you as a person.






- Sure, I am not in favor of the DNC. The Democratic party has done a lot of harm to the working class and black people, despite constant statements to the contrary. The same can be said for the Republican party, for many of the same reasons. Both parties are totally corrupted by corporate interests, which is IMO the main problem here. We are not operating in a free market. We are operating in a system that is in a state of nearly total regulatory capture.

- This seems like a marketing line item along the lines of "Nazis are bad, we are not Nazis, ipso facto we are good." This line reads like marketing and provides precisely zero value in terms of clarifying what Antifa is about in 2018. It is an entirely unremarkable position to think that, "yes, the Nazi party was detestable," and the number of people in the US who think otherwise has to number below 10,000 individuals. Even many white supremacists are not interested in associating with neo-Nazi groups, as far as I can tell. There is some overlap, but neo-Nazis are so unpopular that even the supremacists seem weary of them.

- OK. Got it.

- OK. Is the "in the US" there because they have killed people elsewhere, or just a clarification about where Antifa operates?

- This one, in particular, is where 95% of my aversion to Antifa comes from. More on that at the bottom. Basically, this is a Pandora's box IMO.

- What else, beyond protesting, does Antifa do then?

- This makes no sense. Anarchism is even more different from socialism and communism than it is from capitalism. Socialism has strong elements of central planning and curtailment of personal economic freedoms for the "common good", and communism is basically a strongly authoritarian system where everything down to who gets to raise people's children (note: it often isn't the parents) is mandated by the state, by threat of physical punishment.

- Not being funded by private interests is usually a good thing in my book. At the same time, it sounds like there isn't anything TO fund since Antifa is not an organization in any traditional sense. It's like seeing a "gluten free" label on salt at the store.

- Pro gun. Cool. No arguments here. To what degree, though? I assume that anarchists would want zero regulations at all. Communists would be in favor of a total ban so that the state can exercise uninhibited control over people. Again, these two things cannot coexist, unless the people in favor of them don't actually understand what they say they are in favor of.

- "Legislation can't save us, but disparate vigilante groups can." That is what I am getting from this line.

- Basically every group listed in there is something that almost everyone everywhere already objects to. Also, those words keep getting re-purposed as synonyms for, "anyone I don't like." The parallels to the Nazi government's methods of quashing dissent are both dangerous, and ironic.




OK, so what is my core beef with Antifa? My beef is that it is a group that believes in justified mob/vigilante violence as a means to an end, while simultaneously "not being a group". So instead it is a label. Whoever is behind the label is saying that anyone who "hates Nazis and racists" can also wear the label and go engage in extrajudicial violence against anyone accused of being one of the hated things. Well, hating Nazis and racists IS the mainstream view, by an overwhelming majority. I suspect that this is why those words keep getting redefined, and the shadow of their umbrella keeps spreading to cover more and more people who are clearly not those things. So basically, Antifa is pushing an idea of, "anyone holding mainstream views can put on the Antifa label and go engage in physical violence with anyone that they feel like arbitrarily putting different labels on, and if anyone gives you a hard time about it, just tell them that your label is not a group and it is just a bunch of people who are really passionate about their (uncontroversial, mainstream) views."

I am not a historian or anything, but the limited reading I have done about the construction of various civilizations over the centuries leads me to be extremely weary of any group that claims a divine or moral right to physical violence. While some, maybe even many, of the members of the group may very well have virtuous aims at heart, a movement does not stop when it achieves its stated goal. It expands the goal because the power conferred to those in charge is not relinquished easily. Antifa may be trying to avoid this by sticking with a decentralized anarchist structure. But at the same time, Antifa will simply never be effective at anything on a large scale if it has zero leadership of any kind. If it does decide to allow centralized leadership, the public will probably demand that the existing government squash it because it is still a group that believes in mostly-arbitrary extrajudicial violence, and extrajudicial violence is entirely unacceptable in the minds of the majority. Antifa might be fighting for completely mainstream views, but they are advocating a method which is despised by that mainstream, and any reading of history shows that violent mob rule is a lot worse than the far-from-perfect situation we have now.

If you look at the world and are saddened by the rampant injustice and cruelty everywhere, then we have that in common. The thing is that, from a historical perspective, this is as good as it has ever been on the whole. Yes, things look that terrible now, and yet I would not want to be born even 50 years earlier than I was. The world has improved that much that fast. There is a lot of work left to do, so this is absolutely not an attempt to say, "whatever, it used to be worse, stop bitching." We may very well have many common desired outcomes for society and humanity. The big disagreement seems to be, mainly, about the means to reach the ends.



Since you obviously seem to care enough to actually go out and try to do something to combat injustice, that is at least worth some credit, even if I don't agree that it is productive. Have you looked into opportunities to volunteer in poor areas around you? Going out and stating what you are against is one thing. Making a difference toward the things that you are FOR is something that I feel like gets overlooked a lot. Humans are wired to be more sensitive to the negative it seems. You could probably make a real, material difference by spending an hour or two a month tutoring a kid or two in poor areas and providing some amount of mentorship, rather than joining a group protest. Telling black communities, "I hate white people who hate you" probably makes less of a difference than engaging in actions that demonstrate, "I care about you and your community." Just my $0.02. Well, maybe $3.50, this post got long.

[Ryan...]

Mr Potato fucking nailed it.

[decay]

Potato: that was indeed a long and well-thought-out response.

you mention twice wanting to know what the anarchist community is doing beyond just protesting, or to help local communities.

a woman i know from this organization https://www.punkswithlunch.org/about/ was with me at the front. first example that comes to mind.

i'll get to more detailed answers when i can, but i wanted to address that one question at least. please don't think i'm trying to dodge on anything you said; i'm in the middle of a big nerd project today (music workstation for me, architecture workstation for the girlfriend).

[Flying Potato]

Mr Potato fucking nailed it.

As an edible tuber careening through the sky, I suppose you could say that I have the view from 10,000 feet.

Potato: that was indeed a long and well-thought-out response.

you mention twice wanting to know what the anarchist community is doing beyond just protesting, or to help local communities.

a woman i know from this organization https://www.punkswithlunch.org/about/ was with me at the front. first example that comes to mind.

i'll get to more detailed answers when i can, but i wanted to address that one question at least. please don't think i'm trying to dodge on anything you said; i'm in the middle of a big nerd project today (music workstation for me, architecture workstation for the girlfriend).

No worries, I was supposed to be clearing brush. Politics are irritating, but not nearly as much as what I need to go chop through before dark. To think, I joined here to get info for my old car, and ended up posting on politics. Ignore the fact that a potato who can fly would have a car. Or political views. Details...

[decay]

- Sure, I am not in favor of the DNC. The Democratic party has done a lot of harm to the working class and black people, despite constant statements to the contrary. The same can be said for the Republican party, for many of the same reasons. Both parties are totally corrupted by corporate interests, which is IMO the main problem here. We are not operating in a free market. We are operating in a system that is in a state of nearly total regulatory capture.

this is to address the fact that we get painted as "liberals". we're not, necessarily, just because we're anti-fascist.

- This seems like a marketing line item along the lines of "Nazis are bad, we are not Nazis, ipso facto we are good." This line reads like marketing and provides precisely zero value in terms of clarifying what Antifa is about in 2018. It is an entirely unremarkable position to think that, "yes, the Nazi party was detestable," and the number of people in the US who think otherwise has to number below 10,000 individuals. Even many white supremacists are not interested in associating with neo-Nazi groups, as far as I can tell. There is some overlap, but neo-Nazis are so unpopular that even the supremacists seem weary of them.

much the same way that even al queda eventually got sick of isis' shit.

anyway to your point; could be intended for the audience who don't know what the term actually means?

the southern poverty law center is a good resource on size/disposition of racist, supremacist groups if you'd like more hard data. trying not to write my own novel in response.

- OK. Is the "in the US" there because they have killed people elsewhere, or just a clarification about where Antifa operates?

i think it's more that we have a bone to pick about the woman who was killed in charlottesville last year.

- This makes no sense. Anarchism is even more different from socialism and communism than it is from capitalism. Socialism has strong elements of central planning and curtailment of personal economic freedoms for the "common good", and communism is basically a strongly authoritarian system where everything down to who gets to raise people's children (note: it often isn't the parents) is mandated by the state, by threat of physical punishment.

a lot of the people involved in the movement kinda treat the three as a buffet to pick and choose ideas from, to be honest.

most of the people in the socialist and communist camps aren't arguing for a new nationwide government; they want the right to implement these ideas in their own localized communities without interference. nobody is coerced to participate; we (antifa) all agree that'd be bad.

- Not being funded by private interests is usually a good thing in my book. At the same time, it sounds like there isn't anything TO fund since Antifa is not an organization in any traditional sense. It's like seeing a "gluten free" label on salt at the store.

it's a common thing to see protesters accused of being "paid shills"; to the point that it's a running joke in the community to ask whether someone got their paycheck from george soros this week.

- Pro gun. Cool. No arguments here. To what degree, though? I assume that anarchists would want zero regulations at all. Communists would be in favor of a total ban so that the state can exercise uninhibited control over people. Again, these two things cannot coexist, unless the people in favor of them don't actually understand what they say they are in favor of.

i understand your argument; gotta return to my point about scale of implementation.

i don't know anyone who thinks stalin or mao were leaders to be put on pedestals.

i'm not socialist/communist/marxist but if a group of people wants to form a community subset and live according to those ideals, what is it hurting me? if anything, it's helping- as in the link i shared in my last post- "hey, maybe if we feed the homeless they won't bust our car windows because they're starving and looking for shit to pawn". that's an anarcho-socialist idea; stepping in to address social issues when it becomes clear the government can't or won't.

that the bay area is being taken over by tent shantytowns is a signal to me that they either can't or won't.

- "Legislation can't save us, but disparate vigilante groups can." That is what I am getting from this line.

legislation and selective or poor enforcement of the laws we do have, but yeah.

- Basically every group listed in there is something that almost everyone everywhere already objects to. Also, those words keep getting re-purposed as synonyms for, "anyone I don't like." The parallels to the Nazi government's methods of quashing dissent are both dangerous, and ironic.

you're putting down a clear understanding of how we operate; on a local, cellular level.

this is where i like to take the "states' rights" argument and make it even more granular; a community has the right to say: hate speech is not welcome here.

OK, so what is my core beef with Antifa? My beef is that it is a group that believes in justified mob/vigilante violence as a means to an end, while simultaneously "not being a group". So instead it is a label. Whoever is behind the label is saying that anyone who "hates Nazis and racists" can also wear the label and go engage in extrajudicial violence against anyone accused of being one of the hated things. Well, hating Nazis and racists IS the mainstream view, by an overwhelming majority. I suspect that this is why those words keep getting redefined, and the shadow of their umbrella keeps spreading to cover more and more people who are clearly not those things. So basically, Antifa is pushing an idea of, "anyone holding mainstream views can put on the Antifa label and go engage in physical violence with anyone that they feel like arbitrarily putting different labels on, and if anyone gives you a hard time about it, just tell them that your label is not a group and it is just a bunch of people who are really passionate about their (uncontroversial, mainstream) views."

i would think such a viewpoint would not be so controversial.

that said, the proud boys (the racist group that showed up to the protest a week ago) clearly identify themselves. they've got a uniform and everything.

I am not a historian or anything, but the limited reading I have done about the construction of various civilizations over the centuries leads me to be extremely weary of any group that claims a divine or moral right to physical violence. While some, maybe even many, of the members of the group may very well have virtuous aims at heart, a movement does not stop when it achieves its stated goal. It expands the goal because the power conferred to those in charge is not relinquished easily. Antifa may be trying to avoid this by sticking with a decentralized anarchist structure. But at the same time, Antifa will simply never be effective at anything on a large scale if it has zero leadership of any kind. If it does decide to allow centralized leadership, the public will probably demand that the existing government squash it because it is still a group that believes in mostly-arbitrary extrajudicial violence, and extrajudicial violence is entirely unacceptable in the minds of the majority. Antifa might be fighting for completely mainstream views, but they are advocating a method which is despised by that mainstream, and any reading of history shows that violent mob rule is a lot worse than the far-from-perfect situation we have now.

If you look at the world and are saddened by the rampant injustice and cruelty everywhere, then we have that in common. The thing is that, from a historical perspective, this is as good as it has ever been on the whole. Yes, things look that terrible now, and yet I would not want to be born even 50 years earlier than I was. The world has improved that much that fast. There is a lot of work left to do, so this is absolutely not an attempt to say, "whatever, it used to be worse, stop bitching." We may very well have many common desired outcomes for society and humanity. The big disagreement seems to be, mainly, about the means to reach the ends.

counterpoint: throughout history, what has changed government regimes or demographically oppressive social schemas more often than protest (violent, if necessary)? the only answer i can think of is war and i'd prefer not to go back there.

[Mediumrarechicken]

Proud boys arnt racist. Mostly white yes. I dont know why you keep saying that. Like I said I personally know a black guy that is a proud boy and hes happy as hell being one. I've gone out drinking with him and some proud boys and I never heard one racist thing said that night.

[decay]

Proud boys arnt racist. Mostly white yes. I dont know why you keep saying that. Like I said I personally know a black guy that is a proud boy and hes happy as hell being one. I've gone out drinking with him and some proud boys and I never heard one racist thing said that night.

some of the quotes attributed to their public voices sure are racist.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys

“I’m not a fan of Islam. I think it’s fair to call me Islamophobic.”
—Gavin McInnes, NBC interview, 2017

“Palestinians are stupid. Muslims are stupid. And the only thing they really respect is violence and being tough.”
—Gavin McInnes, The Gavin McInnes Show, March 8, 2017

In 2002, for instance, when a New York Press reporter asked McInnes what he thought about his neighbors in New York’s Williamsburg neighborhood, he responded, “Well, at least they’re not n*****s or Puerto Ricans. At least they’re white.”

[Flying Potato]

Again, sorry about the length. I guess I am old and prefer long-form type discussions. This is an interesting topic though.

this is to address the fact that we get painted as "liberals". we're not, necessarily, just because we're anti-fascist.

Someone openly labeling them self as "anti-fascist" would never signal to me which political flavor they subscribe to. As I said previously, disliking fascism is overwhelmingly a majority position, and wholly uncontroversial in the western world in 2018. The only people who seem to insist that it is a controversial position seem to be folks who label themselves as "anti-fascists." It reminds me of Don Quixote and his pursuit of dragons.

much the same way that even al queda eventually got sick of isis' shit.

I am sort of lost on this. "Antifa is to Nazis as Al-Qaeda is to ISIS." I don't think that this is going to sell anyone on Antifa.

anyway to your point; could be intended for the audience who don't know what the term actually means?

I still don't really think it "means" anything. Opposing a political party, as horrid as it was, that ceased to exist 70 years ago is literally impossible. I get that a parallel is trying to be drawn here, and some sort of appeal to a historic legacy is being made to confer legitimacy to today's non-movement movement. Despite that, from what you describe Antifa to be now, there is literally nothing in common with the anti-fascists in Nazi Germany in any practical terms. The people back then were fighting a clearly defined enemy who wore uniforms and was carrying out state-mandated genocide.

the southern poverty law center is a good resource on size/disposition of racist, supremacist groups if you'd like more hard data. trying not to write my own novel in response.

I am familiar with the SPLC. As of about 2 years ago I had a lot more respect for them, but they seem to be gradually losing their vision to the mass hysteria that has overtaken the US (on all sides of the political aisle) since the last presidential election. Anyway, I still think that they are doing more good than not.

With that said, let's look at the available facts. This is the best summary I have been able to find, and it references SPLC figures. Also, it is horribly hard to read now, apparently on purpose because of bot-issues? Anyway, zoom the text or something because it does a good job of trying to quantify white supremacy in the US as of a couple years ago.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

The gist is that, with even the most generous assumptions in place, there are 50,000 or fewer organized white supremacists in the US today. The salient point to this is that the SPLC found that the KKK presently has <6000 members. In the 1920's, they had over 4 million members. While not all white supremacists are KKK members, the KKK is an organized white supremacist organization, and its membership has declined by 99.85% since its peak.

Again, I feel like anyone going on a crusade against white supremacy would be using their time much more wisely by mentoring poor kids who do not have decent adult role models to guide them away from bad choices. Otherwise, it's Don Quixote chasing windmills. If the planned response is along the lines of, "white supremacists still strike fear into non-whites, thereby causing them harm" then I also disagree. The corporate media and Democratic party are deliberately filling poor non-white communities with fear, and well-meaning people with completely misdirected efforts.

i think it's more that we have a bone to pick about the woman who was killed in charlottesville last year.

The maniac in the car was a murderous criminal. No argument. But why that, specifically? Is it because it was an attack on the Antifa "tribe"? Dozens of people were killed by and in cars that same day across the nation. Many young black men were gunned down by other young black men in major cities across the nation. Are some lives more worthy of protest than others? Given an awareness of the daily happenings throughout the nation (and world), dwelling on this one incident simply because "it proves Antifa's point" seems more like it proves that Antifa is unable to see past a single attack on its own tribe by its stated enemy, despite claiming to not be a tribe and standing for the oppressed.

a lot of the people involved in the movement kinda treat the three as a buffet to pick and choose ideas from, to be honest.

Yes, I think that this point is pretty clear. The thing is that the buffet has a variety of mutually exclusive items on it, that people still seem to be selecting, indicating that many of them are woefully misinformed about the labels that they identify with. It is impossible to be a pro-gun communist, unless you are planning to be a member of the ruling or enforcing class. An organization with no charter, common visions of society or funding cannot expect to effectively oppose anything. You need at least two of those things.

most of the people in the socialist and communist camps aren't arguing for a new nationwide government; they want the right to implement these ideas in their own localized communities without interference. nobody is coerced to participate; we (antifa) all agree that'd be bad.

So they want to build their own communities within the protective framework of the existing system which they despise? It was tried all throughout the 1900's as "communes". Most fell apart, some turned into cults. All of them still relied fairly heavily on the surrounding capitalist infrastructure, and the ones which eschewed external assistance the most had rampant issues with disease and malnourishment. Western civilization is so far from perfect that it can be described as terrible, while still being vastly better than everything else that has been tried. I doubt that any non-western civilization would even allow the existence of little pockets of counter-cultural communities within it.

it's a common thing to see protesters accused of being "paid shills"; to the point that it's a running joke in the community to ask whether someone got their paycheck from george soros this week.

It is not unheard for protesters to actually be paid shills. I would not have made that guess about Antifa though. Even the paid ones do not usually agitate the police enough to risk arrest. It would make no economic sense to do so.

i understand your argument; gotta return to my point about scale of implementation.

What scale, then? The US stands for “United States.” We are already a system where people in different regions are permitted some measure of autonomy, while still being held to a core of common standards via the constitution. I think that unimpeded federal creep has been a major problem, and that states are being robbed of (or abdicating) their responsibility to govern the people within them in accordance with the people's wishes. A place as big as the US, with as many people as it has, is never going to agree on everything. The federal government's massive overreach is the biggest threat to the continued existence of the union of states, IMO. If you agree with this, then I'd suggest thinking about whether you really are an anarchist, rather than something more like a libertarian or constitutionalist. The framework in the constitution allows for what I think you may be envisioning. We are a bit off course from that, but it can be changed if done carefully (and extrajudicial violence is guaranteed to turn public sentiment against an organization, while also opening the door to more federal overreach in the name of safety).

i don't know anyone who thinks stalin or mao were leaders to be put on pedestals.

Sadly, a lot of the post-modernist fields in universities these days do. I am glad that you and people you know don’t. Those two killed somewhere north of 100 million people via starvation alone thanks to their centrally-planned economies, and tens of millions more via state-mandated purges of political dissidents and ethnic minorities.
Frankly, I think that Antifa would be better off transitioning into AntiCom, because communism killed an order of magnitude more people than fascism in the last century. Even then, the number of organized communists in the US, which I would bet outnumbers the number of white supremacists and fascists combined, is laughably small and literally nobody worries about them because they are irrelevant.

i'm not socialist/communist/marxist but if a group of people wants to form a community subset and live according to those ideals, what is it hurting me? if anything, it's helping- as in the link i shared in my last post- "hey, maybe if we feed the homeless they won't bust our car windows because they're starving and looking for shit to pawn". that's an anarcho-socialist idea; stepping in to address social issues when it becomes clear the government can't or won't.

See line above about communes existing within a capitalist framework while complaining about the capitalist framework. Agreed, it does not hurt me or almost anyone else. Personally, as long as none of my taxes are used to pay for the operation of these little experiments, I say go for it.

Caring for the poor and destitute are absolutely NOT an anarcho-socialist idea. It is a concept that goes back thousands of years to the beginnings of humanity. Within the US, those roles were traditionally fulfilled by churches and small local organizations. The worsening of these issues has multiple extremely complex causes, far too much to get into here. I would say that a large part of the reason why these issues are exacerbated is that the government has attempted to step in and manage the issues. We spend more now on public assistance and entitlements than ever before, in dollars and as a percent of GDP.
Anarchism and socialism are mutually exclusive. I cannot even begin to fathom what anarcho-socialism actually would be if someone tried to put into practice the core tenets of both simultaneously.

that the bay area is being taken over by tent shantytowns is a signal to me that they either can't or won't.

YES, the government CAN'T. I actually agree there. The government certainly is trying, but it is somewhere between not helping and making things worse.

legislation and selective or poor enforcement of the laws we do have, but yeah.

Do you believe that a significant number of, or even a majority of, police are outright racist and refuse to assist citizens when they are victims of crime, solely on the basis of their skin color?

you're putting down a clear understanding of how we operate; on a local, cellular level.

I got that part. I still do not see how any sort of "operating" can actually occur when each cell writes its own rules and is not accountable to anyone or anything. You need at least two of these things: a charter, common vision and funding.

this is where i like to take the "states' rights" argument and make it even more granular; a community has the right to say: hate speech is not welcome here.

Again, I think you might want to look into libertarian ideas (little-l libertarian, not necessarily the big-L political party). Even so, lay out for me a clear definition of "hate speech" and a framework that will ensure that it will not be continuously redefined to work to the advantage of those enforcing a ban on it. I think that you will find a strong case for being a first-amendment absolutist if you try to figure out how to minimize bad outcomes here.

i would think such a viewpoint would not be so controversial.

Disliking racists and Nazis is not controversial. It is the mainstream consensus. What is extremely controversial, for good reason, is insisting that:
- racists and Nazis/fascists are everywhere, with the definitions of those things being largely arbitrary and flexible
- that anyone who does not run around constantly reaffirming their hate of these things is either one of, or complicit with, the racists and Nazis/fascists
- that physical violence is justified against anyone who is one of or "complicit" with those groups

that said, the proud boys (the racist group that showed up to the protest a week ago) clearly identify themselves. they've got a uniform and everything.

I don't know much about the Proud Boys. A brief web search seems to show that they have some number of non-white and Jewish members. I have no idea what they are about, and they are probably a bunch of bored guys looking for an excuse to get into fights…like a right-wing version of Antifa?

counterpoint: throughout history, what has changed government regimes or demographically oppressive social schemas more often than protest (violent, if necessary)? the only answer i can think of is war and i'd prefer not to go back there.

See: The last 200 years of US history. Some change came from war, and a lot came from ORGANIZED protesting. The marches during the civil rights era had clear leadership, clear goals and common purpose. These seem to be things that Antifa openly shuns.

[rhE-30]

It's not just because you have a ding ding, it's a western chauvinist group. Also before anyone says it's a racist and sexist group, I know a couple black dudes that are in, and have seen other ethnicities too, and there is a womans group too and I know there is a trans person there as well. The basic message of them is they are patriotic that we are the best in the world, so flaunt it, that it's best if a man busts his ass at a job so the wife can stay at home to raise the family, and that being politically correct is bullshit. They also have a thing about no beating off because you should be having sex with your woman.

Are you 100% sure they are not just trying to sell t -shirts? They stand for some pretty basic stuff, such as having a wife, and the right not to polish the carrot. Nobody in U.S.A would have a problem with that. Where do they stand on important stuff like education, healthcare, the pillaging of the nations social security, and banksters?