Okay, so there is a lot to unpack here. You're fortunate indeed that I'm in a mood to procrastinate and need to work off some steam.
1. Which facts in particular are you asking for confirmation of?
That antifa want to take over the world. "The people pushing it dream of holding power, using brute force against any opposition. They try to convince us that things have gotten so bad that we must give up freedom and civil discourse. They present themselves as our saviors when what they want to be is our rulers." Literally the only purpose of antifa is to shut down fascists.
I am speaking for myself, as someone who has been involved with anti-fascist organizing for a good 15 years or so, but also as someone who guaranteed knows more antifa than you do, that if there were no fascists, there would be no antifa. I for one would prefer to spend my Saturdays not shouting at fascists in my city's public square, but sleeping in, enjoying a leisurely morning coffee, and having brunch, followed by a productive writing session about a dystopia that is pure fiction, followed by a trip to the pub. I suspect the more earnest sorts in the movement (such that it is) would prefer to spend Saturday doing the sort of organizing work and community building that leads to a better world, rather than simply reacting against an attempt to make the world much, much worse. Instead I wake up at some godawful hour at the end of a 50-60 hour work week, mask up, and trudge downtown to claim the square before they do, stand several hours standing around on uncomfortable concrete with a bad back, and shout at them until they go home. This is not my idea of a good time, nor is it anyone else's (well, the Nazis seem to be enjoying themselves, but they don't count) and I would have no intention of making it a regular event if they weren't directly threatening my life and the lives of people I care about.
Teal deer: Ruling the world is very hard work and like most people, antifa would rather just have a beer. But there are Nazis, so we gotta do our thing. What that thing does, incidentally, is quite different than you seem to be picturing, but more on that later.
2. I am not required to give any account of myself in this discussion.
I suppose not, but you have made some pretty out-there comments in opposition to what I thought was quite a good post. So it stands to reason that you have a better idea of how to deal with literal Nazis that are literally marching through the streets of major urban centres and, in some cases, beating and killing people. I tend to challenge people who have critiques of antifa on what they've done that works better because a lot of the time, they don't.
I'm happy to listen to criticism of antifa from, say, Black Lives Matter activists. I can look to them and see what they're doing to fight fascism, where they've been successful and so on, and learn from them. But the average person who criticizes antifa appears to limit their activism to, say, raising polite children, which while nice, doesn't do much about the immediate problem.
Nor, I should add, does debating them.
You appear to regret that you only debated with this Kekist rather than assaulting him, but you did the right thing. If you'd crippled him, you might have physically kept him from joining the mob, but you'd have enraged two others into doing the same thing. You at least had a chance of convincing him what he was doing was stupid.
I had no chance of doing that—as good a debater as I am, changing his mind was not my intent. I did it because he and his buddies were verbally assaulting a black man on our side of the fence, and as a white-passing person, it's my obligation to get in the way and not make POC bear the brunt of fascism. Debating them acknowledges the validity of their position on the political spectrum, when in fact it is at odds with the liberal democracy in which it flourishes. Debate is what they want.
Now, if I'd punched him, beyond hurting my fist (this is someone about 20 years younger than me, male, and physically fit), I'd have been immediately arrested, as he only felt empowered to "debate" me from behind a row of heavily armed cops taking taxpayer money to defend the free speech of fascists. It would not have gone well. But in the past, it has worked on a small scale, which was what our lovely host's original post was about. I personally know people who have left far-right movements because the fear of violent retribution made them go from wearing their colours openly, to being afraid to, to eventually, isolated from their movements, reconsider their ways. And certainly Richard Spencer was, for a time, afraid of spewing his hate in public.
We don't change minds. Very few people ever change their minds about anything, especially when those minds consist of only a few braincells to rub together. We raise the cost of public organizing. The rest requires a deeper social change that many people who do antifa work are also doing. But that deeper social change happens when there isn't a rise in Nazi violence.
But as I suggested earlier, you deeply misunderstand what antifa actually do. Very little of it involves punching Nazis. It's quite often intelligence gathering, community building, information spreading, documenting, research, writing, and the very un-fun task that I engage in regularly of blocking their marches from happening in public areas and protecting regular people from getting verbally and physically assaulted on the street. The mask is so I don't get doxxed, not because I've actually done anything illegal.
If laws were enacted forbidding people you deem "weakly affiliated Nazis" from organizing, you wouldn't be the one deciding whom they get enforced on
Who said anything about laws? If I trusted the government to enforce its laws on hate speech (we're not absolutist like Americans; Ernst Zundel was deported for Holocaust denial, but that's an extreme case), I could, as I said, enjoy my Saturdays sleeping in. I don't care whether there are laws against them organizing or not; on a pragmatic level, law enforcement sympathizes with their position and protects them when they rally. Nor could a government keep up with them—I would consider the phrases, "remove kebab" or "helicopter rides" to be fascist slogans, for example, but I have had to explain to people over 40 what those mean.
It always astounds me how Americans view free speech. You'd defend the right of someone to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre over the right of the theatre-goers not to get trampled.
"It always astounds me how Americans view free speech. You'd defend the right of someone to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre over the right of the theatre-goers not to get trampled."
The first reflex of everyone who finds free speech "astounding," it seems, is to laud Schenck vs. United States. As I'm sure you know, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes made that spurious analogy in order to justify locking up people protesting against American involvement in World War I. One person was locked away for ten years for protesting. These protesters were, I suppose you'd say, "weakly affiliated" German supporters. Certainly that was the excuse at the time.
An existence proof is sufficient for documentation of the fact that Antifa's aims are much broader than intimidating fascists: At Berkeley, Antifa people attacked people simply for supporting Trump. Again, I suppose they're "weakly affiliated" fascists. By now, about half the people who voted last year are "fascists."
People with violent aims always try to reassure people that their aims are narrow, Some put on an articulate front. I'll give you points for that. But we've seen time and time again that the more they get away with, the more they go after.
I think most people are opposed to violence as a political tactic. Unfortunately, more and more they're being intimidated into silence, not by threats of physical violence, but merely by the threat of disapproval by thugs. This is a large part of what has allowed dictators to get into power: Good people staying silent.
In this scenario, there are generally two sides, superficially opposed to each other but both hating freedom and wanting to suppress it. Each side feeds off the other, gaining the appearance legitimacy from the other side's adoption of similar methods. In the end, though, only one hand can wield the Ring.
I'm so glad to hear that you support unconditional free speech. I can only assume that you've come out loudly in support of the right of ISIS to mobilize its foreign recruits online, that you're lobbying your various officials against legislating bans against Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, and that you are participating in BLM protests, from blocking highways from taking the knee at football games!
Had you shown this sort of solidarity and consistency from your first comment, I might have had a little bit more respect for your position!
Or is it just antifa enacting our "right" to free speech that is giving you the vapours?
(Oh yes, those ardent free speech supporters always seem to take issue with counterprotests. Fascists must not only be free to spew their hatred, but enabled by the media and protected by cops in order for speech to be truly free, but if anyone tries to protest them—thus exercising the "right" to free speech themselves—this is fascism, and we are secretly trying to take over the world.)
The scare quotes, of course, because you have nothing approaching the right to free speech in America, unless you are a wealthy white man. Perhaps I'm giving you too much credit to assume you realize this.
I would be wary of sensationalist reports about Berkeley, particularly when most of the eyewitness reports are coming from cops and people with the extreme right. Also, it's Berkeley. Regardless, large crowds tend to contain a handful of people out for kicks—witness sports riots and Black Friday sales. It is a very far logical leap from four or five people perhaps taking it too far at a protest at a university that sees a lot of action on campus to an organized antifa conspiracy to take over the fucking world.
But yes, I'd say that about half the people who voted last year have very strong fascist leanings, or at least susceptible to it. You seem to think that fascism arises because of a small cadre of strong leaders.
I think most people are opposed to violence as a political tactic. Unfortunately, more and more they're being intimidated into silence, not by threats of physical violence, but merely by the threat of disapproval by thugs. This is a large part of what has allowed dictators to get into power: Good people staying silent.
That's pretty funny, because short of a smattering of actual pacifists (I disagree with them, but I respect consistency), almost every single American is perfectly fine with violence as a political tactic. What would you call police shootings of unarmed black people? Drone strikes in Pakistan? ICE rounding up little girls awaiting lifesaving surgery and imprisoning them? Armed vigilantes on the Mexican border using desperate migrants for target practice? Travel bans on Muslims and bathroom bans on trans people? A prison system that incarcerates more people than China and Russia? Most Americans seem to be perfectly fine with political violence...as long as it's not aimed at them.
Dictators get into power because good people enable them. Quite often, it seems, through the vote.
In this scenario, there are generally two sides, superficially opposed to each other but both hating freedom and wanting to suppress it.
Yup. You got me. I absolutely hate freedom.
In the end, though, only one hand can wield the Ring.
It's rad how you seem to think that you're Aragorn in this scenario but you're actually Wormtongue.
Edited (rogue italics) Date: 2017-11-03 11:44 am (UTC)
Sure, I grew up thinking the Marketplace of Ideas was enough and bad ideas would just naturally lose because reasonable people would see through hatred/fear/idiocy.
(no subject)
1. Which facts in particular are you asking for confirmation of?
That antifa want to take over the world. "The people pushing it dream of holding power, using brute force against any opposition. They try to convince us that things have gotten so bad that we must give up freedom and civil discourse. They present themselves as our saviors when what they want to be is our rulers." Literally the only purpose of antifa is to shut down fascists.
I am speaking for myself, as someone who has been involved with anti-fascist organizing for a good 15 years or so, but also as someone who guaranteed knows more antifa than you do, that if there were no fascists, there would be no antifa. I for one would prefer to spend my Saturdays not shouting at fascists in my city's public square, but sleeping in, enjoying a leisurely morning coffee, and having brunch, followed by a productive writing session about a dystopia that is pure fiction, followed by a trip to the pub. I suspect the more earnest sorts in the movement (such that it is) would prefer to spend Saturday doing the sort of organizing work and community building that leads to a better world, rather than simply reacting against an attempt to make the world much, much worse. Instead I wake up at some godawful hour at the end of a 50-60 hour work week, mask up, and trudge downtown to claim the square before they do, stand several hours standing around on uncomfortable concrete with a bad back, and shout at them until they go home. This is not my idea of a good time, nor is it anyone else's (well, the Nazis seem to be enjoying themselves, but they don't count) and I would have no intention of making it a regular event if they weren't directly threatening my life and the lives of people I care about.
Teal deer: Ruling the world is very hard work and like most people, antifa would rather just have a beer. But there are Nazis, so we gotta do our thing. What that thing does, incidentally, is quite different than you seem to be picturing, but more on that later.
2. I am not required to give any account of myself in this discussion.
I suppose not, but you have made some pretty out-there comments in opposition to what I thought was quite a good post. So it stands to reason that you have a better idea of how to deal with literal Nazis that are literally marching through the streets of major urban centres and, in some cases, beating and killing people. I tend to challenge people who have critiques of antifa on what they've done that works better because a lot of the time, they don't.
I'm happy to listen to criticism of antifa from, say, Black Lives Matter activists. I can look to them and see what they're doing to fight fascism, where they've been successful and so on, and learn from them. But the average person who criticizes antifa appears to limit their activism to, say, raising polite children, which while nice, doesn't do much about the immediate problem.
Nor, I should add, does debating them.
You appear to regret that you only debated with this Kekist rather than assaulting him, but you did the right thing. If you'd crippled him, you might have physically kept him from joining the mob, but you'd have enraged two others into doing the same thing. You at least had a chance of convincing him what he was doing was stupid.
I had no chance of doing that—as good a debater as I am, changing his mind was not my intent. I did it because he and his buddies were verbally assaulting a black man on our side of the fence, and as a white-passing person, it's my obligation to get in the way and not make POC bear the brunt of fascism. Debating them acknowledges the validity of their position on the political spectrum, when in fact it is at odds with the liberal democracy in which it flourishes. Debate is what they want.
Now, if I'd punched him, beyond hurting my fist (this is someone about 20 years younger than me, male, and physically fit), I'd have been immediately arrested, as he only felt empowered to "debate" me from behind a row of heavily armed cops taking taxpayer money to defend the free speech of fascists. It would not have gone well. But in the past, it has worked on a small scale, which was what our lovely host's original post was about. I personally know people who have left far-right movements because the fear of violent retribution made them go from wearing their colours openly, to being afraid to, to eventually, isolated from their movements, reconsider their ways. And certainly Richard Spencer was, for a time, afraid of spewing his hate in public.
We don't change minds. Very few people ever change their minds about anything, especially when those minds consist of only a few braincells to rub together. We raise the cost of public organizing. The rest requires a deeper social change that many people who do antifa work are also doing. But that deeper social change happens when there isn't a rise in Nazi violence.
But as I suggested earlier, you deeply misunderstand what antifa actually do. Very little of it involves punching Nazis. It's quite often intelligence gathering, community building, information spreading, documenting, research, writing, and the very un-fun task that I engage in regularly of blocking their marches from happening in public areas and protecting regular people from getting verbally and physically assaulted on the street. The mask is so I don't get doxxed, not because I've actually done anything illegal.
If laws were enacted forbidding people you deem "weakly affiliated Nazis" from organizing, you wouldn't be the one deciding whom they get enforced on
Who said anything about laws? If I trusted the government to enforce its laws on hate speech (we're not absolutist like Americans; Ernst Zundel was deported for Holocaust denial, but that's an extreme case), I could, as I said, enjoy my Saturdays sleeping in. I don't care whether there are laws against them organizing or not; on a pragmatic level, law enforcement sympathizes with their position and protects them when they rally. Nor could a government keep up with them—I would consider the phrases, "remove kebab" or "helicopter rides" to be fascist slogans, for example, but I have had to explain to people over 40 what those mean.
It always astounds me how Americans view free speech. You'd defend the right of someone to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre over the right of the theatre-goers not to get trampled.
(no subject)
"It always astounds me how Americans view free speech. You'd defend the right of someone to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre over the right of the theatre-goers not to get trampled."
The first reflex of everyone who finds free speech "astounding," it seems, is to laud Schenck vs. United States. As I'm sure you know, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes made that spurious analogy in order to justify locking up people protesting against American involvement in World War I. One person was locked away for ten years for protesting. These protesters were, I suppose you'd say, "weakly affiliated" German supporters. Certainly that was the excuse at the time.
An existence proof is sufficient for documentation of the fact that Antifa's aims are much broader than intimidating fascists: At Berkeley, Antifa people attacked people simply for supporting Trump. Again, I suppose they're "weakly affiliated" fascists. By now, about half the people who voted last year are "fascists."
People with violent aims always try to reassure people that their aims are narrow, Some put on an articulate front. I'll give you points for that. But we've seen time and time again that the more they get away with, the more they go after.
I think most people are opposed to violence as a political tactic. Unfortunately, more and more they're being intimidated into silence, not by threats of physical violence, but merely by the threat of disapproval by thugs. This is a large part of what has allowed dictators to get into power: Good people staying silent.
In this scenario, there are generally two sides, superficially opposed to each other but both hating freedom and wanting to suppress it. Each side feeds off the other, gaining the appearance legitimacy from the other side's adoption of similar methods. In the end, though, only one hand can wield the Ring.
(no subject)
Had you shown this sort of solidarity and consistency from your first comment, I might have had a little bit more respect for your position!
Or is it just antifa enacting our "right" to free speech that is giving you the vapours?
(Oh yes, those ardent free speech supporters always seem to take issue with counterprotests. Fascists must not only be free to spew their hatred, but enabled by the media and protected by cops in order for speech to be truly free, but if anyone tries to protest them—thus exercising the "right" to free speech themselves—this is fascism, and we are secretly trying to take over the world.)
The scare quotes, of course, because you have nothing approaching the right to free speech in America, unless you are a wealthy white man. Perhaps I'm giving you too much credit to assume you realize this.
I would be wary of sensationalist reports about Berkeley, particularly when most of the eyewitness reports are coming from cops and people with the extreme right. Also, it's Berkeley. Regardless, large crowds tend to contain a handful of people out for kicks—witness sports riots and Black Friday sales. It is a very far logical leap from four or five people perhaps taking it too far at a protest at a university that sees a lot of action on campus to an organized antifa conspiracy to take over the fucking world.
Meanwhile, only one side has actually killed people, or attacked civilians without provocation.
But yes, I'd say that about half the people who voted last year have very strong fascist leanings, or at least susceptible to it. You seem to think that fascism arises because of a small cadre of strong leaders.
I think most people are opposed to violence as a political tactic. Unfortunately, more and more they're being intimidated into silence, not by threats of physical violence, but merely by the threat of disapproval by thugs. This is a large part of what has allowed dictators to get into power: Good people staying silent.
That's pretty funny, because short of a smattering of actual pacifists (I disagree with them, but I respect consistency), almost every single American is perfectly fine with violence as a political tactic. What would you call police shootings of unarmed black people? Drone strikes in Pakistan? ICE rounding up little girls awaiting lifesaving surgery and imprisoning them? Armed vigilantes on the Mexican border using desperate migrants for target practice? Travel bans on Muslims and bathroom bans on trans people? A prison system that incarcerates more people than China and Russia? Most Americans seem to be perfectly fine with political violence...as long as it's not aimed at them.
Dictators get into power because good people enable them. Quite often, it seems, through the vote.
In this scenario, there are generally two sides, superficially opposed to each other but both hating freedom and wanting to suppress it.
Yup. You got me. I absolutely hate freedom.
In the end, though, only one hand can wield the Ring.
It's rad how you seem to think that you're Aragorn in this scenario but you're actually Wormtongue.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)