We're creating schisms in societies by setting up every difference as irreconcilable, with us vs them, winner-takes-all, while we still need to live together. It's all pretty toxic. — Benkei

I wanted to go back on this.

It seems like this type of vitriolic politics is being copied from the US to Europe (among other things). I think it's a warning sign when political parties start simply rejecting any kind of cooperation with another parties and when consensus seeking is loathed so much. It's not the parties themselves who are an issue here (as it is partly a show), it's the gap that is built between the supporters of the parties.

And Bret Weinstein has explained this. He thought that it is quite different for a 'Day of Absence' being celebrated by African-Americans being absent (as a boycott mimicking past passive resistance) and to ask white people to stay away. I think that there is an obvious difference in the nuance. And I guess that in any way such a day would and should be optional anyway in either way 'celebrated', hopefully, so that this is a non-issue here. What is the false premiss or lying that refer to I don't know. — ssu

Not sure how you aren't picking this up. In an email Bret (mis)characterized the inversed Day of Absence as "a show of force, and an act of oppression in itself", when the event was completely optional, required pre-enrollment to participate, and it was never expected that a majority of the white students, who comprised 70% of the total student body would participate. Not only did Bret mischaracterize the event via email, but, far worse, he went on Tucker Carlson's show and in front of an audience of millions did not correct Tucker Carlson when the latter framed the event as "student activists demanding that all white people leave campus, or else" and asking if they protested Bret directly because "he did not leave campus because he's white".

Because I just wanted to note that what you described as only a few persons involved was obviously far more, simple as that. — ssu

Dude. I said that a few people were "affected". Not that there were few people "involved". Honestly, please do a better job of reading what I write because it's a waste of my time responding to this illiteracy.

there are political friends and enemies on any issue. — fdrake

Fdrake, enemies are people you look at through the sights of your assault rifle hoping to incapacitate them, even kill them, before they kill you. Those are enemies. Your fellow citizen who has a totally different political world-view, ideology and political agenda about everything is not at all your enemy, but an opponent with whom you make the best democracy you can.

Antifa super soldiers care a lot more about democracy and free speech than the lipservice most people pay to it. — fdrake

Lol! :lol:

Oh that's like an ardent breeze from the 1930's quite in tone with those delirious überlosers hallucinating in their dreams that they are now living in similar time as Weimar Germany and resisting rising Hitlerism and hence picking fights with similar losers with grandiose out of this World pipe dreams. I simply don't get those crowds who want to pick a fight with each other. It's like this perverse love relationship the antifa and the neonazis have: they desperately need each other.

Of course in the end it's pretty pathetic especially in the US which not only is very prosperous, but has a most effective huge security control system that has totally infiltrated all these radical groups.

Not only did Bret mischaracterize the event via email — Maw

OK, you don't get my point in this issue. Fine, on forwards.

but, far worse, he went on Tucker Carlson's show and in front of an audience of millions did not correct Tucker Carlson when the latter framed the event as "student activists demanding that all white people leave campus, or else" and asking if they protested Bret directly because "he did not leave campus because he's white". — Maw

It's America. That he later goes to talk to the media and goes on talk shows can be seen as a quite logical. After all, he hasn't his earlier job anymore. And there aren't so many professor level people interviewed in the US media. Hence among the filmstars, comedians and other celebrities your run-of-the-mill college professor here isn't so bad. And Weinstein isn't a provocateur like Milo or Ben Shapiro. It's simply delirious to think that this professor designed this when sending an email, just as in the case of the Yale Hollywood costume email. As I've said all along, the whole oddity of the event made it a media issue.

Actually Bret Weinstein, who is leftist, just shows the tribalism of US politics. So he goes to talk his leftist views to conservative crowds and gets applause. What's the problem?

OK, you don't get my point in this issue. — ssu

Your point? You asked me to explain what Bret was lying about and I explained. What do you mean your point?

That he later goes to talk to the media and goes on talk shows can be seen as a quite logical. After all, he hasn't his earlier job anymore. And there aren't so many professor level people interviewed in the US media. Hence among the filmstars, comedians and other celebrities your run-of-the-mill college professor here isn't so bad. — ssu

What the hell are you talking about? I don't give a shit about this. I give a shit about him giving a false narrative on a major news network.

We can go in circles about this, but that's only because you can't acknowledge that Milo and Richard are not nearly as popular or influential as they were in 2017, precisely because they were deplatformed. As long as the internet exists, sure, they can find and interact with some audience willing to hear them out, but as long as they aren't on major platforms with scaled audiences, or being legitimized through invites to speak at colleges, they simply fade away. — Maw

I don't know...

Richard Spencer still seems to get a lot of attention on social media like Youtube, and he was never really that popular (but he's become infamous as the nazi).

Milo actually caused his own decline when it came out that he condoned pederasty.

So I disagree. Spencer is alive and kicking and it wasn't de-platforming that ended Milo, it was actually his access to enough rope.

give a shit about him giving a false narrative on a major news network. — Maw

Your babbling over a false narrative, which you haven't explained. Weinstein has gone over these issues in other far lengthier discussions, which there is no reason to say would be false.

It's simply one thing to have this kind of 'Day of Absence' of African Americans to mimick passive resistance and then to say that white people shouldn't come, and this was the whole point of Weinstein. I have no idea why you don't get this point, you just repeat your nonsensical reasoning that the event was optional or something and thus Weinstein was false. Well, I guess anything that the student body decides to do would be optional.

Oh that's like an ardent breeze from the 1930's quite in tone with those delirious überlosers hallucinating in their dreams that they are now living in similar time as Weimar Germany and resisting rising Hitlerism and hence picking fights with similar losers with grandiose out of this World pipe dreams. I simply don't get those crowds who want to pick a fight with each other. It's like this perverse love relationship the antifa and the neonazis have: they desperately need each other. — ssu

I love the antifa super soldiers meme, and will use it whenever I can.

You're making the antifa out of straw here. What they actually do is counterprotest far right groups and dangerous ideologues, disrupt their organisations however possible (usually without violence). I'm kind of baffled that you don't see how fragile democracy is and how persistently it is subverted. I'm most familiar with the UK, so let's go with that. The left more broadly protests for climate change action, they protest the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, they protest the terrible atrocities that come from the alliance between BAE systems, the British government and the Saudi government. They protest the privitisation of our health care system (and have been doing so for a long time), they're protesting for the survivors of Grenfell tower and the austerity politics that allowed the disaster in the first place and the corrupt legal system that continues to allow the owners to walk free. They're doing what they can to support (like through parda schemes and Patreon) education initiatives in poor areas like E15 in London and Drumchapel and Parkhead in Glasgow.

The antifa specifically organise direct action in communities in a rather non-hierarchical way (which often gets called 'sleeper cells' through this stupid narrative that they're the same as far right or Middle-Eastern terrorists) to undermine the influence of racist political groups like the EDL and BNP (remember, the leaders of the BNP have been playing footsies with the literal KKK for years). They counter-demonstrate when people who support these ideologies or want to destroy the fundaments of progressive ideals are stupidly given invited talks at universities and public halls.

They're fully aware that most of the time, they're actually fighting the results of government policy, not the Nazis from the Wiemar republic. If you want to engage in reductive analogies, perhaps if the Wiemar republic had more violent and better organised anti-fascists, there would not have been a need to fight WW2. If half the city shows up to counter protest, handcuffs themselves to government buildings, occupies the homes of political decision maybe the government would actually fucking listen. It's a damn sight more likely to have any effect than civil conversation with your friends; actually engaging the relevant political groups that is, engaging the driving forces of the political machines they, rightly, dislike.

We too often forget that liberals and conservatives, genuine liberals and conservatives, actually agree in spirit with what the radical left activists are doing. They just stopped spitballing and got out their damn chairs.

I still have a response to your earlier in the works, but I should leave a comment on this one.

In terms of a response to the colonisation of many parts of the world, it's hardly an absurd analysis to suggest they should not of come. At least with respect to how they arrived and treated indigenous populations.

Anyone from the many destroyed groups and cultures would have good reason to suggest colonisers ought to have stayed away. In our analysis of past events, we should be able to see this too. Are we to make a habit walking into the homes of others, taking there stuff, enslaving them, etc.?

In these circumstances, it's not absurd to think someone ought to of come. We would say that of anyone who was to do these things or make an attempt in our home.

Your fellow citizen who has a totally different political world-view, ideology and political agenda about everything is not at all your enemy, but an opponent with whom you make the best democracy you can. — ssu

Should have touched on this. Why aren't things like deplatforming, institutional subterfuge, and counter protest legitimate moves again? If you and your opponent both have the gloves on, the discussion usually does not matter, direct action about it is elsewhere.

. I'm kind of baffled that you don't see how fragile democracy is and how persistently it is subverted. — fdrake

It simply isn't subverted as it was in the 20th Century. Especially when focusing on the West, the idea that democracy is in peril is simply an overblown idea typically used to agitate your own side. One really has to have the perspective here: totalitarian ideologies as Marxism-Leninism and National Socialism aren't coming back after the catastrophic 20th Century.

I'm most familiar with the UK, so let's go with that. — fdrake

From the UK I'm not so well informed. But I would assume you have a similar phenomenon as we have here in our idyllic Nordic wellfare state. It starts with neonazi-or-similar movement (usually founded somewhere else) goes on a march with their own silly flags and then there is the counter-protest and in between the police that keep the two separated. Nothing typically happens, but the only thing what is created is a huge media frenzy about the issue.

What they actually do is counterprotest far right groups and dangerous ideologues, disrupt their organisations however possible (usually without violence). — fdrake

But they don't reject violence. As I've said, both neonazis and the antifa need each other.

Should have touched on this. Why aren't things like deplatforming, institutional subterfuge, and counter protest legitimate moves again? If you and your opponent both have the gloves on, the discussion usually does not matter, direct action about it is elsewhere. — fdrake

Having gloves on is basically what a representational democracy and justice state is about. Discussion does matter. Belief in elections does matter.

But they don't reject violence. As I've said, both neonazis and the antifa need each other. — ssu

Without better context, this is like saying penicillin needs the existence of bacteria to work as an antibiotic. Which is true, but also really misses the point.

Having gloves on is basically what a representational democracy and justice state is about. Discussion does matter. Belief in elections does matter. — ssu

And if your opponent takes their gloves off?

It simply isn't subverted as it was in the 20th Century. Especially when focusing on the West, the idea that democracy is in peril is simply an overblown idea typically used to agitate your own side. One really has to have the perspective here: totalitarian ideologies as Marxism-Leninism and National Socialism aren't coming back after the catastrophic 20th Century. — ssu

Sorry for two double posts. I'm kind of frothing at my keyboard here.

I don't buy that antifa like strategies are only justified when we already have a fascist state. Their entire schtick is preventative. If you think they 'need' fascists with real power to justify their actions, you're completely missing why they do what they do.

And if your opponent takes their gloves off? — fdrake

They never had any gloves to begin with. Makes handling the levers of power a bit fiddly.

Without better context, this is like saying penicillin needs the existence of bacteria to work as an antibiotic. Which is true, but also really misses the point. — fdrake

Not really. If you think that to be a vigilante is totally OK or that the police cannot handle some small fringe cabal of neonazis, then I have to disagree. Sorry, but the violence part I simply disagree with.

And if your opponent takes their gloves off? — fdrake

Does he really? Typically terrorism isn't tolerated.

I don't buy that antifa like strategies are only justified when we already have a fascist state. Their entire schtick is preventative. — fdrake

But do we have really a fascist state? Is there truly a threat of it? You see the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) believed that they indeed lived in a nazi-Germany (in West-Germany) and then retorted to violence. Yet that idea of a fraction then igniting the revolution simply didn't happen.

f you think that to be a vigilante is totally OK or that the police cannot handle some small fringe cabal of neonazis, then I have to disagree. — ssu

Like the small fringe cabal of fine neo-nazis that murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesvile? The police clearly handled that great.

But if there had been enough antifa to beat the living shit out of those guys and prevent the killing, they'd have been labelled a terrorist threat. Makes ya wonder.

Not really. If you think that to be a vigilante is totally OK or that the police cannot handle some small fringe cabal of neonazis, then I have to disagree. Sorry, but the violence part I simply disagree with. — ssu

ssu really needs to read the news more often

@ssu To deny yourself extra-legal options is not a prerequisite to being ethically engaged. That doesn't imply that the obverse positioning justifies any particular action, but it does imply that efforts to maintain an appearance of virtue can cloak a simple inability to read beyond conditions deliberately designed to obscure right action, or worse, cowardice in the face of them.

Like the small fringe cabal of fine neo-nazis that murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesvile? The police clearly handled that great. — Baden

I recall correctly from a FBI document published before Charlottesville: right-wing terrorism is typical done by individuals in an act rising from opportunity. They (the FBI) knew their home-grown terrorists actually quite well. Having more than one person makes it a terrorist cell, you know. If I remember correctly, there was just one terrorist.

But if there had been enough antifa to beat the living shit out of those guys and prevent the killing, they'd have been labelled a terrorist threat. Makes ya wonder. — Baden

Seriously???? You start to remind me of the calls for arming teachers when there is a school shooting.

No, the real way is for the police simply to treat these groups seriously and separate them and preserve order.

ssu really needs to read the news more often — Maw

Not my police. But the FBI typically looks at any movement left or right.

Not really. If you think that to be a vigilante is totally OK or that the police cannot handle some small fringe cabal of neonazis, then I have to disagree. — ssu

Antifa don't punish crimes, this is a false analogy. They're in the business of frustrating the political machinations of far right projects, they're usually seasoned protestors or brave members of effected communities responding to real need. They are not vigilantes, and they do not resort to violence unless provoked. They know precisely how their self defence will be sold, so they're reluctant to raise their fists most of the time.

Why they do what they do is to remove real threats to effected communities and society at large. And don't rely on the police to protest the far right or mitigate its threats, is that the police; rightly; are always working to stop illegitimate violence. So, the police themselves will never be able to defend against the tangible threats right projects like these, and themselves are slaves to the acceptable boundaries of discourse and direct action (the Overton window). Of course, their edict for violence is a bit broader than the margins of acceptable opinion, but there is a reason why alleged terrorist sympathisers can be detained (for the UK, indefinitely without a trial).

Beating the crap out of a protestor with a truncheon is fine, a friend attacking the police officer who did it is not. There are huge asymmetries in the justifications for violence, and this is based on learned trust of the police. You have to have rather a lot of faith that the police's violence is in your interest or the interest of society at large to uncritically give them this edict. What usually happens at large protests (at least in the UK) is that (1) the police creates subgroups of the mass of people that are protesting (2) the management strategies they use to keep the subgroups separate are incredibly inhumane (eg, no water for 12 hours, less than a square meter of personal space per person, this is called 'kettling') (3) eventually people in the group get pissed off and violent since they're being treated like shit even when they've not been violent. You know why it's got the nickname of kettling? Kettles fucking boil.

Counter-activism often comes into violent contact with the police, this isn't because it's atypically violent or riotous, it's because the police usually demarcate lines between the original demonstration, say a white nationalist march, and forbid counter protestors to get near the original demonstration. When those lines are drawn, the police beating the shit out of left activists in protest is a matter of geometry on the ground, and of the monopoly of force handed over to the government and its representatives. The government's agents, paradoxically, can be very violent because what constitutes violence is politically prefigured in their favour.

Say you have a far right group who wants to 'send (most brown people) back' having a march through a London community that's mostly African and Middle-Eastern. The police show up to defend these people's free speech right to shout thinly veiled hate speech, threats and dogwhistles at the crowd. Are the police serving the interests of that community? Does their violence frustrate or support the disenfranchisement of and violence towards the people in that community? I know this has happened, but I can't remember the date.

Suppose, like a good minded liberal, you do what you do best and entertain the idea that violence is part of all political action. How would you justify the police's violence towards the community defending their rights to live where they do with dignity and without prejudice? Presumably through appealing to the moral neutrality of police violence; or that it is legal.

Suppose you can suspend the equation of moral with legal for a moment, how then would you justify the police's violence against the counter protesting community? The police beat the shit out of far more non-whites in the community than fascists that day - even when the majority of scuffles were started, predictably, by violent xenophobic racists. Is the police serving your community? Consider one of the rallying cries of protest in Charlottesville in the US: "Who do you protect?". Often, people who are outright enemies of democracy and have literally genocidal intent, and this is moral. Whereas some Iranian nurse punching a goose stepping EDL member to defend his family from what normalising that group's politics would mean? Now that's where we draw the line. It's political correctness *cough left politics cough* gone mad!

Seriously???? You start to remind me of the calls for arming teachers when there is a school shooting.

No, the real way is for the police simply to treat these groups seriously and separate them and preserve order. — ssu

My point here is that not even being able to countenance the fact that some illegal antifa actions/assaults might be ethically justified makes you the one not ethically engaged, not them. It's just too easy to outsource everything without qualification to the police. Again, that doesn't justify any particular action but the argument that "it's illegal" isn't on its own terms convincing.

Also, putting anti-fascists on a par with fascists in terms of the language used to describe them is hardly ideologically neutral.

[Edit: Cross-posted with fdrake's (much more comprehensive) take above.]

Also, putting anti-fascists on a par with fascists in terms of the language used to describe them is hardly ideologically neutral. — Baden

I put to par only those that engage in violence and terrorism. They are indeed equal, no matter on what side they are.

Like the French Resistance and the Nazis? Ok, odd ethical position to take...

RAF members took West Germany in my life time to be Nazi Germany...
And I wouldn't call West Germany the Third Reich.

Yeah, I wasn't talking about Syria either...

No idea what you're talking about. But putting everyone who uses violence on the same ethical terms is madness. And yes, the FR were the "terrorists".

There is definitely a time and a place for violence, and on the societal level there's also a time and a place for genuine revolution.

But when we go to wield what we consider to be justified violence (in this political context), I think it's of utmost importance that we don't haphazardly choose our targets along perceived tribal lines. Attacking the wrong individuals or groups will only entrench them as as an enemy, and actually winning out against the forces that perpetuate the status quo (should we deem it intolerable) requires some degree of organization.

No idea what you're talking about. But putting everyone who uses violence on the same ethical terms is madness. And yes, the FR were the "terrorists". — Baden

And they opposed an actual occupier, an enemy. But I think you can understand that I was talking about the present and the West in general. The US isn't under enemy occupation. And neither is France. Or Finland. And when we have a democracy (at least I live in one), I wouldn't call for, tolerate or accept political violence.

Now you're adding qualifications to what was a sweeping statement. Keep adding a few more and we may get to agreement. I'm saying forget the "politics" for a moment and ask yourself, could an antifa member be seriously ethically engaged? Is that possible? Notice the asymmetry in that it doesn't even make sense to ask that of the fascists who make no pretence to be.