The Antifa-scist sets aside his conventional morality to fight against this enemy -- he verbally and physically attacks the enemy, he destroys the enemy's property and interferes with the enemy's business. He would not normally do these things, but he justifies his actions because of the danger he perceives. — Garth
Who knew that scrubbing Swastikas off walls was the same as scrawling Swastikas on walls? — Kenosha Kid
Right-wing logic is demented. — Kenosha Kid
Insofar as someone is just doing nonviolent, legal acts like this, meant to clean up the community, he is not an Antifa-scist, but an Antifascist. The distinction is important for my argument. — Garth
Good thing I'm not using right wing logic. — Garth
your argument is bunkum — Kenosha Kid
Your logic is that of right-wing nutjob shock jocks. — Kenosha Kid
Right-wing logic is demented. — Kenosha Kid
This is the exact verbal violence, meant to silence me, that I am pointing out is symptomatic of emerging fascism. — Garth
The modern Antifa movement in America is actually a Stalinist movement, which ironically implies that it is also fascist. — Garth
it a hodgepodge of liberal social democracts, anarchists, communists and others; doctrinally mixed; the united front politics of Stalinism was notorious for its commitment to doctrinal purity (whatever the doctrine was at the time). — fdrake
While there may be social democrats in antifa, the ideology of the group is not liberal in the least. A liberal who wants to join the antifa movement in america and maintain their liberalism honestly has no idea what's going on. — BitconnectCarlos
the Italian Fascism never knew any kind of racialist thought — Bertoldo
I suspect you're using liberal in the "classic liberal" sense and not the sense I meant it; by a liberal social democrat I intended a reformist believer in the institutions of liberal democracy. Someone who broadly approves of the way things are set up fundamentally, but criticises/protests flaws when they see them. Those people who will act against resurgent nationalism, political oppression and systemic issues without wanting to overthrow states (anarchism) or the world order of capitalism (communism) [or both]. — fdrake
Antifa fundamentally seeks to stifle certain views, and I get it - in Europe they do this but in America it's against the principles our country was founded on and moreover it sets a dangerous precedent. — BitconnectCarlos
I was saying that what antifa is doing is contrary to our first amendment. — BitconnectCarlos
but the first amendment protects your right to personal belief: it does not protect your perceived right to make the world a platform for those beliefs, and it certainly does not protect your perceived right to act to make a world that is violently hostile to others.
An amendment, by definition, is an alteration of the principles your country was founded upon — Kenosha Kid
The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Take your undemocratic trash elsewhere. Very convenient of you to avoid my second point, as well. — BitconnectCarlos
it certainly does not protect your perceived right to act to make a world that is violently hostile to others. — Kenosha Kid
An important part of a liberal arts education is genuinely exploring views which we don't like. — BitconnectCarlos
Antifa is not fundamentally a movement about discourse and the free exchange of ideas; it is about stifling any potentially dangerous idea before it is allowed to spread. It is a fundamentally illiberal movement.
I know that freedom of speech doesn't give the right to whatever platform you want, but you're still allowed to express your ideas verbally and in writing. — BitconnectCarlos
I avoided your first point because it was wrong — BitconnectCarlos
I didn't feel like getting into it — BitconnectCarlos
I'm making the demographic claim that social democratic liberals can be antifascist actors — fdrake
and that the majority of contemporary antifascist actors are not smash the state anarchists or revolution now communists; — fdrake
and that antifascist organisers as a demographic category are (historically) even more likely to have more hard line positions. — fdrake
I bet you'd like David Hahn's "Physical Resistance: a Hundred Years of Struggle", a history of antifascist movements. — fdrake
It strikes me that someone who commits to antifascist praxis does so from a principled place of understanding, study and experience. — fdrake
I'm sure from their perspective it is actually protecting the liberal rights you hold dear, cf paradox of tolerance. The only conditions under which a "free marketplace of ideas" could exist sustainably are ones with well enforced rules and laws of conduct. When those rules are rejected wholesale or too weak, the fragility of "the free marketplace of ideas" is laid bare; cf "money as speech". Whenever absolute decorum for speech is desired, enforcement of the principles that uphold it is required too. In that context, antifascist action is a democratic check-and-balance. — fdrake
Good, so you understand that you are not protected in defacing property you don't own, or to assemble free from counter-protestors. And presumably you're not going to suggest that fascists should be free to engage in violent acts but Antifa not free to defend themselves. — Kenosha Kid
What threat do you actually perceive from Antifa then? It can't be their anti-fascist position which, by your own argument, must be as protected as anti-black sentiment. — Kenosha Kid
Anyway, it's a non-starter to use the first amendment as an argument against Antifa since they're a direct action group, not a reformist group. The first amendment protects citizens from laws made by the government, and Antifa do not seek to reform those laws. — Kenosha Kid
Really? Let's take your right as an 18+ year old American to vote. Your argument is that this amendment, passed in the early 1970s, was one of the founding principles of your country? Or that every amendment since the Bill or Rights is an attack on the founding principles of your country? — Kenosha Kid
And, believe it or not, I didn't feel like getting into a point that wasn't relevant to my argument. It's rather hypocritical to think I was obliged to respond to everything you have to say, yet you are not. — Kenosha Kid
If by "antifascist actors" you mean actual members of antifa or the ones that dress in black and go to protests I'd like to dig a little deeper into this. I'd love to have these statistics. — BitconnectCarlos
don't believe that a liberal social democrat would fit in in the modern antifascist movement in the US, or the black bloc elsewhere — BitconnectCarlos
Wouldn't you say that depends on the person though? We have some antifascists on this site who have made some very violent, gruesome statements towards people like Biden and others. I think it's disingenuous to group in every modern antifascist with, say, a Jewish anti-Nazi fighter around the time of WWII. Even as a Jew not every anti-Nazi fighter was good; there was a famous plot that was foiled when a group of Jewish partisans after WWII sought to poison the German water supply. — BitconnectCarlos
A major idea of antifa is "punch a Nazi." For me it's very emotionally satisfying to see a Nazi get punched, but ultimately it's not an effective way to deal with Nazism or racism in a non-emergency environment. I hate to say it, but the antifascism movement, much like the neoconservatives of the Bush years, have a habit of viewing the current era as Germany, 1933 and that it is incumbent on us now to act immediately and decisively (with the neocons it was Saddam in Iraq, today it is the far right in America.) If you believe that America today is basically Germany, 1933 I don't know what to tell you. In war there is no talk, only violence. — BitconnectCarlos
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