Why are people not identifying members of antifa like they did with Charlottesville

[Deleted]

I'm still not entirely sure Antifa even exists in any actual organized capacity.

Like, I didn't even hear about Antifa UNTIL people started bitching about it. There were no reports of "Group calling itself ANTIFA does X, Y, and Z" and then complaints cropped up later. It started out the gate with "BUT THE ANTIFAS..." I had to look them up to see what people were complaining about.

Have you've been living under att rock the last 20 years and missed all the big economics meetings where they show up or are you just American aka inside a small media bubble?

[Fencers]

Well, because the guys outed in the Charlottesville protest were mostly racists and bigots. That is not going to fly over well at all.

"Fairness" is an incorrect expectation because current society does not hold Nazis, white supremacists and open bigotry in a respectful light. So if the choice is between a bunch of dudes who pulled down a statue in anger vs. dudes with swastikas on their forehead and holding signs about 'white genocide'- most Americans are willing to give sympathy to the former than the latter.

As an aside, I was in an Irish Pub during the whole Charlottesville rally/protest. Enjoying a few drinks. The news was playing and as soon as they showed the guy with the Nazi flag the entire place erupted in boos, middle fingers at the television screen and intermittent "fuck you nazi!" chants. The television sound wasn't even on- but as soon as people saw that the reaction in a crowded bar was to react strongly to what almost everyone in the pub felt was reprehensible.

The value of the bigot is not high as a social position.

[Kaleredar]

Have you've been living under att rock the last 20 years and missed all the big economics meetings where they show up or are you just American aka inside a small media bubble?

I'm referring to the American... "branch..." of Antifa, as they're the Right Wing's most recent scapegoat to avoid having to deal with things like distancing themselves from white supremacists and Nazis. Well, actually, republican senators, congressmen, and most people have no issue distancing themselves from them. It's Trump and his ilk who have the confounding feeling that they need to engage in whataboutism in regards to the subject.

They rely on the angry white vote. And you wont find many people angrier and whiter than white supremacists and nazis.

[Wyrt]

Because they were smart enough to wear masks.

I'm also pretty sure people are way overstating Antifa's involvement in Charlottesville.

[Deleted]

I'm still not entirely sure Antifa even exists in any actual organized capacity.

Like, I didn't even hear about Antifa UNTIL people started bitching about it. There were no reports of "Group calling itself ANTIFA does X, Y, and Z" and then complaints cropped up later. It started out the gate with "BUT THE ANTIFAS..." I had to look them up to see what people were complaining about.

From what I have seen antifa in the US they only came into existence recently. They seem to be on average very young and slightly built. They look almost childlike to me.

They seem to be students. In Europe they are quite different: stocky, often industrial workers, quite large and menacing. In the US they also seem to have female members-again, I have never seen anti-fascists in Europe with female members.

What is surprising is that they clearly have zero experience in street fighting. If I was going to take on a gang of nazis with weapons, then I wouldn't arm myself with a stick. At very least you'd need a supply chain of crates pre-filled with molotov cocktails so you can keep up a permanent chain of explosive pressure. You add glue to the cocktail so it works like homemade napalm. Even that would probably be naive, given the nazis had firearms which has never happened since WWII in Europe, and the Charlottesville police weren't doing shit, which is again a factor.
Antifa did not seem to have a system of barricade-building, didn't use vehicles of pre-purchased improvized explosives such as fireworks, had nothing in the way of improvized armour (motorcycle helmets etc).

In short they were probably motivated by the fact that nazis were taking over a city and hadn't really thought it through the way an organized socialist or anarchist street-fighting gang might have done in the 1930's. (yes even anarchists need organization to be effective)

My guess would be that most members joined antifa quite recently as a direct reaction to Trump's election and don't really know what they are doing. I very much doubt they have developed any kind of sophisticated or coherent philosophy of anarcho-communism, or will ever be organized or millitant enough to effect even the mildest form of revolutionary change if, in fact, anti-fascist groups did that historically, which they never have.

[ati87]

From what I have seen antifa in the US they only came into existence recently. They seem to be on average very young and slightly built. They look almost childlike to me.

They seem to be students. In Europe they are quite different: stocky, often industrial workers, quite large and menacing. In the US they also seem to have female members-again, I have never seen anti-fascists in Europe with female members.

What is surprising is that they clearly have zero experience in street fighting. If I was going to take on a gang of nazis with weapons, then I wouldn't arm myself with a stick. At very least you'd need a supply chain of crates pre-filled with molotov cocktails so you can keep up a permanent chain of explosive pressure. You add glue to the cocktail so it works like homemade napalm. Even that would probably be naive, given the nazis had firearms which has never happened since WWII in Europe, and the Charlottesville police weren't doing shit, which is again a factor.
Antifa did not seem to have a system of barricade-building, didn't use vehicles of pre-purchased improvized explosives such as fireworks, had nothing in the way of improvized armour (motorcycle helmets etc).

In short they were probably motivated by the fact that nazis were taking over a city and hadn't really thought it through the way an organized socialist or anarchist street-fighting gang might have done in the 1930's. (yes even anarchists need organization to be effective)

My guess would be that most members joined antifa quite recently as a direct reaction to Trump's election and don't really know what they are doing. I very much doubt they have developed any kind of sophisticated or coherent philosophy of anarcho-communism, or will ever be organized or millitant enough to effect even the mildest form of revolutionary change if, in fact, anti-fascist groups did that historically, which they never have.

So god dam made up boogeyman......if I exclude the ranting parts.

Antifa is just the next george soros or even obama a enemy the right wing can rallt against, antifa for examples used to be only mentioned on freaking nazi websites before all of this.

[Sharein]

Because they are NOBLE WARRIORS

[lonely zergling]

Antifa people change cloths at protests multiple times to make it harder to identify them after they commited their crimes. Everything they do is organized very well to make work for police hard.

[Strangewayes]

Antifa are fighting a glorious revolution to overthrow the Neo Nazi/KKK controlled government. Thanks to the wealthy benefactors that have provided funding and transportation for these freedom fighters, we will soon be rid of the 8000 Nazis in the United States. If you oppose our glorious revolution, then it is clear to us that you are in fact the enemy, we will not tolerate Nazi-sympathizers or people who trust in the law of our corrupt White supremacist controlled government. All will be crushed in our glorious new way forward to a Communist Utopia, guaranteeing equality for all!

[Orbitus]

they incited violence. they didnt force it, they incited it. they provoked it and hoped for it.

Really? You have a source for that? Are you saying they took the first swing and the Nazis finished it with a terrorist attack? And don't just say that them being there provoked it. Because that is the worst fucking excuse you can come up with.

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Antifa people change cloths at protests multiple times to make it harder to identify them after they commited their crimes. Everything they do is organized very well to make work for police hard.

Wow, this is some next level conspiracy bullshit.

[Zecora]

This is a serious question. I'm not saying that what happened to the white supremacists was wrong, I'm just saying why is no one doing to all the people just destroying landmarks and then posting in your face pictures about it where they don't even bother to cover their face in any regard? This is the problem with America, the media picks a side and makes them look awful while ignoring news of what's going on with the other cultures. Right now the media is forcing a race war by only posting white people doing things and white people being racist. What about all the media attention of crowds of black people melting down a public statue?

The lack of an ideology based on mass murder, the lack of people threatening to burn down businesses for having coloured people insides, the lack of people screaming "the Jews will burn!" or the lack of an actual terrorist attack using ISIS methods might be part of the reason.

[lockedout]

Locked out FFS man read the god damn title thread!

Seriously man Santa clause, who/what is the subject of this thread?

Antifa man they haven't been people identifying Antifa members because they live as a figment in the imagination of racist trying to deflect Alt-Right Nazi's rallying to Unit Right.

Of course Antifa exists are you feeling ok?

[Doctor Amadeus]

Of course Antifa exists are you feeling ok?

Yep right along with fucking Santa Clause and there is more evidence for him than these bullshit claims.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Civil War monuments that are being taken down were never meant to commemorate the civil war. Maybe that was their surface "reason", but if you look at a timeline of when all of these civil war monuments were erected, it wasn't in the years following the civil war. No, they were mostly built in response to major civil rights movements. Only about 10 statues across the entire country were built in the few years following the civil war. But as you go further and further away from the civil war, you find more and more statues and monuments built, and the most during times when blacks gained rights.

Every time some kind of minority was about to gain a major right, or had won a major right, there was major push back from the racists and bigots and they erected monuments to the civil war, their "heroes" who fought for slavery. And this most recent uprising of the right wing bigots and racists isn't in response to Antifa. No, Antifa came AFTER. It's been in response to rights gained by the LGBT community, and a black president.



(For a larger version of the picture, right click and select open in new tab)

But as usual, these people will always be on the wrong side of history.

Notice something about that graph? The most monuments are built after the Plessy vs Ferguson ruling, and in addition to there being a lot of "other" locations (red dots), many were built in front of fucking court houses. That's right, when blacks BEGAN challenging "separate but equal", people built confederate monuments in front of court houses. Then again, during the civil rights movement and the desegregation of schools and other public places, a lot of statues are built on school grounds. This targeted building of statues has a very clear message and intent. Intimidation. Not that it works terribly well, but that was generally the intent.

[Deleted]

extremists are bad.

So are people I disagree with, I disagree with like.. 99% of all people.


... I might be bad :O

[Asotcha]

Because antifa is barely even a thing except in the addled posts of right-wing apologists who use them in their 'but antifa, but blm' posts to unsuccessfully deflect from how bullshit their own 'side' is. Every time antifa is mentioned it instantly identifies the alignment and intentions of the poster; not unlike when some chumpstick tries to deflect from Trump with 'but her emails!'.

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Civil War monuments that are being taken down were never meant to commemorate the civil war. Maybe that was their surface "reason", but if you look at a timeline of when all of these civil war monuments were erected, it wasn't in the years following the civil war. No, they were mostly built in response to major civil rights movements. Only about 10 statues across the entire country were built in the few years following the civil war. But as you go further and further away from the civil war, you find more and more statues and monuments built, and the most during times when blacks gained rights.

Every time some kind of minority was about to gain a major right, or had won a major right, there was major push back from the racists and bigots and they erected monuments to the civil war, their "heroes" who fought for slavery. And this most recent uprising of the right wing bigots and racists isn't in response to Antifa. No, Antifa came AFTER. It's been in response to rights gained by the LGBT community, and a black president.



But as usual, these people will always be on the wrong side of history.

Notice something about that graph? The most monuments are built after the Plessy vs Ferguson ruling, and in addition to there being a lot of "other" locations (red dots), many were built in front of fucking court houses. That's right, as soon as courts would no longer allow legal persecution of blacks, people built confederate monuments in front of court houses. Then again, during the civil rights movement and the desegregation of schools and other public places, a lot of statues are built on school grounds. This targeted building of statues has a very clear message and intent. Intimidation. Not that it works terribly well, but that was generally the intent.

re-posting for emphasis. Excellently said.

[Cthulhu 2020]

re-posting for emphasis. Excellently said.

Here's a video that actually breaks that graph down and goes into in-depth analysis of the historical events.

[D3thray]

I think if you have armed Nazis taking over your city and actually killing people, then someone needs to act. Ideally that needs to be the police.

Their seemed to be some kind of collusion between the Nazis and the police. Contrast it with, say, protests in Philadelphia where the militarized police presence was heavily criticized and it looks like their was some kind of arrangement. There is no excuse for letting a paramilitary group march in uniform and carrying weapons, ever, whatever faction it represents. Peaceful right to protest is just that, it doesn't extend to militarism.

Under the circumstances antifa acted correctly and did the job of law enforcement the police should have done. In other circumstances it might be better for antifa not to be there.

None of that explains or excuses the pathetic capitulation to fascism. I don't think you understand how serious this development is, or perhaps you are simply looking to deflect attention away from the far right because you are sympathetic to it, it is very difficult to tell.

Do some people not know how to deal with children throwing a tantrum? You ignore them. As soon as Antifa showed up and started swinging they gave the neo-nazis legitimacy. I'd argue the only reason you see police being given orders to stand down is because of the media coverage of BLM protests and the anti-police climate arising from it. No mayor wants their police force in the media at all.

*** btw Siri just changed 'police force' into 'political cronies' in that last sentence. /shrug still works :P***

[Deleted]

Here is the reason. Nazi's and the like are evil. Anyone who is fighting against them and their ideas is a hero. Unless you happen to be a nazi or support Nazism.

So Stalin was a good guy?

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You cannot connect the Nazi of WW2 Germany to the Nazi today. One was a global super power and the other are a fringe minority. While they idolize, empathize, and believe 99% of the crap they did. They are not them, and therefore you can't use that as a justification for how you treat them.

They are a terrorist group who use violence and intimidation to push their agenda, but so does Antifa. That puts them in the same boat, I've said from day one to all Antifa people and Antifa supporters. They are acting out in the exact way a fascist would. Silencing any descending voices you disagree with and they will go to extreme measure to do so.

There were no "super powers" before the cold war

[Deleted]

The lack of an ideology based on mass murder,

Karl Marx — 'The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.'

the lack of people threatening to burn down businesses for having coloured people insides,

Everyone know's its okay to burn shit down if its owned by the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy:

the lack of people screaming "the Jews will burn!"

“there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
Marx.

or the lack of an actual terrorist attack using ISIS methods might be part of the reason.

I too bemoan the lack of competence among the current crop of Anti-Fascists - But have a look at history if you like.