Scapegoating allows politicians to avoid angering their own constituents, and it also makes it rhetorically easier for politicians to avoid taking the demands seriously.

And a significant fraction (1/6 to 1/3) of arrests have been from out of state. So, the original claims had an element of truth.

But I disagree with you that it’s just “BS”, which would imply a level of cynicism which may exists, but for which you provided no evidence.

[1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disor...

I remember during the 2010 London riots it was alleged that the organisation was happening over Blackberry Messenger, and the government was outraged that RIM refused to turn over decrypted messages to them.

Sure, the police haven't arrested many of these out of staters, non-community members, but they are most certainly here. They had to walk back their comments because they can't just say "but we're there in the community and we see it".

I hated that tactic in my own country, where some of my fellow rioters last year blamed covert police agents for the damage and provoking violence, and I hope you hate that tactic from your own side as well.

At least, this is my experience with large parts of the german (radical) left movement. It is allmost surreal, when you follow the left wing online news ticker about the demonstration and everything that happens. Police and fascist violence there and there and again there! And when you also follow neutral mediums or the other side, or are even there to see for yourself. Because then you can see quite some leftist/antifa violence or threats of violence, as well.

The agressors are allwas the others, the police and fascists, never they themself. And sure, police and fascists do use aggressive violence. And in numbers probably a lot more. But not only them. So it is a tactic. It is propaganda. I have seen all three sides (antifa, police and fascist) use it. And was quite some of that violence in fact done by covert police? Possible. But usually with the applause of the crowd.

(And the german right-wing movement is of course even worse at being hypocrites, because no one there is officially a rassist or a nazi and they get angry, if you point out rassist or nazi-ideologie arguments they made)

Now, I don't think the bulk of the looters are bad people. But to change the narrative to be anything other than a REALLY TERRIBLE PR move by young people being opportunistic is absurd. For the truck driver who was beaten, the MSM were calling the violent protestors brave.

It comes down to this - are you helping the cause or hurting the cause? Only delusional, heavily-biased people / social justice warriors think looting is helping the cause and they're making every excuse under the sun. To think that humans, by and large, will look past it (for right or wrong) is out of touch with reality.

And if you criticize the means in any way, you get attacked even if you support the same change. In my opinion, to suggest that young black people are so pliable and incapable of thinking that some posts by a rogue group would turn them into robotic looters is racist in itself.

Young people semi organized and did some dumb stuff and justified it because of rightful injustice. Are they bad? No. Was it wise? Of course not. That's what happened.

Outside of that - I've been involved in a coroner's inquest before as my jury duty and it was very interesting. You basically are tasked with deciding whether a death was homicide, suicide or natural causes. I've heard about these civilian oversight boards as the answer but they have challenges with "local political manipulation" and require "steep budgets for investigators" [1]

So from my coroner's inquest experience, I was thinking - you already have civilians. It's efficient. If an officer is involved and the coroner's inquest participants rule it to be a homicide - boom, you could mandate an automatic trial!

This seems like it would be easier to roll out, more efficient, and provide pure accountability to any officer involved shooting. They'd know they would be legally required to go to trial if the coroner's inquest ruled a homicide.

Certainly, some evidence could still be tampered with by the powers that be, but that would elude the civilian oversight boards too in those cases. And with body cams, social media and business and civilian cameras, it's gotten much harder for them to hide evidence. So if you have an easy path to a trial originating from jury peers after coroner input, then you have a ton more accountability.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/is-civilian-overs...

The problem, which shows up in plenty of posts on social media, is that people's concern should, first and foremost, be the excessive use of force by US police officers, and the lack of accountability that officers face, in particular when black lives are lost as a result. Sure, destroying things this is bad, but black lives matter.

I grabbed this quote from your reply specifically because it seems to make the claim that people who belive in social justice are delusional, heavily-biased, and are entirely or at least largely in support of looting. I've never seen anyone make the argument that looting is helping the cause. What I have seen is arguments that acknowledge the 'badness' of the looting, and point out that the same arguments are not being applied to the police.

"Funny how one bad protester labels the whole movement, but a few bad cops are never supposed to represent all cops." -@aStatesman (Twitter)

In fact, there are plenty of videos people have posted of protesters stopping looters in various places. This tweet has one, but there are many in the responses to that tweet as well: https://twitter.com/gryking/status/1267101707596632066

There definitely are people making such arguments. The assertion is that property is the root cause of injustice so presumably destroying it is just. See for example https://twitter.com/ImReadinHere/status/1267402206220869632

What puzzles me is that some people supporting this argument are highly paid software engineers. How do they reconcile this with the fact that it is precisely the concept of private property (and yes, violent enforcement of it) that allows them to sit in front of the computer all day building some cool stuff and not worry that some violent thug will break into their house and take away their laptop?

For example, a corrupt politician can understand why an anti-bribery campaign is beneficial for his country.

I think it's fair to say that destruction of private property turns the situation into an economic problem, which in turn is a political pressure point. Rich people have more influence over police departments and attorneys general than do poor people. But for such pressure to do any useful work, the message must be, "give us justice and the looting will end."

(That justice may come in the form of charges against specific police officers, or perhaps as a campaign of institutional reforms within the police apparatus.)

Edit: it seems exactly this happened after the Ferguson riots https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ferguson-anniversary-fina...

That sounds like an assumption whose truth is heavily dependent on being in a specific locality.

> How do the looters benefit from having stores in their area that they are too poor to buy from?

Again, an assumption that is highly dependent on geography and specific looting. You're also assuming that the looters are necessarily poor -- forgetting about, for example, organized crime.

Consider for a moment what the optimal strategy would be to handle this vandalism and looting from the perspective of "Rich people." A) Capitulate to the demands of people using terror / destruction of property as leverage B) Utilize the vast resources available to you to end the source of the problem

I think your heart is in the right place in a very Robin Hood-esque kind of way but you're not grappling with reality if you think "give us justice and the looting will end" is going to play out favorably for the looters

Those vast resources that you mention (police and military) are at the very core of the conflict. Their use of force has only exacerbated the problem, because people spread videos of unjustifiable abuses (three cops brutalizing one prostrate individual in LA, a cop hitting protestors with his vehicle in NYC, a brigade of cops shooting law-abiding people on their own porch in Minneapolis, etc) that in turn draw more protestors to the fore.

Your A/B scenario is precisely the problem -- you equate the soothing of public anger with "capitulation" rather than "justice," and you make violence an imperative by arguing that the only strong approach is the brutal one.

Not to mention that you express a view that police brutality can "end the source of the problem." What is the source of the problem, if not police brutality itself? Were Americans violating curfews to demonstrate in the streets of major cities immediately prior to the murder of George Floyd?

True, but presumably these software engineers that I was talking about think about the ability to do their work as something worthy and morally good, not simply as a benefit that they get from a corrupt system. On the other hand, corrupt politicians don't think of bribes as something desirable to have in a system: they either cynically exploit their position for strictly personal gain or think of themselves as victims of the system who are forced to take bribes.

> I think it's fair to say that destruction of private property turns the situation into an economic problem, which in turn is a political pressure point. Rich people have more influence over police departments and attorneys general than do poor people. But for such pressure to do any useful work, the message must be, "give us justice and the looting will end."

This can be a valid strategy. I am reminded of someone who successfully executed this strategy: ANC and Nelson Mandela. But they were very clear in their demands and always stressed that they were reluctantly engaging in violence only because they had exhausted all peaceful methods. In contrast it seems that many who support recent riots are not very interested in actual solutions to the problem and only want to stick it to the Man in some way.

We know how a riot can be a bad barrel that leads the people involved to do bad things. But a riot is not a day-to-day occurrence with its own persistent culture.

On the other hand, a police department does have a persistent culture, and we don't exactly understand how or why some police departments engender more brutality than others.

"The Lucifer Effect" is a very interesting book on the institutional dynamics that lead otherwise normal people to do horrific things. It is written by Philip Zimbardo, of Stanford Prison Experiment fame. He is a proponent of the "bad barrel" theory.

The phrase that "bad apples" is taken from is "A few bad apples spoil the bunch". It's one of many phrases that has entered the common consciousness in partial form with the exact opposite meaning of its original intention.

His counterpoint is that a bad barrel can spoil a bunch of perfect apples. Good people can commit evil actions when they are put into bad social structures.

The spoilage in the "bad barrel" model comes from the containing structure, not from within its contents.

If you have a good barrel, you can keep bad apples more or less fresh. And if you have a bad barrel, even the best apples will spoil.

More literally: our focus should be on the command structures, accountability practices, disciplinary bodies, legal liability, and training programs within police departments -- rather than blaming systemic problems on a handful of white supremacists, careless brutes, or sociopaths.

I've also never seen anyone make the argument that excessive use of force by US police officers is helpful.

That gives us two extremes that we can eliminate from the discussions. There are no people who think illegal force used by the police is good, nor is there people who think looting is helping the cause of stopping the police from using illegal amount of force. Two strawmen done and dusted.

> "Funny how one bad protester labels the whole movement, but a few bad cops are never supposed to represent all cops."

101 in in-group and out-group human behavior research. The in-group is always made out of individuals and a few bad apples can never represent the group that a persons self belong to. The out-group however is in contrast a homogenic group. The purpose of having a clearly defined group to define as "them" is to avoid having to spend the energy to individualizing every member. It is a type of lazy thinking. Both the police and the protesters has bad people in them and good people, you only need to look at the individual level.

> The problem, which shows up in plenty of posts on social media, is that people's concern should, first and foremost

If we expect every post on social media to include boiler plate signaling then it kind of losses meaning. Everyone already agree that illegal use of force by the police is bad and should be prosecuted. We have democratic created laws that says so and no movement to remove them. The problem lies at the pseudo kinship relations that a band-of-brothers style police force has when it is tasked to enforce those laws against the in-group.

A crucial difference is that the police is an actual entity/organization, and one that is entirely responsible for its members. The whole problem is that this organization is not properly keeping their 'bad apples' in check, and even actively shielding them from consequence.

On top of that, this organization is immensely powerful, has ridiculous weaponry (and some degree of training), and is legally allowed to do a lot of violent things that most other 'groups' or individuals are not.

I think it's absolutely fair to consider the police as a group (while acknowledging that it has 'good' members), and make more individual distinction concerning the protesters.

I also think it's not a coincidence that Trump and various others are pitching the "it's Antifa destroying our cities" or for that matter even the whole idea that Antifa is a properly organized entity. So much easier to justify the use of force against the whole lot of protesters!

Telling organizations to keeping their 'bad apples' in check is an up hill battle, as within a in-group you don't see bad apples as representing the group. They are seen as individuals that did a bad choice, took a wrong turn, and as any individual they are given chances to change and do better. With pseudo kinship this get amplified, as its a fundamental aspect of most cultures that you treat kinship different than "others". Issues get handled and address within the family.

In order to break such patter you need to get cops more integrated into the society that they serve, increase pay in order to increase the status of the job within the rest of the community, decrease the inherent risks so that individuals has to rely less on a "family" to protect then, and increase the training period.

Nothing of that will help of course when governments start to use the military against protestors. Here in Sweden we have had several different parliaments trying to make clever hacks in order to prevent future parliaments from making such decision. At a time they even gave the power as an exclusive right under the king with the general idea beying that since the king does not participate politics and no future parliament would dare to take something from the king once given. Others have written laws forbidding parliament for taking such decisions. Currently it has been 89 years, and the event that caused such heavy opposition against military use against protestors, Ådalshändelserna, is still referenced in modern day politics. No matter what you don't send military against protestors.

I am pretty sure that they do, at least in my mind as well as in the minds of my friends. Especially due to the amount of incidents. You can criticize one side without supporting the other.

> there are plenty of videos people have posted of protesters stopping looters in various places

And there are a quite few where they haven't. This movement consists of different people with different beliefs after all.

I have literally, a few months ago, responded to comments on this site where people claimed all police were bad because of the bad actions of some.

Tribalism is a real thing, and it results in dehumanization of the other "side", and opportunistic labelling.

In 2019, 259 black people were killed by police. In the same year, 189 Hispanic people were killed by police. 406 white people were killed as well. 17 Asians. Obviously, blacks are overrepresented.

Data here: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

When was the last time you saw a national news media report on a non-black person being unjustly killed by police? It happens, and the cops get let off, routinely. Daniel Shaver is a particularly egregious example, and the lack of national media coverage helps ensure that the cops aren't held accountable. The cop who murdered him was acquitted, and temporarily rehired to let him collect a 2400 a month pension.

The national media wants this framed as PURELY a racial issue, when the reality is that it's a mix of race, police militarization, and lack of police accountability due to cozy relationship with prosecutors.

This racial framing is unnecessarily tribal, and undermines the effectiveness of achieving a meaningful goal that helps reduce this behavior by police.

Watching livestreams from demonstrations in my city I saw a lot of this. Local people, mostly guys, were marching and sticking around until the later evening hours to stream live. They were basically patrolling and keeping an eye out for anyone who threw stuff, got out fireworks, or started a fight.

I saw them grab one kid who threw a bottle into a line of cops and chase him down as he ran away. Then when some others began yelling to "kick his ass!" the same guys held anyone back from starting a fight. It was community de-escalation and struck a stark contrast with the gassing and rubber bullets I've seen.

Any time you get a whole bunch of people crammed in together with emotions running high, there's a chance someone will decide to break stuff or punch someone. Seeing the crowd self-policing like this gave me the tiniest bit of hope.

This is precisely my point. The looting and destruction creates a major secondary storyline that has taken over. And that you're delusional if you think it isn't hurting the cause.

For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed.*

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police...

* For every 10,000 white people arrested for violent crime, 4 are killed. (ducks ... and runs away)

It's incredibly sad a comment that adds actual data to a conversation is being downmodded.

This guy had, according to the coroner's report, recently used meth, had fentanyl in his system and the police stated he resisted arrest. He also has a police report from 2007 where he pointed a gun at a pregnant lady's belly to restrain her while his partner ransacked her apartment for jewelry and drugs. Sounds peaceful to you?

https://www.theblaze.com/news/george-floyd-fentanyl-methamph... https://files.catbox.moe/f4ylk1.jpeg

(and BTW it was a forged $20 bill, not check forgery)

> jogging down a street

You use this as an example of police brutality in which the police weren't even involved. And then you immediately follow with "Save your talking points for when they're actually relevant"? Will you?

> sitting in one's own home

Breonna Taylor, a black woman, who's boyfriend shot first at the police when the executed a no-knock warrant. Does this sound racially motivated to you? If they were white, would the officers not shoot back?

--

Maybe you should stop skimming headlines of MSM and start actually trying to uncover the whole story before you help perpetuate a race war with lazy, anecdotal and misleading examples masquerading as actual talking points.

I did not, however, say any of the other things you are attributing to me.

This is deeply hypocritical name-calling, and undermines your writing by implying that you, yourself, might be heavily biased.

Using adjectives to describe the headspace of people who are committing crimes or supporting those that do that aren't even related to the injustices at hand, destroying businesses and other people's places of work, etc, is not name-calling.

Portland itself outlawed black residents in the 1840s and that law stood for many decades. It's only very recently that Portland has developed the reputation for having a liberal populace; as recently as the 1990s it was essentially the white supremacy capital of the west coast.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=anarchist+symbol&iax=images...

It probably was sprayed by teenagers, but by spraying it, they're indicating their political affiliation.

Being "anti-fascist" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but using the "antifa" label makes it sound scary or organized. It reminds me of media outlets talking about message board trolls and disruptors as "the shadowy group known as Anonymous".

If not for C19 the masks would be strong evidence.

But green/long hair and a female voice acting like a leader, white and hoodies means you'd go with Antifa.

I'd cross reference it with other protests. I think you get a hit if you really cared, they look like they are active.

(Antifa are dumb teenagers, a bit like 4Chan, Anonymous, or even ISIS, the word is lose in it's meaning when it's a distributed organisation)

Why? National Action, NS113, and Scottish Dawn, (UK far right terrorist organisations) all had female membership and leadership.

But to your specific point were the females also foot soldiers? Not, do you know of an example, but was it somewhat common?

This seems to be a more left wing thing.

What a weird thing to say. Yes, some of them had long hair; some of them had dyed hair.

> But to your specific point were the females also foot soldiers? Not, do you know of an example, but was it somewhat common?

It was a known tactic of National Action to recruit as many women as they could, because those women would then go on to recruit a lot of men.

They had enough women members to run a "Miss Hitler" beauty pageant.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/scottish-woman-named-m...

One of the winners went on to become part of the National Action leadership: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/national-action-...

IDK, your description could just as well be feminists, mermaids, gorgons, sirens, etc., infact it seems to go as far as to just be saying "any white person protesting with BLM is an Antifa".

I see a lot of mischaracterization of what is a category, not a group. From what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism, and somewhat characterized by people willing to take direct action.

It’s funny to me that now they are a target, people are trying to play down their involvement in the political landscape the past few years.

I’ve watched them shut down speech, aggressively block events from happening, attack people in MAGA hats, there is so much hate pouring out of them that they are more fascist than anti-fascist.

This is the definition of the word, no matter how much lefists try to whitewash the term and shift the overton window.

Wikipedia points to many resources about Antifa movements, starting from here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa

And you only care to pick one narrow definition.

You got it backwards.

The only definition from that page that is not related to some extremist marxist/anarchist movement is this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism

And even that one uses the logo of the Antifaschistische Aktion. None of the other historic Antifascist movements described in that article are in any way relevant today.

Today, "Antifa" is synonymous with "Antifaschistische Aktion".

Why is it important for you to filter some definitions out?

> And even that one uses the logo of the Antifaschistische Aktion. None of the other historic Antifascist movements described in that article are in any way relevant today.

There are historical reasons that explain why Antifa caught up as a name, what logo activists use, etc. The abbreviation did not change, it still stands for "anti-fascim actions" today, or "Antifaschistische Aktion" in German.

But you are saying Antifa is synonymous, ie. equal to "Antifaschistische Aktion", not for what the words mean, but in a literal way, to restrict the definition. No matter how the name came to life, the spirit behind it is broader that the name; nowadays it is a perfectly fine shortcut for anti-fascism.

I mean, dictionaries tend to agree on this one:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/antifa

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Antifa

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antifa

I know a number of people in various countries who participate in Antifa action and who, while definitely left of center, are by no means anarchists or communists, and not even close to Marxists-Leninists or whatever other hard-left groups there are.

No mass is 100% identical though, so "you can't use some individual actions to project on the group they chose to be part of and that chooses to accept them" really just makes the concept of groups useless.

"No, that specific action wasn't covered by our shared intent, so obviously we will accept responsibility for it" is something I believe pretty much everybody will agree on after the action has happened and has resulted in negative feedback. Had it produced applause and achieved the goal of the group, they would have celebrated it.

You certainly can't cherry pick them (one instance of violence versus billions of instances of peacefulness, for example), apart from "group that chooses to accept them" not applying here.

> Had it produced applause and achieved the goal of the group, they would have celebrated it.

Had there been anye instances of violence by people calling themselves antifa, those seeking to defend the ongoing, systematic violence would have invented instances of violence of people they call antifa. See how that works, or rather, how it doesn't?

> See how that works, or rather, how it doesn't?

My point is that disowning a member's actions when they aren't considered favorably post factum is what pretty much every group does. If Antifa/black bloc were actively promoting non-violence, that would be a different issue, but this rather sounds like the Daily Stormer saying "we don't condone violence wink wink" when another one of their goons snaps and shoots up a mosque.

If the black bloc was all of antifa, it would just be called antifa. Outside the black bloc, direct action covers a lot of things, from just organizing all sorts of things (not just protests), art and being loud, to vandalism and even violence.

Just take all the sorts of things that were done in human history while claiming it was for freedom, both bad and good. Does that make any person doing thing X in the name of freedom responsible for what a person doing Y in the name of freedom? You can call those people a "group" all day long, but that doesn't mean they're actually a group in the sense of voting on their values and actions.

https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/08/eric-clanton-takes-3...

How he didn't get 7 counts of attempted murder is beyond me.

My point is that a such a philosophical principle is only valid iff you are comfortable with that same principle being used by your political enemies against you.

It's pitiful that this is the best boogeyman the right can come up with in 2020 and it's extra pitiful that - like everything else they project - it's just them telling on themselves.

And that's the problem.

This story is natural clickbait because you have literal fascists claiming to be anti-fascist, which is an obvious contradiction.

But if Antifa is just anybody who is against fascism then violent anti-fascists are Antifa. You can't say they're not when they actually are against fascism. And without any official leadership to disavow the advocation of violence, now your label is tainted by violent evildoers and you get to enter the grab-bag of boogymen for whenever somebody needs one.

Your definition is meaningless and imprecise.

smart enough to learn to code or to polish a pitch to a vc, but lacking any critical thinking skills or morality that would cause them to reflect on their position in society.

flocking to the right at the first hint of something that does reflect these truths.

supporting fascists because you're scared or uncomfortable is even worse than supporting fascists because you're a bigot imo

Sure, people that disagree with your viewpoints lack critical thinking and morality. Painting people who disagree with you as immoral idiots just sounds like you're not able to defend your beliefs.

People start with moral intuitions first and work backwards to find reasons. Fallacies, ignorance, and sloppy thinking is quasi-deliberate, to satisfy a priori values of what is sacred and what is profane, who are the good people and who are the bad people.

Naming yourself "the good guys" doesn't mean anyone who opposes you is bad. It's like if someone said disliking 'Make America Great Again' means you don't want America to be great. Or opposing the Patriot Act makes you not a patriot.

You know this, everyone else reading this knows this, stop pretending we don't.

In the UK, the British Union of Fascists organised a march in London in 1936 and were countered by ten times as many people organised by anarchist, communist, socialist and Jewish groups. The ensuing violence sent an extremely clear message that fascism is not welcome in the country.

>> Antifa literally exist to use violence upon people who don't share their politics

Your reply:

> Using violence to achieve political goals is not in itself a "hallmark of fascism".

Agreed. But I didn't write that it was.

You live in the UK. How would you compare the IRA of the 1920s with the provos in the 1980s? Would you say they're the same group? They have the same name.

In my experience (as a mainsteam left person) Antifa consider anyone not on the hard left to be either 'fascists' or 'bootlickers'. Everyone else I know who has had any contact with Antifa has had the same experience. Many Antifa people would say this is an accurate view of anyone who does not share hard left political views.

The genocide became widely known after the war had already started. The allies did not join the war out of their goodwill but rather due to their own geopolitical and economic interests - they never intended to stop any genocide (the US engaged in eugenics and mandatory sterilisation and only stopped because hitler did it too - they even put the Japanese living in the US in concentration camps), it was just a side-effect.

Regardless (and this is a bit offtopic), I wonder, would you support WWII if only to save people from genocide? In the same spirit would you support war against China in order to save the Uyghurs and other suppressed groups? I personally would reply yes to the first one but I am debating about the second.

No, for two reasons: I don't actually have any concrete information on what is happening in China, and 2 the USA does a lot worse to suppressed groups both inside and outside the country than China has ever done, so I'd support a dismantling of the US State (today, maybe during ww2 I would say first go to war with germany and then dismantle the USA) before I support any kind of intervention in any other place in the world.

I mean, no, it happened, so obviously you cannot prove it didn't happen.

> It’s possible this has occurred

Ah, but "they were not real anti-fascists".

Have we still not gotten over this line of argument?

The fact that nazis exist doesn't invalidate it. Again you probably know this so I'm not going to bother replying further.

So no, I really, truly have no clue what you're getting at. Like as far as I can tell you're saying "being willing to punch a Nazi makes you a Nazi". Which, like, no.

>> Naming yourself "the good guys" doesn't mean anyone who opposes you is bad. It's like if someone said disliking 'Make America Great Again' means you don't want America to be great. Or opposing the Patriot Act makes you not a patriot.

Your reply:

> Like as far as I can tell you're saying "being willing to punch a Nazi makes you a Nazi".

ok

Please elaborate. Please don't just re-quote yourself. You know, follow the guidelines and engage in good faith. I did, it why I asked a genuine clarifying question which you seemed to ignore.

No, you did not address GP in good faith. And GP did address your question by quoting himself: the problem is not "fighting against the bad guys", the problem is whom you consider the bad guys. Anti-fascists calling themselves such in no way means that everyone they oppose is actually a fascist.

I did. Please don't presume to know my thoughts.

> Anti-fascists calling themselves such in no way means that everyone they oppose is actually a fascist.

This doesn't address my comment, nor is it what GP said. Id suggest you reread their comment. And mine.

I'll break it down:

> Antifa literally exist to use violence upon people who don't share their politics

This is overbroad. Many people don't share antifa politics. I don't. They don't threaten me with violence. Something is missing here.

> which is one of the hallmarks of fascism

So this is only sensical in an overbroad generalization of antifa to mean "violent left wing people who are violent towards anyone not suitably left wing", which isn't antifa under any reasonable definition, and is an entirely circular argument.

So yes, please: explain.

However, they are not facists.

Antifa is definitely not a new thing, having been around in Europe since the rise of fascism in the first half of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Antifa&type=revis...

both antifa (term from the 30s and reused in Europe when neonazis showed up in the 90s) and BLM were term widely abused (and maybe even introduced) by the Russian troll army in the wake of US social movements after Occupy.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/02/activi...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

I consider an organization on their tenets, under which Black Lives Matter is completely fine.

KKK for example isn't.

Right-wing terrorism has no redeeming kernel of decency, nor does it have a productive movement behind the (few?) bad actors.

No, you don't, or you would consider a religion that endorses literally infinite amounts of torture for anyone who disagrees with them to be violent. There's also its attitudes toward homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22), slavery (Exodus 21:7), murdering people for working on saturdays (or maybe sundays?) (Exodus 35:2), and touching pig remains (Leviticus 11:7), among others.

But to some extent I do agree with you, otherwise I would still be a Christian which I'm not, for the fact that any belief that subjugates moral philosophy and reasoning to interpreting holy text will always have blind spots.

Either way, I apologize if it distracted from the point I was trying to make, that all organizations, good or bad will have bad actors, but what's important is identifying which organization can be fruitful and which is inherently bad.

Maybe we will disagree on a few there.

As someone more eloquent than me put it: Christianity had it's chance to rule the world; we call it the Dark Ages for good reason.

So when you say 'From what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism' - what does that mean? America doesn't have any serious fascist groups - from what I can tell the ruling powers are decidedly corporatist and the first alternative philosophy seems to be light/moderate socialism. Second is maybe libertarianism.

So who/what do you think the anti-fascists are opposing, and what would they espouse if they ever decide there are no fascists for them to define themselves against?

Corporatism was inseparable from fascism in Italy and Germany. The exploitation of the profit motive is one of the primary reasons that so many people overlooked the atrocities.

Fascism is the reason so many companies like IBM, Hugo Boss, L'Oreal, Koch Industries, Audi, Porsche, Adidas, BMW, and countless other extant corporations have dark histories from supporting the German extermination camps to utilizing their slave labor to build their products.

Corporatism was also inseparable from the political systems in the UK and the US though, wasn't it?

Quoting a few key sentences from Wikipedia:

Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. [0]

America doesn't have a serious lobby that believes in those things. There isn't a lobby that is serious about autarchy, there isn't a lobby calling for complete mobilisation and there isn't a lobby calling for a one party state. Apart from maybe the anti-facists I don't know of a lobby promoting political violence. The war and imperialism stuff is possibly true, but that isn't a new thing in American politics - America has been at war my entire lifetime and mostly in the same set of middle eastern countries.

The only link between fascism and American politics is that Trump is popular in the Republican party and is happy to stand up and say that the globalism pendulum has swung too far. That is a tenuous link to fascist ideology.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

I've gotta say, the NRA has been getting closer to fitting this.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals?cycle=2012&id=d00000...

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/us/nra-details-plan-for-a...

Their original goal, of a rights advocacy group has turned into a partisan dividing tactic.

Supporting one party over another is not an act of fascism. They promote the GOP because the GOP supports their goals. Do you think it's reasonable to expect them to promote the other party while that party actively works against them?

They promote a stronger police presence in schools, but they also support the right of teachers to be armed and able to defend against attackers. In other words, they support teachers being able to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. Whether you agree with that or not, the 2nd Amendment is a decidedly libertarian idea. Fascism is authoritarian by nature. Promoting one of these is mutually exclusive with promoting the other.

Regarding police in schools, I don't see how that fits with Wikipedia's definition of fascism: a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy. Perhaps we're operating on different definitions.

I also wouldn't think poorly of the NRA for just it's change in how it donates to candidates if they weren't performing illegal coordination and also promoting Republicans candidates even if their opponent was aligned with their 2nd Amendment stance.

Police presence in schools is just a step into a strong regimentation of society IMO. And the 2nd Amendment is far too vague to be considered libertarian. We could debate all day over what the intent was, or how it can be interpreted.

Frankly I don't see why that's relevant. My point is that the amendment itself has become a partisan issue. The GOP and the NRA agree on their interpretation of the amendment, while the other party opposes them. Why would you expect two allies to support their mutual opposition instead of each other, and how does not doing so equate to fascism?

> performing illegal coordination

Political corruption != fascism, and it is certainly not unique to it.

> the 2nd Amendment is far too vague to be considered libertarian

I disagree, but I can see how some interpretations of it (that it's meant to arm militias which are agents of the state) could even be considered authoritarian. However, the NRA advocates for the interpretation that says people should have the means to overthrow their government if necessary. I'm having a hard time seeing how that aligns with fascism.

"However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpx9rb...

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7DOx5...