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[nenjin]

Assaulting Nazis and their supporters is actively preventing more violence.

It's not? It's creating violence, and encouraging more violence in the future. If you hit a guy who is about to hit another guy, yes, that's violence possibly preventing future violence.

Where did we get the idea that randomly attacking people you disagree with politically is somehow preventing violence elsewhere? That's just giving in to the same hysteria and bloodlust but claiming it's a morally superior form.

There's no chief dog-lover who decides who gets to use the name or not.

So what? Proud Boys aren't actually a problem because some Proud Boys aren't racists while others are? Some Nazis are actually good people but others aren't but since there's no chief Nazi it can't be said that a Nazi is a nazi? This shit is stupid. If you ascribe to an organization where people conceal their identity then go beat the shit out of people, guess what? Membership in that organization puts you in the same boat.

You can be anti-fascist and not be a problem. Being anti-fascist and belonging to the group Antifa is a problem. Not because you're anti-fascist, but because of what they do.

Going to a rally with the express purpose of fighting someone on the other side of the picket line isn't political activism. It's just barbarism with a political flavor. Why it's somehow ok to lionize Antifa when they do it but demonize anyone else when they do it is beyond me. Nazis and Antifa both belong in jail, so they can tear each other apart and leave the rest of society out of it.

[Bumber]

And yeah, Andy Ngo is a nazi scumbag too. He deserved everything he got.

Openly gay Vietnamese-American Nazis. My, how times have changed.

Checking Wikipedia, he seems more like an advocate of extreme free speech and an anti-Islamist than a Nazi. I doubt he's anti-immigrant considering that his parent are immigrants.

Maybe don't wish violence upon people you don't know?

[Doomblade187]

Nenjin, you do realize that most antifa counterprotests consist of yelling and shit-talking, right? Like, the violent peeps are a very low percentage of people here. So even if you wanted to jail said peeps, that's not all of Antifa.

I understand the same can be said of proud boys, but the point stands: the violents are in the minority here.

Re Bumber: while I cannot say a whole lot about Andy, I do know that one can be anti-immigrant, and an immigrant themselves. Same for being gay and a Nazi. (I don't think he's a Nazi, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's fascist)

[nenjin]

That's fine. It's people that don't see the equivalency that annoy me. Like violence is ok as long as you're punching the right people. Which is exactly how both sides see it.

[SalmonGod]

Because there is no equivalency.

Fascists are grouped together by an ideology that has mass systemic violence as its end goal.  Their violence is targeted at people based on intrinsic qualities.

Antifa is grouped together by their opposition to fascism, in order to prevent fascism's end goal of mass systemic violence.  They may behave violently themselves sometimes, and sometimes misidentify targets (though it seems like the majority of accusations like this turn out to be bullshit when you really research them).  But when they direct violence at someone, it's not because of the subject's intrinsic qualities.  It's because of the subject's choices.

So when we point out that there will be bad people and mistakes made in any large group of loose association, that sentiment does NOT apply just as easily to fascists. 

• With Antifa, it is possible for their incidents of violence to be individual loose cannons or mistakes, because there is no ideology or end goal of violence behind those actions. 
• Fascist incidents of violence are inevitable and cannot be chalked up to loose cannons or accidents, because their ideology is violent.  Any person associated with fascism is a violent person just waiting for the right time.

I have never intentionally harmed anyone in my entire 36 years of life.  Never thrown a punch at anyone.  Not once.  But if anybody ever throws a Sieg Heil around me, I'm going to punch them.

And this discussion is sorely lacking instances of antifa violence that were direct intervention on behalf of minorities who were immediately faced with fascist violence.  For example, that crowd at the Unite the Right rally didn't just want to march around with tiki torches.  Antifa didn't instigate the violence that day by ruining their free speech event.  I've read personal testimony that there was a gathering at a black church that the fascists learned about, and re-routed their march to target them.  The counter-protesters intervened and headed them off to protect that congregation.

[Il Palazzo]

Fascists are grouped together by an ideology that has mass systemic violence as its end goal.  Their violence is targeted at people based on intrinsic qualities.

Antifa is grouped together by their opposition to fascism, in order to prevent fascism's end goal of mass systemic violence.  They may behave violently themselves sometimes, and sometimes misidentify targets (though it seems like the majority of accusations like this turn out to be bullshit when you really research them).  But when they direct violence at someone, it's not because of the subject's intrinsic qualities.  It's because of the subject's choices.

It doesn't matter what is the ideological motivation behind it. Violent opposition is counterproductive. Especially if targetted against a group built around notions of masculinity and the siege mentality.
I think everyone here can on some primal level understand the desire to punch a hailing supremacist, but going with it just plays into their hand. It trades a chance at actually changing anything for an instant gratification of self-righteousness.

[nenjin]

Any person associated with fascism is a violent person just waiting for the right time.

You can make the exact same statement about people in Antifa, and it applies. They're just naturally violent people waiting for the right target. That's predatory no matter how you slice it. It's like straight edge people trying to beat up people at a party because they're doing drugs.

Short of actually preventing violence (i.e. someone is beating up someone else, you intervene to stop it) it's violence for violence's sake. The idea that you're going to kick the shit out of someone and they're magically going to stop believing whatever you beat the shit out of them for is asinine, irresponsible and deluded. It just perpetuates more violence.

Or more specifically, the idea that beating the shit out of one person, or a group of people, is somehow going to affect their entire movement is so blisteringly naive and self-serving it hurts. Did it work in the Civil Rights era? Did jumping blacks in the streets make them less likely to fight for their rights? Hell no. The struggle for equality continued, and it spawned the Black Panthers as an added "bonus."

But if anybody ever throws a Sieg Heil around me, I'm going to punch them.

Then you've lost. Until we pass legislation that makes it illegal like Germany has, all you're doing is playing directly in to their arguments about free speech in this country and justifying their persecution complex. Which means they're more likely to assault someone else due to that belief. Punching people for what they believe rather than what they've done is how the spiral just gets deeper and uglier. If you're standing between innocent people and those that want to hurt them, that's one thing. If you're looking for a reason to attack someone who hasn't actually done anything, then yes, you're attacking their intrinsic characteristics just as much as a neo-nazi who looks for minorities and gays to beat up. It doesn't matter that they chose to believe this rather than being born that way, it's the simple fact that you're trying to punish a belief rather than action. You're punishing a "thought-crime." Remember those? Is throwing up the Black Panther fist a reason to kick someone's ass? No? Then why is throwing up a signal from the other side of the spectrum a reason to kick someone's ass? Because you agree with one and not the other?

Being righteous requires more than just your target being an asshole.

Your example below is what's closer to a reasonable application of force to prevent an atrocity. Going to a rally to scrap with fascists is not. It's bloodlust.

[sluissa]

I mean, it's not actually just as bad by a hefty goddamn margin since, y'know, they haven't fucking murdered people. It's maybe a concern but it's not bloody nearly an equal one.

Excepting that one time in Dayton.

But you know... no true Scotsman and all.

[SalmonGod]

No, the spiral has been getting deeper and uglier for decades, precisely because we have ignored it.  I've seen it festering since my mid-teens 20 years ago.  Stormfront, as one example, set up their website in 1996.  And according to Wikipedia, their membership grew from 120,000 to 300,000 between 2009 and 2015 (notably pre-Trump election).  Active recruiting, because the taboo on supporting fascist ideology has faded over time.

Call it self-righteousness or bloodlust if you like.  We differ on strategy.  If you think the goal is to change someone's beliefs by kicking the shit out of them, then you haven't been paying attention the several dozen times this subject has come up, including this one.  The recent surge of fascism is not something that happened suddenly.  It's something that has been built up to for decades, because they have been ignored as they built up numbers, infiltrated law enforcement (as it has been pointed out multiple times the FBI had a task force assigned to monitoring and verified was a real problem), and wedged tolerance for instigation of violence as free speech into our cultural narrative. 

The goal is to re-establish the taboo on publicly espousing their rhetoric, which allows them to more easily recruit and organize.  I know the argument is that this just helps them to draw more attention to themselves.  But this is naive.  These people are savvy.  If conflict didn't come to them, they would go out and create it.  They don't need antifa types to do this for them.  We keep being told that they need to be allowed to fail in the marketplace of ideas, and let them paint themselves negatively by being the exclusive perpetrators of violence.  But Breivik was a Stormfront user.  Did widespread condemnation of his massacre slow down Stormfront recruiting?  Fuck no.  Their numbers doubled in the 4 years following what he did.  You think 180,000 people joined up between 2009 and 2015, because they saw a nazi get punched and felt sorry for them?  Recall again when the nazi punching videos and memes started getting popular?  Their numbers are exploding because people sympathetic to their ideas have always been around, but taboo kept them isolated and dormant, unsure of how many others out there felt the same way and whether they could get away with gathering together.

Spectacle will be a part of their game no matter what, whether we participate in their spectacle or not.  The point is to de-platform them.  They have the right to speak all they want.  They don't have a right to a platform.  Nobody has to give them the space.  Nobody has to be silent while they speak.  And above all, the taboo needs to be re-established at any cost.  If the fascists are going to create a spectacle no matter what, then it's imperative that part of that spectacle is deterrent.  That dormant fascists out there don't get the idea that they can just show up to a rally where they have a pleasant weekend hanging out in public with fellow fascists to discuss ethnic cleansing without fear of repercussions.  That they can expect the possibility of getting hurt, fired, etc.  It needs to always be scary to have one's name and face associated with fascism.  Because as soon as it's not, the way their numbers are growing right now will look like nothing.

[Il Palazzo]

I fail to see how antifa counter-protests are deplatforming white supremacists, exactly.

[Dunamisdeos]

No, they join up because the alt-right's constant rhetoric is that they are the only thing standing between America and violent left-wing thugs waiting to jump out and beat them for their ideas.

Then Antifa goes around beating up people for their ideas. So thanks so very much for headlines like these. Thanks for making them afraid, now we're all much safer.
 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/18/antifa-proud-boys-claim-success-after-portland-protest/2045313001/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/proud-boys-portland-rally_n_5d59390ee4b0eb875f2539c4
 
The alt-right would have wandered around and chanted some crap they heard on Facebook and gone home. That's what they actually ended up doing everywhere that they weren't clashing with Antifa.  Yeah sure Antifa accidentally beats up their own people sometimes and literally beat up journalists that don't agree with them, but they're saving us from Fascism! It's just a few loose cannons, while 100's of others stand next to them and crow about it/take videos! Totally not supported by the whole!
 
Here's some of the stuff the police siezed from the good guys, including knives, hammers, bricks.... and, I admit amusingly, some safety scissors. They also threw bricks at the police trying to keep the two groups separate.
 
I'm willing to admit that once they stood in opposition to something, but Antifa doesn't give half a shit about anything but LARP'ing their self-entitled political hero fantasies. The fucking white nationalist racist bigots caused less damage to the community there.

[MrRoboto75]

I fail to see how antifa counter-protests are deplatforming white supremacists, exactly.

They don't.

[Doomblade187]

Random thought:

I hear a lot here condemning Antifa. But while we discuss them, do we not discuss the threat of fascism and how to best deal with it?

Do they not draw attention to the issue?

Also, it should be noted that police in the US tend to arrest leftist protesters over right wing protesters. As such, condemning Antifa as a lawless group is going to see some resistance from people who are tired of a disproportionate response to left wing activists.

I fail to see how antifa counter-protests are deplatforming white supremacists, exactly.

They don't.

Well, the ones you see in the street aren't. The ones doing online footwork and doxxing/reporting are.

[Gentlefish]

Video on political violence. Sorry for the length but it goes very in-depth into the subject.
 
There's various kinds, not just physical. Fascists are trying to pursue all avenues of violence to further their causes of systemic eradication of minorities and undesirables.
Antifa engages in self-defensive violence against fascists.

The picture of a black man and disabled woman and child would not exist in a fascist society because there would be no black or disabled peoples. They're fighting for their security and safety.

I fail to see how antifa counter-protests are deplatforming white supremacists, exactly.

They don't.

Used to be just punching a fascist was enough to get on the news. Now it has to be a full counter-protest to hit the news. It's working. And while it may give them a persecution complex, it drives them underground and out of the public eye. Where they used to be, before our current president was elected.

One of the few benefits of all this is that we can see which of our congresspeople are fascists and grifters. Steve King, for example.

E: Here's the meat of the video for those who don't wish to watch a whole hour-long vid.

[Dunamisdeos]

I'm all for fighting the alt-right and their bigoted crap, but, and i can't believe I have to say this, you have to actually fight the alt-right using tactics that don't literally further the alt-right. Somehow that's apparently not a stipulation for fighting the alt-right right now.  What Antifa's been doing is like dumping gasoline on a fire while screaming I'M HELPING and flicking gas at anyone who tries to stop you.

Antifa engages in "Throw bricks at the cops trying to stop you from throwing bricks at opposing protesters". Self defense, indeed.

I have definitely seen instances such as what was that, the aforementioned black church that SalmonGod brought up from Charlottesville? It was a Methodist church IIRC, and the alt-right was being violently aggressive and ended up handing out some unprovoked beatings of their own. Antifa stood in their way and probably avoided an extremely nasty situation. I remember seeing tweets from church members.

Point is, they didn't hunt down people with opposing beliefs with concealed hunting knives like they do now. It does NOT drive the alt-right underground, It drives them directly to the media while they openly claim victory and plan to show up more often because their persecution complex is being validated.

I can't watch the video where I am now, sorry ;-;. Thanks for providing it, I'll be able to check it out in a couple hours.