Sometimes, antifascism takes the form of violence. The above middle-aged woman is swatting a neo-Nazi with her purse. Her mother had been in a concentration camp. Some people who adopt neo-Nazi or "fashy" or "alt-right" or "alt-lite" positions think they are just being some kind of anti-PC comedians. They can pretend they were being contrarian or incendiary and laugh that they "triggered" some "Snowflakes".
(Although, what's white and cold and afraid of melting, really? Who is triggered by an idea of white genocide that doesn't seem to be happening--except in the minds of sad unfuckable white boys who worry they will never be father-material, and are therefore leaving all their father-material in tissues and gym socks?)
But the language and posture they adopt however "jokingly" once resulted in the mass murder of millions of people. Full stop.
The slap upside the head is a form of zen awareness teaching known as grandmotherly kindness. It is meant as a correction to a person who is on a path that leads to great destruction of both self and others through hate, fear and ignorance.
The fascist side is about violence. The anti-fascist has learned this language and is performing an outreach. Sometimes that outreach connects in a bloody way. But the fascist way is always worse. It always is. Because it isn't confronting a dangerous ideology, but directing hate at marginalized people. The antifa resistance is defense. Even if it takes a proactive course. Because we humans have been down this road historically, and know the results of it.
I am ideologically antifascist. I don't think that people who automatically invoke MLK or nonviolence in general, understand why antifa needs to be understood on it's own terms. But if you believe that equality, representation, democracy, matter--you have to pick your side. Antifa is just "anti-fascism". Don't criticize the methods before you've defined where you stand. Or you might be judged about where you stand by how you break it down. Then judge the methods. By what they intend. By what they always have.
3 comments:
Hi Vixen, I see I missed your 10-year anniversary. Let me add me congratulations to your other commenters'. Someone told me that the average lifespan of a blog before the blogger burns out is 3 years. You're obviously a long-distance runner.
I was surprised and pleased that Nancy Pelosi has condemned and repudiated Antifa with extremely forceful terms. This was unexpected, but long overdue. And then I was pleased that Sen. Diane Feinstein admitted that Trump could be a good president, presumably if he went more to the left. (She paid a price for this in public opinion.) And I have noticed a few Democrats agreeing with Trump's economic policies.
Clearly, someone deep in the planning phase of Democratic politics is aware that eventually someone is going to have to win an election. Right now the Democrats have lost the whole of the center. Your average real Americans who do not forcefully define themselves as either right or left see anything in Antifa except a violent, Communist street gang with some organization and money. And if this is the face of the Democratic Party, the turn-off at the ballot box will be profound. I think this is why Pelosi, who has been around for a while, repudiated those Communists is no uncertain terms.
Here is what most real Americans think about all this.
1. Nazism is un-American.
2. Cultural Marxism is un-American.
3. The Ku Klux Klan is un-American.
4. Antifa is un-American.
5. People who suppress free speech are un-American.
Back in the 1960s the anti-war movement collapsed almost the instant that the government ended the draft. However at least the anti-war movement had a legitimate object to justify its protests and repudiation. (Most guys just didn't want to get drafted.)
These days there is no clear and overwhelming object. It's almost riots for riots' sake. The middle understands this all too well. They normally might be persuaded to vote for a Democrat. But if the face of a Democrat is a black-masked rioter, they'll retreat to a Republican vote to try to end the violence.
Real Americans are the people you saw in Houston helping others. I noticed you were generous when your highlighted the people involved in the rescue efforts. If some people's education is so flawed they wonder “what is a real American?” in Houston you saw them.
G.K> Chesterton once quipped something to the effect of "My country right or wrong is like saying my mother, drunk or sober". Nazism, KKK, Marxism, and antifa aren't un-American--they just represent different prisms of the American experience. I can't happy-talk myself out of understanding that this is my country, and American people have sterilized "undesireables" here--and Nazi eugenics was based on it. I can't happy-talk myself out of the reality that the KKK was born here. Marxism itself isn't necessarily what Leninist/Stalinist Communism became, and the reason in part for American Communism was the Pinkertons and and strike breaking bully boys cracking heads of even women and children on American streets because factory/mine/means of production owners wanted more work for less pay.
If you don't grasp what Occupy and BLM have stood for, and think they made "riots" comparable to, for example, the 1921 Tulsa riot, I don't know what to tell you. Real Americans can be heroes, and great. I expect that of them, and applaud them when they are. But then again, we had slavery, Indian genocide, and made second class citizens of waves of immigrants again and again. I acknowledge that too, because I am a realist. But these people, black lives, First Nations, immigrant lives? These are also my people, as are people of different religions. As are people of whatever gender ID or sexual expression. Because they are all Real Americans if they are living here, and the Real Americans who say otherwise are asking for a fistful from me, Vixen of the bluest Eye and early-colonial associations. I don't rely on my education to know what people are people. I rely on my education to know what people are bad trouble and call them out. There's trouble-makers out there calling themselves "left" too, and online "fake news" movements that smear good work.
Even if getting at the truth is hard, I'm with the Allies, never the Axis. I hope that is American (TM) enough for anybody.
1. "Cultural Marxism" is a boogeyman invented by Nazis propagandists
2. The "white moderate" is the same as the "good German"
3. Trump and Trumpism is anti-American because it is anti-freedom.
4. Conservatism is anti free speech.
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