They get innocent people like Heather Heyer and Andy Ngo hurt. This is what dumbass political gang wars do. They sound fun! Oh, no, that’s one of the grossest misrepresentations of all time. They are apparently a multiethnic drinking group. “ are the racists, the mob of masked white people attacking minorities or the pro constitution multiethnic drinking group with the Cuban president that likes defending minorities from assault? One such Facebook comment defending them was as follows: Who are they? See here and here (a very revealing Vox article) as I don’t have the space to expand. That said, and this is where I do some soul searching, do I do this when attacking the right? Do we all take straw men extreme versions of the position we attack to make our arguments more forceful? That is something I now need to be wary of. But I weary of this being used as a hammer to hit “The Left” with. The radical left and the radical right are, generally speaking, nutjobs. But I am amazed that people are surprised the radical left do it. And no, you simply can’t go around beating people up. “Aha, look, Antifa have been unnecessarily violent! Look how terrible the left is!” In reality, this statement should more properly read, “Aha, look how equally violent the radical left can be when compared to the radical right!”Īntifa no more represents the political left as a whole than the Proud Boys represents the political right as a whole. I think what gets me are two things: the conflation of Antifa with “The Left”, whether implicit or explicit, and the apparent, and this could be my skewed perspective, letting off the hook of the people against whom Antifa were counter-protesting. This almost becomes a gotcha moment for the right against the left, the prologue of which has been the rise of centre-right commentators and thinkers such as Jordan Peterson. Sadly, as far as I am concerned, this (and a good many other things in the media over the last few years) has also drawn in many people from the centre and centre-left and caused them to move more to the centre and more to the right in reaction to this perception of violence and intolerance from the left.īut what gets me is that some of these people (but not all) are often ignoring, either implicitly or explicitly, the violent behaviour of the people against which Antifa are counter-protesting. Indeed, the right-wing press have been salivating over this latest incident with Andy Ngo. The problem, as mentioned, is that this behaviour doesn’t do Antifa any favours at all nor does it do any favours to the left in general since Antifa are often conflated with the left. Some of the causality here can be quite complicated and difficult to untangle, which was what I was discussing in my last piece there is arguably some provocation or perceived provocation that leads to some of this violence. The situation has recently become that, when this does happen, people rightfully shout loudly about the unnecessary violence taken against such third parties. And their mistakes cost political ground as well as being immediately horrible for the vuictims. What is most unfortunate for their cause is that they often target people on the periphery or even innocent bystanders, and are prone to violent mistakes. They are admittedly a very reactionary group of people, often resorting to violence against the people with whom they disagree. In order for them to call themselves anti-fascists, there must be some fascists to react against (or people they perceive as fascists). Who are they? Well, in the broadest and simplest sense, they are a loosely organised, far-left group of people counter-demonstrating against fascists and far-right rallies. However, is this just an example of increased layers of cognitive dissonance? Am I just getting deeper and deeper into defending my initial intuitive reactions by creating more complicated layers of thought? Comments below, please…įirst of all, let’s talk about Antifa. Some of these conversations have become quite heated, and here’s for why. The more I think about this, the more my reasoning and analysis become nuanced. I have seen a number of friends and colleagues posting and writing about this on Facebook and I have got engaged in a couple of conversations. However, this is something I’ve been brooding upon to the last couple of days. I know that this was the subject of my last piece and I apologise if I’m going to bore you.
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