Antifa rocks!

[Estebonrober]

If they get the point it aint dumb...but it does show a double standard. The left throws the word around at all sorts of people and I dont see y'all lecturing them about its proper use.

Omg you have to just be trolling at this point. The left does throw the term around a lot BUT, the ones they throw the term around on have stuff in actual common with fascist policies like the corportocracy or supremacist policies, or hearken back to so mythical age policies. The current administration does all bloody three of those so to implicate fascism isn't completely out of bounds. I might consider it a bit hyperbolic but at least the policies line up.

This whole discussion is pushing me more in antifa's favor all the time.

 

[Patine]

'The Left' is anything to the left-of-center, which in the US may be more centrist than the norm, but anything away from 'centrists' and 'moderates' fits the bill. I would exclude blue dogs and DINOs, but sometimes it feels more like describing what the left is against is easier than what it stands for.

I can't care less for what twitter is up in arms about, and if the right is suddenly losing its **** because of a he-said she-said situation between one busload of kids and another busload of Black Israelites and a Native Vet and the fallout thereof, well, welcome to PR. People form opinions and react to things! So shocking!

Chances are low that anyone is going to fight over those twerp kids. People vent, get angry, move on to the next problem. And honestly? The US can take a few fist fights on the street. The US is not so fragile it cannot handle petty political violence. Nations have riots, massive protest movements, bloodless and bloody revolutions, and still stand as either great or high powers. Not worried there.



No one cares for what you have to say if you just prattle insults, or your faux-whining about what is or is not appropriate, or your whinging about some 'middle way' or whatever you're spouting about. Why are you so important that your...view...is important for us to take up as a thread? Divisions in politics exist, have always existed, and you can either work with that reality or be ignored. The left exists as a tangible thing. It is, if anything, actually getting a backbone and traction in the US. While wild divisions and fanciful monikers like 'Democratic Socialism' and the like exist, and soul-searching will be undertaken, something has formed and will refine itself, something that is equatable to first world Social Liberalism or Social Democracy - both on the Left; unless you're some Commie who thinks anything Capitalist can never be Leftist, in which case, we're Centrists.

I am a Centrist, actually, and very dismayed about what the partisan divide has done to people and society. It's become a destructive and ruinous socio-political phenomenon in it's present form, and lost most capacity for good in society and governance. An utter plague. And, my point is, words and terms, and the way they're used, and the intent with which they're used, have power. And that power is being misused daily by billions in a way contributing to, and accelerating, a death spiral of global civilization, because people just won't stop and think before using thoughtless and inappropriate "catchphrases" ALL THE TIME!

 

[aelf]

The foundations of that statement, and the hypocrisy so deeply intertwined with it, and the flawed and self-serving (and self-deceiving) world view that produced, that is so blatantly obvious, makes only one response truly appropriate here - LOOK IN THE MIRROR!

I described your attitude and you asked me to look in the mirror. So either you're engaging in some playground-level "no u" type of rebuttal or you're unintentionally saying that I (the leftist extremist) am just like you.

Congratulations, you played yourself, I guess.

 

[Estebonrober]

I am a Centrist, actually, and very dismayed about what the partisan divide has done to people and society. It's become a destructive and ruinous socio-political phenomenon in it's present form, and lost most capacity for good in society and governance. An utter plague. And, my point is, words and terms, and the way they're used, and the intent with which they're used, have power. And that power is being misused daily by billions in a way contributing to, and accelerating, a death spiral of global civilization, because people just won't stop and think before using thoughtless and inappropriate "catchphrases" ALL THE TIME!

I think what "the left" side of the room is trying to say to you is that "the left" has tried civility and only been continually punched in the face for it. Only one side has been playing by the "rules", the other is in a gun fight to the death. Just ask them. Therefore they are advocating getting into gun fight mode. You and I might disagree with the tactic, but its premise is legitimate.

 

[Hrothbern]

I think what "the left" side of the room is trying to say to you is that "the left" has tried civility and only been continually punched in the face for it. Only one side has been playing by the "rules", the other is in a gun fight to the death. Just ask them. Therefore they are advocating getting into gun fight mode. You and I might disagree with the tactic, but its premise is legitimate.

I think it all turns around who you represent and what you actually do. What level of violence as response to what situation.

If you are the resistance in occupied Europe during WW2, you at least represented a substantial part of the population.
Do not be mistaken that most of the occupied population were against not really needed heroic actions leading to reprisals !
Assasinating some high-up Nazi officer caused reprisals on the population. Ordinary and more effective espionage and sabotage not.
And yes... it was difficult to separate the good of the common cause from personal revenge on some Nazi's or traitors.

Being the strong arm as representatives of the many, is fundamentally differing from being the strong arm of a few or as it happened only your in-group.
The delusion often in that bubble is that it is for the many and/or the good of all. The delusion of legitimacy. The denial that you do not have that legitimacy for the degree of violence you want or do.


Besides that fundamental legitimacy from violence

"Violence" as tool for protests, or as tool to force obedience, has such a big range.

The issue is whether the severity of the situation justifies it, whether the severity of the situation justifies the degree of violence.
Not in your personal eyes, but in the eyes of the people of your cause.
Whether that are the core activists in the eyes of the people of your movement. Or a government overreacting with police violence in the eyes of the majority of the population.

If you do not de-escalate violence all the time while there is no pressing need to use it.... de-escalating in your mind (and for the few really involved also in your actions).
If you do not de-escalate all the time.... you cannot escalate violence in a dosed response, as a meaningful tool, anymore where it matters, because you hit the ceiling too fast and are only left with "all out" violence, which is in almost all cases likely to be counter-productive to your goals and objectives.

The very fact that for you personally, or your in-group, that ceiling has been reached from disappointments, from scars, from fatigue.... does not give you the right to ignore that many others with the same convictions, etc have not reached that ceiling and disagree with you, on the use and level, because of the counter productive effects.

 

[Peuri]

I can't care less for what twitter is up in arms about, and if the right is suddenly losing its **** because of a he-said she-said situation between one busload of kids and another busload of Black Israelites and a Native Vet and the fallout thereof, well, welcome to PR. People form opinions and react to things! So shocking!

Chances are low that anyone is going to fight over those twerp kids. People vent, get angry, move on to the next problem. And honestly? The US can take a few fist fights on the street. The US is not so fragile it cannot handle petty political violence. Nations have riots, massive protest movements, bloodless and bloody revolutions, and still stand as either great or high powers. Not worried there.

I don't care about the particular incident, but the kind of discussions that were had around it. I think you should care about people throwing around calls for casual violence. That's kind of like what the alt-right is accused of, isn't it? That's how civil wars start, with the end of a communication and escalation of vitriol. I don't think anyone will start punching people because of this incident, but what about when the next "outrage" hits the fan? And when the same vitriol continues, only more emboldened by the last one? And what about the "outrage" after that one? I do worry about that. And by your definition I would be on the left. My country escalated into a civil war 100 years ago partly because of the real inequalities that did exist, much like they do in the US now, but it really was the rumors and "fake news" from both sides that escalated the hate, poisoned the minds and animated the fists. I will admit that my country did not have such a long history of democracy, large army and surveillance institutions, but either way, I see the escalating hate from both sides as immensely dangerous.

And I also do care about what this situation tells about people's ideological goggles that they have. Just because there were some obnoxious looking kids with MAGA hats, the first position that people on "the left" jumped to was that the boys must be racists. How could that possibly be known? I mean you can interpret their dancing as mocking the man, but most likely they thought that the guy was trying to de-escalate the situation that was going on with the black overt racists* on the other side of the street. It was just sweet irony, that the story proved to be wrong. And I'm saddened that the right is probably having a field day with it spinning their own narratives about it now. And that is dangerous.

I don't know that I believe in committed "moderates". Like, everyone claims to be a moderate after the fact but what was the moderate position on abolition of slavery? (or the extension of the franchise or citizenship to any group)

What is the moderate position on climate change or global inequality now?

I'm not sure if this is directed at me, but I'm not sure if I'd be called a moderate, maybe I've been moving from the left to center lately, but more than that I am worried about the health of the discourse. And still, the way you are framing this reminds me of Colbert's joke about reality having a liberal bias. A way of thinking where positions formulated by actors that have been taken by "the left" as their predecessors, that have been good, so it is assumed all the policies that it could possibly formulate now, must therefore be good also, and conversely because the opponents of the actors that the "left" sees as it's predecessors opponents have been wrong, the ones that oppose positions formulated by the present "left", must therefore be wrong too. And I'm sure I'd agree with the more progressive American liberals on economic issues, but I wouldn't presume to just outright know that I must be right and the opposition must be wrong on everything, and even go as far to say that they are immoral.

*From my view as they were throwing around racist slurs, I don't know much about their movement, if those words have some other connotations to the initiated.

Edit: And I know I've posted some virulent stuff on this forum too in the past, yes, I've sinned. But I'm trying to make good now.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

then, by that same logic, so can the Bush Administration, and they REALLY should be and are greatly deserving of it, and having the book thrown at them to boot.

Them and not only them. I suspect we have quite a bit of misrepresentation and fraud to go around, and accountability for that would be nice. I suspect just as strongly that it's not going to happen though.

 

[Patine]

I described your attitude and you asked me to look in the mirror. So either you're engaging in some playground-level "no u" type of rebuttal or you're unintentionally saying that I (the leftist extremist) am just like you.

Congratulations, you played yourself, I guess.

You obviously deal with a mentally and socially deficient crowd if you've declared a coup d'grace that easily. These juvenile antics are not worth my time.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't know that I believe in committed "moderates". Like, everyone claims to be a moderate after the fact but what was the moderate position on abolition of slavery?

For Slavery, it was either to reignite the African-return colonization schemes or 'wait' until Slavery became an unprofitable form of production, often due to mechanization/industrialization/new markets appearing elsewhere.

That was Lincoln's position, and the South perceived him as radical enough to do a secession about it. The "moderate" position in 1861 was allowing slavery to expand West, but not actively encouraging it to do so; to allow human suffering to increase at a moderate rate.

This is of course a merely historical quibble, offering no blatant analogies to the present.

 

[brennan]

What about the objective reason that it has already happened? The Weimar Republic was...

...so with the depression, hyperinflation, war reparations and the Dolschtosslegende, you think you can convince me that the Weimar Republic failed because it was tolerant? Really?

How do you feel about the police?

Pretty negative, but at least we're not the US.

 

[Senethro]

I'm not sure if this is directed at me, but I'm not sure if I'd be called a moderate, maybe I've been moving from the left to center lately, but more than that I am worried about the health of the discourse. And still, the way you are framing this reminds me of Colbert's joke about reality having a liberal bias. A way of thinking where positions formulated by actors that have been taken by "the left" as their predecessors, that have been good, so it is assumed all the policies that it could possibly formulate now, must therefore be good also, and conversely because the opponents of the actors that the "left" sees as it's predecessors opponents have been wrong, the ones that oppose positions formulated by the present "left", must therefore be wrong too. And I'm sure I'd agree with the more progressive American liberals on economic issues, but I wouldn't presume to just outright know that I must be right and the opposition must be wrong on everything, and even go as far to say that they are immoral.

*From my view as they were throwing around racist slurs, I don't know much about their movement, if those words have some other connotations to the initiated.

Edit: And I know I've posted some virulent stuff on this forum too in the past, yes, I've sinned. But I'm trying to make good now.

Nah, not aimed at you. I was just sort of generally dissing the fake moderates who claim the reformists of the previous generation as their intellectual predecessors and hold their positions, but not their intent to change things for the better. The fake moderates of every generation who think the leftists have gone one step too far, and would must rather they shush up so things can remain TIDY and people be POLITE!

Reform should be a journey, not a destination.

 

[Hrothbern]

Nah, not aimed at you. I was just sort of generally dissing the fake moderates who claim the reformists of the previous generation as their intellectual predecessors and hold their positions, but not their intent to change things for the better. The fake moderates of every generation who think the leftists have gone one step too far, and would must rather they shush up so things can remain TIDY and people be POLITE!

Reform should be a journey, not a destination.

Most leftists of today moved up a lot to the political centre if not to the right,
In my country even the socially motivated Christian Democrats (not socialistic left right motivated), were in the 80ies, as biggest party in NL, clearly more leftish than the Social-Democrats now (because of their partial roots of the Christian Unions).

I agree absolutely with reforms being a journey, but.... without some compass distractions can get you wandering in circles backward.

 

[Patine]

Nah, not aimed at you. I was just sort of generally dissing the fake moderates who claim the reformists of the previous generation as their intellectual predecessors and hold their positions, but not their intent to change things for the better. The fake moderates of every generation who think the leftists have gone one step too far, and would must rather they shush up so things can remain TIDY and people be POLITE!

Reform should be a journey, not a destination.

I call myself a Centrist (which is actually different than a Moderate) by default largely because I believe subscribing to definite, identifiable, pre-packaged ideologies on the right- or -left-wing (or hybrid ones, like Libertarianism or even Fascism) that have names and political parties built around them, and often symbols and typical campaign colours, that are well known, have all either failed utterly or are highly unlikely to work at all, but are beaten like dead horses by those who insist on continuing to push them, and the interactions between the ideologues, politicians, and politicians of these groups has become incredible and unbearably toxic to the point of preventing functional and viable government beyond "national life-support" levels in a great many cases. I have my own mixture of political beliefs and ideals, which do not conform to these named and packaged ideologies, and include many radical reform ideas and views of addressing deep-seated socio-political and economic issues at a fundamental level, instead of the typical practice of many governments and political parties of just playing "whack-a-mole" with the symptoms of these problems and calling it a day, as well as things I think are practical and common-sense and that it perplexes are so avidly avoided in being done or addressed by a lot of the powers-that-be today.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Most leftists of today moved up a lot to the political centre if not to the right,
In my country even the socially motivated Christian Democrats (not socialistic left right motivated), were in the 80ies, as biggest party in NL, clearly more leftish than the Social-Democrats now (because of their partial roots of the Christian Unions).

I agree absolutely with reforms being a journey, but.... without some compass distractions can get you wandering in circles backward.

Yes, I've probably moved a little to the right in the last 30 years, but Corbyn still doesn't sound all that left-wing to me. Just very stuck in the groove.

 

[inthesomeday]

I’ve not read most of the thread besides the first page but @Traitorfish not all our black bloc was taken from Europeans; some communities independently and organically developed the tactic during climate protests in the mid-2000s in response to the murder and torture of many prominent ELF activists

 

[aelf]

You obviously deal with a mentally and socially deficient crowd if you've declared a coup d'grace that easily. These juvenile antics are not worth my time.

Perfect. You can stop digging now.

 

[Imaus]

I don't care about the particular incident, but the kind of discussions that were had around it. I think you should care about people throwing around calls for casual violence. That's kind of like what the alt-right is accused of, isn't it? That's how civil wars start, with the end of a communication and escalation of vitriol. I don't think anyone will start punching people because of this incident, but what about when the next "outrage" hits the fan? And when the same vitriol continues, only more emboldened by the last one? And what about the "outrage" after that one? I do worry about that. And by your definition I would be on the left. My country escalated into a civil war 100 years ago partly because of the real inequalities that did exist, much like they do in the US now, but it really was the rumors and "fake news" from both sides that escalated the hate, poisoned the minds and animated the fists. I will admit that my country did not have such a long history of democracy, large army and surveillance institutions, but either way, I see the escalating hate from both sides as immensely dangerous.

And I also do care about what this situation tells about people's ideological goggles that they have. Just because there were some obnoxious looking kids with MAGA hats, the first position that people on "the left" jumped to was that the boys must be racists. How could that possibly be known? I mean you can interpret their dancing as mocking the man, but most likely they thought that the guy was trying to de-escalate the situation that was going on with the black overt racists* on the other side of the street. It was just sweet irony, that the story proved to be wrong. And I'm saddened that the right is probably having a field day with it spinning their own narratives about it now. And that is dangerous.


I'm not sure if this is directed at me, but I'm not sure if I'd be called a moderate, maybe I've been moving from the left to center lately, but more than that I am worried about the health of the discourse. And still, the way you are framing this reminds me of Colbert's joke about reality having a liberal bias. A way of thinking where positions formulated by actors that have been taken by "the left" as their predecessors, that have been good, so it is assumed all the policies that it could possibly formulate now, must therefore be good also, and conversely because the opponents of the actors that the "left" sees as it's predecessors opponents have been wrong, the ones that oppose positions formulated by the present "left", must therefore be wrong too. And I'm sure I'd agree with the more progressive American liberals on economic issues, but I wouldn't presume to just outright know that I must be right and the opposition must be wrong on everything, and even go as far to say that they are immoral.

*From my view as they were throwing around racist slurs, I don't know much about their movement, if those words have some other connotations to the initiated.

Edit: And I know I've posted some virulent stuff on this forum too in the past, yes, I've sinned. But I'm trying to make good now.

MAGA hats are seen by some as automatic symbols of hate. That's a discourse in of its own. In NYC, I've only seen one guy with it, and he was a black dude who was either looking for a fight, serious in his political beliefs, or one of the Metro's numerous oddballs. Am I just to deck someone for wearing a symbol of hate?

My position has been, for years now, since before OWS, to be self-defense and organization. Punitive actions aren't my forte and from my observation can hand the game over to the other side, whichever side, extremely quickly...but I'm digressing, again.

 

[Berzerker]

I think what "the left" side of the room is trying to say to you is that "the left" has tried civility and only been continually punched in the face for it. Only one side has been playing by the "rules", the other is in a gun fight to the death. Just ask them. Therefore they are advocating getting into gun fight mode. You and I might disagree with the tactic, but its premise is legitimate.

Aside from the militias and gun rights folk who are in the habit of bringing guns to rallies, the right only started bringing weapons after Antifa began attacking them. I saw video of 3 militia types in fatigues with their 'assault weapons' at Charlottesville keeping the peace in their vicinity as Antifa gave them a wide berth.

 

[Patine]

Aside from the militias and gun rights folk who are in the habit of bringing guns to rallies, the right only started bringing weapons after Antifa began attacking them. I saw video of 3 militia types in fatigues with their 'assault weapons' at Charlottesville keeping the peace in their vicinity as Antifa gave them a wide berth.

Was it that recently? I must have seen a LOT of doctored footage, then, most of it predating the political organizations that the doctoring should be serving the interests of by years - even a few decades.

 

[Berzerker]

We're talking about those organizations, so footage of other people predating them is another subject.