Antifa: There are Monsters Everywhere!!!!

[Cloud_Strife]

IDK going senile. Get off my lawn!!!

Spend your remaining time and sanity with your loved ones... it's cruel to deprive them of your lucidity....

 

[Angst]

Generally you can change people's minds for genuinely held beliefs via facts, logic and arguements.

Doesn't matter if it's fascism or hardcore christian or whatever.

You can with a personal connection (sometimes). Takes a bit of individual effort.

Personal relations is always the best approach, but most people don't respond to logic and arguments, actually. It has been well established in the literature. Rather, they are moved by emotional appeals. For the left, it's usually appeal to empathy, for the right, it's usually projection of power.

 

[Zardnaar]

Personal relations is always the best approach, but most people don't respond to logic and arguments, actually. It has been well established in the literature. Rather, they are moved by emotional appeals. For the left, it's usually appeal to empathy, for the right, it's usually projection of power.

Pretty much. Some people drift into groups like that due to social exclusion or lack of self esteem.

Policies don't matter, emotion does. Same thing her we just elected Trump's opposite.

 

[Angst]

Pretty much. Some people drift into groups like that due to social exclusion or lack of self esteem.

Policies don't matter, emotion does. Same thing her we just elected Trump's opposite.

Trump and Biden aren't really comparable. This is beyond policy, by the way. It has to do with undermining democracy and corruption.

 

[tjs282]

Same thing her we just elected Trump's opposite.

Trump and Biden aren't really comparable. This is beyond policy, by the way. It has to do with undermining democracy and corruption.

Zard lives in NZ (="her[e]"), so I assume he was talking about Jacinta Arden, who was also just (re-)elected, and not Joe Biden (who would be "ther yu" to Zard).

 

[Kyriakos]

The prime minister of New Zealand is too boring, sorry. And I am not surprised she won convincingly against Ann Widdecombe.
Chloe would be good.
In the case of Australia, only that ridiculous clown, Abbott, was funny.

 

[Angst]

Zard lives in NZ (="her[e]"), so I assume he was talking about Jacinta Arden, who was also just (re-)elected, and not Joe Biden (who would be "ther yu" to Zard).

I'm an idiot. Thanks for the correction.

EDIT: I even misread his post completely from what I can tell. Derp. Opposite means opposite, Angst

 

[yung.carl.jung]

German militants of the Communist Party backed by Stalin in the early 1930’s.

So probably not a terrible threat today. “Antifa” is as much a fiction as the fa they are anti.

If you want ot be that exact and play Patine's game then I agree with you, unfortunately social reality is not so clean.

The militant wing of the KPD started as a reaction against the incredible violence from the Police and the Freikorps.

Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League), the KPD's paramilitary and propaganda organisation, had been formed in 1924[18][19] and was often involved in violent clashes with the police. In 1929, the Red Front was banned as extremist by the governing Social Democrats after rallies escalated on May Day in Berlin, where 33 civilians were killed by the Berlin Police, making 1 May 1929 the bloodiest May Day in German labour history.[19]

And you know what? They were right all along.

On 5 May 1919, members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlach near Munich, acted on a tip from a local cleric and arrested and killed twelve alleged communist workers (most of them actually members of the Social Democratic Party). A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich today commemorates the incident.[8][9][10] In another incident on May 6, 1919, Freikorps forces in Munich entered a Catholic Church proceeding to beat and then shoot 25 people who had been falsely accused of being Communists.[11]
Provisional Freikorps armored vehicle in Berlin during the Kapp Putsch of March 1920.
Freikorps also fought against the communists in the Baltics, Silesia, Poland and East Prussia after the end of World War I, including aviation combat, often with significant success. Anti-Slavic racism was sometimes present, although the ethnic cleansing ideology and anti-Semitism expressed in later years had not yet developed.[12] In the Baltics they fought against communists as well as against the newborn independent democratic countries Estonia and Latvia. In Latvia, Freikorps murdered 300 civilians in Mitau who were suspected of having "Bolshevik sympathies". After the capture of Riga, another 3000 alleged communists were killed,[11] including summary executions of 50–60 prisoners daily.[13] Though officially disbanded in 1920, some of them continued to exist for several years[14] and many Freikorps attempted, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the government in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920.[15] Their attack was halted when German citizens loyal to the government went on strike, cutting off many services and making daily life so problematic that the coup was called off.

Remember, this was long before the Nazis took power. Ex-soldiers were killing civilians left and right on supposed allegations of being a communist. Not reacting to that is madness. Numerous members of the Freikorps later joined the NSDAP, only to be slain in the Night of long Knives.

Of course these are just a few examples. In the late 10s and early 20s there were countless small-scale revolutions, policy endeavors, political uprisings, communes.. and they were all put down incredibly violently. The People's Republic of Bavaria ended in large scale murder. Practically every relevant politician from the USPD was killed by reactionaries. Communists and Socialists were also right to brand not only the Nazis, the Freikorps and the monarchists as enemies, but also the SPD. After all it was the SPD that ended up curbing all political efforts left of themselves via state mandated power.

In the 30s it wasn't so much "backed" by Stalin, but rather it had by all means and purposes become nothing but a soviet plant with the sole purpose of denouncing the SPD. Most of the people that mattered had left by then. Even with all the **** going I could not find one historical source that pointed to a single murder from the early KPD/Antifa.

These posts seem emblematic of the dismissive, dangerous sciolism wikipedia type of researching history. Frankly, on this forum especially, people post all kinds of utterly brainded **** about German history that they gathered from hearsay (not talking about you two).

Against the backdrop of omnipresent political violence against all strains of leftists, of rising fascism and of course of poverty and political instability, I personally find that one cannot fault the early Antifa KPD for developing their own paramilitary wing. I mean.. their predictions were right, too. Most of the people affiliated with any kind of hard-left politics ended up dead in the streets or in a concentration camp. Frankly, I think I would've done the same thing. TL;DR at least read the entire Wikipedia article before ****posting about topics you're a layman on.

At least in parts of Europe (like Italy and Greece) antifa is certainly a lot less tame than the US one.
Moreover various euro countries had leftist terrorist groups, including Germany.
Maybe the situation in Greece is a bit better cause by now leftist terror is not associated with partition, while in Italy there is the north-south divide and in Spain there was the alliance between the left and independence groups (like the Catalans) in the civil war (maybe it still exists? don't know anything about this).

In my view such groups (whether they are left or right) are usually characterized by people who speak in slogans and have no practical idea for any successor state if their 'revolution' would materialize. They are, thus, reactionary in nature.

I'm not gonna go out and say that the RAF dindu nuffin wrong, but they were definitely spot on with their diagnosis of what was going wrong in Germany at the time, as was the SDS. Didn't save either from being shot by police.

And I do agree with the general statement that antifa tends to be more violent in Europe. Though many people conflate antifa with the black bloc, which is mostly just apolitical people looking for an excuse to be violent. I personally see it as something positive that there is a violent adversary to fascists, since most of the violence seems to be used against windows, cars and police shields. I also think antifa are elementary in countering scare-tactics from far-right groups, like we saw them in Chemnitz in the mid 10s. I lived there at the time, and if it wasn't for people showing solidarity, I know for a fact many migrants would be too scared to leave their houses on monday.

I am not aware of a single political homicide comitted by antifa members. meanwhile antifascists are popped every day.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah the main problem with the German KPD wasn't that they violently fought the Nazis, it was they took Stalin's orders, which meant refusing point-blank to work with the SPD during the Third Period because they were considered "social fascists" and not significantly different from the Nazis.

The Third Period of course ended with Hitler's assumption of power and the outlawing of the KPD and trade union movement, which somehow surprised the Comintern even though Hitler had been saying he would do exactly that.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah the main problem with the German KPD wasn't that they violently fought the Nazis, it was they took Stalin's orders, which meant refusing point-blank to work with the SPD during the Third Period because they were considered "social fascists" and not significantly different from the Nazis.

The Third Period of course ended with Hitler's assumption of power and the outlawing of the KPD and trade union movement, which somehow surprised the Comintern even though Hitler had been saying he would do exactly that.

I believe the Moscow Communists did some purging in Spain during the civil war.

 

[Lexicus]

I believe the Moscow Communists did some purging in Spain during the civil war.

Why quote me if you aren't saying anything relevant to what I said?

 

[Zardnaar]

Why quote me if you aren't saying anything relevant to what I said?

You were saying the KPD were refusing to work with the SPD.

Sonething similar happened in Spain except they would murder other anti fascists.

 

[cardgame]

SPD was very explicitly not anti fascist

 

[amadeus]

SPD was very explicitly not anti fascist

Could you elaborate? I thought the SPD was the only party in the Reichstag to vote against, when they could, Nazi attempts at seizing power.

 

[cardgame]

Could you elaborate? I thought the SPD was the only party in the Reichstag to vote against, when they could, Nazi attempts at seizing power.

I might have confused them with the CDU.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I might have confused them with the CDU.

CDU didn't exist at that time,it was founded in 45. You are likely talking about the "Center Party" (Zentrumspartei), which was its political predecessor.

Could you elaborate? I thought the SPD was the only party in the Reichstag to vote against, when they could, Nazi attempts at seizing power.

They weren't the only party who opposed the Nazis, but they were de-facto the only party in the Reichstag to vote against the Nazis because most USPD politicians were murdered and the KPD was infiltrated by Stalinists.

A lot of communists realized that the Weimar democracy had ran its course and the real elections were to be held in the streets, which again was a fundamentally correct prediction. At that point in the '30s all genuine political efforts left of the SPD were curbed, partially by the SPD itself of course.

Just for the record, "Social Fascism" is of course a lukewarm denounciation tactic, and it was in fact absolutely stupid not to ally with the SPD, we are in total agreement about that.

Yeah the main problem with the German KPD wasn't that they violently fought the Nazis, it was they took Stalin's orders, which meant refusing point-blank to work with the SPD during the Third Period because they were considered "social fascists" and not significantly different from the Nazis.

It's not so much that most communists were hardcore Stalinists and decided to follow every order of his, it was rather the case that the KPD was successfully infiltrated in an admittedly impressive way. You can fault the people for being gullible and not resisting, sure, but it seems much more sensible to me to fault Stalin and the Sowjet Union for this specific incident.

Leftist infighting is obviously a huge problem, but it wasn't always self-inflicted or mere pettiness, more often than not it was a concentrated political effort.

The Third Period of course ended with Hitler's assumption of power and the outlawing of the KPD and trade union movement, which somehow surprised the Comintern even though Hitler had been saying he would do exactly that.

I'm not so sure the ComIntern was actually surprised, I sure as hell know the Soviets weren't. I think it's much more likely that this outcome was intended.

In the end what we saw happening with the KPD in the 30s is very much like what happened to Socialists, Communists and Anarchists during Republican Spain. There was a concentrated effort from Stalin's side to meddle, sew chaos and destroy any meaningful political action. We can speculate about Stalin's motives forever, I personally don't know enough to make a definitie statement, but it seems to me a matter of fact that the Sowjet Union put an insane amount of ressources into bringing down actual grassroots communist movements.

 

[Zardnaar]

CDU didn't exist at that time,it was founded in 45. You are likely talking about the "Center Party" (Zentrumspartei), which was its political predecessor.



They weren't the only party who opposed the Nazis, but they were de-facto the only party in the Reichstag to vote against the Nazis because most USPD politicians were murdered and the KPD was infiltrated by Stalinists.

A lot of communists realized that the Weimar democracy had ran its course and the real elections were to be held in the streets, which again was a fundamentally correct prediction. At that point in the '30s all genuine political efforts left of the SPD were curbed, partially by the SPD itself of course.

Just for the record, "Social Fascism" is of course a lukewarm denounciation tactic, and it was in fact absolutely stupid not to ally with the SPD, we are in total agreement about that.



It's not so much that most communists were hardcore Stalinists and decided to follow every order of his, it was rather the case that the KPD was successfully infiltrated in an admittedly impressive way. You can fault the people for being gullible and not resisting, sure, but it seems much more sensible to me to fault Stalin and the Sowjet Union for this specific incident.

Leftist infighting is obviously a huge problem, but it wasn't always self-inflicted or mere pettiness, more often than not it was a concentrated political effort.



I'm not so sure the ComIntern was actually surprised, I sure as hell know the Soviets weren't. I think it's much more likely that this outcome was intended.

In the end what we saw happening with the KPD in the 30s is very much like what happened to Socialists, Communists and Anarchists during Republican Spain. There was a concentrated effort from Stalin's side to meddle, sew chaos and destroy any meaningful political action. We can speculate about Stalin's motives forever, I personally don't know enough to make a definitie statement, but it seems to me a matter of fact that the Sowjet Union put an insane amount of ressources into bringing down actual grassroots communist movements.

Mapping my political beliefs to Weimar Germany I would likely be a SPD voter.

Most communist parties were patsy's of Moscow or were infiltrated by Moscow.

Everyone kinda knew it at the the time as well plus western Europe was full of White Russians.

So being opposed to the KPD or picking the Nazis over them made sense in 1930-33 with the knowledge they had at the time.

 

[Lexicus]

It's not so much that most communists were hardcore Stalinists and decided to follow every order of his, it was rather the case that the KPD was successfully infiltrated in an admittedly impressive way. You can fault the people for being gullible and not resisting, sure, but it seems much more sensible to me to fault Stalin and the Sowjet Union for this specific incident.

I didn't mean what I said as an attribution of blame.

I'm not so sure the ComIntern was actually surprised, I sure as hell know the Soviets weren't. I think it's much more likely that this outcome was intended.

Nah, the Soviets totally were. I don't know where you're getting this information but the Third Propaganda Period was all about minimizing the threat posed by the Nazis, and the outlawing of the KPD came as a surprise, leading to the total reversal into the "popular front" (ie, uniting with "bourgeois" parties against fascism) period which lasted until Molotov-Ribbentrop.

 

[Berzerker]

Antifa was at least indirectly responsible for that girl getting killed in Charlottesville, from a practical point of view.

You really can‘t blame one side for something the other ones does. So no, anti is NOT responsible for „that girl getting killed in Charlottesville“ and even just suggesting that is horrible.

Three people died because Antifa started a riot by attacking protesters, the only one more responsible for Heather Heyer's death is the driver. If my side showed up to attack protesters and people died I sure wouldn't walk away thinking I was blameless. There were 2 sides: the lone killer and everyone else.

 

[CaptainF]

Three people died because Antifa started a riot by attacking protesters, the only one more responsible for Heather Heyer's death is the driver. If my side showed up to attack protesters and people died I sure wouldn't walk away thinking I was blameless. There were 2 sides: the lone killer and everyone else.

Eh, actually none of this is true, but I know that won't stop you repeating your lies. After all, Berz is the gullible simp who listens to Jimmy Dore's drunken rants and takes them as gospel! He also thinks Global Warming is a good thing. I wonder if he'll next try to claim he isn't racist towards black people? That would be good for a laugh!