Comments

1

No, there is something much darker going on here and you should acknowledge and deal with it.
Antifa is basically an outgrowth of Youth Against War & Fascism. Young people who demonstrated classic anarchic zeal for mayhem and a fearlessness about compiling a criminal record.
WTO might have been the last hurrah for that generation. BLM could take it up but they have their own focus now. Courageous alienated young people who seriously don't give a fuck about authority.
Given a critical mass of those folks, the oft-heard chant "Whose streets? OUR streets!" has some real meaning.
Alt-right knows that, fears that, and has been enjoying exposing the hollowness of the left claim to 'own the streets'.
I hate to disabuse you of your idealism but a large part of the success of the labor movement in the 20th Century didn't occur until we developed a thug arm of our own.
It sucks, but there it is.

2

Yes, please.

4

This. Confronting them as equals bolsters them. Confronting them with mockery cuts them down. Punch them in the ego instead of the schnoz. Hurts much more.

5

kallipugos is pretty much right.

In fact this has been studied to death by the likes of historians like Nigel Copsey and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and other researchers in the social sciences. And it has been repeatedly shown that when governments refuse to act that citizens fielding confrontational opposition on the streets to extremist groups drives those extremists underground where they wither rather than fester. In fact there is a direct line between the LACK of forceful but prudent confrontation and the RISE of nationalist and racist movements.

Certainly blind thuggishness can sometimes play into the hands of whoever wants to take it the farthest. And it's a fine line. But that's not what most in the Anti-fascist movement are doing. And characterizing them all like that is lazy, ignorant and an apologia to real dangerous extremism.

But organized direct confrontation works. Because the threat of force works. It's why nation states have police, jails, and armies. Because without the fear of real direct consequences those ideologies that tend to extremism only become more emboldened, violent and extreme.


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