Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

conix, Wrong. - “They have no allegiance to liberal democracy”: an expert on antifa explains the group

"More from the Progressive mob"

labeling Antifa as progressives is to misrepresent.

Why a loose network of militant activists is confronting fascists.

By Sean [e-mail]@vox.com Updated Aug 13, 2018, 10:13am EDT

[...]

Do antifa’s tactics actually work?
Sean Illing

You’re a historian. You’ve looked at the data. Is there evidence that the tactics adopted by antifa work? Are there cases of these sorts of groups successfully undercutting fascist movements?
Mark Bray

Another good question. Whenever we look at the question of causation in history, you can never isolate one variable and make grand or definitive conclusions. So I don't want to overstate any of the causal claims being made here. But Norway is an interesting example. In the ’90s, they had a pretty violent neo-Nazi skinhead movement, and the street-level anti-fascist groups there seemed to play a significant role in marginalizing the threat. By the end of ’90s it was pretty much defunct, and subsequently there hasn't been a serious fascist [movement] in Norway.

Another example you can look at is popular responses to the National Front [a far-right political party formed in Britain in 1967] in the late ’70s in Britain. The National Front was pretty huge, and the Anti-Nazi League, through both a combination of militant anti-fascist tactics and also some more popular organizing and electoral strategies, managed to successfully deflate the National Front momentum.

One of the most famous moments of that era was the Battle of Lewisham in 1977 where the members of this largely immigrant community physically blocked a big National Front march and that sort of stopped their aggressive efforts to target that community.
They don’t care about liberal democracy
Sean Illing

So antifa’s logic is that fascism is a rejection of liberal democratic norms, and therefore it can’t be defeated with what we’d consider conventional liberal democratic tactics?
Mark Bray

Well, certainly the latter is correct. They argue a couple of things. First, they argue that in Europe you can see that parliamentary democracy did not always stop the advance of fascism and Nazism — and in the cases of both Germany and Italy, Hitler and Mussolini were appointed and gained their power largely through democratic means. When Hitler took his final control through the [1933] Enabling Act, it was approved by parliament.

They also say that rational discourse is insufficient on its own because a lot of good arguments were made and a lot of debates were had but ultimately that was insufficient during that period, and so the view that good ideas always prevail over bad ideas isn’t very convincing.

They other key point, which probably isn’t made enough, is that these are revolutionary leftists. They’re not concerned about the fact that fascism targets liberalism. These are self-described revolutionaries. They have no allegiance to liberal democracy, which they believe has failed the marginalized communities they’re defending. They’re anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.

https://www.vox.com/2017/8/25/16189064/antifa-charlottesville-dc-unite-the-right-mark-bray

See again also:

Goodness, you are loathsome.
This crap sounds "left wing" to you?
both men said that members of the group, including Keenan, repeatedly used ethnic slurs, including “spic” and “wetback,” against the marines. (There was no testimony that Massey used any such language).
Read more at https://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/12/13/marines-assaulted-philadelphia-keenan-massey-antifa/#rXmRltgOIEIm0zD8.99
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=145492413