What is our position on the ANITFA movement?

[Recuperation]

you've taken this wildly off-topic and not stuck with a particular topic and this is a thread about antifa and not really a place for freefloating ramble so i'm done enabling that but after this post

i've said quite a bit about antifa though, i meant that you became sidetracked and preoccupied with some buzz words, all of your posts were responded to but you have failed to respond to large parts of my posts but you went for those words like you wanted to escape the original topic



i was going to settle for you finally illustrating an intelligible position without changing the subject



a lot of the details of those things are pretty significant as is the extent or severity and are in fact new. i get crisis as control but i don't get 'the more you escalate the deeper you get'

Hah I apologize for taking us 'wildly off track'. Then again this board has been dead for over a year now. Are you so anxious to go back to reading spam?

My overall point is that you and BIXX who are the main defenders of antifa in here have not been able to provide any content for that defense. Your posts have lots of text but nothing to respond to, his are one line sarcastic remarks. I've lurked this board for several years. Personal attacks based on ones political tendency are the bread and butter here, I know that. But if I refuse to get down in the mud with you, you're left floundering. I imagine this would be the case with the other posters here who are so used to this board's culture so you shouldn't feel singled out.

My intelligible position is that you lack critical thinking skills. Not in regards to others but to yourself and your own positions. I would aim this position at antifa as well. Reading books and regurgitating them back at people is truly a useless exercise, for you and me. If I want tiqqun, I'll read them. I've been trying to dig an actual position out of you for the entire thread, because I don't give a fuck about whatever identity you've internalized over the course of your readings.

But if you're fed up with me there isn't much incentive to continue. I can withdraw from the thread if my presence has been so distasteful and harmful to the important conversations you would prefer to have about punching Nazis in the face or the imminent revolt of the masses.

Best of luck to all of us.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I'm legitimately surprised that you're unsure about what 'solidarity' means as it's kind of always been a staple of revolutionary leftist organising - to show your support for your fellow workers and do what you can to facilitate their successes or develop from their failures. Ele'ill suggests one of the more important aspects in the case of antifascism, that of financial support during legal struggles, but antifascist action has always had broad elements to organising. It's essentially a propaganda war and near everyone on the left needs to challenge the liberal suggestion that "advocating genocide" and "organising against the advocates of genocide" are, in anyway, comparable. I guess solidarity in this case can be something as 'simple' as posting online to counter a bullshit fascist narrative. Solidarity is about building support for our fellow workers in their struggles no matter how they emerge.

It's easy to look at the situation in the US and scoff at the idea that there's anything positive to be had, I get that. However, I can only draw on my own experiences in the UK where direct action against fascists essentially destroyed the EDL. The leadership might still have been around but most of the membership disappeared and in the face of such disruption the leadership split and became even more ineffective. There's, unfortunately, always this unassailable core of bigotry within these movements but those on the periphery legitimately fade away when confronted openly. When people talk about 'antifa' successes in the US it may seem minor or in a small way pathetic even but direct action has legitimately discouraged a lot of potential fascist recruits and disrupted fascist organisations from operating openly - it's not an example from the US but in Italy antifascists recently did this: http://libcom.org/news/community-act...-rome-13092017 and, essentially, as revolutionaries we should be encouraging and organising for the same in our communities whenever we are faced with fascist groups polluting our neighbourhoods. And antifa direct action doesn't just involve showing up at a protest dressed entirely in black but also there's day to day stuff such as cataloguing fascist websites, tracking fascist members and engaging with community groups and such to ensure that they are aware of fascists descending on their areas to hold their rallies and meetings.

Maybe you don't draw much from it personally, and that's fine, but to suggest that revolutionaries shouldn't show solidarity, or that solidarity is meaningless, is to ignore our traditions and to abandon the fact that the working class, as a class, must confront all the ills of capitalism together in order to achieve communism. Antifascist action is perhaps not a pure 'revolutionary' form of praxis in all its forms but it is certainly a praxis which deviates from the expectations of liberal capitalism and directly confronts the far right.

[BIXX]

Recuperation is playing the game of 'i can't understand what you mean' when confronted with an argument that delegitimizes their original claims. If they really are a fan of tiqqun as they claim, they should understand what it is that Ele'ill is saying. It's not a hard argument to understand and the positions taken here are clear reflections of tiqqun and similar authors.

Also, to whine about me making sarcastic one line posts is clearly not true, but if you want me to respond at length to what's said, perhaps give me something that actually requires more than a one line post. Or, alternatively, engage me where I ask questions such as at post #82. But if someone's argument is unable to stand and there's a short reply that I can give to it that's quick and concise, I'll choose that option. I also don't really feel the need to lay the whole game of responding to every detail you've posted, because eventually you reach of point of ridiculous analysis that's missing what the argument actually is.

[Recuperation]

Recuperation is playing the game of 'i can't understand what you mean' when confronted with an argument that delegitimizes their original claims. If they really are a fan of tiqqun as they claim, they should understand what it is that Ele'ill is saying. It's not a hard argument to understand and the positions taken here are clear reflections of tiqqun and similar authors.

Also, to whine about me making sarcastic one line posts is clearly not true, but if you want me to respond at length to what's said, perhaps give me something that actually requires more than a one line post. Or, alternatively, engage me where I ask questions such as at post #82. But if someone's argument is unable to stand and there's a short reply that I can give to it that's quick and concise, I'll choose that option. I also don't really feel the need to lay the whole game of responding to every detail you've posted, because eventually you reach of point of ridiculous analysis that's missing what the argument actually is.

Good god.

If I want tiqqun, I'll read them. I've been trying to dig an actual position out of you for the entire thread, because I don't give a fuck about whatever identity you've internalized over the course of your readings.

All I can say is: WHOOOOSH

[Recuperation]

I'm legitimately surprised that you're unsure about what 'solidarity' means as it's kind of always been a staple of revolutionary leftist organising - to show your support for your fellow workers and do what you can to facilitate their successes or develop from their failures. Ele'ill suggests one of the more important aspects in the case of antifascism, that of financial support during legal struggles, but antifascist action has always had broad elements to organising. It's essentially a propaganda war and near everyone on the left needs to challenge the liberal suggestion that "advocating genocide" and "organising against the advocates of genocide" are, in anyway, comparable. I guess solidarity in this case can be something as 'simple' as posting online to counter a bullshit fascist narrative. Solidarity is about building support for our fellow workers in their struggles no matter how they emerge.

It's easy to look at the situation in the US and scoff at the idea that there's anything positive to be had, I get that. However, I can only draw on my own experiences in the UK where direct action against fascists essentially destroyed the EDL. The leadership might still have been around but most of the membership disappeared and in the face of such disruption the leadership split and became even more ineffective. There's, unfortunately, always this unassailable core of bigotry within these movements but those on the periphery legitimately fade away when confronted openly. When people talk about 'antifa' successes in the US it may seem minor or in a small way pathetic even but direct action has legitimately discouraged a lot of potential fascist recruits and disrupted fascist organisations from operating openly - it's not an example from the US but in Italy antifascists recently did this: http://libcom.org/news/community-act...-rome-13092017 and, essentially, as revolutionaries we should be encouraging and organising for the same in our communities whenever we are faced with fascist groups polluting our neighbourhoods. And antifa direct action doesn't just involve showing up at a protest dressed entirely in black but also there's day to day stuff such as cataloguing fascist websites, tracking fascist members and engaging with community groups and such to ensure that they are aware of fascists descending on their areas to hold their rallies and meetings.

Maybe you don't draw much from it personally, and that's fine, but to suggest that revolutionaries shouldn't show solidarity, or that solidarity is meaningless, is to ignore our traditions and to abandon the fact that the working class, as a class, must confront all the ills of capitalism together in order to achieve communism. Antifascist action is perhaps not a pure 'revolutionary' form of praxis in all its forms but it is certainly a praxis which deviates from the expectations of liberal capitalism and directly confronts the far right.

Monkeyman I understand exactly what kind of Solidarity is on offer. If you're capable of providing material or legal support to the antifascists then you should do that. If you can lend actual manpower to a confrontation, you should do that. I said as much in my post. Unfortunately that is not an option for 90% of people even in the US, let alone other countries. Aside from one off demonstrations which take place in the middle every few months, the vast majority of clashes are taking place in a hyper-liberal bastion located in California which does not reflect the conditions of the rest of the country.

So what people are left with is giving vocal solidarity, almost exclusively on the internet. This leads to two things, the first being uncritical attitudes and thought which I think I've addressed enough so I will avoid beating a dead horse. Number 2 though is perhaps even worse. These people are essentially outsourcing their sense of outrage and powerlessness onto the antifa activists.

Have you noticed that BLM has essentially disappeared here in the last few months? What has it been replaced by? Multi-millionaire athletes kneeling for a moment before the game starts. Those inauguration riots after trump got elected? Those have disappeared as well, replaced with the nightly outrage of fucking Jimmy Kimmel or some other asinine television personality or newspaper columnist. This is the future of antifascist action here in the US. 10s of thousands of people consuming empty riot porn created by a numerically insignificant band of activists in Berkeley.

You can't see the dangers in that?

[BIXX]

10s of thousands of people consuming empty riot porn created by a numerically insignificant band of activists in Berkeley.

When does it go from numerically insignificant to numerically significant?


Don't worry, I haven't forgotten your other post.

[Recuperation]

I think you're the one who is supposed to be telling me that? I'm saying it won't.

[BIXX]

I think you're the one who is supposed to be telling me that? I'm saying it won't.

Sorry, your reading comprehension has clearly failed you. What is the number that makes the "band of activists" numerically significant?

[Recuperation]

Well lets see, there are roughly 330 million people in the country. So let me flip the question on you, are the Berkeley antifascists numerically significant in your mind?

[BIXX]

Sorry, you need to define these numbers seeing as I think this numerical significance shit you're spouting is... well, shit. Numerical significance also matters less than you think it might.

[Recuperation]

Which number do you want me to define? The population of the country?

I crunched some numbers for you:

Its difficult to quantify political engagement as its not a metric that anyone with the tools to track it are very interested in. So lets settle for electoral participation? Its certainly not perfect but seeing as the ballot is held up in this country as the supreme act of citizenship I don’t think its totally useless either.

In the last election 139,000,000 people cast a ballot, that’s about 42% of the population. So that’s 42% of the population that at the very least had some kind of investment in the system as of November of last year, enough to register and then request an absentee ballot, fill it out and mail it in or even stand in line for a few hours just to cast their vote. I think it’s fair to assume that a large amount of people are prevented from voting, either through suppression, ID issues or laws stripping felons of the right, etc. So lets add another 3% to that number for a flat 45% of adults willing to participate in America’s liberal democracy.

Lets be insanely generous and say that the Berkeley antifascists number in the range of 10,000, that’s .00003% of the population. Lets use my completely BS estimation of there being a 100:1 supporter to activist ratio for Antifa, that still only brings us to a whopping .003% of the population.
Earlier in this thread you appeared to suggest communization as your preferred social revolution strategy? Do you imagine that .003% of the population is sufficient to carry out a program of communization? Or to offset the 45% of the population who we can assume have some kind of investment (with at least 20% being conservatives who have a DEFINITE investment) in things continuing as they are? I would say you are bordering on a vanguard strategy at that point, without taking into account that “successful” vanguard strategies take decades to develop, not months.

These numbers aren’t even taking into account people with no interest in voting but who take a keen interest in politics regardless.

I await your thoughtful response.

[Recuperation]

Suggested soundtrack for this comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvnsj8G7QM

This conversation got real hostile, lets lower the tone a little. Hostility is perhaps a poor indicator of commitment?

[BIXX]

Suggested soundtrack for this comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvnsj8G7QM

This conversation got real hostile, lets lower the tone a little. Hostility is perhaps a poor indicator of commitment?

I appreciate your peace offering, here is mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzAuXuxD0Oo

Don't worry tho, I've got a reply coming in a few minutes.

[BIXX]

Which number do you want me to define?

What is the number of people who have to be involved in these clashes for them to be considered significant for you?

I don’t think its totally useless either.

For revolutionaries it is.

In the last election 139,000,000 people cast a ballot, that’s about 42% of the population. So that’s 42% of the population that at the very least had some kind of investment in the system as of November of last year, enough to register and then request an absentee ballot, fill it out and mail it in or even stand in line for a few hours just to cast their vote. I think it’s fair to assume that a large amount of people are prevented from voting, either through suppression, ID issues or laws stripping felons of the right, etc. So lets add another 3% to that number for a flat 45% of adults willing to participate in America’s liberal democracy.

Hell, add 20% to your estimate- even at 63% that leaves 37% who wouldn't participate in this liberal democracy. This is why your metric is useless for revolutionaries- if 37% of the population isn't voting, instead snubbing political engagement with liberalism, that doesn't speak to their future actions, and furthermore, voting doesn't speak much to the actions that'll be taken by the voters in the future- how many were people who hadn't engaged with radial politics prior to Trump's election? How many will flip? Etc...

I'm gonna have to rearrange some of what you said to make a point without jumping back and forth, if you feel that I'm just cutting your post up and rearranging it so it doesn't make any sense I'd remind you that I'm responding to the points your argument rests on.

Earlier in this thread you appeared to suggest communization as your preferred social revolution strategy?

If we wanna get really nerdy, not at all, communization is communization- not a "social revolution strategy".

Do you imagine that .003% of the population is sufficient to carry out a program of communization?

There is no "program".

Lets be insanely generous and say that the Berkeley antifascists number in the range of 10,000, that’s .00003% of the population. Lets use my completely BS estimation of there being a 100:1 supporter to activist ratio for Antifa, that still only brings us to a whopping .003% of the population.

Or to offset the 45% of the population who we can assume have some kind of investment (with at least 20% being conservatives who have a DEFINITE investment) in things continuing as they are?

So, lets crunch a few more numbers. I'll be cutting these down a bit based on personal observations that close to 1/3rd of these people are also communists- that number I'd assume gets lower in some cases and higher in others, so hopefully it'll average out a bit.
40,000 antifascists showed their faces in Boston
2,000 roughly in Portland
Dunno why I can't find the actual numbers on how many antifascists were at cville but I'm willing to say 3000, as a low estimate.
I think saying there's 10,000 in Berkley is fair, maybe a bit high, lets drop it to 8,000.
There are a lot of cities I'm not gonna bother counting up, for example Ferguson and St. Louis, or New York, Maine, San Jose, Oakland, etc... Due to simplicity. Lets be generous to you, and say only 10,000 antifascists are left in the US- an estimate I'm positive is low.
Which leaves us with 63,000 antifascists, and assuming roughly 1/3rd are communists, 21,000 communists. Given estimates of various leftist organization membership, I'd say that this number is probably on the low end, as most communists appear to be unaffiliated with an official organization.
21,000 commies equals roughly .0065% of the population- already more than your estimate of total supporters of antifa. At 63,000 you're looking at nearly .02% of people just acting as antifascists- and for fun, let's look at your "bs estimate" off 100:1. We get just under 2% of the population supporting antifascist action. Now I think this will vary from locality to locality, but it looks roughly accurate as a general trend (I live in a decidedly left-liberal to leftist area where I'd be willing to bet that number is much higher, maybe as high as 10%- I'm gonna guess most areas are lower- say 1-2%, which various population centers swinging to the extreme ends of the spectrum).

Lets check that against the insurgency in afghanistan- .25% of people are insurgents there, roughly, with varying levels of support in different areas of the country. I acknowledge that there is a difference between .25% and .0065%- a rather large one, at that. But the reality of the insurgency is a long and complicated one, which has been holding off the armed forces of various coalitions and nations at varying levels of support and membership. The problem isn't so much one of numbers, but of ethic.

I would say you are bordering on a vanguard strategy at that point, without taking into account that “successful” vanguard strategies take decades to develop, not months.

This is a whole other discussion I'd be interested in, but I just wanna say that any insurrection will have people who come first.

[Recuperation]

Ignoring semantics, communization would require conscious exertion by the individual correct? No more mass psychology and all that? What metric are you using to place 37% of the population, a HUGE number in a rejectionist camp? I know plenty of people who don’t participate in the system at all sorts of different levels and capacities and 99% of them are legitimately just not doing anything. With no conscious intent. Being a superfluous human is a legitimate occupation in this country already, even without something like basic income in place yet haha. But superfluous humans are a part of this epoch right, this context? They are still as likely to spout the same patriotic nonsense that any conservative or liberal is.

I think its interesting that your examples bring you back to armed conflict alone. Even at the peaks of the insurgency in Afghanistan the country has never been in a situation of total war, and has maintained its cultural integrity. They also have a completely different history from us. Wouldn’t you agree that insurrection of this military sort also leads to exceptionalisms and tribalisms? The necessity of secrecy would naturally leads to exclusion of fellow conscious-communizers right?

[uncle sam]

Hey Fag!

I would love to believe that us communists and dick suckers alike should join together to circle jerk antifas dick! We all love to suck their nuts and they love it when w e put it up their ass. That's my position and would love to hear your thoughts.

Check your privilege,

Uncle Mother Fuckin Sam 8===D-----

[BIXX]

Ignoring semantics, communization would require conscious exertion by the individual correct? No more mass psychology and all that? What metric are you using to place 37% of the population, a HUGE number in a rejectionist camp?

My point was that I don't believe the voting stats are significant, because of exactly that- I don't believe 37% of the country is rejecting capital so much as just not participating- it forms tmean anything about their future actions. OTOH, voting doesn't mean someone won't abandon liberalism.

But superfluous humans are a part of this epoch right, this context? They are still as likely to spout the same patriotic nonsense that any conservative or liberal is.

They're also just as likely to flip as anyone else.

I think its interesting that your examples bring you back to armed conflict alone. Even at the peaks of the insurgency in Afghanistan the country has never been in a situation of total war, and has maintained its cultural integrity.

Total war isn't something I think is particularly practical for liberation from the existing order (if you mean total war in the sense I think you do). Also, I think the maintenance of their cultural integrity is up for debate depending on who you ask in those countries. Culture is more often than not a personal (or rather, ideological) analysis of societal values.

They also have a completely different history from us.

Agreed- but I think that it is again less relevant than folks think. The necessity to destroy capitalism exists just as much there as it does anywhere else.

Wouldn’t you agree that insurrection of this military sort also leads to exceptionalisms and tribalisms?

Would you mind expanding on this? I don't wanna reply to something thinking you mean one thing and have it turn out you mean something else.

The necessity of secrecy would naturally leads to exclusion of fellow conscious-communizers right?

Aside from my personal criticisms of the idea of class consciousness, I think communes will be formed by the fight against capital itself, among people who have struggled together etc...

[quixoteslance]

The neo-Nazis are just feeble and pathetic byproducts of globalized capitalism. They don't even have the means to perform their agenda.
They are a symptom of a sick society. But simply curing a symptom does not cure the disease. Globalized capitalism along with the watched national borders is mobilizing fascism and creating victims every second and those whining self-identified "Nazis" are just feces of its organism.
Fight Neo-Nazi assembly? Doesn't hurt. But there's much more to be done.
Antifa is shortsighted like this.

[supremenincompoop]

After reviewing antifa I've learned this non-group; since it is based on independent cells, is anti-facist. Yet it employs the same tactics and rhetoric as Hitler. Nazism started as a Socialist movement just like antifa. This movement claims to be anti-racist yet targets whites, which the last time I checked is a racial classification. This sick, perverted group embraces pedophilia because age is a social constraint. Does this mean that if someone wanted to rape a baby it is ok? Since rape is a social constraint does that make rape acceptable? The entire premise of this joke of a non-group is based on a poor reflection of true anarchy. True anarchy means without leadership, not without rules. So, if there is anyone who assumes a leadership place in this movement...they are no longer representing anarchy. Does this mean it really doesn't exist? See how foolish this could become. The uneducated, social outcasts who make up this movement need to get a real life. Join the military and get some real structure and discipline. Obviously they are not smart enough to even know what they are supposed to believe.

Antifa is a gathering of fellow communists, socialists, and anarchists. What is your view on this movement? I think that they are putting the Idea of a proletariat revolution to actual application rather than the current "neo-liberal" (Ew... gotta get that taste outta my mouth) idea of no intervention whatsoever. In my opinion, they are our tool as the far-left to fight these neo-fascist white supremacists. So yeah, I want to know what my fellow lefties think. Oh, and if you are a fascist just browsing... fuck off m8. -Miguel

[BIXX]

The neo-Nazis are just feeble and pathetic byproducts of globalized capitalism. They don't even have the means to perform their agenda.

Given that they've both killed and beaten people, I don't really care if you think that antifa is short sighted- they do save actual lives. You also seem to think no one involved with antifascist action is involved with anything else- that is objectively untrue. Antifasicts are in numerous other fields, from housing, to anti-police brutality, to actual direct work against capital. Not all antifascists of course but I'd wager a large amount of them. To claim short sightedness shows your lack of familiarity with Antifa itself.