Posted on 09/29/2017 11:18:52 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For many who want to #resist against the alt-right and white supremacy, Antifa has emerged as an acceptable counterweight to neo-Nazis. They were lauded by some after they stood up to Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., in August. This mostly white radicalism only concerns me in the ways in which it might affect Black people. My first and last priority is always what is in the best interest of Black people. Antifa has a mystique that is attractive to some of our sisters and brothers who are actively engaged in struggles for freedom and liberation. This mystique might grow as we go further into the abyss of the current administrationas voting rights are curbed and affirmative action programs are eliminated.
There is a history of white radicals, though well intentioned, promoting violence as the solution to the race problem. John Brown, a hero to many, tried unsuccessfully to convince Fredrick Douglass to join his raid on Harpers Ferry. Frank Joyce, then a white member of the Northern Student Movement, a counterpart of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, expressed a desire for people to confront white supremacy with violence. In a memo to other Northern Student Movement members, Joyce wrote, I am convinced that in the long run a terrorist campaign against Southern sheriffs would be effective, even though it would be expensive in lives. I do not understand why it hasnt happened. I am not prepared to start it. Then and now white radicals have presented violence as a new solution to end the manifestations of white supremacy present during their time. Black people should continue to ignore these white saviors, as Douglass ignored Brown.
In our present struggle for liberation, we are a people divided by semantics and personality rather than tactics. The legacy civil rights organizations march and the youth-led organizations march. Whether on Black Twitter or in the Black church, there is no significant contingent of Black people who is willing to kill our oppressors or attempt to launch a revolution. This nonviolence has been a cross-generational, centuries-long consensus among Black people. From slavery to Trump, Black people in the United States have had to collectively and individually determine whether violence was the best way to achieve freedom, citizenship, equality, liberation or the end of the unjust police killings of Black men, women and children. Most Black people, through a combination of fear and sanity, have chosen to either do nothing or have actively embraced nonviolent tactics and ideologies. The race riots and uprisings of each generation have never turned into revolutions. The Black experience in the United States has produced Nat Turner but no Toussaint LOuverture. In the United States, Black people are outnumbered and out-gunned.
Still, there are always those who see violence as a panacea. The people who are most receptive to these revolutionary impulses are the young. The fearlessness and hopefulness of Black youth ignited the sit-in movement of the 1960s. This fearlessness and hopefulness also led to the establishment of groups that promoted armed revolution against the most powerful and well-equipped government on the planet. We must constantly remind ourselves that violence will not end racist policing or attacks to our civil rights. Past generations have tried violent tactics and they failed. Antifa is not dangerous because they pose any threat to the United Stateswhich has a nuclear arsenal. Antifa is dangerous because its ideology may deceive Black youth, who are demoralized by the ascendance of Trump and the continued slaughter of Black women and men by police.
Antifa is predominantly white.
Antifa doesn’t fool many people, but it provides a brittle mask of legitimacy while they attempt to stop others from exercising their own freedoms of expression.
Even some Dems are willing to admit how dangerous and counterproductive Antifa is and has always been.
At least 95% based on the mug shots I’ve seen.
Antifa *uses* black youth and anyone else they possibly can use.
But anyone who dares to say "My first and last priority is always what is in the best interest of White people" is an evil racist.
Which one? There are several.
AntiFa: frequently violent Communist idiots accusing everyone else of doing what they would eagerly do if they really were in power.
Antifa is owned and controlled by white liberal elites. Of course they need blacks to be the foot soldiers... there aren’t enough white liberal elites to cause trouble on their own.
I don’t see any key insights. To me, Antifa and Nazi are equivalent. Both attract violent losers who want an excuse to engage in mayhem. Whether that violence is justified by the “Nazi threat” the victims might pose if there were enough to matter, or it is justified by the alleged Jewish threat to racial purity that real Nazis imagined 75 years ago (the last time when there were enough Nazi followers to matter) is not important.
What matters to both groups of thugs is having an excuse to beat weaker people up, preferably many on one and armed against unarmed, while feeling virtuous about being a thug. Antifa Socialism is precisely as dangerous as National Socialism, because they both center on unprovoked and unjustified violence and express that hostility in almost an identical manner.
The money quote...
Ding, ding, ding - we have a thread winnah!
What a stinking pant load of incoherent black lib gibberish and bosh. I cannot ascertain a logical theme to this mess. It’s more of the same “tear it all down; burn it all down” you get in Africa.
“our present struggle for liberation”
“the continued slaughter of Black women and men by police.”
“Antifa is not dangerous because they pose any threat to the United Stateswhich has a nuclear arsenal.” — So we plan to nuke antifa now?
“there is no significant contingent of Black people who is willing to kill our oppressors or attempt to launch a revolution” — perhaps because the great majority of black people make an effort to lead normal, middle class lives? Or perhaps because those radicals that might “kill the oppressors to launch a revolution” know how that would wind up?
Thank you. President Trump got roasted for seeing the equivalence, but he was right. As usual.
Don’t know what it’s all about but I’m pretty sure they are influenced by ‘outsiders’ who see a chance to destroy America from within, since obama couldn’t finish his part.
I agree with the violent losers part, but I disagree with the equivalence. The 'Nazis' will never attract more than a fraction of one percent of these misfits. Communisms/Antifas - with their adulation by the Media and Educrats - will attract a much larger pool.
I agreed with a section in Pat Buchanon's book - 'the Unnecessary War' - where two historians during the time prior to the United States entry into WWII noted that Communism was much more dangerous to the United States than Nazism. At that time there were American First people who were demonstrating that the United States should stay out of this European conflict - and whenever 'American Bund', or 'Silver Shirt', people would try to join in - the American Firsters would quickly toss them out. Nazism was never going to attract more than a fraction of a percent of the people in the United States. Communism, on the other hand, could be dressed up (it sounds nice in theory - you just have to ignore human nature and the 100 years of disasters that have followed societies that have tried to implement it in practice) to appeal to a lot of useful idiots.
I see that going on today - the Democrat Party is basically preaching the Communist line (reportedly the CPUSA's website in 2012 said that they weren't running a Presidential candidate that year, and they just recommended that their followers vote for the Democrat candidate). The Media makes a big deal about these few dozen Nazis, and use them as a reason to tolerate the much larger AntiFa crew.
There are what, maybe a dozen real “neo-Nazis” alive today? And a few pretenders who are just yanking our chain?
Antifa thugs are exactly the same as Nazi thugs, and both get the same sadistic pleasure from being up the defenseless person that they blame for their status as losers. The main difference is that communist/socialist/Antifa thugs have better press.
Far left journalists, which is most of the press will excuse even the most reprehensible unprovoked Antifa attack while condemning the identical action from a Nazi. What matters morally is the unprovoked attack, not whether the thug uses national socialist or Antifa socialist rhetoric to justify the violence they enjoy for its own sake.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.