Thursday, August 17, 2017

But what should be more troubling to Antifa is that its strategy of participating in violence provides a unique opening for right-wing extremists. We are hearing more and more about Antifa not because its anti-fascist message is being disseminated more effectively. Instead we are hearing about it as the bogeyman of white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other far-right groups.
Antifa is, in this context, the violent provocateur of the alt-right. Unless and until the left acknowledges this political vulnerability, being able to distinguish Antifa from its ideological opponents will increasingly become a blurry enterprise.
This was true back in the Sixties and Seventies when the Black Bloc provoked violence at otherwise peaceful demonstrations. There was a theory that the perpetrators of violence were was agent provocateurs, and there likely was some truth to that in cases. However, it was not true of all cases and perhaps most. The people perpetrating the violence were far left. They self-identified as anarchists. Later this became known as the black bloc.

I knew some of these people back then. They were predominantly anarchists, although it seemed to me that some were just thugs looking for a fight with The Man. This was a fringe group at the periphery of the much larger antiwar movement, when most demonstrations were organized as protests against the Vietnam War. This was the extent of their interest for some, but there were also a lot of people that were also peacefully protesting a system that they viewed as exploitive and corrupt. This can be viewed as a dialectical response to the status quo at the time that considered "normal" in America. A lot of younger people didn't want to sign up for that future.

Among the protesters were fringe groups of socialists and even a few communists, but they were also generally peaceful in my experience. It was the self-styled anarchists that were into bashing, and their target was the riot police. Most of the policing of the demonstrations was by regular forces, but there was also a contingent of riot police in the background and violence would work to draw them out. The mainstream media never reported on this, and the rest of the demonstrators mostly ignored it as an aberration, if they even encountered it at all. It was not a widespread phenomenon.

But now the media is on it, and it is also on the Internet. The peaceful opposition needs to be aware that this is an issue and not try to cover it up or deny it, or it will become toxic.

Fortune
Antifa Needs a New Way to Fight the Alt-Right
James Braxton Peterson is professor of English and director of Africana studies at Lehigh University

17 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

Yep. The "counter-protest" is a questionable tactic under the best of circumstances, because the counter-protester is viewed as a disrupter.

If the goal of a public protest is to win public sympathy, then disrupting, heckling, taunting, and being violent probably won't work, and may backfire.

The counter-protesters seem focused on a "them vs. us" battle, not on the big picture.

Detroit Dan said...

I was initially sympathetic to the idea that the antifa were part of the problem. But after thinking about it, the extent of their victory for the forces of good has been far reaching.

The alt-right use intimidation to get their way. The antifa decided to fight back, and have been successful. Confederate statues are being taken down, the terms of the debate have turned against the Confederates even amongst Republicans. The NBC nightly news that I've recently started watching mocks Trump and the alt-right, backed by videos and photos taken by antifa and their comrades. It has been a brilliant success. Bravo antifa! The world is better place because you stood up to the bullies, and out-smarted them.

Dan Lynch said...

Chomsky: Antifa is a major gift to the right

"What they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive."
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"It's a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant."


A poll show that most Americans -- including black Americans -- want the statues to stay. (I oppose the statues as a matter of principle, but am not losing sleep over them). But I would not be surprised if public opinion shifts as more statues are taken down. Most people are followers.

NOLA's statue controversy had been debated for decades and it's not clear that antifa had anything to do with NOLA's decision. PerhapsDavid Duke deserves credit for their removal because by championing the statues, Duke made them synonymous with the KKK.

Baltimore's mayor says she removed the statues because she was afraid of C'ville-type violence, not because of Antifa.

MRW said...

David and his KKK bonafides are obsolete. He renounced them years ago. If you can accept Senator Byrd making a 180, why not Duke?

Matt Franko said...

Duke is still into race based concepts though... same with alt-right (Spencer & Co.)...

They delineate issues via racial aspects ... mostly using correlation....

Objective scientists they are not... not trained that way... I think Duke and Spencer are both history majors so very backward looking people...

Matt Franko said...

Darwin was very backward looking too with his theories that we descended from the apes, etc... all the genealogy people are backward looking ... these are not the A Team...

Matt Franko said...

"James Braxton Peterson is professor of English and director of Africana studies at Lehigh University."

This guy is not qualified with this training to be making suggestions that have a predictive component... iow this is not the best guy who anyone would want to seek advice on a future course of action...

Salsabob said...

Sputnik is reporting Assange will soon release wikileak proving Nazi driver of car that killed in Charlottesville was actually deep state former DNC operative attempting to get away with Hillary's missing emails! You heard it here first - of course!

Tom Hickey said...

Darwin was very backward looking too with his theories that we descended from the apes, etc.all the genealogy people are backward looking ... these are not the A Team...

All of science is backward looking. It looks at data which is necessarily from the past. The other alternative is making stuff up out of one's head. That's called magical thinking.

André said...

The wolves that kill people in daily basis when stealing money from health care, education, public security and etc will always complain about violent insurgency of the sheep.

They will even try to convince some part of the sheep that violent protests are bad. They will call for "peaceful protests", which usually is the same thing as no protests at all. The wolves don't want they power to be challenged.

That's the reasoning behind black bocs. It has a very distinct nature from antifa...

Dan Lynch said...

@Andre, non-violence is a tactic, and violence is a tactic. Neither works 100% of the time, perhaps not even most of the time.

A thinking person will assess the situation and choose tactics that are most likely to attain his goals.

The wolves do not care if the antifa sheep attack the right wing sheep. When sheep fight among themselves, the wolves eat well.

Tom Hickey said...

Right, Dan. This is about strategy and tactics to accomplish policy objectives that are both positive and normative.

Agree with Andre that black blocs are about opposing the establishment and the status quo it imposes, while specifically directed groups opposes those specifics in particular. Antifa seems to fall mostly in the later category, but I would also assume it tracks at least some of the black bloc folks.

The people that organized the torchlight march made a huge strategic and tactical blunder. It was bound to provoke a strong reaction and probably a lot of people think it was justified. After the Nazis, that's a place you just don't go unless you aim at severe disruption.

The same thing is happening in Eastern Europe now, not just Ukraine. It is illegal in Germany to display any Nazi symbolism or behavior, so it is difficult to assess Nazi penetration there.

Americans don't realize it but the failure of Japan to publicly acknowledge its behavior in the WWI era and continuing to honor its military heroes officially is one the same level.

This is the way a lot people see the honoring the Confederate tradition in the US. Connecting this with European fascism with a torchlight march was really in your face stuff.

Another paradox of liberalism. Where should the lines be drawn. Germany has a different view from that of the US. But was the US experience that much different from Germany?

Ryan Harris said...

A statue does not necessarily indicate glory or greatness. To understand Democracy, a person must understand human frailties, failings, government's failings and historical blunders as well as their successes.

I fail to see how college kids/professors running around in black masks and baseball bats beating people is useful anymore than an angry white dude with an ak47 slung over his shoulder parading for white supremacy makes progress. It's absurd, it sells papers though. No one in line at Walmart grocery talks about them. Colin Kaepernick and Richard Spencer on the other hand, Everyone knows them and their ideas.

Matt Franko said...

"All of science is backward looking."

So when an anesthesiologist predicts what the correct dosing should be for a 120lb patient they just look at the dosing they used for the last patient (who was 300 lbs) and do the same thing?

Tom Hickey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tom Hickey said...

Matt, how do you think they know the correct dose? Maybe by doing researching involving data in a time series (historical = looking a the past).

Science is about looking for patterns (invariance) in data (times series - historical past) and assuming that the future resembles the past to some extent (problem of induction).

The extent of this resemblance is great in ergodic systems and not great in non-ergodic systems.

The present and future only come into play in experiments to test the hypotheses generated by induction (observation of the past) or abduction (educated guess) as a starting point for using deduction to deduce hypotheses for testing against evidence to be obtained iaw the testing protocol.

Six said...

Yes Matt, good doctors always ask their patients "have you ever had an adverse reaction to anesthesia in the FUTURE?" prior to surgery.