Where I'm from, lots of people say/seem to think that Antifa is some kind of violent organization. Is this true? what does Antifa /do/?
Oh, we hear that criticism a lot. It’s not a new one.
Starting with your second question: Antifa is an abbreviation of anti-fascism. Anti-fascism is a global movement of people who are opposed to fascism & willing to do something about it. Our blog has been documenting things antifa do for the last five years. But before you dig through our archive for examples, let’s talk a little bit about fascism first.
One of the characteristics of fascism is violence. Not just the tolerance of violence; not just the acceptance of violence; but the fetishization of violence as a desirable & legitimate means to achieve the goals of fascism. One of those goals being the eradication of the “outsider” groups by scapegoat for society’s problems. This isn’t just theoretical - the number of deadly attacks by fascists increases almost every week. Last year, every homegrown terrorist attack and every extremist murder committed in the U.S. was carried out by fascists/the extreme right. So far in 2019, we’ve documented more than two hundred attacks by the far-right/fascists around the world, which have killed 154 people and injured more than 700 others.
So antifa are people standing up against people advocating for genocide and more-than-willing to use the most extreme forms of violence to further their agenda. Of course, anti-fascists are going to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves and their communities from this violence. You want a clear example of this, Anon? Ask Dr. Cornell West, who says his life was saved when antifa defended himself and pacifist clergy from an armed mob of white supremacists in Charlottesville on August 11, 2017:
Is it “violent” to defend yourself and others in your community from attacks by fascists & to stop them from organizing to commit attacks? Liberal Pooh seems to think so:
Two problems with this whole “antifa are violent!”:
1) It’s very clear that the level of “violence” committed by anti-fascists is in reaction to the very real, very deadly, and very frequent violence perpetuated by fascists. Seriously, we would challenge you to make a list of all the “violence” committed by anti-fascists so far this year (or any year) and compare it to our list of documented fascist violence. Equating both as the same thing is a logical fallacy called false equivalence - it’s like saying that starting a campfire is equivalent to setting a forest fire.
2) These people around you condemning anti-fascist “violence” - do they also condemn the actual violence committed by fascists week after week, or do they ignore those shootings, bombings, stabbings, beatings, arson attacks, etc. or make excuses justifying them?
If you were to ask these people who condemn anti-fascism as “violent” what the proper response should be to a gang of racist terrorists planning to murder people, are they able to provide a better alternative? Because believe us when we say that if anti-fascists saw a viable alternative to putting ourselves on the line to physically defend our communities against fascist violence, we would take that alternative in a heartbeat.
If someone is going out of their way to condemn anti-fascist “violence” but doesn’t say shit when fascists bomb a church or stab a gay couple or beat a Latina woman unconscious (all of which happened in the past week), you have to ask yourself if they’re actually concerned about violence or if they’re just pretending to as a strategy to stop people from supporting anti-fascists. And if the latter is the case, the only people that benefit from it are fascists.
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