 |
| Anti-Fascists Heading to War |
We all get sent out anyway and we always sign up for the privilege.
Those who have read this blog over the years will know that I've devoted a good number of posts about what it was like growing up with a disabled parent, one who went overseas and did not come back the same.
Today the Conservative right is on the attack against what they've named "Anti-Fa" an abbreviation of anti-fascist.
I grew up with an anti-fascist, one who was blown up pretty much from ankle to eyebrow and yet hung on almost until the age of 92. My dad.
His generation wasn't the first in Canada's proud anti-fa tradition. That officially came into being with the formation of the Mackenzie-Papineau brigade.
Not many years later Canadians in scores of thousands became Mk. 2 anti-fascists as they enlisted to battle a German fascist, Hitler. Young men, some just boys, guys like my dad and my uncle Bud. From Halifax they boarded troop ships often piped aboard to "Farewell to Nova Scotia." A good many of them never set foot in Canada again. More still returned broken.
And yet, when fascists take to our own streets, we're not supposed to push back? And we're supposed to tolerate the political party that has coddled, energized and mobilized these extremists. Because "anti-fa" has become a pejorative in their sick minds. Not in your dad's time or your grandpa's time.
Please, not in my time and not in yours either.
For those unfamiliar with, "Farewell, Nova Scotia" here's a version sung by Gordon Lightfoot accompanied by the sometimes magical guitar of the late Red Shea.
Take comfort in philosophy. And oh yes...and a firearm.
ReplyDeletehttp://bigthink.com/articles/the-paradox-of-tolerance
Noam Chomsky says, Antifa is a great gift to the right, and he is correct, just like the Nazi idiots at Charlotteville were a massive gift to the left.
ReplyDeleteNoam Chomsky says, Antifa is a great gift to the right, and he is correct, just like the Nazi idiots at Charlotteville were a massive gift to the left.
ReplyDeleteAnyong...Yes and my dad served in the Newfoundland Regiment...came home but was not the same. My mother lost her father who served during the Boer War, gassed during WW1 and killed during WW2 at the Ford Aerodrome in England. She lost a brother early ... his boat was torpedoed. Another brother taken at Dunkirk and spent the war in a POW camp in Germany. All to get rid of Hitler.
ReplyDeleteWe must be vigilant when it comes to these modern day fascists. What exactly do they know and yes, we must push back.
So who bombed Libya to the stone age? A Nobel Prize laureate. These days fake LIBERALS (does a name Hillary rings the bell?) are advocating the wars.
ReplyDeleteTrump campaigned on a "less war" platform but is he being led down a garden path by warmongering coalition of liberals&neocons.
Hey there anonymous, still a fucking idiot I see.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this, and here is the wall of text I came up with:
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of right wing fellow travellers, people who don't quite have the guts to come out and say they're racist or support fascism, who will say oh, those alt-right people might be bad, but the “alt-left” or the “antifa” are “just as bad”, because they are also violent—they hit the fascists with clubs or whatever.
I have noticed liberals and even some radicals who should know better tending to argue this by claiming that it's the fascists et al who start the violence, who come intent on violence and so on, but agreeing that groups willing to meet fascism with violence are bad. It is no doubt true that the fascists are fomenting most of the violence, but it is a lousy basis for arguing the issue—it dissolves into he-said she-said and it concedes a very important piece of ground by ignoring the actual content of what the people involved stand for.
The important issue is this: Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists are evil. These ideologies are inherently evil and it doesn't matter whether they happen to be shooting anyone right at the moment, one does not become “just as bad” as a fascist by pounding a fascist into the pavement. Indeed, I think there is a very strong argument to be made that fascists, white supremacists, KKKers and especially Nazis simply should be beaten up and doing so does not make someone bad, but good.
Let's back up for a moment. What do white supremacists stand for? Stripped to essentials, the idea is that one racial group is better than all other racial groups, and those other racial groups should be forcibly suppressed, expelled, deprived of rights, perhaps killed. This is an inherently violent project. It's not like the idea is to ask the blacks nicely whether they wouldn't feel more comfortable at the back of the bus again, and if it wouldn't be less trouble to have the burden of lining up to vote taken away. No, we're talking about pogroms, imprisonment and massacres.
What do fascists stand for? The idea that there should be a single absolute leader that everyone worships like a demigod, whose word is law, so that the leader is empowered to make the tough decisions and suppress all opposition to the sweeping measures that are supposedly necessary to “get things done”. The “things” that need doing are usually repugnant, but the point here is that by definition, it means no democracy, the elimination of rights and the rule of law, and violent enforcement of these things. This will require the secret police, dissenters being dragged away and tortured or executed or both.
What do Nazis stand for? White supremacy and fascism put together.
The only reason white supremacists, fascists or Nazis are ever not violent is because they don't have the power to be so. If they gain power, the whole point of their ideology is to do violent things—very, very violent things. Nothing any antifas might do on the streets clashing with these scum is within a light year of what the fascists want to do if they get the chance. So no, they are not “just as bad”.
(continuation)
ReplyDeleteNow, absent any question of infringement on rights, it is clear that confronting, counterbalancing, stopping, obliterating such groups is a good thing, because they are very bad. So if cracking them on the head with a club is what it takes, so be it; I will not worry about their poor little heads. But is that what it takes? Some argue that to the contrary, what is needed is nonviolent resistance. Yeah, bullshit. Nonviolence is fine when you outnumber them massively, as we did in Vancouver a couple days ago. But when the fascists are a more serious presence it is almost certainly not good enough. Nazis are not impressed by the moral suasion of nonviolence. Violence is in fact just what is needed to discourage people from staying in such groups. Why? Because they are bullies, driven by fear and the need to turn that around by being feared. In becoming neonazis or KKKers, their objective is to swagger and intimidate, feel like big people by throwing their weight around. If instead it is impressed on them that to be in the KKK, to be a fascist, is to be in danger, to be under threat, to suffer hurt and damage, they will tend to slink away.
But what about rights? What about the right to free speech and assembly? The unique thing about the groups we're talking about is that they may be exercising those rights and hiding behind them, but the whole point of them is they don't believe in rights and their objective is to take yours away. And frankly, in my opinion if your objective is to destroy a right then you have abrogated your own possession of it. Taking it away by bashing them in the head when they show their putrid faces is not only not “just as bad” as the fascists, it isn't “bad” at all, it's the action of an antibody dealing with a vile disease.
So PLG declared himself as a violence promoting left wing fascist.
ReplyDeleteOnly if you don't read for comprehension. Even there, it's hard to be a contradiction in terms--one can be both "violence promoting" and "left wing", but one can't be both "left wing" and "fascist" no matter how much ridiculous sophistry the authoritarian racist right spews to try to confuse just what both fascism and leftism are.
ReplyDeleteTake the given name on your birth certificate, add the surname name on your birth certificate and that's your nazi fighting name.
ReplyDeleteOr, as in the case of our idiot, anonymous coward here - that's your nazi name.
PLG, you have described yourself above, by your own words: "The “things” that need doing are usually repugnant, but the point here is that by definition, it means no democracy, the elimination of rights and the rule of law, and violent enforcement of these things."
ReplyDelete"Left" has appropriated some terms to exclusively label the "Right."
Fascist(s) term is just one of them. For example, both Stalin and Mao were fascists.
Also feel free to check the meaning of a word bigot: there are as many bigots on the left as are on the right.
Wow. The depth of this creature's prideful ignorance is breathtaking.
ReplyDeleteOhhh, it's Humpty Dumpty. Sorry, didn't recognize you there at first, Mr. Dumpty. But it's really hard to have a discussion with someone who just redefines terms to mean whatever they please. It's confusing and you can never find the goalposts.
ReplyDeleteWe're feeding the troll methinks.
ReplyDeleteAnti-Racist Action (ARA) successfully used violence against fascists in the 1980s and early 1990s. To the extent that those white supremacist idiots were VERY reluctant to raise their stupid heads for quite a while.
ReplyDeleteAs PLG says; they do not have a peaceful ideology that one can agree with or disagree with. They deliberately target taking away the rights of specific groups of human beings. They do not merit having a stall in the marketplace of ideas.