Maydona wrote:I like how folks are writing walls of text in here arguing if antifa are terrorists when antifa has no central command, funding or even members.
literally anyone can put on some black clothes and a mask and call themselves antifa, and they'd be antifa because it's not an organization.
Indeed. Which is why it is particularly concerning to see attempts to label antifa as a terrorist organisation.
What if they're going to protests with the intention of engaging in defensive violence and defensively bashing the fash?
Ifreann wrote:Hiding your face? That's only sensible when being identified might put you and your family in danger. The police routinely hide their faces at protests.
Yes, and it also conveniently prevents the police or potential victims from identifying you after you've committed a crime.
Yes.
I'm certain Klansmen and alt-righters who cover their faces make the same sorts of arguments. I'm not going to give any of them a pass.
I'm not asking you to give anyone a pass, I just don't understand how covering one's face means that one is, therefore, necessarily the aggressor in any violent incident. It's entirely possible to go to a protest with one's face covered, just to hide one's identity with no specific intention to do violence, and get attacked. I don't see how such a person could possibly be an aggressor, therefore wearing a mask does not make one the aggressor.
Ifreann wrote:Going armed? Being armed doesn't make one the aggressor, that's ridiculous. And again, the police are also rounteinly armed at protests, and often better armed than most other people present.
Police have a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence and tend to employ crowd dispersal weapons before reaching for guns or batons. Bringing a weapon that's function is to inflict severe bodily harm while not killing someone suggests that you might be engaging in violence deliberately.
So people should either defend themselves with guns or not at all? Using any other weapon, like a baton, makes one the aggressor?
Ifreann wrote:Going armed with specific weapons? Well come on, if they took the barbed wire off the bat does that change who is the aggressor? That's just silly.
Yeah, nobody believes you're sincere about this. You're acting like an apologist for thugs.
I guess? I don't really think that they're thugs, but I suppose that hardly matters to you. Regardless, that doesn't mean that I'm wrong. You're calling people the aggressors based on what they wear or what they carry or what they may have thought at some point about fascists, not whether they are actually instigating violence. I could be Hitler reborn and what you are saying would not make more sense.
I'm not inclined to trust the police.
Do you have examples of police abusing their power against members of Antifa by tracking down their families? Because I definitely trust the police to safeguard the public interest more than a group of random communists who have a history of violently assaulting people.
I'm not aware of the police doing that specifically. But I above referenced an incident in which the police found members of Patriot Prayer on a rooftop with a cache of firearms, very obviously planning to attack an anti-fascist rally and let them go, no arrest, no charges, no one outside the force even knew this had happened for months. So you may say that the police won't go to people's homes to intimidate them, but clearly they aren't too pushed about enforcing the law against those who are going to do that.
Also there's no such thing as members of antifa.
