Is Antifa a terrorist group and should it be banned?

[Ifreann]

I really like the comparison that is, apparently, in Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Antifa is like birdwatching. There are birdwatching organisations, but no one would say that birdwatching is an organisation.

[Kubra]

Get deep cover operatives to infiltrate Antifa Central Command.

Who said they have a Central Command? You're not an Antifa spy are you? Are you now or have you ever been?

uh oh comrades, he's on to us! quick, alert the central committee!

[Greed and Death]

How do you ban them they are a bloody hanger.

[Atheris]

How do you ban them they are a bloody hanger.

I have no clue what this means, but I'm using it now.

[Greed and Death]

How do you ban them they are a bloody hanger.

I have no clue what this means, but I'm using it now.

Go to a closet, try to punch a wire hanger.

[Atheris]

I have no clue what this means, but I'm using it now.

Go to a closet, try to punch a wire hanger.

Oh, right. I thought you meant the hanger was bloody.

[Neanderthaland]

Go to a closet, try to punch a wire hanger.

Oh, right. I thought you meant the hanger was bloody.

Let's abort this metaphor before it ends up somewhere uncomfortable.

[New Bremerton]

If Antifa or any other far-leftist, militant group is ever permitted to gain real power over its subjects, it will be indistinguishable from the CCP. It will routinely lie, distort, and renege on the promises that it makes. Antifa is not an organization. Neither are al-Qaeda or communists. Unlike real protesters fighting for freedom and democracy, these far-leftists would sooner implement their own, "transitional", "pre-communist" utopia where power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who can obviously be trusted not to abuse their authority in any way. Anti-police? Yeah, right.

[Liriena]

If Antifa or any other far-leftist, militant group is ever permitted to gain real power over its subjects, it will be indistinguishable from the CCP. It will routinely lie, distort, and renege on the promises that it makes. Antifa is not an organization. Neither are al-Qaeda or communists. Unlike real protesters fighting for freedom and democracy, these far-leftists would sooner implement their own, "transitional", "pre-communist" utopia where power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who can obviously be trusted not to abuse their authority in any way. Anti-police? Yeah, right.

You do know that a lot of people who participate in antifa activism are anarchists, right?

Hell, most communists in the western hemisphere aren't Maoists either.

[The Lone Alliance]

I really like the comparison that is, apparently, in Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Antifa is like birdwatching. There are birdwatching organisations, but no one would say that birdwatching is an organisation.

Well, sort of, It's not really very accurate because Birdwatchers actually watch birds.

If you compared modern day Antifa to birdwatchers they would be birdwatchers that spend all day looking for birds but since they can't find birds they expand their definition of birds to include reptiles because they "Both lay eggs".

It's kind of hard to be Anti-Fascists if you can't find any actual fascists.

But no they shouldn't be banned even though I find them to actually be counterproductive in stopping fascism.

[Liriena]

I really like the comparison that is, apparently, in Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Antifa is like birdwatching. There are birdwatching organisations, but no one would say that birdwatching is an organisation.

Well, sort of, It's not really very accurate because Birdwatchers actually watch birds.

If you compared modern day Antifa to birdwatchers they would be birdwatchers that spend all day looking for birds but since they can't find birds they expand their definition of birds to include reptiles because they "Both lay eggs".

Not saying that there haven't been instances of apparent antifascists going after people who were not fascists, or most likely were not fascists. There have been such instances.

But suggesting that non-fascists have been their main targets in practice is a bit of a stretch. It just so happens that fascist ideology and praxis, and some very particular brands of American conservatism, are often tightly intertwined. In many cases, it's not that antifa activists are going after the wrong people, but rather that a lot of the "wrong people" somehow keep joining fascist activists and the like on the streets. We've seen this with people from Breitbart, starting with the now disgraced Milo Yiannopoulos, who actively collaborated with active fascists. We've seen it with Andy Ngo and his complicity with groups like the Atomwaffen Division. We've seen it with Steven Crowder and Stefan Molyneux, Tim Pool and his growing obsession with a second civil war, Candace Owens and her unfortunate Hitler apologia, etc. Also, some fascists will flat out lie about their political identity (see: James Allsup and Kaitlin Bennett)

[The Lone Alliance]

Well, sort of, It's not really very accurate because Birdwatchers actually watch birds.

If you compared modern day Antifa to birdwatchers they would be birdwatchers that spend all day looking for birds but since they can't find birds they expand their definition of birds to include reptiles because they "Both lay eggs".

Not saying that there haven't been instances of apparent antifascists going after people who were not fascists, or most likely were not fascists. There have been such instances.

But suggesting that non-fascists have been their main targets in practice is a bit of a stretch.

I never mean to imply that Antifa's main targets were non-fascists, I'm more saying that since there wasn't enough fascists at the time they did expand to anything they saw as possibly fascist, but wasn't actually fascist.

It just so happens that fascist ideology and praxis, and some very particular brands of American conservatism, are often tightly intertwined.

Yes they "Both lay eggs".

In many cases, it's not that antifa activists are going after the wrong people, but rather that a lot of the "wrong people" somehow keep joining fascist activists and the like on the streets. We've seen this with people from Breitbart, starting with the now disgraced Milo Yiannopoulos, who actively collaborated with active fascists. We've seen it with Andy Ngo and his complicity with groups like the Atomwaffen Division. We've seen it with Steven Crowder and Stefan Molyneux, Tim Pool and his growing obsession with a second civil war, Candace Owens and her unfortunate Hitler apologia, etc. Also, some fascists will flat out lie about their political identity (see: James Allsup)

That's what I mean by stating they're actually counterproductive in stopping fascism, if anything the very fact that groups have rose up simply to fight Antifa that end up inevitably becoming fascists shows that instead of ending fascism they're actually helping to create it.

[Liriena]

Not saying that there haven't been instances of apparent antifascists going after people who were not fascists, or most likely were not fascists. There have been such instances.

But suggesting that non-fascists have been their main targets in practice is a bit of a stretch. It just so happens that fascist ideology and praxis, and some very particular brands of American conservatism, are often tightly intertwined. In many cases, it's not that antifa activists are going after the wrong people, but rather that a lot of the "wrong people" somehow keep joining fascist activists and the like on the streets. We've seen this with people from Breitbart, starting with the now disgraced Milo Yiannopoulos, who actively collaborated with active fascists. We've seen it with Andy Ngo and his complicity with groups like the Atomwaffen Division. We've seen it with Steven Crowder and Stefan Molyneux, Tim Pool and his growing obsession with a second civil war, Candace Owens and her unfortunate Hitler apologia, etc. Also, some fascists will flat out lie about their political identity (see: James Allsup)

That's what I mean by stating they're actually counterproductive in stopping fascism, if anything the very fact that groups have rose up simply to fight Antifa that end up inevitably becoming fascists shows that instead of ending fascism they're actually helping to create it.

The only way your meaning makes sense is if we accept the premise that antifa not only predates this conservative-fascist coalition, but also that it was its primary cause. Which is another big stretch. Those groups haven't risen up "simply to fight antifa". The conservative-fascist coalition was already taking shape before 2017, when antifa gained mainstream attention. It had already been cultivated for a couple years by outlets like Breitbart and people like Yiannopoulos. That coalition already had an enemy before antifa ("SJWs", "cultural marxists", "regressive left", etc.). It just so happened that the appearance of antifa in the mainstream gave them the missing half that every fascist dogma needs: the ability to frame their phantasmagorical enemies as weak and pathetic and as existentially terrifying and omnipresent.

[Liriena]

Not saying that there haven't been instances of apparent antifascists going after people who were not fascists, or most likely were not fascists. There have been such instances.

But suggesting that non-fascists have been their main targets in practice is a bit of a stretch.

I never mean to imply that Antifa's main targets were non-fascists, I'm more saying that since there wasn't enough fascists at the time they did expand to anything they saw as possibly fascist, but wasn't actually fascist.

You are assigning a singular motivation to a very disorganized phenomenon, and not a particularly credible motivation, given what antifa is.

Fascists do have a history of perpetually expanding their targets as time goes by, because fascism is very much power and violence for power and violence's sake. Power and violence is the point; the targets are the excuse to retroactively justify that point.

Antifa is the opposite. Antifa originally came into being because fascists were already there. It didn't have to manufacture an excuse for its own existence, an antagonistic ideological fantasy to justify clinging to power. The ideological foundations of antifa provide no incentive at all to "expand" its target to go after non-fascists if there aren't "enough" fascists at the time. If there are not "enough" fascists, there is no antifa, and since antifa is not an organization, and thus cannot amass power for itself, it has no reason to try to perpetuate itself through deceitfully choosing new targets.

Let me ask you this: how often did you hear about antifa activity before 2017?

It just so happens that fascist ideology and praxis, and some very particular brands of American conservatism, are often tightly intertwined.

Yes they "Both lay eggs".

???

[Liriena]

Seriously, though, what do people think antifa stands to gain from systematically and willfully targeting poor innocent conservatives who were totally doing nothing wrong?

Antifa isn't fantasizing about creating an ethnostate.
Antifa doesn't tend to have any particular state in mind.
Antifa certainly isn't trying to be a Leninist vanguard.
Antifa doesn't have an inherent political program or essential political goals beyond opposing fascism.

[North German Realm]

My opinion is that allowing the state the right to ban an organization as grassroots and as 'platformless' as Antifa is, regardless of what shit they pull, categorically a bad idea. Arresting Antifa who do dumb shit is one thing -whether you agree they should be arrested or not- but "Banning" Antifa gives the state the right to just persecute anyone it wants on the accounts of the fact that Antifa is neither a hierarchical organization nor does it have any actual platform other than "Fight fascism by using black bloc tactics". Their definition of fascism needs work, and that's apart from the fact that persecuting people for the great crime of wanting to fight fascism is objectively bad.

[The Lone Alliance]

I never mean to imply that Antifa's main targets were non-fascists, I'm more saying that since there wasn't enough fascists at the time they did expand to anything they saw as possibly fascist, but wasn't actually fascist.

You are assigning a singular motivation to a very disorganized phenomenon, and not a particularly credible motivation, given what antifa is.

That's because they are disorganized, it's kind of hard to set up a singular organized response team when it's a whole bunch of independent groups all doing their own things.

There are Antifa orgs that are organized prepared, and have a plan of action, who identify their targets and then there are some who go "Ben Shapiro is speaking over there, he's a douche and that's close enough right?"

Fascists do have a history of perpetually expanding their targets as time goes by, because fascism is very much power and violence for power and violence's sake. Power and violence is the point; the targets are the excuse to retroactively justify that point.

That's kind of the cause of any movement that's looking for a reason to justify themselves, like how some of the current protests keep expanding their list of grievances to to support justifying their continued protests.

Antifa is the opposite. Antifa originally came into being because fascists were already there. It didn't have to manufacture an excuse for its own existence, an antagonistic ideological fantasy to justify clinging to power. The ideological foundations of antifa provide no incentive at all to "expand" its target to go after non-fascists if there aren't "enough" fascists at the time. If there are not "enough" fascists, there is no antifa, and since antifa is not an organization, and thus cannot amass power for itself, it has no reason to try to perpetuate itself through deceitfully choosing new targets.

Yes in theory that is how Antifa is supposed to be, but everyone knows how well theory works when you add people to it.

There's always the problem with the LARPers, the types who joined on the surface because they claim they're there to stop fascism but really they're there because they want to feel apart of something or use the group for their own egos. Then there are the violent people who just want to hurt people (And likely would normally be fascists) but choose to join Antifa so they can hide behind the moral high ground. And the Grifters, and the infiltrators, oh and the Antifa orgs that are actually alt right in disguise.... really that's the problem with such an unorganized situation, no quality control.

Let me ask you this: how often did you hear about antifa activity before 2017?

About as often as I heard about actual public fascist activity. And no a handful of idiots sucking off Spenser or Milo doesn't really count that much. Maybe Spenser but Milo's stuff was always inevitably about himself because he's an Ego maniac.

Yes they "Both lay eggs".

???

I was agreeing that there's many similarities between the two.

Also that you should look at it from an evolutionary angle.

Birds evolve from Reptiles
And most of the modern American Far right movement evolved from dissatisfied American Conservatives. (And a few disgruntled Liberals and Libertarians)

[Novus America]

Seriously, though, what do people think antifa stands to gain from systematically and willfully targeting poor innocent conservatives who were totally doing nothing wrong?

Antifa isn't fantasizing about creating an ethnostate.
Antifa doesn't tend to have any particular state in mind.
Antifa certainly isn't trying to be a Leninist vanguard.
Antifa doesn't have an inherent political program or essential political goals beyond opposing fascism.

Antifa does not even clearly define what Fascism is so yes they very much can be a threat to non fascists.

Many if Antifa DO Want to be a Leninist vanguard. Although it is true Antifa has various ideas in it nearly all want to tear down the current social order, not preserve it.

Groups in Antifa has different ideas of what should replace our current society but Antifa is dominated by accelerationists and revolutionaries regardless.

So for those of us wanting to reform and preserve the US, both Antifa AND Fascists are our enemies.

That being said you cannot really just ban Fascist or Antifa as it would violate the First Amendment.
You can only ban organized criminal groups, not whole ideologies or political positions.

[Novus America]

If Antifa or any other far-leftist, militant group is ever permitted to gain real power over its subjects, it will be indistinguishable from the CCP. It will routinely lie, distort, and renege on the promises that it makes. Antifa is not an organization. Neither are al-Qaeda or communists. Unlike real protesters fighting for freedom and democracy, these far-leftists would sooner implement their own, "transitional", "pre-communist" utopia where power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who can obviously be trusted not to abuse their authority in any way. Anti-police? Yeah, right.

You do know that a lot of people who participate in antifa activism are anarchists, right?

Hell, most communists in the western hemisphere aren't Maoists either.

Anarchism basically just becomes warlordism even if the people originally did not intend for it to become that.