Why is the media promoting Antifa?
Gabriel Black
Over the past week, the anarchist affiliation Antifa (“Anti-fascist”) has received widespread and favorable coverage in the establishment media.
On August 18, the New York Times, the main newspaper voice for the Democratic Party, published a major front-page feature article, “Antifa Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far Right.” The piece, written by Thomas Fuller, Alan Feuer, and Serge F. Kovaleski, showcased the views of the movement with interviews of its members.
The article presents Antifa as a serious force for fighting fascism, all but inviting readers to sign up. “Unlike most of the counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville and elsewhere,” the Times reports, “members of Antifa have shown no qualms about using their fists, sticks or canisters of pepper spray to meet an array of right-wing antagonists whom they call a fascist threat to American democracy.”
The newspaper interviewed several members of the affiliation, who, the Timesstates, believe “the ascendant new right in the country requires a physical response.” The quotes are all presented favorably, including one from a self-identified member of Antifa, who argues that “physical confrontation” with Nazi groups is necessary, “because Nazis and white supremacists are not around to talk.”
The Times article is not the only example. On August 20, NBC’s “Meet the Press” carried a segment featuring Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and Lecturer at Dartmouth.
Bray was also invited to write an op-ed in the Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The column, “Who are the antifa?,” published on August 17, was in effect a free advertisement, encouraging readers to support or join the movement. One photo caption read, “Antifascists may seem like a novelty, but they’ve been around for a very long time. Maybe we should start listening to them.”
The prominent and sympathetic coverage for Antifa from the Times, the Post and NBC is politically sinister.
The Times has a policy of excluding any genuinely left-wing opinion, while “Meet the Press,” the most widely-watched Sunday news program, never interviews or features in its panel discussions anyone outside what is considered acceptable by the political establishment.
At the same time as it is giving favorable coverage to Antifa, the Times, Post and other media outlets have collaborated with Google in the effort to suppress genuine left-wing opposition, including the World Socialist Web Site and other sites.
The promotion of Antifa serves several interrelated functions. First, the physical violence of a handful of protesters in any large demonstration is regularly used as a pretext for police provocation. This is true not only in the US, but in Europe and around the world. Police give the “anti-fascist” and anarchist groups a free hand to carry out provocations, which are then exploited to carry out a violent crackdown.
A Berkeley antifa, courtesy of Zerohedge
The groups themselves are easily infiltrated by police provocateurs, who encourage violent acts for the desired end.
The politics of the various groups that comprise Antifa are, moreover, entirely compatible with those of the Democratic Party, and serve a purpose for that section of the political establishment.
Since before Trump was elected, the Democratic Party has sought to channel widespread popular opposition to Trump behind the military and intelligence apparatus.
Indeed, the conflicts within the ruling class since the Nazi rampage in Charlottesville have culminated in the strengthening of the grip of the military and financial elite over the Trump administration. The first product of this restructuring was Trump’s announcement of a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
The Democrats and affiliated media, particularly the Times, have sought to bury the basic class issues—the fight against social inequality, war, and authoritarianism—through the promotion of a series of diversionary issues.
The Times has relentlessly promoted the anti-Russia campaign, seeking to channel mass opposition to Trump behind the demand for more aggressive measures against the government of Vladimir Putin.
It has encouraged the conception that the United States is divided by immense racial divisions, promoting both the identity politics of the Democratic Party and providing respectful and even admiring coverage of what it calls “white nationalists.”
It has also prominently featured the Jacobin magazine, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the Democratic Party.
The promotion of Antifa conforms to this agenda. Indeed, many of the groups involved in Antifa are essentially factions of the Democratic Party. By Any Means Necessary, BAMN, which is mentioned by name with a link to its website in the Times article, is among the most fervent advocates of the racialist politics of the Democrats. It received national attention in 2014 for its campaign for Affirmative Action, which was waged in alliance with the Democrats and sections of the corporate elite and military.
Adherents of Antifa claim they are fighting the fascist threat by physically preventing neo-Nazis from getting a hearing, denying them access to schools and cities where they may reach followers.
Ignored, however, is the role of the Democrats and the social and political conditions that create fascism.
The neo-Nazi groups are themselves at present a minuscule social force, unable to organize more than a few hundred people for their major rallies, including the demonstration in Charlottesville. Trump and his fascistic advisers (including the now-departed Stephen Bannon), however, are seeking to exploit political confusion and alienation to develop an extra-parliamentary far-right nationalist movement.
To the extent that a fascist movement will develop, it is because they receive the backing of a section of the ruling elite under conditions in which the policies of the ruling class go unchallenged. That is, it is the subordination of the working class to the Democratic Party and its various affiliates, to which Antifa contributes, that creates the ability for fascistic groups to grow.
In terms of its social basis, Antifa attracts disoriented layers particularly among the middle class on the basis of a program compatible with the aims of the Democratic Party and the ruling elite, and which is indifferent and even openly hostile to the mobilization of the working class. It is for this reason that they are being promoted in the media.
Originally published by World Socalist Website
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There’s a lot of nonsense written about QAnon, Anonymous and Antifa, some people even equating them with both the CIA and the left (if you can believe that!). They are all creations of the state monopoly finance capital ruling class and their intelligence agencies, mainly the CIA, used to reinforce state oppression and create false divisions.
Is Antifa a single Soros compromised organization or a loose amalgamation of mostly genuine anit-fascist organizations being opportunistically targeted for cooptation?
In No Way the Alt-Left: Dispelling Disinformation About Antifa
So many claims and counter-claims.
So many questions.
Like almost every 21st century phenomenon, Antifa is a curious mix of useful idiots, superstate agendas, quiet infiltration, smart pr, violence, cognitive dissonance, ludicrous apologiae, and of course George Soros. The NYT’s useful idiots would’ve given Lenin a life-threatening wet dream, but they are clinically discerning compared to the gullibility of Britain’s impoverished poor. This might help clarify a few issues as to why they are gaining media coverage and fellow travellers:
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/the-sinister-reality-of-antifa-violence-secrecy-links-to-george-soros-perversion-of-social-justice-causes/
Your comment was replete with lurid anti-communist innuendo and anti-poor classism. Are you a fascist by any chance?
Anarchists are not communists. Anarchists are used by the ruling class for its own agendas
Calls for a “civilian army” came from emperor Obama, sowing the seeds for the controlled opposition we are seeing; also the promotion of a nationwide harassment program controlled by police and neighborhood watch called “gang stalking”:
Fascinating days isnt it, one should think the hysterical Russian bashing was dying, but got replaced with Charlotteswil, yeah, how CONvinient isnt it, timing is everything.
Do notice the use of narratives, Nazi and Racist, nice huh, difficult to defend anything against nonsense and loaded words, where once used kicks in an row of associations incl Holocaust ™, to wars and mass slaughtering witch we are been and have been spoon feed for decades, it works perfectly, I have to admit.
We may debate this, but I simply chose to ignore it, to me, its an sign of degenerating mind and matter.
The entire narrative is utterly useless and works only with infernal minds degenerated to mere shit and knows nothing else than what they have learned in school and thru an rotten MSM, period, nothing else, and intresses me, up my ass.
The only place this stupidity’s belong, I could tell you about slaughtering but that requires an day of writing, but thats again an diversion, by f….. up the debate, about what side someone presumably is or represents, to me this are payed thugs, period, mixed with some stupid sheeps, whom may even be genuine, but the problem is the payed actors as AntiFa/rst, and BLM, the KKK was always Democratic, since their dawn, and the civil war wasn’t about slavery at all, give me an break.
The second
Racism.
Again, what do they associate with this, to day they use the people coming to our land from Africa to lord knows where, incl Syrians, and all of them is labeled refugees, an rhetorical clap trap that they want us to swallow, since we all can see that this isnt the truth, but the MSM counters this with showing us Family’s, children and elders, and points on them and screams loooook at them, yeah, 2% of them, what about the rest.
And here is it that they have blended the reality with an created word play, Racism covers anything they dont like, the facts is one thing, the truth is something else, and like the crime waves, no go zones, every-time something happens, the MSM counters it with an choosy home report from that zone, witch tells us everything is like an peace full rose garden.
They find anything, to blame others, lack of work, in Sweden, f…. that nonsense, this is an crime ridden shit hole, where gangs rule parts of the Swedish lands and city’s, to then blame the Sweds for it is an hideous lie and an flat out rape of reality, the problem is the people, if they dont do anything, the only way Sweden can protect their own, incl everybody else, is to throw em all out and burn down this parts of the city s, for never again be used.
The criminals, kick em out, again its their own responsibility, their own actions, and there by to take the consequences, and send them back, there is nothing racistic about that, its about protecting the people.
Thats why when the debate is kicked into over drive about sending out “refugees”, we get cases where the Gov. by supposedly showing the people they are indeed doing something, by kicking out family’s whom have been here for decades, or old people like 90 years, all to crush the debate, again using visuals and storys to counter the “racism” against “refugees”, of course.
And so on, this goes to an lot of other issues where they use the same propaganda techs, done since the stone age, aka before TV.
I have no problems with anyone, but I simply want this traffic stopped, period.
Anyone else, send them home, if not Syrian, go home, nothing to argue about, and its not our responsibility what so ever.
But when all this is stated, I know perfectly well about WHY Africans comes to our land, that is something no parts of the fence debates at all, apart from some fringe articles writing about the rape and plundering of African while they scream at me for been an racist because I want them to go home and take the f….. fight there.
I dont even apologize for this, because they know it as I do, but to me they are traitors, coward scums whom in stead of fighting for their own people flees with their tale between their legs to Europa and whines because we dont like it, to that there is only one proper responds and that is Go and F…. your self.
Thats it, where is the racism in it, I never excuse anyone, regardless, their actions, because of their back ground/religion/culture, I never, ever, do that, not even gender.
Never forget the golden rule, in most of the bonkers hyping of this bullshit issues this days, Follow the Money.
peace
In the 80s, we used to fight racism scum. Put them in hospital. We were RED ACTION.
Reblogged this on Taking Sides and commented:
Read it for the article, but also for the commentary that follows . . .
I’m with Malcolm x in regards to non violence.
The people who petrol bombed an asian family front and back simultaneously,on a council estate in islington were not non violent.
Perhaps because I live in southern Europe, and we’ve struggled through Soros’s catastrophic nonsense for decades, it is clear as day for us that what is happening in the USA is a giant manipulation for political ends. Antifa is not the left – its purpose is to discredit and destroy the left, just as the purpose of Black Lives Matter is to further discredit black people and ultimately paint them as vicious brutes for which lynching is not good enough. As an excercise pick any high visibility “left” anti-Trump group [anti-Trump is the present US context, we in Europe and around the world have other contexts] and you’ll see that with Soros funding and misdirection each ‘movement’ succeeds in exactly degrading and delegitimating the cause they purportedly represent. Vaginas on womens’ heads? [Not to mention the muslim veil as the symbol of radical muslim womanhood -] Aren’t these “statements” what early feminists fought to escape from, and in fact the indignity of the vagina hat would have been inconceivable from either the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ in the context of the less barbaric 1960s.
The person behind these faux movements is George Soros and the funding for Soros comes from the US government (via US taxpayers) , Israel (via US taxpayers) and EU vassals (via EU taxpayers). The present weaponised migration into Europe is organised 100% by these forces.
Wayne Madsen:
“Soros pretends to combat the right-wing and conservative elements around the world by financing leftist and «social democratic» parties and movements. This is merely a clever smokescreen which is engineered not to promote the «left» but to control it.” (I’d add : to degrade and delegitimise both ‘left’ & ‘right’)….”
Delegitimise the ‘Right” because supposed ‘fascist menace’ groups like Jobbik, Golden Dawn and (I would suggest) various of the US “White Supremetists” are also funded by the same sources. A cartoon enemy is necessary.
The ICC, i.e. the International Criminal Court, is a private [!!] court funded by Soros & co and it’s purpose has been to criminalise and decapitate leaders of small countries standing in the way of Empire, but especially from Africa where so much mineral wealth is located. It will never prosecute war criminals like Tony Blair, Sarkozy, Henri-Levi or Bernard Kouchner [of Medicins Sans Frontieres i.e. a Soros NGO, and Foreign Minister of France directing the Libyan War]. As for the American war criminals – Albright, Kissinger, Clintons, Bushes – “forget about it!” – since USA is not an ICC member.
There is not a single “Soros” movement that works either FOR the good of the groups they represent or for the good of the people of the countries they operate in. All these NGOs serve Empire (whether or not the rent-a-mobs know this), comprising fifth columns in every society they are placed in. The secret of “NGO” success is money. The European migration is generating huge profits for its participants.
The rest of the world (ROW) is well advanced in anti-Soros pushback to the point of throwing his “NGO”s out of their countries. NOT America though since these faux political groupings and manipulations are protected and funded by the US gov and none of this is reported in the MSM. Therefore uninformed Americans are forced to take Soros manifestations and manipulated civil unrest – through the fact of its violence – at face value. Wayne Madsen writes:
“To combat Soros International and its American and Western European and Israeli sponsors, the answer is to create units that will 1) identify the threats; 2) employ active measures, including raids on Soros-financed offices and arrests of troublemaking ringleaders; 3) widely publicize the nature of the Soros operations and the organizations and individuals who are behind them; 4) permanently neutralize the threats under the guise of national security, anti-racketeering and anti-money laundering laws currently on the books, and conspiracy to commit street violence. Any measures that are less daunting will turn out to be quite useless.”
PS – I ask Americans to question the present Soros motto of “Hate”. Who started that? Whose ends are served by “Hate”? Is that REALLY the reality of your society? Or are you being grossly manipulated? Remember Rwanda! (another US gov / vassals / Soros intervention)
Soros on the Ropes
https://www.sott.net/article/341037-Wayne-Madsen-Soros-on-the-ropes
George Soros False Flag Factories
Wayne Madsen
https://www.strategic-culture.org/pview/2016/09/26/george-soros-false-flag-factories.html
After Trump Win Anti-Soros Forces Are Emboldened in Eastern Europe
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/world/europe/after-trump-win-anti-soros-forces-are-emboldened-in-eastern-europe.html?mcubz=0
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/331026-why-is-the-state-department-refusing-to-disclose-soros
2017 – US Gives Soros Groups Millions to Destabilise Macedonia
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2017/02/u-s-gives-soros-groups-millions-destabilize-macedonias-conservative-govt/
Watchdog Sues for Record on Tax Dollars Funding Soros Infantry
http://dailysignal.com/2017/04/19/watchdog-sues-for-records-on-tax-dollars-funding-soros-infantry/
Greece: George Soros a Trojan Horse Against Europe
https://spectator.org/greece-george-soros-trojan-horse-against-europe/
Billionaire Geoprge Soros has ties to more than 50 partners of the women’s march on Washington
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/20/billionaire-george-soros-has-ties-to-more-than-50-partners-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/?mcubz=0
Jeff & Ole Dammegard – Stunning Facts…Charlottesville & Barcelona
https://youtu.be/28HfAI2Ka3U
charlottesville, the facts, as crazy as they are
https://youtu.be/tPjhTl28F6U
Thanks for highlighting Ole Dammegard, not someone I was aware of.
A different and interesting reading of the Antifa phenomenon, a piece that I’m still mulling over:
What’s Wrong with Chris Hedges view that ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right’
BTW: for anyone who might be interested, I was linked up to the foregoing piece via this website, another find to which I was alerted by Dr. Stuart Bramhall: Redneck Revolt: Putting The Red Back In Redneck
In part, Redneck Revolt’s statement of purpose reads:
“The history of the white working class is one full of resistance, collectively and individually, against the rich elite that hold power over all of our lives. From massive armed uprisings like the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, to the resistance to coal mining in predominately white rural Appalachia today, white working people have been in conflict with those that uphold predatory economic, political, and social systems.
“The history of the white working class is also one filled with collaboration with those same rich elite power holders. White working people have played the role of foot soldiers for the political and economic elite, participating in genocide and the enslavement of other peoples, and overall protectors of the ruling class. White working class participation in state and paramilitary organizations and formations like the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen, the U.S. Armed Forces, and the Council of Conservative Citizens has undermined the struggle for freedom among all people.
“It is with these conflicting histories in mind that we hope to incite a movement amongst white working people that works toward the total liberation of all working people, regardless of skin color, religious background, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, or any other division that bosses and politicians have used to fragment movements for social, political, and economic freedom.”
Yes, but in practice, Redneck Revolt always just seems to collaborate and co-operate with Antifa. I wouldn’t trust them either, frankly. It seems to me as though the Deep State may be trying to instigate a low-intensity conflict that gets their potential enemies to start fighting each other rather than TPTB. Charlottesville was a total set-up. As soon as the Antifa rolled in, the police just pulled back. The police wanted a rumble and they got one. Then the endless media coverage–Trump this, Trump that. Meanwhile, an escalation in Afghanistan is being overshadowed.
” Then the endless media coverage–Trump this, Trump that.”
I look outside my ‘bubble’ daily and your comment reminded me of this video/vlog. Candice Owens is apparently a former liberal turned conservative and a recent arrival on the political video scene. Searching her twitter for this video I note you tube have already removed one of her videos.
https://twitter.com/participassant/status/899949845733101569
“Second, the antifa are not motivated by a “lust for violence,” but by a desire to defend themselves and others who are targets of racist, sexist violence by fascists, and to disrupt the strategic, intimidating use of violence by fascists.” When the author right there did not point out that the original antifa were the real deal, as were some later imitators, but left it hanging so as to convey the idea that antifa is new, I simply had no time to read further. And who was the author of that piece?
I agree with Hedges about non violence. One, That isn’t who ‘i’ am. Two, The people are outgunned. Which doesn’t prevent me from acknowledging, when others who do actively (violence in some form or another) resist the police state, are the real deal.
As my post (below) says, You need to know ‘who’ is fighting for you before you can wholeheartedly support them. Especially these George Soros days.
I should have said “before you can wholeheartedly or partially support them.”
“And who was the author of that piece?”
Michael Novick
You can follow that link to a re-worked version of the piece that I haven’t read yet, and that I know you won’t, Arrby. But others might want to . . .
Thanks. Appreciated. Later…
My memories of a young Chris Hedges shilling against Milosevic in the grossly illegal Yugoslav war, and his subsequent career as ‘left’ gatekeeper are enough for me to discount anything he says. This crocodile tear laden article is par for the course. His job is to represent the supposedly intellectual, high ‘left’ conscience of empire. No doubt if he were in Europe he would join hands with Varoufakis on Europe’s urgent need for migrants and the the barbarism of clinging to national sovereignty….sorry to say.
elenits.
Not being familiar with Chris Hedges, I find it a bit chilling with regard his shilling against Milosevic. I too have recently read Bramhall’s article on redneck revolt and I thought it all sounded very reasonable. Thanks for the info. I will look into this further.
Vaska is usually pretty spot on when it comes to divining the “real” strategies of clever and reasonable sounding words, so I would have to scrutinize her article by Gabriel Black the same way I look at the faux or pseudo left wallahs.
Elenits is absolutely right in the above. Not only was Hedges’ reporting on the destruction — the euphemism was “the break-up” — of Yugoslavia below second rate, spattered with inaccuracies and showing a risible ignorance of the real history of the region, but it was fully part and parcel of the Western MSM wall-to-wall propaganda job on that topic. Nor has he ever apologized for his part in that misinformation campaign or had the grace to revise his view of Milosevic even after he was exonerated by the ICC. It’d be instructive and illuminating to compare the Serbian elections at which Milosevic was (correctly) accused of fraud with the Bush Junior re-election and the 2016 farce at the DNC for a sense of what American democracy means today.
And yes, like Chomsky, Hedges too is a fan of Varoufakis and his quixotic/cynical project for the supposed democratization of the EU.
Chomsky AND Hedges like Varoufakis, Vaska? Thanks for the confirmation!
And we musn’t forget to add Slavoj Zizek to that team.
One of Varoufakis recent efforts was to instruct ‘the Left’ and all Greeks that we have a DUTY to support Macron.
Says it all really.
Oh yes, Zizek’s in that group, too. I missed Varoufakis’s shilling for Macron; as you say, it says it all about him.
But . . . but . . . Varoufakis and Zizek are superstar iconoclastic Marxist revolutionaries! And they are published in the most iconoclastic MSM publications that you can find anywhere.
If they are supportive of neoliberal policies, it’s precisely because they are Marxists. Think dialectically. You know, opposites and all that.
But I’ll let Varoufakis explain it to you in his own words, because if I try to explain it to you, I’ll end up making a mess of it:
“. . . I chose to delve into the guts of neoclassical theory and to spend next to no energy trying to develop alternative, Marxist models of capitalism. My reasons, I submit, were quite Marxist.
When called upon to comment on the world we live in, I had no alternative but to fall back on the Marxist tradition which had shaped my thinking ever since my metallurgist father impressed upon me, when I was still a child, the effect of technological innovation on the historical process. How, for instance, the passage from the bronze age to the iron age sped up history; how the discovery of steel greatly accelerated historical time; and how silicon-based IT technologies are fast-tracking socioeconomic and historical discontinuities.”
There’s more of that crystal clear kind of reasoning where that came from.
At first blush, it’s true, you sort of have the sense that Yanis, like Zizek, might have missed something that is both crucial and obvious in Marx.
But he, like Zizek, I can assure you, did not.
In fact, the most crucial part of Marx is, as Yanis puts it, the “dialectical perspective, where everything is pregnant with its opposite.” And that explains why “. . . most commentators fail to appreciate the dialectical process under their nose. They recognise the mountain of debts and banking losses but neglect the opposite side of the same coin: the mountain of idle savings that are “frozen” by fear and thus fail to convert into productive investments.”
Yup. And now we understand how a Marxist can be a neoliberal. It’s all to do with dialectical contradictions as Marx understood them.
(Ooops. I almost forgot to source my quotes to the iconoclastic publication in which the material was first published: Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist)
God bless you Norman for dragging through that book for quotes! When Varoufa claimed earlier that ‘nation’ and national sovereignty was purely a matter of economics I stopped reading him. This ignores not only Capodistrias’ vision of national sovereignties defeating Metternich’s vision of competing empires at the Congress of Vienna [codified in the Treaty of Westphalia] but also the most famous episodes of classical history: why did Sparta and Athens join forces in the face of the Persian invasions? Because both were Greek and this was no longer a family squabble. Who can explain this mystery of a nation’s ancient sense of identity?
Meanwhile 6 days after Macron’s En Marche! movement (which is an exact translation of Israel’s Kadame) won the first French vote, it was announced in the European and Greek MSM to great fanfare that Varoufakis would bring his “movement” [note: not “parties”] “back home” to Greece in preparation for the next elections. Back home? DiEM25 was not formed here but abroad and has never been here. Watch this space!
Just a reference backing up both of your and Vaska’s claim:
“In fact, sovereignty is a necessary condition (though not a sufficient one) for any radical social change, given that such a change is impossible within the NWO of open and liberalized markets for commodities, capital and labor. Therefore, those like Varoufakis, Zizek and the self-declared ‘anarchist’[28] Chomsky (who promptly joined Varoufakis’ movement!), as well as the rest in the globalist ‘Left’ (including ‘anarchists’), who talk today about open borders, are in fact deceiving the victims of globalization. That is, they exploit the old libertarian ideal for ‘no borders’ in order to indirectly promote the NWO. No borders is of course an important ideal, provided however that the peoples themselves control the economy ―not ‘the markets’ (i.e. Goldman Sachs [29] people and the likes, recently joined by Emmanuel Barroso the ex-President of the European Commission!) or, alternatively, some central planners.”
Source: Takis Fotopoulos
Read Novick’s piece condemning Hedges. Looked like a battleground between the Guardian and OffG or the Labour Party elitists and Corbynistas. That doesn’t mean I wholly accept Novicks outright dismissal, the fact is that some of Antifa’s members are socialists and they allied themselves with people who were looking for a fight. If you know there’s a fight in the offing and you go there to do battle, then you are what Hedges described(it doesn’t matter who threw what punches, nobody will care about the details)so leftists got lumped in with violent clashes on both sides. “…..Hedges says “street violence diverts activists from the far less glamorous building of relationships and alternative institutions that alone will make effective resistance possible,” citing Cooperation Jackson, a grass-roots cooperative movement in Jackson, MS. I support Cooperation Jackson financially and have long been in solidarity with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement that helped initiate it. MXGM supports armed self-defense against white supremacist violence in the South and elsewhere. They support political prisoners, including freedom-fighters of the Black Liberation Army. MXGM called a demonstration here in LA in 1992 to shut down a forum called by a Black pseudo-nationalist fronting for a group of neo-Nazis and Hitler apologists……”
It is this kind of vigilante reaction that enables a false misrepresentation of who the real instigators of racist violence were in the first place – it always has been.
Everybody remembers the Toxteth riots back in ’81, but not the reason for them. What they remember is black youths throwing petrol bombs at cars and the police. Ergo, it was the blacks who caused the trouble, not the states failure to address the issues or the harassment by police throughout their neighbourhoods. etc. etc. From Wiki: “….Because it was seen to involve mainly black youths (similar to riots around the same time in Brixton, Handsworth, and those in 1980 in Bristol), the Toxteth upheaval was generally reported as a “race riot”, but there were also reports of frustrated white youths travelling in from other areas of Liverpool to fight alongside Toxteth residents against the police…..”
That is why any association with violent activists is not a good idea. It always ends up being misrepresented.
Novick is missing a trick – one the gov’t and it’s MSM poodles know all too well.
antiFa: suicide tattooed crystalline fractal Fascist milksops
who will fight just to fight – just to distract from the gnawing of the ersatz-immortal worm at the core
who will fight willingly for any social media Svengali’s synthesized cause: because fighting is the only prescription anti-depressant therapy they can afford
who self-reflect as Capitalists: self-reflecting homogeneously individuated hordes of Capitalists
who are racist anti-racists: mimicking anti-bigotry bigots
who arise as democracy dies: as Capitals latest meritocratic iteration of for profit $15-an-hour entrepreneurial totalitarian child soldiers
whose minds have been addled by the navel fluff opiate of narcissistic no-real-difference single issue identitarian politics; that they’ve been spoon-fed-for-free from birth by culturally Marxist Democrat dealers
who introspect deep into the everynight on the toked fluff and burning witch-beard of the progressive liberal lies whose Dragon they’ve been chasin’
who travel to riots on block-booked for the day fleets of western liberal buses with the KKK
who are self-pityingly-blinded by the soul-stinging of their emoticon tears: to the Class War of attrition being waged on them – and to the real revolutionary potential of class-solidarity with the separated-at-birth alt-right political-mirror-cloned doppelganger they just reflex-reactionary-maced
who serve the same Gods of Money as the stood-down-for-the-day bread-and-circus-spectator white-supremacist police
who are immune to the mocking of the anti-saviour Soros; as he rapaciously laugh laughs like Lucifer – all the way to his IMF-BIS-central bank: whose worthless paper fiat currency puppet-strings he manipulates to control them
riding on a synthetic Kabuki-violence wave: like a Sorosite high priest of the Cult of Cybele – borne shoulder high by the emasculated cohorts of the simultaneous locked-goose-step of the alt-left-right-left-right-left…
A.G’s Ghost
Wow mate. I must have been sitting in the cuckoos nest when your comment flew over me. Gotta ask: Do you believe in anything?
In the structuring of political reality, the media purposefully leaves aside the dreaded ‘C’ word – CLASS! Instead, we have the politics of identity, where one group pursues a political agenda which in no way threatens the social structure of late capitalism. Thus our class relationships (and therefore unity) are deliberately obscured and diverted into areas which pose no threat to the ruling elite. It should be understood that the system can to a large extent has easily accommodated gay rights, women’s rights, black rights (Obama being the template) and so forth, whilst at the same time waging a relentless war on the 99% at home and abroad. For example.
‘ … Trevor Phillips, a long time Labour party activist of the London ethnic community in his capacity of the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, aptly explained why he broke from this: ”The idea was to corral certain groups of people, to make people like me – someone from an ethnic background – a political category, which they could move around. It was treating me just like a pawn and that the only thing that mattered to me was my colour” Trevor was raising the implicit issue of the all class element in the identity of a person irrespective of skin colour, sexual identity and so forth. From this point of view, identity politics, A BASIC ELEMENT OF LIBERAL IDEOLOGY, can be seen as a way of obscuring class divisions, or alternatively, as the present day tactics of the ruling class, to divide and rule in the pseudo-democracies of the western world. ‘
(The New World Order – Takis Fotopoulos)
Frank. What an absolute gem.
Found the following: http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol12/vol12_no1_Brexit_Globalization_Bankruptcy_Globalist_Left.html
Fotopoulis seems to have been extensively quoted by a large array of Libertarians/Socialists academics. The best place to start is his site Inclusive Democracy,where PDF’s can be downloaded, unless you can afford the books.
It should be obvious that the left is in total disarray. So much so that the left is now clutching at whatever narratives that the right is offering them. The mainstream liberal “left” does so with the right-wing narratives of teams Blair and Clinton. And likewise, part of the alternative, anti-Hillary left is now doing the same with narratives offered by the alt-right. But is the latter really any better than the former? Instead of jumping on right-wing bandwagons, such as those condemning anti-fascism, the left should carve out its own path or be damned.
I was cheering when Hillary lost last November. But I draw the line at attempts to make me feel guilty or embarrassed for opposing Nazis. The neo-conservative movement was started in the 1960s by former lefties who were appalled by the sight of unwashed hippies. I’m not going to follow their example by letting pics of tattooed fashion victims on the left make me become apologetic towards fascism.
I don’t have an opinion on whether Antifa is good or bad, but the backlash in the alternative media is bordering on hysteria. Judging by the amount of denunciating, you’d be inclined to think it was a member of Antifa that drove a car into a peaceful crowd, rather than an overt fascist. Surely you don’t have to be a Hillary shill to have a more nuanced opinion than the narrative currently framed by the alt-right that feebly attempts to deflect the blame for the death of Heather Heyer onto left-wing activists.
Oh for God’s sake wake up!
Antifa is not American and its not ‘real’. It’s a Soros organisation put together in Germany c 2005 and has been the right arm of the PTB for the last 10 years deployed purposely to create violence in otherwise peaceful demonstrations and providing – among other things – the excuse to forbid demonstrations completely. Antifa has been active in Greece, Spain, Italy, France etc. since 2008 and usually consists of foreigners and its ‘members’ are always paid. It is pure rent-a-crowd, rent-a-thug.. NOW Soros deploys it in USA to create division and instead of doing your homework you fall for the US deep state directed MSM song sheet and sob song.
Antifa Thugs Demand ‘Overdue Payment’ From George Soros
https://newspunch.com/antifa-payment-george-soros/
Antifa Members are Now Protesting George Soros Demanding Their Payments
https://youtu.be/6IovWPu2w44
I’ve fought racism all my life and I certainly don’t cheer for Nazis. But this whole hysteria in the media is about unless you condemn the Nazis then you’re a Trump supporting Nazi. Well, they can sell it…but I’m not buying.
As for ANTIFA, there are definitely issues with this group and their tactics. They certainly weren’t peaceful. If this rally had just gone ahead with Nazis bleating their usual shit would anyone have cared? Would support for nazis have increased? I doubt it very much.
You also have to define between straight out nazi fruitcakes and those who flirt with right wing activism. There is no black and white, just shades of grey. Even one of the videos from the demonstration that’s doing the rounds is by a guy who now preaches to right wingers on his video blogs but used be part of the Occupy movement previously.
Another thing that might make us suspicious of this Charlottesville narrative that the media are trying to sell us. Who’s to say that both sides didn’t have government plants/assets steering their followers into a confrontation?
Bravo Seamus: of course both sides are funded and supported – to create ‘events’.
Clever chap Seamus. Doubtless you hit the nail on the head. It’s all theatre for the most part, for a price, but makes for a good distraction while the government goes about it’s secret illegal business as usual.
Ouseman.
I rather think that we need to be more than just anti Trump or pro Clinton in defining what is right and left or right and wrong – neither represents either. The use of violence is not something I could advocate because it leads to a descent into even further chaos and confusion. If Antifa are going to identify with people taking the law into their own hands and resorting to violence, then they are simply becoming what they protest so loudly against. Hysteria is just the beginning which was probably the point of using violence in order to attract attention, but it will end up being a tool to beat the left and socialist movement with. Clinton and Trump will be laughing all the way to the next theft of our life and liberties. Soros delights in sowing dissidence and violence and uses it as a weapon to further his own nefarious agenda. Until I’ve looked into Antifa further, I’m putting a lot of distance between them and myself and Stuart Bramhall.
That’s not a member of Antifa from Berkley. That’s internet rap sensation “Lil Peep”.
Someone should let Zerohedge know.
“Nazi rampage in Charlottesville ”
I don’t think one apparent paranoid schizophrenic driving his car into a crowd qualifies as a “Nazi rampage.” The rest of the violence was initiated by the VA State Police (who attacked the “unite” rally and then pushed them into the crowd of alleged leftists) and the antifa and thugs aligned with them.
Perhaps the “paranoid schizophrenic” was an MKULTRA patsy? Do you find the plate number GVF 1111 a little too
convenient with at least 8 million Americans on government databases like Main Core?
https://gangstalkingismurder.wordpress.com/james-alex-fields-jr-was-on-a-government-database-watchlist/
Violence is merely the unworthy expression of egotism – whichever side it springs from. The worst elements of the media take a perverse delight in fomenting dispute and conflict. Oh, how you all love to conflate and complicate matters of human folly !
True anarchy, as espoused and practiced by Ghandi, is all about white-anting the system. Once the pyramids are undermined they will collapse.
Refusing consumerism, BDS,dissent and peaceful protests are the tactics we must use.
Anarchy = Rules WITHOUT rulers.
The mantra of peaceful protests and consumer activism as the only “acceptable” modes of protest and struggle fall right into the hands of those who wield the greatest instruments of violence. Why would you trap the working class within the box that the rulers themselves lionize? Pacifism is really just a petty-bourgeois fad and emotional preference.
With each intensification of far right activity, journos talk about the nascent fascist movement. It’s contradictory. The fascism is intensifying. It isn’t about to begin.
I think that the author is on the right track here, otherwise. Indeed, Reading Zinn’s “A People’s History Of The United States,” teaches me and those who pay attention that the state will always manipulate the people in order to protect itself and the class which it protects. Zinn comes back to the basic tact of giving enough people just enough to tamp down rebellion and create a middle class that will serve as a buffer between it and the abused, abandoned masses. That tact includes channeling working class grievances into electoral politics (death in other words). Also, Zinn quotes authors like Francis Piven and Richard Cloward who present very interesting stats about strikes. It turns out that there were more (wild cat, sit-in) ‘before’ unionization. Why? The ruling class could more easily corrupt a handful of union leaders than the entire working class, and they did. Bosses actually wanted unions because they could control them.
Workers literally had to fight for their rights in the 40s, 50s and 60s. And they often died. They were often simply murdered by the state and the bosses in early times. Those who won rights that we are now losing, but which we had for a while, didn’t win them by saying “Please” to uncaring, unprincipled bosses and their political partners. When Martin Luther King began to come around to Malcolm X’s position that the government and main political parties will always seek to coopt civil rights leaders and activists and render them ineffectual. Shortly afterward, as he was somewhere supporting strikers, he was assassinated.
So, One can argue with the rightness, or morality, of active resistance to the police state, but, setting that aside and as Gabriel Black helpfully makes plain, Its vital that we know about ‘who’ is actively resisting the police state in our name.
‘Antifa’ is a reminder that large parts of the ‘left” in the US will fight anything before actively challenging the imperialist party. The Military Industrial Congressional axis has promoted fascism, internationally, at the cost of millions of lives, for seventy years, during which time the ‘left’. as a whole, has increasingly distanced itself from critics of the warmongers and empire. And, particularly from critics of Zionism.
says the bloke who has never ever dealt with real nazis in their community. A fucking armchair pussy.
When the bastards come to beat you up, i will laugh and point to you pathetic posts.
Isn’t it odd how the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists violent hate groups–including Christian churches–don’t have any listing for the violent Antifa thugs?
I fear Americans are getting pushed into either submitting to totalitarian assholes like Antifa, who want to take what white Americans have and give it to others, like Antifa, or they’ll have to rise up, a repeat of the Civil War.
Relax, Greg. Antifa isn’t going to take away your God-given rights as a white man or anything that you “earned” through the brilliance of your white genes and initiative. The most they’ll do is give you a face full of fist if you take part in a white supremacist rally, but I’m sure you can desist from THAT, right? They’re too disorganized and childish to accomplish much more than that. The task of actual redistribution of wealth and destruction of class and racial divisions falls to genuine communists.
Antifa will melt away when they are no longer needed and re-appear under another banner / flag. Rent-a-mob.
The enemy are the people who own the media and who also own AntiFa. The 0.1% arrange that we fight every identitarian group possible except for themselves.
Hey!
The wsws has been promoting the same policies for marx knows how long, with the expectation, one assumes, of a different outcome vis a vis the elites and capitalism generally. This equates to the definition of lunacy. Try something different, eh?
Try to stay on topic.
Wrong. Antifa has no overarching strategic outlook for defeating capitalism (or fascism, for that matter). It engages in adventurist and impetuous acts of violence but has no plan for what comes next. Marxist-Leninists, on the other hand, do have such an outlook.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t disapprove of Antifa because it uses violence; I disapprove of it because that violence is not integrated within a broader strategic plan. The issue isn’t “Is violence good or bad?” The issue is “Is this violence actually helping the cause of the working class?” If it isn’t, then it’s objectively bad. If it is, then it’s objectively good.
Exactly. We should distinguish between movements that use force to exercise a valid right of self-defense or national self-determination (like the Palestinian groups), and those that merely seek to ‘de-platform’ their fellow citizens. How exactly is that striking a blow the oligarchy?