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March 29, 2024, 02:15:01 PM

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First they came for the right wing bloggers...

Started by biggytitbo, February 23, 2018, 08:28:18 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Funcrusher

Good thing he didn't come at me with an Observer, I'd have been brown bread for sure.

Black blocked onto a new page. Should be safe here.

Lemming

You're safe here on the new page with me, I still think hitting people is Just Not On (while still leaving a little bit of moral wriggle room to laugh at Spencer getting twatted).

Hank Venture

There's no such thing as a non-violent Nazi. Their ideology is based on ethnic cleansing. Punching them is completely justified both morally and as a pragmatic tactic.

Edit: Given the world as it is, considering «antifa» even a remotely a problem is demented.

Lemming

Quote from: Hank Venture on November 29, 2018, 02:11:45 AM
There's no such thing as a non-violent Nazi. Their ideology is based on ethnic cleansing. Punching them is completely justified both morally and as a pragmatic tactic.

Does it work as a pragmatic tactic in the age of the internet, where these movements thrive and grow almost entirely online?

We had a thread about The Twatting Of Richard Spencer around the time it happened, and I think argued something along the lines that violence doesn't work today, and that it can only provide easy ammo for right-wingers to whip people up against the imaginary wave of antifa coming to kill everyone.

While in retrospect I'm not sure that the rise in support for Spencer has been as intense as I feared, I also don't think getting punched hindered him or his neo-Nazi beliefs in any way. It's definitely contributed to the moral panic over black bloc/antifa that seems to have taken hold with every centrist/centre-right person in America and the UK, which is actively hurting the left and making us easier to dismiss and scapegoat.

manticore

Quote from: Funcrusher on November 29, 2018, 12:17:56 AM
Hench comedy fans, comedy fans that are hench. I'm just finding you all banging on about beating up fascists somewhat amusing. Non violent resistance is favourite for me - I agree with Chris Hedges criticisms of the black bloc.

So do I. Black bloc are macho thugs out for a street fight, have been since their origins in Germany in the 80s, and elements of antifa have inherited their mentality and approach.

For instance the mess described here:

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/31/antifa-violence-gives-far-right-provocateurs-crave/

---------------------------------

Anti-fascists interrupt two members of an organisation called Turning Point USA, which has some definite racist links and leanings. But it's a really messy and contradictory situation again when you have an overwhelmingly white bunch of people (particularly two men) screaming in a black right-wing woman (Candace Owens)'s face and chanting 'fuck white supremacy'.

https://www.phillyvoice.com/antifa-protesters-charlie-kirk-candance-owens-philly-restaurant-turning-point-usa/

As regards chevil on Chomsky, one small part of his feeling about this might come from his memories of having his anti-Vietnam war meetings around 1964 broken up by right-wing students before students got hip and got on the same side as him.

I looked up 'hench', and that's just the right word for thoughtless posturing about kicking people's heads in without concern for whether it's actually the right or most effective way to challenge right-wing or fascist movements. Do people really imagine that potential or actual Trump supporters will be anything but strengthened in their beliefs by seeing masked left/anarchists threatening and attacking people and breaking windows on the streets?

What is actually wrong with non-violence?

garbed_attic

Quote from: manticore on November 29, 2018, 03:04:10 AM
I looked up 'hench', and that's just the right word for thoughtless posturing about kicking people's heads in without concern for whether it's actually the right or most effective way to challenge right-wing or fascist movements. Do people really imagine that potential or actual Trump supporters will be anything but strengthened in their beliefs by seeing masked left/anarchists threatening and attacking people and breaking windows on the streets?

What is actually wrong with non-violence?

Most people don't care about whether it "works". It's that fascists deserve to feel pain and it is gratifying to see them beaten up. It's probably not a pragmatic position unless there's a mass mobilisation of being beating up fascists, but it is an understandable one.

Large Noise

Antifa can do really good work when it comes to shutting down the likes of the EDL (SDL in Scotland, same thing though). They make it difficult for these groups to organise, force them to be covert with times/locations which prevents them attracting interest, and give authorities a strong incentive to deny them the right to congregate and march. Look at what's happening with the Proud Boys in the US; it's clashes with Antifa and the subsequent police involvement that's thrown that group into complete disarray.

biggytitbo

I thought jobotic might like this one, considering how thoroughly he's gulped down the Koolaid - https://consentfactory.org/2018/11/19/the-hitlergate-hearings/

QuoteNone of this messaging will need to make sense. The goal of the "Resistance" is not to present a credible case that Donald Trump is literally a fascist or a Russian operative, or that global capitalism is in any real danger of being torn asunder by literal fascism (whatever your definition of fascism is). The goal of the "Resistance" is to make it unmistakeably clear who is really running things, and what happens to annoying billionaire ass clowns who get elected president without their permission, and to the ignorant rabble who elect such ass clowns, or who vote to leave the European Union (which, of course, they will never allow to happen, except perhaps in some nominal sense).

In other words, the global capitalist ruling classes are about to teach the world a lesson. It is the same basic lesson they have been teaching the world since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They taught it in the former Yugoslavia. They taught it in Greece, and Iraq, and Libya. They have taught it throughout the Middle East. They are about to teach it throughout the West. The lesson is, resistance to global capitalism is not just futile, it is suicidal. The lesson is, play with identity politics and all that "cultural wars" stuff to your heart's content, but fuck with global capitalism and we will squash you like a tomato bug.

The Hitlergate Hearings, the fascism hysteria, the Russian mind control paranoia, and the rest of the concerted propaganda campaign we have been subjected to since 2016 (and are about to experience the full force of) are all just parts of a broader effort, not just to crush the "populist" insurgency that began in the West with the Brexit referendum, continued with Trump, and then spread throughout Europe, but to crush all hope for any future rebellions against global capitalism and its ideology, regardless of whether they stem from the Left or Right. (If you think they're just focused on the neo-nationalists, you obviously haven't been paying attention to the ongoing demonization of Corbyn, Mélenchon, Sahra Wagenknecht, and assorted other "populist" leftists.) In the old days, this was the part where the king would mount the usurper's head on a spike to remind everybody who was boss. Nowadays, of course, we do it on television, or the Internet, like when we hung Saddam, or sodomized Gaddafi with a bayonet. They're not going to do anything like that to Trump, who is, after all, an American usurper, but they are going to make an example of him.

biggytitbo

Haha The Trumpenleft - https://consentfactory.org/2018/11/26/beware-the-trumpenleft/

QuoteThe Trumpenleft (or "Sputnik Left," as it is also called by professional anti-Putin-Nazi intelligence analysts) is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It is a gang of nefarious Putin-Nazi infiltrators posing as respectable leftists in order to disseminate Trumpian ideology and Putin-Nazi propaganda among an assortment of online leftist magazines that hardly anyone ever actually reads. The aim of these insidious Trumpenleft infiltrators is to sow confusion, chaos, and discord among actual, real, authentic leftists who are going about the serious business of calling Donald Trump a fascist on the Internet twenty-five times a day, verbally abusing Julian Assange, occasionally pulling down oppressive statues, and sharing videos of racist idiots acting like racist idiots in public.

The Trumpenleft is determined to sabotage (or momentarily disrupt) this revolutionary work, mostly by tricking these actual leftists into critically thinking about a host of issues that there is no good reason to critically think about ... global capitalism, national sovereignty, immigration, identity politics, corporate censorship, and other issues that there is no conceivable reason to discuss, or debate, or even casually mention, unless you're some kind of Russia-loving Nazi

Hank Venture

#1029
Quote from: Lemming on November 29, 2018, 02:28:33 AM
Does it work as a pragmatic tactic in the age of the internet, where these movements thrive and grow almost entirely online?

We had a thread about The Twatting Of Richard Spencer around the time it happened, and I think argued something along the lines that violence doesn't work today, and that it can only provide easy ammo for right-wingers to whip people up against the imaginary wave of antifa coming to kill everyone.

While in retrospect I'm not sure that the rise in support for Spencer has been as intense as I feared, I also don't think getting punched hindered him or his neo-Nazi beliefs in any way. It's definitely contributed to the moral panic over black bloc/antifa that seems to have taken hold with every centrist/centre-right person in America and the UK, which is actively hurting the left and making us easier to dismiss and scapegoat.

You're kidding yourself if you think scapegoating the left is in any way dependent on the left doing anything in particular. I don't mean this in a rude way, nor do I mean talking down to you, but the left is way too nice, to our own detriment. There is no civility on the right/the far right. The far right is banking on the left approaching them in good faith so they can exploit it, because they are not going to give an inch to debate. The liberal fantasy of debate as a video game quick-time event, where if only you say the right things in the right order means you have convinced a Nazi, isn't ever going to work, because no Nazi is participating in the debate in good faith, by definition - their worldview is malignant gibberish.

Nazis are today so emboldened that they aren't afraid to walk the streets shouting their slogans. Counter-protesting is the only thing that will chase them off. Any excuse will have the center/center right jumping down the throats of the left, because the center/center right prefer the far right to the left in any case.

Here's an example of respectable/"intellectual" center-right/right Financial Times putting it out there for all to see: https://twitter.com/FT/status/1067404567074213888

Nothing the left ever does is going to appease the center right. Bolsonaro the actual and literal fascist is preferable to a milquetoast social democrat.

kngen

Quote from: Large Noise on November 29, 2018, 11:07:27 AM
Antifa can do really good work when it comes to shutting down the likes of the EDL (SDL in Scotland, same thing though). They make it difficult for these groups to organise, force them to be covert with times/locations which prevents them attracting interest, and give authorities a strong incentive to deny them the right to congregate and march. Look at what's happening with the Proud Boys in the US; it's clashes with Antifa and the subsequent police involvement that's thrown that group into complete disarray.

Agree 100%. And no platforming goes back a lot further than the Black Bloc - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43_Group

As far as them being 'street thugs' - well, in entirely pragmatic terms, there are a lot of those on the other side, and I've been very grateful to have AFA or Red Action (dating myself here a tad) on my side when things have gone a bit mental.

Endicott

Quote from: manticore on November 29, 2018, 03:04:10 AM
What is actually wrong with non-violence?

It leads to your own death. Not everyone in the fight is up for that, some people want to win. Put extremely simply, in a war both sides use bullets. You can of course argue about the details, and the efficacy of particular actions, and how they play out in PR. Inappropriate violence can be self defeating. But it's not wrong in principle. I agree with what Hank Venture said above.

Mister Six

Quote from: Hank Venture on November 29, 2018, 12:43:24 PM
Nazis are today so emboldened that they aren't afraid to walk the streets shouting their slogans. Counter-protesting is the only thing that will chase them off. Any excuse will have the center/center right jumping down the throats of the left, because the center/center right prefer the far right to the left in any case.

Yes, this kind of thing is also why I wasn't too red-eyed about  Spencer getting socked. It's like banning guns: the point isn't that nobody will ever obtain a gun, it's that ordinary people won't be exposed to guns and their danger will not be normalised or be allowed to seem attractive.

If Nazis manage to get into the majority they will murder Jews, non-whites, the disabled, Romanies... This is a serious threat, and the whole point of their existence.

So yeah, embarrass them, shame them and hit them until they fuck off up a mountain and don't come back.

Lemming

#1033
Quote from: Hank Venture on November 29, 2018, 12:43:24 PM
You're kidding yourself if you think scapegoating the left is in any way dependent on the left doing anything in particular.

Agreed, but I feel like the actual incidents of violence, rare though they are, have given the centrist/right media enough material to wank themselves dry for years to come. Black bloc shit is just hugely unpopular with the general public and whenever people see it, it costs us support. In a time of such extreme political polarisation, where people see things in a grand "left vs right" narrative, I really believe the actions of a few balaclava-clad kids can have negative effects for mainstream left movements such as Corbyn's Labour as they all blur together in the public's mind.

Again, I agree that the media and centre/right politicians are going to scapegoat the left no matter what, but that means we need to avoid making it easy on them.

There's also the perception that it's not just literal neo-Nazis who are on the receiving end of this violence, rightists on Twitter have been having panic attacks about anyone in a MAGA hat getting brutally ass-kicked in the street. Check out MuteBanana's stuff earlier in the thread with vague footage of red-hat-wearing people getting beaten down - that kind of footage, along with real incidents of antifa violence, spreads like wildfire. There is no wave of antifa coming to beat the shit out of regular Trump supporters, of course, but the perception of violent leftists has people shit-scared, and it has to fall to us to combat that perception wherever we can.

QuoteI don't mean this in a rude way, nor do I mean talking down to you, but the left is way too nice, to our own detriment. There is no civility on the right/the far right. The far right is banking on the left approaching them in good faith so they can exploit it, because they are not going to give an inch to debate. The liberal fantasy of debate as a video game quick-time event, where if only you say the right things in the right order means you have convinced a Nazi, isn't ever going to work, because no Nazi is participating in the debate in good faith, by definition - their worldview is malignant gibberish.

It seems unreal that we even have to engage with malignant gibberish in 2018, but these movements are picking up steam fast - especially, scarily, among young men. We need to have some kind of counter-attack, whether it revolves around no-platforming, counter-protesting, debating (and I 100% agree with the people who say that seriously debating Nazi views runs the risk of lending them some kind of legitimacy, so I'm not sure what the best way of engaging in such a debate would be), or just mocking the shit out of them.  Making it impossible for them to show their faces in public or online without getting the piss brutally ripped out of them - Westboro Baptist Church is the example that springs to mind, although I know the anti-Westboro strategy hardly maps perfectly onto dealing with Nazis. Either way, rearranging Spencer's jaw doesn't seem to work.

EDIT: Should also add that while no-platforming and counter-protesting are crucial, these movements mainly grow online. I don't know how to stop that, and I don't know how to penetrate the veil of total bullshit that people in alt-right communities surround themselves with, but finding a way to do that is key to stopping the entire "movement", I think. Stopping Nazis showing up in public is great, but when the average alt-right footsoldier is a 19-year old knobhead posting anime reaction gifs on /pol/, that's where the ideology needs to be fought.

QuoteNazis are today so emboldened that they aren't afraid to walk the streets shouting their slogans. Counter-protesting is the only thing that will chase them off. Any excuse will have the center/center right jumping down the throats of the left, because the center/center right prefer the far right to the left in any case.

Counter-protests are vital, being visible and making Nazis aware that their views are not welcome anywhere outside their shitty little 4chan boards is vital, actively stopping this new form of fascism from gaining a foothold anywhere in mainstream society is vital. I just don't know if swinging a bike lock at people helps, and I'm unconvinced that it doesn't actively hinder.

jobotic

Quote from: biggytitbo on November 29, 2018, 11:42:02 AM
I thought jobotic might like this one, considering how thoroughly he's gulped down the Koolaid - https://consentfactory.org/2018/11/19/the-hitlergate-hearings/

Well we know where you copy and paste some or your hilariously biting comments from, lovely. You pompous arse.

biggytitbo

Don't you ever worry that you're allowing yourself to be manipulated though? Becoming an unwitting actor in someone else's play? It would certainly worry me If I discovered most of what I think perfectly aligns with what the world's power elites want me to.

chveik

Quote from: biggytitbo on November 29, 2018, 03:25:22 PM
Don't you ever worry that you're allowing yourself to be manipulated though? Becoming an unwitting actor in someone else's play? It would certainly worry me If I discovered most of what I think perfectly aligns with what the world's power elites want me to.

how ironic

Paul Calf



biggytitbo

I love how many Nazi hunters there are on here though, makes me feel safe for the imminent takeover of the Fourth Reich.


jobotic

Quote from: biggytitbo on November 29, 2018, 03:25:22 PM
Don't you ever worry that you're allowing yourself to be manipulated though? Becoming an unwitting actor in someone else's play? It would certainly worry me If I discovered most of what I think perfectly aligns with what the world's power elites want me to.

Most of what I think doesn't align with what the world's power elites want it to. Although they'll probably struggle on. Still, if they want me to despise Nazis then I'm too weak to resist.

biggytitbo

Mate, there's nothing the people who hold all the power in this world would love more than for us to waste all our energies chasing pretend Nazis, pretend terrorists, pretend 'far-left' fascists, pretend foreign dictators or whatever other phantom tunes they want us to dance to. Anything that stops us focusing on them, and the structures they use to control us, basically.

chveik

Have you ever been to a protest? Cops are a hundred times more violent than antifa or any similar movement.

Pdine

Quote from: biggytitbo on November 29, 2018, 03:59:25 PM
Mate, there's nothing the people who hold all the power in this world would love more than for us to waste all our energies chasing pretend Nazis, pretend terrorists, pretend 'far-left' fascists, pretend foreign dictators or whatever other phantom tunes they want us to dance to. Anything that stops us focusing on them, and the structures they use to control us, basically.

So assuming you're right and there are many bogus extremists out there sent by The Man to distract us, how would you recommend we differentiate them from the real extremists? Are there real extremists?

Paul Calf


jobotic

Quote from: Pdine on November 29, 2018, 04:04:01 PM
So assuming you're right and there are many bogus extremists out there sent by The Man to distract us, how would you recommend we differentiate them from the real extremists? Are there real extremists?

Even the ones who run someone over in Charlottesville are pretend extremists remember?

biggytitbo

Quote from: Pdine on November 29, 2018, 04:04:01 PM
So assuming you're right and there are many bogus extremists out there sent by The Man to distract us, how would you recommend we differentiate them from the real extremists? Are there real extremists?

They're not bogus extremists, they're the same extremists that were there before, that were always there. Just pointing at something that was already there doesn't make it new. Its the exaggeration and distortion of the nature of these things for propaganda purposes that's the problem. See also how suddenly loads of people are outraged by the same shit America always does because its Trump doing it so it gets publicised more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)

Pdine

Quote from: jobotic on November 29, 2018, 04:05:25 PM
Even the ones who run someone over in Charlottesville are pretend extremists remember?

I'm not mocking Biggy here, I just doubt there's a genuine political epistemology operable given his assumptions. He might be right, but the cost of accepting that there can be no certainty due to overwhelmingly powerful secret conspiracies is that all we are left with is faith. 

Pdine

Quote from: biggytitbo on November 29, 2018, 04:07:41 PM
They're not bogus extremists, they're the same extremists that were there before, that were always there. Just pointing at something that was already there doesn't make it new. Its the exaggeration and distortion of the nature of these things for propaganda purposes that's the problem. See also how suddenly loads of people are outraged by the same shit America always does because its Trump doing it so it gets publicised more.

So why do you call them 'pretend'?