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Comment by jules | Hacker News Reader

That's not how it goes in practice. The fact that the people in that twitter thread endorse antifa shows that they are either ignorant of what antifa actually is (as opposed to what it claims to be), or they endorse an organisation that is more fascist than the fascists it purports to fight.

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Antifa is a label, typically self-appointed. There must be thousands, probably tens of thousands of groups that identify as antifa, most of them confined to a region or a city.

It's possible to make generalisations across all the various groups, but you're going to have huge variance across them -- in pretty much all areas, including internal structure, attitude towards violence and political positions.

Of course groups are aware of one another and cooperate (as well as conflict, I assume) in an anarchic way, but there is no centralized power or executive. It's certainly not a single organisation.

From an organisational perspective, sports fan clubs are rather similar (mostly independent of one another, mostly local, very heterogeneous in how they work internally and interact with the world).

One only has to look at that twitter thread to see what kind of antifa they are endorsing:

> we have an "antifa" movement in France (reacting to our rising far right), and they're often just as violent :-(

reply:

> yup, 100% okay with that, personally

> Me too (mostly). Personally trying to flush out internalised cishet machismo, but if there was ever an outlet...

> the only things fascists respond to is violence. Ignoring them or letting them attack you doesn't help

> good! bash their brains in tbh

It is clear that the kind of antifa they are endorsing falls on a particular point on the "huge variance" spectrum of attitude to violence. It is clear that the code of conduct is being applied selectively to one half of the political spectrum. And I say this as somebody who has always voted for the most left wing party in my country. This attitude towards violence and censorship and social shaming from my side worries me greatly.

“The anti-fascists are the real fascists!” is a tired argument and it has been for more than 70 years, ever since that was said in actual Nazi Germany and the fascists proceeded to win.

When the so called anti-fascists use violence against peaceful protesters and against the police who try to stop them, then yes.

"""If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else. Those who recognised its threat at the time and tried to stop it were, I assume, also called “a mob”. Regrettably too many “fair-minded” people didn’t either try, or want to stop it, and, as I witnessed myself during the war, accommodated themselves when it took over … People who witnessed fascism at its height are dying out, but the ideology is still here, and its apologists are working hard at a comeback. Past experience should teach us that fascism must be stopped before it takes hold again of too many minds, and becomes useful once again to some powerful interests""" <--- Franz Frison, Holocaust survivor

That's misleading. In neither Italy nor Germany did the fascists seize power without using violence. In Germany, the SA was used by the Nazis to suppress their opponents in elections and intimidate the powers that be. Even then, they only won like 40% of the vote and had to manufacture a crisis to seize full control. Similar in Italy.

So what's the solution?

Because attacking people for beliefs you don't like doesn't exactly make things better.

A lot of the people that seem to be trying to attack those they see as facist would be just as bad in the power as those they oppose. Except you know, with different targets.

One rule of thumb would to be to recognize that, within all groups, there are extremists (and they often have the loudest voices). It is wise not to denounce an entire group based on the extremists. It is wise not to flippantly dismiss concerns raised based on the behavior of the extremists.

The problem I see with a heck of a lot of online conversations is that it ridiculously fails this rule. Often times there are some issues on both sides of the coin worth discussing, but it's hard to discuss things rationally when the loudest voices on both sides are acting like spoiled toddlers or often worse. Often times, the extremists dominate the conversation and the resulting discussion is toxic.

Violence is never the solution, but isn't it possible to be anti-fascist (or against any other political movement that more relies on emotionalism instead of rationalism) without being violent? I would think so.

The standard I often judge groups by is whether it's possible to be a decent person and remain a member of the group; rather than looking at the assholes, I look at how the group treats members who stand up to the assholes. Unfortunately, a lot of groups have been failing this spectacularly, and the older a group the worse it often seems to get.

Of course it's possible to be anti facist without being violent. It's possible to non violently get changes in the world, at least if you're in a remotely democratic society like the one you're in at the moment. People like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi proved it.

Responding to political concerns with violence just begets more violence. It just entrenches people's beliefs even further, inspires revenge from the 'other side' (or at least, their own axe crazy extremists) and eventually causes everything to erupt even further (through a civil war).

Honestly, I'd say this part in the most recent series of Doctor Who sums up some of the issues with people trying to solve all their problems with violence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvGND1i6Dj0

Martin Luther King changed the world because America decided that it would rather deal with him, then the far more violent parts of the black liberation movement.

If those more violent parts didn't put the fear of God into the government, he could have been safely ignored.

"If too many people disagree with me, we need to kill them". How about no? There is nothing wrong with fascism, and suggesting that people whose political views differ from ones own are subhumans who need to be killed is pretty ironic coming from a supposed holocaust survivor.

Did anyone in Nazi Germany really claim that the anti-Nazis were the real Nazis or fascists or something? Sounds unlikely somehow.

No, in particular since neither national socialism nor fascism was a boogeyman then.

Before the Nazis came to power, there were plenty of people in Germany who thought the Nazi party & Hitler were thugs and dangerous.

See "Brownshirts"[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

Yes, but they were not a boogeyman, like I said. Where you can just say "you are a nazi!" to shut down any discussion of anything you please. There's a difference between "some people didn't like them" and being a boogeyman.

Yep! The communists claimed the social democrats were fascists because they wanted to own the left, for example.

Well, if you replace "fascists"/"Nazis" with "totalitarian threat" -- the former is modern shorthand for the latter but obviously want used that way until after experience of their rule established that perception -- a big part of the Nazi schtick was portraying other groups that way (Communists, the supposed global Jewish conspiracy, etc.)

Very similar to "anti identity politics leftists are the true leftists" which is probably relevant to this discussion.

Violence is never an appropriate response to speech. I don't care what the Nazis are saying, if you use violence to silence them, you are the problem, and I will support their free speech rights. Free speech is not simply for ideas you like, it's for ideas you hate, too.

Says "GunboatDiplomat"[1]... ;-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunboat_diplomacy

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