Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately the mainstream has portrayed "antifa" as some kind of covert organization acting inappropriately. They fail to point out that antifa is literally short for anti-fascist. In other words, unless you're pro-fascism, you're anti-fascist by default. It's akin to calling yourself a liberal or conservative.

View on HN

No. Antifa is more than just anti-fascist, and not everyone who is anti-fascist is Antifa. There are plenty of people who are not pro-fascist, but also are not pro-brawling-with-the-Proud-Boys-in-the-streets.

In fact, the Proud Boys could use the same logic. Are you ashamed of America's heritage? No? Then you're one of the Proud Boys. The logic in either case is completely false. In fact, this is one of the standard fallacies, but I can't remember the name of it.

I think you’re referring to the “false dilemma” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma)

This is not how it works. Antifa has a specific meaning. Similar to how having carbon in a product is not enough to say that it is organic. Or how just publishing your source code online is not enough to make your program open source.

I wonder how long until a militant group starts calling themselves, "The Human Beings"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com