Something that happened at Charlottesville confused me. The alt-right spokesmen kept referring to the counter-protesters as "commies." I didn't know that was even a thing anymore. Even the Russians are not commies. Yes, it is true I have a poster of Kim Jong-un up in my room, but I swear when I ordered it, I thought Kim was a South Korean fashion model.
Be that as it may, thanks to President Trump, I now know to whom the white supremacists were referring. Antifa, (the Antifaschistische Aktion) was a resistance group formed in 1930s Germany to combat the rise of Nazi fascism. This organization directly fought against Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Adolf Hitler’s Brownshirts, and Francisco Franco's nationalist army. Antifaschistische Aktion tactics were used as a model for anti-Japanese resistance in occupied-China during World War II. The group never had any link to Stalinist Russia.
In 1987, a group calling themselves "Baldies" joined together in Minneapolis, Minnesota to fight neo-Nazism spreading in their city. The Anti-Racist Action movement grew in the U.S. among left-leaning punk rockers. Antifa could be described as a "unite the left" movement, composed of anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobia groups, pitted against the neo-Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists.
Antifa members also represent anti-government and anti-capitalist groups because they believe these institutions perpetuate and are in-league with the white nationalist movement.
As we saw in Charlottesville, the hatred displayed "on many sides" was ugly. At past incidents, Antifa fighters have smashed windows, burned cars, maced and physically attacked opponents, and hurled urine, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at police.
Antifa activists publicly identify white supremacists in an attempt to get them fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments, in addition to disrupting white-supremacist rallies by force.
As Scott Crow, a longtime Antifa organizer, said, "The idea in Antifa is that we go where they go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don't believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece."
I am undecided. In my youth, I would have been on the front lines punching those Nazi fuckers in the mouth. Now, I don't understand why the counter-protesters didn't just set up a stage in a park across town, trot out some folk singers, maybe Gloria Steinem to give a speech, and pass around some doobs. Have the media completely ignore the Nazi rally, and let the police deal with them.
People would see the absurdity of these sheet-wearing grand poobahs, and jack-stepping jerks for the pitiful losers they are.
For an in-depth look at Antifa, read the Mother Jones article at:
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