Describing it as “one of the darkest days in American history,” President-elect Joe Biden denounced Wednesday’s spectacular assault on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. as a coup attempt fomented by Donald Trump.
Yet, almost at the same time as the future president was denouncing Trump’s coup attempt, he was appointing Victoria Nuland — the driving force behind the 2014 insurrection that overthrew the Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych — as his new Under Secretary for Political Affairs.
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”
— Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations”, Social Research, vol 38 (via philosophybits)
Like five years ago I saw a post on this website that was like “unfollow me if you support Trump or if you are Trump” and I’ve been on-again off-again remembering that post ever since for just the confident, unironic, completely serious implication from OP that Donald Trump himself may not only be on tumblr, but that he might very well be following your pastel Undertale RP blog burdening you with the responsibility of informing him he’s not welcome there.
All that to say that post has now skyrocketed to the forefront of my mind as tumblr fast approaches becoming the last social media platform to ban him. I’m gonna check my follower list and find tumblr user notrealdonaldtrump rooting through my garbage because he liked my hot anime takes and gravity falls gifs and im gonna have to chase him out with a broom
I really hope that you’ll give this a listen. I’ve considered myself an antifaschist for awhile now, but I’m starting to think that our approach is off. I was never able to put it into words until now. https://youtu.be/LCiAfD2EDvY
The interviewer is longtime leftist, organizer, and folk singer David Rovics. He can absolutely be trusted.
The tldr is that physically fighting fash, while useful in the short term to protect our communities, leads to escalation and further radicalization over the long term and makes things more dangerous for everyone involved. We need to be primarily focused on community outreach (largely done), building dual power, and deradicalizing the far right. In the end they are pissed off at the system for many of the same reasons that we are; they’re being misled and focusing on the wrong enemy. It’s a result of the divide and conquer tactic that the ruling class seems all too happy to employ.
It is entirely possible that one day there will be no more fash, no more proud boys or white nationalists- but it won’t be because they were beaten into submission. That’s never worked. It will be because enough people gave a thought about and then did something about the material and ideological circumstances that created them. Problems must be solved at the source.
Heimbach has done anything to make anyone believe he’s reformed besides a pretending to be in order to make some fast $$$ and dupe people like you into taking his advice about what antifa should be doing?
But OK, aside from that, here are some other things you seem to be wrong about:
1) Antifa = Violence, violence, violence. The reality, Anon, is that 99% of antifascist work is non-violent. You don’t get to see that because the media & youtubers are incentivized to focus only on the violence. Anyone with even a cursory involvement in the antifascist movement would know this.
2) Physical community self-defence, de-radicalization, community outreach, and “dual power,” are mutually exclusive. Again, Anon, 99% of our work focuses on the middle two. Physical community self-defence (or “violence” as you might describe it) doesn’t actually come up that often, tbh. The Leninist/Maoist concept of “dual power” is not one accepted by all or even a majority of antifascists, because anti-fascism is a broad-based movement of people with all sorts of political ideologies, who tend to set their ideological differences aside while we try to stop fascists from murdering people.
3) Fighting fascists doesn’t help long-term and only radicalizes them further. The truth of the matter is that physically opposing fascists (which is self-defence by definition), raises the membership stakes of fascism and is as likely to force fascists to reconsider their choices as it is to further radicalize them. The 100-year history of anti-fascism bears this out. The experience of every credible anti-fascist crew we know bears this out. The personal experiences of members of our own anti-fascist collective - some of whom have been doing this work for over three decades now - bears this out.
Also: how can you make this claim while simultaneously supporting the idea that Matt Heimbach - who we fought many times in many locations - is now a “reformed” white supremacist? Your example contradicts your point.
Also: can we talk about how privileged your position is? Last year, we documented 372 people being murdered by fascists. Only a person that doesn’t face an existential threat from fascism would make the argument that standing up to fascist aggression is counter-productive.
4) Fighting fascists has never worked. Dude, have you read 20th century history? Come on now.
5) We must prioritize dealing with the source of all society’s ills instead of defending our communities against physical attack by fascists. There is no consensus in the anti-fascist movmenet about “the source” of all problems. Anti-fascism is a non-sectarian, broad-based movement of people, many of whom will disagree with you about your perceived source of societal ills. We put those differences aside because fighting back against fascism is a priority than political debate right now. Because people are being murdered.
And now you want to claim that we shouldn’t oppose these fascists in the streets? That they should just be left unopposed out there or that the cops can deal with them while anti-fascists focus on “the material and ideological circumstances that created them?”
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