Election 2024: beware of emotions

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That's what protestors were called by right wing media. There's no actual group named Antifa. And the reason for that shortening of the descriptive name is so that right wing media doesn't have to admit they're against people who are anti-fascist (which is what that nickname refers to).

At the time, actual WWII veterans did just that: applauded the ongoing work done by those protestors to draw attention to the growing fascism in the U.S. (and other countries as well).

There is no single overarching "Antifa" organization, but there is indeed a loose network of groups devoted to exposing and opposing hate groups, and some of these groups have long called themselves "Antifa." The term "Antifa," as a shorthand for "anti-fascist," has been around for decades.

The right wing media has made Antifa into a boogieman, claiming, for example, that Antifa activists were involved in the looting that accompanied some BLM protests. Based on what I've observed about Antifa activists, that claim seems highly unlikely.

Antifa activists are not, typically, "street thugs." As far as I can tell, Antifa activists are typically well-educated folks who spend a lot of time researching and documenting the activities of various hate groups in order to oppose them in various ways.

To get more of a feel for Antifa activists, I recommend looking at the following:

Some websites of local NYC-based Antifa groups:

- NYC Antifa (includes profiles of some local hate groups/leaders)
- Rise & Resist (recently doing voter registration drive)

Some X (formerly Twitter) accounts of other Antifa groups elsewhere:

- One People's Project (I had some interaction with this group about 15 years ago)
- Torch Antifa Network
- Stumptown Research

And here is some info by and about Spencer Sunshine, who was falsely alleged by Lin Wood to be both "the international leader of Antifa" and the QAnon Shaman. Although he isn't "the international leader of Antifa," he's a respected researcher, with a Ph.D. in sociology, as well as an activist.

- I’ve Been Tracking the Far Right for Years. Then Lin Wood ‘Exposed’ Me as the QAnon Shaman by Spencer Sunshine (with Harry Siegel), The Daily Beast, Jan 11, 2021
- Blaming it on Antifa: Trump’s Crisis Scapegoats by Spencer Sunshine, The Battleground, 05 Jun 2020.
- The Far Right Is Growing Stronger—and Has a Plan for 2024 by Spencer Sunshine, The New Republic, January 4, 2024.
- Spencer Sunshine's page on the website of Political Research Associates.
- About Spencer Sunshine, on his personal blog.

Back in 2016 I attended a panel discussion where he was on the panel. He is certainly NOT a "street thug."

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 22 Oct 2024, 4:56 am, edited 2 times in total.

Antifa attempted to recruit me in 2021 on Facebook. A member had joined a left-leaning group of which I was a member (politics was not its focus) and reached out to me through messages. I blocked the user.

The problem with Antifa is that in public, they conceal their faces, and that is the practice of criminals, which indeed, they are, on occasions when they break the law. Antifa regards police as "the enemy." These practices are not helpful to society and only serves to deepen divisions and harden positions.

I think that more good can be accomplished by working with people, reaching out and learning.

There was a time when I felt like an Antifa. I had a similar attitude and would have joined, if someone had reached out to me on Facebook. I felt like a Communist Revolutionary.

However, then I got to know the "other side". There are always many facets to everything, never only one. I was about to say there are two facet, but there are many more than two facets. Only God knows how many. The world seems extremely complicated to me.

I think that sometimes, God smiles at our thoughts, and plucks us out of our lives, and moves us like a chess piece to another part of the board, and we fill a different role. It was the same as happened with Saul, who became Paul.

I think that every prospective Antifa member should attend their local police department's community outreach, a class with education and training that concludes with a ride-along with a cop. Learn what the job entails, but also about the people that occupy the uniforms. They are people, and they feel the same emotions. The hope and desire for every one of them is to complete their shift and return home to their families without getting shot.

I also think that a prospective Antifa could be part of the change. Join the police. There is high demand for recruits. Especially minority recruits and women recruits. What is the obstacle? The obstacle is that it is a very difficult and demanding job. That is what deters the Left winger that is convinced our system must be overthrown and that police are fascists. They like to criticize, protest and perform acts of sabotage and intimidation, but they don't necessarily want to join police and be part of the change, because... being police is hard. And you might get a bullet.

I subscribed today, because they have an app that I can access on my phone, and that is very appealing. I don't particularly care for the Apple News app that presents only the stories that Apple wants me to read.

The cost is trivial at $10/yr.

I also added it to my home page. I plan to use it everyday for a while.

My interests are Business, International, and BRICS.

Criminals aren't the only people who cover their faces.

The main reason many Antifa activists cover their faces is simply to make it harder for the fascists and hate groups to track them down. Many antifa activists are not themselves criminals, but they are certainly messing with dangerous people.


Not as "the" enemy, but as "an" enemy. The main enemy is the hate groups.

As for why the police are all too often "an" enemy, that's mainly because the police, in all too many places, alas, have been infiltrated by hate groups. This is an unfortunate reality. See, for example:

- Prevalence of white supremacists in law enforcement demands drastic change by Hassan Kanu, Reuters, May 12, 2022
- White Supremacist Links to Law Enforcement Are an Urgent Concern by Michael German (a former FBI agent), The Brennan Center, September 1, 2020

Also, a significant number (though not all) antifa activists are anarchists, who on principle don't deal with the police for that reason.

Some antifa activists do get into physical fights with hatemongers, although this isn't a primary tactic of most antifa activists/groups, as far as I can tell. They tend to be nerds, as far as I can tell. I doubt that most of them would even be physically capable of holding their own in a physical fight.


The "reaching out and learning" approach does work well for some people, such as Daryl Davis. (See How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes by Dwane Brown , NPR, August 20, 2017.) However, I wouldn't recommend this as a one-size-fits-all approach for everyone. To do what Daryl Davis has done, successfully, in the way that he did it, requires an almost superhuman level of charisma.

It seems to me that a variety of approaches, by a variety of different people, will be necessary to stop the hate groups.


Hmmm, I don't think every police department has that particular kind of "community outreach." Might be good if they did.


Hmmm. Almost, but not quite the same emotions. The job attracts people with a distinct personality type. (See, for example, this account by a longtime WP member who grew up in a neighborhood where lots of cops lived.)


Another obstacle is that there are a lot of unjust laws that a cop is required to enforce, as well as necessary laws. If there weren't so many draconian laws against victimless crimes, or so many government policies that have the effect of criminalizing poor people, then there would be fewer conscientious reasons for someone to rule out becoming a cop.

One can be both very educated and a street thug. If you were brawling seemingly every weekend in the streets of Portland and Seattle you were likely a street thug under the illusion you were doing something heroic when all you were accomplishing was making certain streets uncomfortable.

World War Two vets are like any group diverse in how they view things so I am sure that if they were alive today you would have some that would support Antifa and some that still are alive do support Antifa. That said I knew many WWII vets growing up and the common view of protesters was that they were traitors and ungrateful bastards figuratively spitting on the country and men like themselves whose sacrifices gave them the opportunity to protest and go to college.

Switching the subject the claim that Antifa did 1/6 goes beyond straining credulity. Antifa protesters would to put it mildly would stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd of MAGA’s.

To me a "thug" is a robber or a murderer. Such crimes, by Antifa activists, are extremely rare.

On the other hand, for example: Right-Wing Extremism Linked to Every 2018 Extremist Murder in the U.S., ADL Finds.

According to Antifa Panic: Blaming the Left for Terrorism by Spencer Sunshine, The Battleground, 05 Aug 2019:


That episode was way back in 1993, in the days of Anti-Racist Action and the fights between rival groups of skinheads. Today's Antifa activists are a different and typically more intellectual crowd.

(In any case I think it's probably best to retire the word "thug," which has too often been used as a racial dog whistle, although that's not how you are using it in this case because we are talking about "brawls" between two categories of people who are mostly white.)

According to the above-quoted article by Spencer Sunshine:


These same tactics are also used by higher-budget, more-mainstream groups like the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center. (The latter groups also report evidence of violent activities/plots to the FBI, whereas Antifa groups generally refrain from talking to law enforcement agencies.)

As for whether Antifa is "doing something heroic," Spencer Sunshine claims:


I do disagree with some Antifa tactics, as I've explained elsewhere. For example, I disagree with the way that at least some Antifa groups do counter-protests, by attempting to physically interfere with protests by hate groups, rather than staying inside their own separate designated, barricaded area for the counter-protest. Seems to me that their counter-protests would be a lot safer and therefore attract a lot more participants (including, perhaps, yours truly) if they would stay physically away from the extreme right wing protesters.

(Back in 2010 or so, I participated in two entirely-peaceful counter-protests against Islamophobic rallies. We all stayed on our side of the barricades.)

However, we shouldn't fall for the way Antifa has been demonized by the right wing press. In particular, Antifa should not be blamed for the riots and looting that accompanied some Black Lives Matter protests. Nor have Antifa groups played more than a very small, insignificant role in the BLM protests generally. As Spencer Sunshine explains in Blaming it on Antifa: Trump’s Crisis Scapegoats, The Battleground, 05 Jun 2020:


And I do think Antifa groups have been doing a valuable service, however imperfectly. As for "making certain streets uncomfortable," would you be more comfortable if the hate groups were doing their thing on those streets without any counter-protest?

Everybody is saying the election hinges on Michigan, which makes me worry that the huge Arab population in Dearborn (which normally leans toward the Dems) will sit it out because of the Gaza war, thus handing the election to Trump.

I will not deny my emotions. Emotions are the only reason I'm motivated to do anything.

Without emotion there is no desire and without desire it is impossible to set goals for yourself.

That sounds like Vietnam War veterans. There wasn't much protesting against joining the fight during WWII.

He's talking about the WW II veterans who were in their forties or early fifties during the late 1960's, and who strongly disapproved of the hippies. Many of these older WW II vets, like a lot of older folks generally back then, strongly disapproved of protests against the Viet Nam war -- at least at first. This was one of the reasons for the extreme "Generation Gap" of the 1960's.

Would goon suit you better than thug?

I have been referring this entire time to the nearly weekly street brawls between Antifa and the Proud Boys and the like that went on for a number of years in Seattle and Portland and occasionally elsewhere.

When hate groups march I would prefer most of the time they would be ignored because they seek attention and provoke overreactions that gain them sympathy and recruits. Since this is 2024 and ignoring is not practically possible since everyone has a camera I would prefer the counter-protesters not sink to their level. The constant brawling gives the appearance of anarchy which historically and currently has aided authoritarianism.

People who dox for political reasons are appointing themselves judge and jury of the thought police. Are the people Antifa doxes truly fascist? I ask that because while any amount of fascists is bad the number of true fascists in America is very small so who are they doxing?

All the above has deflected from my point. Even if the most generous of descriptions of Antifa are true I still find comparing them to soldiers who took down the Third Reich very offensive.

All the what-aboutism about how the right has been more lethal is only repeating what I have said a number of times and deflecting from my point which is I expect that if Trump wins the left will escalate and vice versa.

Agreed that brawling is not desirable.

I don't know enough about the history of Antifa in Portland and Seattle, specifically, to know exactly why they felt they had to resort to brawling.

For example, were extreme right wing gangs going around attacking and/or physically intimidating people, and the police not doing much if anything about it? The Antifa writings I've read so far suggest that something like this occurred, although I haven't yet seen the details.

I also suspect that the police departments in Seattle and Portland -- and probably in many other places too -- simply were not prepared to handle competing groups of protesters and counterprotesters as well as, say, the NYPD did back in 2010.

Dammit. Houston missed out on the whole autonomous zone thing.