Cole, I share your dislike of this...
Cole Younger wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 1:54 pm
I’m sick to death of people reducing anyone they disagree with to the most brutish and disgusting lowest terms they can possible imagine. It has helped birth two domestic terror organizations in the form of BLM and antifa. In the case of antifa I don’t know if they were in the beginning what we see now. I tend to think they area more militant offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement but I don’t know that. BLM began as something much different from what we see now. What was simply a movement dedicated to awareness about police brutality came back as something much different a few months ago.
...and I'd like to gently suggest you're engaging in it a little yourself there.
I can tell you what Antifa is--it's the people who show up to meet the violence of aspiring fascists with violence. That's violent, but it's not terror--it's a street fight. I'd rather not have street fights, but if we do, I want my side to win. Whenever I went to an anti-Klan rally, my intentions were always peaceful, and I always prepared for violence, because I knew my intentions weren't shared by the people I was protesting, and because not everyone on my side had the same peaceful intentions. A demonstration is a show of force (among other things), and force is the next-door neighbor of violence.
We're going to see a street fight today in Portland. I've been worried about this ever since one of the Proud Boys finally got killed. They have a dead martyr and a live one--that kid who killed the people in Kenosha--and they've been pounding Portland on a monthly basis. It's very much like how the Nazi stormtroopers went to "Red Berlin" for their street fights while Hitler was on the rise. The point was to pick a major leftist city and and punish it as a show of power. And it worked.
We saw what they could do in terms of national mobilization in Charlottesville. It wasn't much. (Though they did kill Heather Heyer, which is a lot.) Now we'll see what they can do after three years of pumping up for it, and whether there's a response of violence initiated by their allies in other cities.
(I think if this fizzles, we may be past rightist violence as a major threat this year.)
As far as Antifa is concerned, Cole, that's what you're not seeing--the specific people they're fighting. A role they played in Charlottesville, when police let the rightists run wild, was fighting incipient fascists who were attacking non-violent demonstrators. I'm glad they did. They sometimes engage with the police, but then, the police sometimes side with the would-be fascists when push comes to shove. I've seen a lot of footage of cops taking a knee in a staged display of #BLM solidarity, which I bet is mostly sincere, but I've not seen footage of cops taking the side of left against right during violence.
I'm not going to tell you they're all pure of heart and mind, Cole, because I know that isn't true. It can't be, statistically, nor does it match my personal experiences. Some people just like to fight and they pick my side to fight for. Those people scare me. Some people who are on my side scare me, too. One guy I knew back in the day is now an executive at a supposedly good business, but I figure he's just as much of a shit as he was then. Probably worse, because he has more power. Though I'll ask if I ever run into a current mutual acquaintance in a position to know if he improved. I hope he did.
We've seen small beer next to the East St. Louis race riots, the Ludlow massacre, the Manhattan draft riots, the destruction of Greenwood, or the major riots of the sixties. If you look at the damage done in, say, the Detroit riots of '67, and compare it to what happened in Minneapolis, it's like comparing a broken leg to a broken toe. I say this to keep some perspective, for myself as much as for anyone. It feels like things are going straight to hell right now, because they are, but they've also been worse. The stakes are high, very high, but so far the bills have been very small, relatively speaking.
I'm sure much of this appalls my liberal friends here at least as much as it does you, Cole, but I just can't not tell the truth as I understand it. I may be wrong but at least I'm honest. I'm part of a long line of leftist and leftish American radicals, dissidents, malcontents*, and ne'er-do-well's. Paine, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Warren, Tucker, Parsons, Debs, Heywood, Randolph, Rustin, King, Baker, Clark, Hoffman, Milk. There are many others. Those are some of the ones that come to mind easily.
My personal model was Abbie Hoffman. He never lined up with any ideology besides freedom and was proud of his American Revolutionary heritage as a Boston native. He did crazy things that made sense. When he got set up for his drug bust, he went underground with the Weathermen briefly, but didn't get along with the Leninist-Maoist ideology** and left. He settled himself and his new wife in a little town in upstate New York. Then he could not keep out of a fight to save a local river and ended up exposing his identity and doing time. Then he got out and kept at it till he died. What more can you ask?
All that and I never did get around to #BLM. But I've had this on my mind for a while now. I don't mind honest disagreement, so I have to be honest myself. As Tom Robbins quoted Bob Dylan in Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, right before we see what it means, "To live outside the law you must be honest."
And to be fully honest, I should admit my other model was Sissy Hankshaw--I did my best to think of her when I hitchhiked to protests and such--and not Billy West. But bless his heart for saving all those innocent lives. He was honest.
*A word you may remember from our first serious discussion.
**Me, either.** Marx and Jesus both need saved from many of their followers. I say this knowing very little about Marx--he was never relevant to me.
***I mean, seriously. There were Maoists in the late seventies who tried to organize wheat farmers on the basis of them being peasants. Really. That's what happens when you're caught in the grip of theory.