A cartoon version of a wispy antifa dude muttering “uh, is anyone doing a fascism here?" would definitely go on my fridge, but my drawing skills are such that anyone who sees it will undoubtedly think I have a disturbed child rather than a fervent appreciation for incisive & insightful cultural commentary.
All of this may be well and true, but it's very strange to read it from Europe, where Antifa (AN-ti-fa, not an-TI-fa) is still respected and connected to the rest of the organized left.
It's probably petty of me, but there's something about the "an-TEE-fa" pronunciation, in an American accent, that particularly grates....possibly because they don't really know its history?
The pronunciation tilts me. It's a shibboleth for someone whose exposure to it came from before Trump said it in a speech and people rushed to defend it as if they'd known what it was all along.
I think the most cynical thing since 2016 is how anti-fascism got fuses with anti-trump, which got fused with carrying water for the Democrats. It was very useful for the Dems to portray Trump as a literal fascist instead of a very vulgar version of a garden variety Republican, much less admit that the Democrats share or at least don't genuinely oppose many of his policies. This crude misreading of the historical moment, grandiosity, and continued embrace of this narrative about fascism (which very conveniently and self servingly benefits mainstream liberalism) has infected almost every single aspect of the 2021 left. I'd like to say it was just Antifa (although they may be the worst), but it's much worse than that.
This is and always was the reason they get blowjobs from the NYTimes and academics on Twitter.
You can tell how insincere the liberal rhetoric about fascism is because there has been zero and I mean zero discussion about reducing the power of the executive branch and office of the president post Trump. If they meant it, you'd think they'd be yelling day and night about taking as much legal authority from the White House as possible. But none of them care now.
Good observation and it's amazing how many other things got similarly fused. Lifetime DC apparatchiks casting themselves as some kind of scrappy Resistance was another good one, and it was a fashionable, radical posture to support things like the Department of Energy during the supposed fascist crisis we all "lived" through.
My first exposure to this discussion was when Chris Hedges wrote his essay against the black blocs back during Occupy and had those debates with Graeber and Crimethinc. I remember thinking that Hedges lost that argument pretty convincingly at the time.
The costumes, the posturing: I think of pro wrestling every time I hear about these guys. And of course in pro wrestling you need an opponent. Nobody would pay to see Hulk Hogan climb into the ring by himself. Trump as usual had it half right. It's not a question of very fine people on both sides of the issue, it's that both sides have an ample supply of morons.
"...perpetual adolescents in paintball outfits wandering around looking for someone with wrists skinnier than theirs to fight."
Nancy Rommelman at Reason had an article about the antifa riots in Portland where she witnessed them trying to form up a "shield wall" to resist the police. When the cops, who are actual jocks, went in they tore through the formation using nothing but their bare hands to rip away their shields and shove people out of the way. As the Antifa crew limped away Rommelman couldn't help but notice how many of them were clumsy, or fat, or short. It makes me wonder if the real motive here is politics or deep seated personal issues.
I have thought about this a lot. Physical fighting is not an option for some of us. I'm a 5'1" female. At a DC protest when the much bigger male person I was with said , :"hang onto my belt-loop, I'm going in."--I decided there and then I would be very careful with crowds, forever. In those years the protestors were Veterans for Peace--but they were trained fighters. Not so much today. I doubt an Antifa could protect themselves from confrontation.
The problem of course is that if you can't fight that limits your options. That means some combination of
a) Finding somebody weaker than yourself. Like a woman or retiree.
b) Outnumbering the other guys.
c) Using a firearm, knife, pepper spray, club, etc.
d) Not getting into a confrontation in the first place.
Of course, option d is excluded immediately for these guys. Thus the spectacle of a female photographer being knocked to the ground and then maced. It is more than a little disgusting and contemptible.
When I had a small child I was holding by her hand (at a protest for women's rights) a man grabbed my purse and knocked us over.(Chicago). Another man helped us up, but the thief was gone. I was bewildered. I remember saying to the man who helped us, "why would anyone steal from a mother and child?" And he said, "you are a far easier mark than someone his own size." I've always thought about that. I see it with Antifa. Sometimes I imagine how it would be to be big and strong, but wasn't dealt those genes. So some of us have to be quick and careful..like a chipmunk. If I had a spirit animal that would be mine.
"A country that has seen a near-total takeover of its institutions by fringe left social justice politics is not a country that is slipping into fascism"
Social justice politics is developing into its own form of totalitarianism. Wokies, for lack of a better name, are not content to just have their own discourse. They require that you participate. You have to use their language, hunt their witches and then stand around the fire. Failure to participate, or even any faint skepticism about the ongoings is enough to rouse suspicion. This wouldn't be of concern if you could opt out, but as it appears this shit is going to continue forcing its way into the real world. HR *will* force you into a DEI seminar, and your coworkers *will* dissaprove if you aren't ecstatic about it.
I don't disagree with any of your critiques of antifa, although I've mostly found antifa to be harmless, and I don't think the idea that they make a good bogeyman is important because the right wing media is basically nothing but a bogeyman factory and they will just find another one.
However, I feel like maybe the dissonance that I feel reading your posts sometimes is that you just pretend conservatism and right wing don't exist and I don't understand why.
Is there a "near-total takeover of its institutions by fringe left social justice politics"? Sure, maybe, if you limit your definition of institutions to people who used to work at gawker, elite academia, the NYT, and MSNBC. But it's not true if you expand your definition to include the Wall Street Journal or the cable news channel that gets vastly more viewers than MSNBC. Or if you expand your definition of institutions to include our actual representatives in government, many of whom have floated the idea of designating antifa as a terrorist group or whatever.
And I don't think the media serves as the pr arm of antifa either. Again, your are limiting your definition of "the media" to people that work at like three outlets all based in New York. There is literally an entire cottage industry of Andy Ngos that try to provoke outrage about antifa. You may think they are a sideshow, but if you leave Brooklyn, they are not. People living in Central Florida or suburban Houston don't read Ashley Feinberg, but they sure as shit see Tucker's segments on antifa.
Again, I'm left saying...who cares. You can argue that the left should care about antifa because they give the right something to be mad about, but they already exaggerate antifas influence and Andy and Tucker will just lie openly. You can't win these people over, and me arguing about antifa is just following the treats laid out by the right wing freaks to distract from real power.
I care because I go to protests something like 20 times a year and thus I have to live with their behavior. I care because the public perception of the radical left is intrinsically important to me and constantly circulating video of dudes hitting women and calling themselves revolutionaries is not good for us. I care because I actually care about press freedoms and think that journalists should not be afraid to film a protest where antifa are present. And I care because I have contempt for a certain kind of soi dissant radical that has opportunistically taken advantage of recent unrest to self-aggrandize.
You're linking me to an article written by a guy that has literally appeared on Tucker, the most popular cable news show which I think can be fairly described as far right, on how everything is liberal? And yes I agree with him and you that elite, metropolitan academia is largely woke. I don't know what else I'm supposed to get from that article.
I think that you are mistaken in believing that 1) there will ever be a time when there are not bad actors within a protest movement (I'm hesitant to say left movement because I think we agree that antifa isn't really "left") and 2) that right wing media will ever not have a menacing portrayal of the left. You cannot please Andy and Tucker, which I think you know, so there's no point in addressing concerns of theirs unless they are also yours and the concerns of people that you want to win over.
In my experience, that's just not the case. The average person doesn't give a shit about antifa and has never encountered them in real life, only through media portrayals, which you seem to think are universally positive. I don't even remember seeing them at the protests last summer (although surely some were there), and I certainly haven't seen them at any protests since then.
I'm not convinced that getting mad about a fringe movement with no real power or influence or even ~ambition~ to power and influence is anything other than following the treats put out by the reactionary right.
"You cannot please Andy and Tucker, which I think you know, so there's no point in addressing concerns of theirs unless they are also yours and the concerns of people that you want to win over."
Oh well, that's settled then. Nothing to see here! Antifa are still great!
Given what you say about incoherence on the contemporary left, the insignificance of last year's protests, and the idiocy of current antifa, maybe you can give us more insight about which kinds of protests you think are still worth going to and why.
same. It's a very limited and geographically particular takeover of wokeness that is being described, so I don't see the point in universalizing it.
I'll share an anecdote: a friend of mine was an Army Intelligence Officer at a base in Texas until recently. His commanding officer controlled the tvs that were on around their section of the base all day, and guess what news channel was on 24/7? Am I supposed to suspend my belief in the US Military as an institution when I read this blog?
Maybe you should take a look at the military as an institutional whole, not just your base commander who, while certainly a participant in the larger institution, is certainly not controlling its direction when it comes to wokeness, even wokeness as cynical rhetorical ornamentation.
To deny that intitution of the military, from the commander in chief himself, through the Secretary of Defense, to the joint chiefs of staff - all of them - have not bought into this is self-evidently wrong. They're not shy about it in the slightest.
So if a base commander in Texas watches Fox News, you will still have to show and prove to someone like me that that guy has more institutional power to set direction than literally everyone at the highest 20 rungs of the food chain of that institution.
Conservatives boast a governing trifecta in about half of the 50 states, the most-watched cable news channel, media conglomerates that are devouring local news stations and papers, most news radio, and beyond their superficial commitment to "woke" posturing, Fortune 500 companies are as rapaciously capitalistic as they ever were (ditto the Ivy Leagues).
Those are literally institutions. And looking at the dominant sway in terms of current political power, there's no denying the simple observation that the woke narrative has its hand on the institutional rudders right now. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
You want to mention other institutions? Like, what? Academia? The entertainment industry?
Or are we pretending the mere existence of a Fox News or Republicans in power anywhere somehow, for some reason, invalidates that simple, easily observable, fact across the board?
"...in elite universities where there’s total unanimity of opinion .."
True, and against the standard line that academics are all competing with each other via ideas and perspectives. Or the other line that academics all agree because they are smarter than us, and have a better hold on what's right. Someone needs to write a thorough analysis of this phenomenon. How is it that intense competitors will align, without formal agreement, in their interests to maintain power and exclude large numbers of people, while maintaining the façade of competition?
It makes me sad because I really believed in science and academia. It was so disappointing when I was there.
There has been lots of analysis of this phenomenon but it's mainly from sources us lefties ignore or dismiss, often for good reason. I'd be surprised if Unqualified Reservations had written less than a million words on the topic over a decade ago.
I would also point out that Portland is not inevitable. The riots there continue on and on and on because the local government is completely dysfunctional. Contrast the situation there with a place like Denver, which is also run by Democrats but took a totally different tack in dealing with riots: namely aggressive law enforcement coupled with both civil and criminal penalties.
There was another riot in Portland recently where the cops essentially backed off and let the two sides brawl for hours. That's where this photographer was assaulted.
I'm a public defender here in Oregon and your perception is waaaaay off. I've represented a lot Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer types than I have Antifa, by quite a long shot. The statement that the cops up here just let the right wingers do whatever they want is just patently false.
I'm sure their are plenty of instances of cops failing to enforce laws against PB and PP, but talking to my PB and PP clients, they also have endless stories about how they all believe that the cops in Portland are all on Antifa's side and let Antifa get away with anything.
I apologize for not having external cites for you on this. Its entirely possible that my experience is an anomaly of chance. But I have had a lot more right wing defendants than left wing ones.
I can also say that the charging decisions and plea offers I get from protest related cases are extremely generous on both sides of the political aisle. I think the District Attorney's office very much so does not want to take these to trial.
I don't think Antifa are harmless. They destroy property and hurt innocent people. Here in Reno last year, we had one of those mostly peaceful protests where the city hall was overrun and vandalized (with a lot more damage that was caused by the (heh heh) "insurrectionists" of 6 January). We don't have a lot of black people here in Reno, but one of them, a journalist, was beaten up during the mostly peaceful protest by a couple of white people who drove 350 miles from a neighboring state apparently just to assault a black guy. This weird man-bites-dog story oddly didn't go very far in the national news, but was reported in our local fishwrap:
Looks a little like the Weimar Republic, no? That sure ended well.
These morons might not represent any sort of coherent political ideology, but they hurt people, destroy property and deliberately escalate all political (and even cultural) discussion and protest into violence. Insisting they aren't smart or subtle enough to represent an important political movement doesn't mean anything because I'm pretty sure few SA members were capable of arguing epistemology over their lagers, but they were effective nonetheless. I think it would be prudent to wait a few years and see how they color political discussion in this country before declaring them "mostly harmless."
I think you could make the Peter Turchin/Michael Lind argument that their new prominence is symptomatic of some deeper problems within the wider society.
“they lack satisfying opportunities for violence in their lives, and protests create conditions where it’s easier to find targets and easier to evade arrest”
I think this explains a lot of the worst behavior on the left (from actual violence to cruel internet bullying). Some people are cynical assholes seeking an outlet, while others convince themselves that punching a conservative at a demonstration, or telling some alleged “Karen” she’s a worthless piece of shit on Twitter, are actually noble behaviors advancing the cause of social justice.
It’s especially easy to justify when the woke world constantly claims that disagreement = “violence” against marginalized people. Then whole groups of people (conservatives, white people, men, etc) become legitimate targets based on their identities and opinions. So you can be an aggressive, asshole bully, and as long as the optics are in order (your target has more “privilege” than you) people on the left will rally around you.
So much of our so-called "politics" comes from a world where most people believe that nothing can actually change. If one believed that the world or system could change, they would want a more inclusive movement (in a literal sense). More people on your side, more votes, more striking workers in your union, etc.
But, in a world where people don't believe anything can change, politics is just another outlet for performance. "The left" lacks any coherence (as deBoer said), so it just becomes a way for people to prove that they're tougher, more righteous, smarter, more skeptical etc etc than the idiot masses.
Kinda reminds me people on LinkedIn talking about "disrupting" or "breaking the status quo" or "revolutionizing" etc etc. It's like, dude, you make Power Point decks.
Bloomberg had an article from a couple of sociologists a while back who found that high homicide rates correlated with political polarization. They speculated that once people abandon the idea of a common good they lose their faith in civic institutions as a means for redress and justice and take matters into their own hands. It makes you wonder about the insane violent crime rates the country is experiencing right now.
The rate of increase is the highest it's even been, ever since modern crime reporting started around 1960. Year on year the change is stunning.
So far as pulling back, I wonder. From about 1960-1990 crime increased for some reason. 1990-2020 (approximately) saw falling crime rates. It's a small sample but another 30 year oscillation would mean rising crimes rates until 2050 or so.
Lead is one possible explanation but there are dozens of possible explanations. James Foreman Jr. summed it up best I think: if you get 10 criminologists in a room not only will you get 10 different opinions as to why crime rates declined but in addition those opinions will all be mutually contradictory.
The only thing that I am fairly positive of is that it is not just one thing. Real world problems always have many, many different contributing factors.
I’d go a step further to say they’re right about there being no opportunities for meaningful change. Regulatory capture nullifies it and media narratives repackage the captives as the tip of the spear in a culture war. Also, congresspeople live too goddamn long. Workplace organizing for better working conditions is probably our only hope, and I’m not getting a great vibe.
I was once a protestor myself. Then Obama was elected and all my old buddies wanted to drink and scream at Fox News, instead. The plot was lost and now I’m too tired for chanting.
"Once upon a time people said “I support this movement and these ideals, but this behavior, this event, this person, no.” That would seem to be a basic aspect of adult maturity, to recognize that no political tendency, no matter how idealistically envisioned, can be healthy without good-faith criticism and social pressure from allies. But where once movement leaders with intrinsic credibility would lead the conversation about whether antifa were crossing the line at an event and needed to be confronted, now antifa gets discussed by a PR team of Twitter bluechecks who have never protested anything, know nothing about the myriad weird social realities that afflict all protests, don’t live in the neighborhoods where protest violence is happening, and have mostly already forgotten about the spasm of meandering, much-hashtagged protests from last year."
I wonder how much of this isn't an artefact of 'no enemies to the left'? The basic calculus might be "well, these guys are anti-fascist, and fascists are my right-wing enemies, therefore this leftist organization is doing good, and even if I'm not personally antifa, I'm not going to oppose them". If this is the case - I'm not wholly confident that it is, I'm thinking it out - then it betrays what you describe elsewhere in this essay: an unseriousness in leftist thought. That's because 'no enemies to the left' (or right) would once have betrayed something doctrinal or ideological, not tactical. That is, an enemy wouldn't necessarily be demarcated based on his behavior, but rather his stance on issues.
Take an extreme example. Someone with whom you are almost completely ideologically aligned, but is maybe 1% further to the left than you, commits an unspeakable crime, with no doubt whatsoever about his guilt. Would 'no enemies to the left' mean you have to circle the wagons around him and say, "no, what *looks* like serial killing is actually mostly peaceful CO2 reduction and you're a bigot for noticing?" Of course not. If on the other hand someone who was significantly further left than you in ideology was bringing people into a broader left wing movement, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and curing the sick, 'no enemies to the left' would behoove you to support and amplify them, even with some doctrinal differences remaining to be hashed out Come The Revolution.
But in the absence of any serious leftist thought, in the absence of anything but Trustfund McFordham putting a brick through an Arby's window, in a world where the media's newfound 'moral clarity' means clarifying that they know nothing of morals, nor indeed much of anything, it reduces to 'my side good'. And if that means telling people that things obviously bad are good, well, so much the better.
Great piece explaining how antifa *can be* harmful and the liberals who refuse to cover them critically under literally any circumstance. So why undercut the central point by calling them "harmless?" For a fearless guy, you sometimes offer some unnecessarily sheepish caveats.
FWIW Freddie, I don't find that first paragraph insufferable at all. I see it as a necessary reminder that real activists do real on-the-ground work as opposed to just yell on Twitter, try to get people fired, and police their friends for wrongthink.
Thank God antifa are there to ensure that no violence ever goes uninstigated and no locals are ever subject to harrassment and assault.
A cartoon version of a wispy antifa dude muttering “uh, is anyone doing a fascism here?" would definitely go on my fridge, but my drawing skills are such that anyone who sees it will undoubtedly think I have a disturbed child rather than a fervent appreciation for incisive & insightful cultural commentary.
All of this may be well and true, but it's very strange to read it from Europe, where Antifa (AN-ti-fa, not an-TI-fa) is still respected and connected to the rest of the organized left.
I too pronounce it AN-ti-fa, but I have no real reason why other than that's how I heard it first many moons ago.
It's probably petty of me, but there's something about the "an-TEE-fa" pronunciation, in an American accent, that particularly grates....possibly because they don't really know its history?
The pronunciation tilts me. It's a shibboleth for someone whose exposure to it came from before Trump said it in a speech and people rushed to defend it as if they'd known what it was all along.
I think the most cynical thing since 2016 is how anti-fascism got fuses with anti-trump, which got fused with carrying water for the Democrats. It was very useful for the Dems to portray Trump as a literal fascist instead of a very vulgar version of a garden variety Republican, much less admit that the Democrats share or at least don't genuinely oppose many of his policies. This crude misreading of the historical moment, grandiosity, and continued embrace of this narrative about fascism (which very conveniently and self servingly benefits mainstream liberalism) has infected almost every single aspect of the 2021 left. I'd like to say it was just Antifa (although they may be the worst), but it's much worse than that.
This is and always was the reason they get blowjobs from the NYTimes and academics on Twitter.
You can tell how insincere the liberal rhetoric about fascism is because there has been zero and I mean zero discussion about reducing the power of the executive branch and office of the president post Trump. If they meant it, you'd think they'd be yelling day and night about taking as much legal authority from the White House as possible. But none of them care now.
Kinda like assuming drone assassinations would stop after Bush left office in 2008.
Good observation and it's amazing how many other things got similarly fused. Lifetime DC apparatchiks casting themselves as some kind of scrappy Resistance was another good one, and it was a fashionable, radical posture to support things like the Department of Energy during the supposed fascist crisis we all "lived" through.
My first exposure to this discussion was when Chris Hedges wrote his essay against the black blocs back during Occupy and had those debates with Graeber and Crimethinc. I remember thinking that Hedges lost that argument pretty convincingly at the time.
The costumes, the posturing: I think of pro wrestling every time I hear about these guys. And of course in pro wrestling you need an opponent. Nobody would pay to see Hulk Hogan climb into the ring by himself. Trump as usual had it half right. It's not a question of very fine people on both sides of the issue, it's that both sides have an ample supply of morons.
"...perpetual adolescents in paintball outfits wandering around looking for someone with wrists skinnier than theirs to fight."
Nancy Rommelman at Reason had an article about the antifa riots in Portland where she witnessed them trying to form up a "shield wall" to resist the police. When the cops, who are actual jocks, went in they tore through the formation using nothing but their bare hands to rip away their shields and shove people out of the way. As the Antifa crew limped away Rommelman couldn't help but notice how many of them were clumsy, or fat, or short. It makes me wonder if the real motive here is politics or deep seated personal issues.
I have thought about this a lot. Physical fighting is not an option for some of us. I'm a 5'1" female. At a DC protest when the much bigger male person I was with said , :"hang onto my belt-loop, I'm going in."--I decided there and then I would be very careful with crowds, forever. In those years the protestors were Veterans for Peace--but they were trained fighters. Not so much today. I doubt an Antifa could protect themselves from confrontation.
The problem of course is that if you can't fight that limits your options. That means some combination of
a) Finding somebody weaker than yourself. Like a woman or retiree.
b) Outnumbering the other guys.
c) Using a firearm, knife, pepper spray, club, etc.
d) Not getting into a confrontation in the first place.
Of course, option d is excluded immediately for these guys. Thus the spectacle of a female photographer being knocked to the ground and then maced. It is more than a little disgusting and contemptible.
When I had a small child I was holding by her hand (at a protest for women's rights) a man grabbed my purse and knocked us over.(Chicago). Another man helped us up, but the thief was gone. I was bewildered. I remember saying to the man who helped us, "why would anyone steal from a mother and child?" And he said, "you are a far easier mark than someone his own size." I've always thought about that. I see it with Antifa. Sometimes I imagine how it would be to be big and strong, but wasn't dealt those genes. So some of us have to be quick and careful..like a chipmunk. If I had a spirit animal that would be mine.
Also, anyone who's mugging someone in broad daylight probably isn't operating with morality top of mind.
"A country that has seen a near-total takeover of its institutions by fringe left social justice politics is not a country that is slipping into fascism"
Social justice politics is developing into its own form of totalitarianism. Wokies, for lack of a better name, are not content to just have their own discourse. They require that you participate. You have to use their language, hunt their witches and then stand around the fire. Failure to participate, or even any faint skepticism about the ongoings is enough to rouse suspicion. This wouldn't be of concern if you could opt out, but as it appears this shit is going to continue forcing its way into the real world. HR *will* force you into a DEI seminar, and your coworkers *will* dissaprove if you aren't ecstatic about it.
The penultimate paragraph here (leading with the "Buzzfuck.com" sentence) might be my new favorite thing ever written in English. Great read, Freddie.
I don't disagree with any of your critiques of antifa, although I've mostly found antifa to be harmless, and I don't think the idea that they make a good bogeyman is important because the right wing media is basically nothing but a bogeyman factory and they will just find another one.
However, I feel like maybe the dissonance that I feel reading your posts sometimes is that you just pretend conservatism and right wing don't exist and I don't understand why.
Is there a "near-total takeover of its institutions by fringe left social justice politics"? Sure, maybe, if you limit your definition of institutions to people who used to work at gawker, elite academia, the NYT, and MSNBC. But it's not true if you expand your definition to include the Wall Street Journal or the cable news channel that gets vastly more viewers than MSNBC. Or if you expand your definition of institutions to include our actual representatives in government, many of whom have floated the idea of designating antifa as a terrorist group or whatever.
And I don't think the media serves as the pr arm of antifa either. Again, your are limiting your definition of "the media" to people that work at like three outlets all based in New York. There is literally an entire cottage industry of Andy Ngos that try to provoke outrage about antifa. You may think they are a sideshow, but if you leave Brooklyn, they are not. People living in Central Florida or suburban Houston don't read Ashley Feinberg, but they sure as shit see Tucker's segments on antifa.
Again, I'm left saying...who cares. You can argue that the left should care about antifa because they give the right something to be mad about, but they already exaggerate antifas influence and Andy and Tucker will just lie openly. You can't win these people over, and me arguing about antifa is just following the treats laid out by the right wing freaks to distract from real power.
The liberal takeover of institutions is in fact a quantitatively verifiable phenomenon: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal
Andy Ngo is rich precisely because of antifa and their cheerleaders: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/how-to-avoid-creating-the-next-trump/
I care because I go to protests something like 20 times a year and thus I have to live with their behavior. I care because the public perception of the radical left is intrinsically important to me and constantly circulating video of dudes hitting women and calling themselves revolutionaries is not good for us. I care because I actually care about press freedoms and think that journalists should not be afraid to film a protest where antifa are present. And I care because I have contempt for a certain kind of soi dissant radical that has opportunistically taken advantage of recent unrest to self-aggrandize.
You're linking me to an article written by a guy that has literally appeared on Tucker, the most popular cable news show which I think can be fairly described as far right, on how everything is liberal? And yes I agree with him and you that elite, metropolitan academia is largely woke. I don't know what else I'm supposed to get from that article.
I think that you are mistaken in believing that 1) there will ever be a time when there are not bad actors within a protest movement (I'm hesitant to say left movement because I think we agree that antifa isn't really "left") and 2) that right wing media will ever not have a menacing portrayal of the left. You cannot please Andy and Tucker, which I think you know, so there's no point in addressing concerns of theirs unless they are also yours and the concerns of people that you want to win over.
In my experience, that's just not the case. The average person doesn't give a shit about antifa and has never encountered them in real life, only through media portrayals, which you seem to think are universally positive. I don't even remember seeing them at the protests last summer (although surely some were there), and I certainly haven't seen them at any protests since then.
I'm not convinced that getting mad about a fringe movement with no real power or influence or even ~ambition~ to power and influence is anything other than following the treats put out by the reactionary right.
I think that you do not share my lived experience of these people.
fair enough.
"You cannot please Andy and Tucker, which I think you know, so there's no point in addressing concerns of theirs unless they are also yours and the concerns of people that you want to win over."
Oh well, that's settled then. Nothing to see here! Antifa are still great!
Given what you say about incoherence on the contemporary left, the insignificance of last year's protests, and the idiocy of current antifa, maybe you can give us more insight about which kinds of protests you think are still worth going to and why.
Sure, I can do that
"People living in Central Florida or suburban Houston don't read Ashley Feinberg, but they sure as shit see Tucker's segments on antifa."
Ding ding ding.
I remain baffled by how you guys think this is helping your case.
I'm guess I'm baffled by your definition of institutions.
same. It's a very limited and geographically particular takeover of wokeness that is being described, so I don't see the point in universalizing it.
I'll share an anecdote: a friend of mine was an Army Intelligence Officer at a base in Texas until recently. His commanding officer controlled the tvs that were on around their section of the base all day, and guess what news channel was on 24/7? Am I supposed to suspend my belief in the US Military as an institution when I read this blog?
Maybe you should take a look at the military as an institutional whole, not just your base commander who, while certainly a participant in the larger institution, is certainly not controlling its direction when it comes to wokeness, even wokeness as cynical rhetorical ornamentation.
To deny that intitution of the military, from the commander in chief himself, through the Secretary of Defense, to the joint chiefs of staff - all of them - have not bought into this is self-evidently wrong. They're not shy about it in the slightest.
So if a base commander in Texas watches Fox News, you will still have to show and prove to someone like me that that guy has more institutional power to set direction than literally everyone at the highest 20 rungs of the food chain of that institution.
My husband was navy reserves for 8 years and there was a trans person in his group. That’s a far cry from don’t ask don’t tell.
that sounds like a good thing to me.
Well, starting with major media, state and local governments and the Fortune 500 companies in America is a *good start* on that, don't you think?
Conservatives boast a governing trifecta in about half of the 50 states, the most-watched cable news channel, media conglomerates that are devouring local news stations and papers, most news radio, and beyond their superficial commitment to "woke" posturing, Fortune 500 companies are as rapaciously capitalistic as they ever were (ditto the Ivy Leagues).
Those are literally institutions. And looking at the dominant sway in terms of current political power, there's no denying the simple observation that the woke narrative has its hand on the institutional rudders right now. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
You want to mention other institutions? Like, what? Academia? The entertainment industry?
Or are we pretending the mere existence of a Fox News or Republicans in power anywhere somehow, for some reason, invalidates that simple, easily observable, fact across the board?
"...in elite universities where there’s total unanimity of opinion .."
True, and against the standard line that academics are all competing with each other via ideas and perspectives. Or the other line that academics all agree because they are smarter than us, and have a better hold on what's right. Someone needs to write a thorough analysis of this phenomenon. How is it that intense competitors will align, without formal agreement, in their interests to maintain power and exclude large numbers of people, while maintaining the façade of competition?
It makes me sad because I really believed in science and academia. It was so disappointing when I was there.
There has been lots of analysis of this phenomenon but it's mainly from sources us lefties ignore or dismiss, often for good reason. I'd be surprised if Unqualified Reservations had written less than a million words on the topic over a decade ago.
I would also point out that Portland is not inevitable. The riots there continue on and on and on because the local government is completely dysfunctional. Contrast the situation there with a place like Denver, which is also run by Democrats but took a totally different tack in dealing with riots: namely aggressive law enforcement coupled with both civil and criminal penalties.
There was another riot in Portland recently where the cops essentially backed off and let the two sides brawl for hours. That's where this photographer was assaulted.
I'm a public defender here in Oregon and your perception is waaaaay off. I've represented a lot Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer types than I have Antifa, by quite a long shot. The statement that the cops up here just let the right wingers do whatever they want is just patently false.
I'm sure their are plenty of instances of cops failing to enforce laws against PB and PP, but talking to my PB and PP clients, they also have endless stories about how they all believe that the cops in Portland are all on Antifa's side and let Antifa get away with anything.
I apologize for not having external cites for you on this. Its entirely possible that my experience is an anomaly of chance. But I have had a lot more right wing defendants than left wing ones.
I can also say that the charging decisions and plea offers I get from protest related cases are extremely generous on both sides of the political aisle. I think the District Attorney's office very much so does not want to take these to trial.
I don't think Antifa are harmless. They destroy property and hurt innocent people. Here in Reno last year, we had one of those mostly peaceful protests where the city hall was overrun and vandalized (with a lot more damage that was caused by the (heh heh) "insurrectionists" of 6 January). We don't have a lot of black people here in Reno, but one of them, a journalist, was beaten up during the mostly peaceful protest by a couple of white people who drove 350 miles from a neighboring state apparently just to assault a black guy. This weird man-bites-dog story oddly didn't go very far in the national news, but was reported in our local fishwrap:
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2020/06/15/journalist-attacked-black-lives-matter-protest-reno-city-hall/3149426001/
Meanwhile, in coastal cities there is fighting in the streets, instigated almost every time by people calling themselves Antifa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxSKVP__-ww
Looks a little like the Weimar Republic, no? That sure ended well.
These morons might not represent any sort of coherent political ideology, but they hurt people, destroy property and deliberately escalate all political (and even cultural) discussion and protest into violence. Insisting they aren't smart or subtle enough to represent an important political movement doesn't mean anything because I'm pretty sure few SA members were capable of arguing epistemology over their lagers, but they were effective nonetheless. I think it would be prudent to wait a few years and see how they color political discussion in this country before declaring them "mostly harmless."
I think you could make the Peter Turchin/Michael Lind argument that their new prominence is symptomatic of some deeper problems within the wider society.
“they lack satisfying opportunities for violence in their lives, and protests create conditions where it’s easier to find targets and easier to evade arrest”
I think this explains a lot of the worst behavior on the left (from actual violence to cruel internet bullying). Some people are cynical assholes seeking an outlet, while others convince themselves that punching a conservative at a demonstration, or telling some alleged “Karen” she’s a worthless piece of shit on Twitter, are actually noble behaviors advancing the cause of social justice.
It’s especially easy to justify when the woke world constantly claims that disagreement = “violence” against marginalized people. Then whole groups of people (conservatives, white people, men, etc) become legitimate targets based on their identities and opinions. So you can be an aggressive, asshole bully, and as long as the optics are in order (your target has more “privilege” than you) people on the left will rally around you.
So much of our so-called "politics" comes from a world where most people believe that nothing can actually change. If one believed that the world or system could change, they would want a more inclusive movement (in a literal sense). More people on your side, more votes, more striking workers in your union, etc.
But, in a world where people don't believe anything can change, politics is just another outlet for performance. "The left" lacks any coherence (as deBoer said), so it just becomes a way for people to prove that they're tougher, more righteous, smarter, more skeptical etc etc than the idiot masses.
Kinda reminds me people on LinkedIn talking about "disrupting" or "breaking the status quo" or "revolutionizing" etc etc. It's like, dude, you make Power Point decks.
Bloomberg had an article from a couple of sociologists a while back who found that high homicide rates correlated with political polarization. They speculated that once people abandon the idea of a common good they lose their faith in civic institutions as a means for redress and justice and take matters into their own hands. It makes you wonder about the insane violent crime rates the country is experiencing right now.
The rate of increase is the highest it's even been, ever since modern crime reporting started around 1960. Year on year the change is stunning.
So far as pulling back, I wonder. From about 1960-1990 crime increased for some reason. 1990-2020 (approximately) saw falling crime rates. It's a small sample but another 30 year oscillation would mean rising crimes rates until 2050 or so.
Lead is one possible explanation but there are dozens of possible explanations. James Foreman Jr. summed it up best I think: if you get 10 criminologists in a room not only will you get 10 different opinions as to why crime rates declined but in addition those opinions will all be mutually contradictory.
The only thing that I am fairly positive of is that it is not just one thing. Real world problems always have many, many different contributing factors.
I’d go a step further to say they’re right about there being no opportunities for meaningful change. Regulatory capture nullifies it and media narratives repackage the captives as the tip of the spear in a culture war. Also, congresspeople live too goddamn long. Workplace organizing for better working conditions is probably our only hope, and I’m not getting a great vibe.
I was once a protestor myself. Then Obama was elected and all my old buddies wanted to drink and scream at Fox News, instead. The plot was lost and now I’m too tired for chanting.
"Once upon a time people said “I support this movement and these ideals, but this behavior, this event, this person, no.” That would seem to be a basic aspect of adult maturity, to recognize that no political tendency, no matter how idealistically envisioned, can be healthy without good-faith criticism and social pressure from allies. But where once movement leaders with intrinsic credibility would lead the conversation about whether antifa were crossing the line at an event and needed to be confronted, now antifa gets discussed by a PR team of Twitter bluechecks who have never protested anything, know nothing about the myriad weird social realities that afflict all protests, don’t live in the neighborhoods where protest violence is happening, and have mostly already forgotten about the spasm of meandering, much-hashtagged protests from last year."
I wonder how much of this isn't an artefact of 'no enemies to the left'? The basic calculus might be "well, these guys are anti-fascist, and fascists are my right-wing enemies, therefore this leftist organization is doing good, and even if I'm not personally antifa, I'm not going to oppose them". If this is the case - I'm not wholly confident that it is, I'm thinking it out - then it betrays what you describe elsewhere in this essay: an unseriousness in leftist thought. That's because 'no enemies to the left' (or right) would once have betrayed something doctrinal or ideological, not tactical. That is, an enemy wouldn't necessarily be demarcated based on his behavior, but rather his stance on issues.
Take an extreme example. Someone with whom you are almost completely ideologically aligned, but is maybe 1% further to the left than you, commits an unspeakable crime, with no doubt whatsoever about his guilt. Would 'no enemies to the left' mean you have to circle the wagons around him and say, "no, what *looks* like serial killing is actually mostly peaceful CO2 reduction and you're a bigot for noticing?" Of course not. If on the other hand someone who was significantly further left than you in ideology was bringing people into a broader left wing movement, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and curing the sick, 'no enemies to the left' would behoove you to support and amplify them, even with some doctrinal differences remaining to be hashed out Come The Revolution.
But in the absence of any serious leftist thought, in the absence of anything but Trustfund McFordham putting a brick through an Arby's window, in a world where the media's newfound 'moral clarity' means clarifying that they know nothing of morals, nor indeed much of anything, it reduces to 'my side good'. And if that means telling people that things obviously bad are good, well, so much the better.
Great piece explaining how antifa *can be* harmful and the liberals who refuse to cover them critically under literally any circumstance. So why undercut the central point by calling them "harmless?" For a fearless guy, you sometimes offer some unnecessarily sheepish caveats.
I meant to write that the piece also does a good job explaining that the latter group, apologetic liberals, also *can be* harmful.
FWIW Freddie, I don't find that first paragraph insufferable at all. I see it as a necessary reminder that real activists do real on-the-ground work as opposed to just yell on Twitter, try to get people fired, and police their friends for wrongthink.