I concede that this first bit is insufferable. I have been an activist since I was old enough to be politically conscious. I helped organize gay rights rallies when I was 16, participated in the admittedly vague anti-corporatism of the late 90s, then dove headfirst into antiwar activism when the bombs started to fall on Kabul and Jalalabad. I spent five dispiriting years devoting myself to anti-Iraq activism more or less as a vocation. Now I do housing work here in the city. I’ve been in more groups and committees and “circles” than I care to remember. I’ve had the glamorous banner-unfurling moments and many more of the tedious “who’s going to rent the porta potties” moments. I’ve done the tabling and waded through the interminable listserv posts. I’ve been in group after group that was wracked with toxic left shit but still got it together to put on great events. I’ve waved signs, chanted the chants, occupied buildings, lied down in the street, made speeches, handed out leaflets, and sang the songs. Did any of it matter? No idea. But I did it all the same and I wouldn’t change a thing.
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 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.
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.
"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.
"...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.
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.
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."
“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.
"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.
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 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.
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.
"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.
"...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.
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.
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."
“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.
"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.