“ I’m sorry to break this to you romantic types - most people who self-select as antifa in 2021 are just bored white people attracted by the possibility of an excuse for mindless violence.”
Exactly. So many white kids from the burbs wearing black skinny jeans and black anarchistic hoodies they got at Hot Topic cosplaying a Bolshevik.
I feel the need to point out that the last dude he shot also had an illegal firearm and was chasing a dude (Rittenhouse) while pointing said illegal firearm at him. Trying Rittenhouse for wreckless endangerment and a weapons possession charge in such circumstances would still be charging based on politics and not a sense of law or justice IMO.
Another great piece, Freddie. I'm still not used to watching blatant selective dehumanization. There has never been any proof he was a white supremacist. Yes he went to a Trump rally and was clearly of that mindset, but that doesn't mean people know what was in his head. They needed it to be true and so they pretended it was true. Just as you point out the mundane work of knocking on doors and having conversations is hard, well so too is having humanity and reserving judgment. It is only: how can I win this today. Due process? Nope. Doesn't matter. Guilt or innocence will be decided by Twitter and the media that feeds off of it. I guess I still find it shocking that there are so few people in media who have the courage to defy the mob. I guess it comes down to that. This isn't to defend what Rittenhouse did. But I still have enough humanity left to understand he was in over his head and he should not have been out there trying to protect anyone.
That he thought it was his job is astonishing. To this day most of my friends on the left do not seem to realize just how bad things were that night and how little protection there was for small business owners who didn't have insurance to rebuild, for instance. I'll never forget one video I saw of a woman with a 100-year-old mattress store. An old man picked up a fire extinguisher to protect her store from being burned down. He was beaten up and sent to the hospital. Not only was this not news but you were told you were a racist if you showed concern. https://youtu.be/mfMbRwV1uoU
Good job Freddie, on a total cluster-fuck of an issue. The lack of black victims doesn't seem to faze the mob at all - the real irony here is the flip-flop of historical allegiances -
The mob-left is full-throat supporting the shady prosecutors that over-charged a murder case for political reasons and assumed a slam-dunk guilty verdict and are trying to pull some hijinks (marsha clark anyone)
The wing-nut right is full-throat supporting defense lawyers and are anti-prosecutor.
the testimony I saw yesterday, I watched over 5 hours, Rittenhouse just straight-up plain ole kicked the prosecutors ass! If I was the DA, I'd have that dudes ass in my office ripping him a new one.
He got showed up by a teenager! the classic answer to the question of why he shot someone with a gun if that person with the gun hasn't shot him first?
Answer: "because he was pointing the gun at me and had just hit me in the head with a skateboard two times"
Freddie, I'm organizing a conference in NY on anti-fascism in the twenty-first century (to coincide with the centennial of the March on Rome). I hope you will come and share your ideas.
"in a just world, Rittenhouse would be convicted both for a weapons possession charge..."
I used to be an in-a-perfect world there would be no guns type. Then I got interested in hunting waterfowl and took some gun safety classes.
Is the less perfect world the one in which only the forces of government are armed, or one where citizenry are also armed? Are we at all still concerned about democratically elected government unjustly targeting groups of its own constituents? Or in the West are we on the cusp of inculcating that level of indefinite trust in authority? Maybe it's a faith-based belief then?
This article is missing a substantial acknowledgement of the main underlying issue, which is that if a "left rioter" had done the same to Rittenhouse under the same circumstances they'd easily be behind bars for life. Rittenhouse, on the other hand, gets a sympathetic judge who's done everything in his power to stymie the prosecution (if only all criminal proceedings were so blessed!)
Hand-wringing about antifa violence tourists seems pointless when there are exponentially more right-wing militia types with the capacity to do this and the legal leeway to get away with it. Nonviolence is the means in no small part because it's all we've got.
"The threat of investment banks is vastly larger to the average poor person of color than the threat of Boogaloo Boys"
This! I'm a Jew, and I don't give half a shit about basement dwelling losers calling themselves Nazis, yelling "Jews will not replace us", or posting allegedly offensive memes on 4chan. Finance, the military industrial complex, landlords, the oil industry, etc are much larger enemies to the average person than these "fascists" will ever be. Guys in suits who talk about "synergy" and "circling back" cause way more harm than to the average person than these Nazi larpers ever will.
Last summer, I made a Facebook post defending riots. It was the old "Well, a burned down building is not as bad as a lost life" kind of line. I realized months later that my post didn't make sense. So why did I write it in the first place?
Because I was scared. Scared of being labelled a bad person and losing friends. Social media was so chaotic at that time, and liberal folks were on the hunt for wrongthink so they could mob and shame people. They would shame people just for being silent! So I felt that if I wrote a post to signal to liberals "okay he's cool, we don't have to worry about him," they'd move on to other targets.
This dynamic is not the least bit surprising to most of us, I'm sure.
“ I’m sorry to break this to you romantic types - most people who self-select as antifa in 2021 are just bored white people attracted by the possibility of an excuse for mindless violence.”
Exactly. So many white kids from the burbs wearing black skinny jeans and black anarchistic hoodies they got at Hot Topic cosplaying a Bolshevik.
I feel the need to point out that the last dude he shot also had an illegal firearm and was chasing a dude (Rittenhouse) while pointing said illegal firearm at him. Trying Rittenhouse for wreckless endangerment and a weapons possession charge in such circumstances would still be charging based on politics and not a sense of law or justice IMO.
No sense limiting political violence to the cops who are servants of capital
Another great piece, Freddie. I'm still not used to watching blatant selective dehumanization. There has never been any proof he was a white supremacist. Yes he went to a Trump rally and was clearly of that mindset, but that doesn't mean people know what was in his head. They needed it to be true and so they pretended it was true. Just as you point out the mundane work of knocking on doors and having conversations is hard, well so too is having humanity and reserving judgment. It is only: how can I win this today. Due process? Nope. Doesn't matter. Guilt or innocence will be decided by Twitter and the media that feeds off of it. I guess I still find it shocking that there are so few people in media who have the courage to defy the mob. I guess it comes down to that. This isn't to defend what Rittenhouse did. But I still have enough humanity left to understand he was in over his head and he should not have been out there trying to protect anyone.
That he thought it was his job is astonishing. To this day most of my friends on the left do not seem to realize just how bad things were that night and how little protection there was for small business owners who didn't have insurance to rebuild, for instance. I'll never forget one video I saw of a woman with a 100-year-old mattress store. An old man picked up a fire extinguisher to protect her store from being burned down. He was beaten up and sent to the hospital. Not only was this not news but you were told you were a racist if you showed concern. https://youtu.be/mfMbRwV1uoU
Good job Freddie, on a total cluster-fuck of an issue. The lack of black victims doesn't seem to faze the mob at all - the real irony here is the flip-flop of historical allegiances -
The mob-left is full-throat supporting the shady prosecutors that over-charged a murder case for political reasons and assumed a slam-dunk guilty verdict and are trying to pull some hijinks (marsha clark anyone)
The wing-nut right is full-throat supporting defense lawyers and are anti-prosecutor.
the testimony I saw yesterday, I watched over 5 hours, Rittenhouse just straight-up plain ole kicked the prosecutors ass! If I was the DA, I'd have that dudes ass in my office ripping him a new one.
He got showed up by a teenager! the classic answer to the question of why he shot someone with a gun if that person with the gun hasn't shot him first?
Answer: "because he was pointing the gun at me and had just hit me in the head with a skateboard two times"
Prosecutor: So you shot him?
Rittenhouse: Yes
Thank you Freddie. When I read something like this I feel like sanity is out there ready to be imposed.
We wanted massive social unrest, but not like this, not by him.
Meanwhile, the trial of Ahmed Arbery’s killers seems to be going WAY better for the prosecution, in part because that incident did not occur in the midst of massive unrest and disorder. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trace-thc-ahmaud-arberys-blood-will-not-be-disclosed-jury-us-judge-rules-2021-11-04/
Freddie, I'm organizing a conference in NY on anti-fascism in the twenty-first century (to coincide with the centennial of the March on Rome). I hope you will come and share your ideas.
"in a just world, Rittenhouse would be convicted both for a weapons possession charge..."
I used to be an in-a-perfect world there would be no guns type. Then I got interested in hunting waterfowl and took some gun safety classes.
Is the less perfect world the one in which only the forces of government are armed, or one where citizenry are also armed? Are we at all still concerned about democratically elected government unjustly targeting groups of its own constituents? Or in the West are we on the cusp of inculcating that level of indefinite trust in authority? Maybe it's a faith-based belief then?
This article is missing a substantial acknowledgement of the main underlying issue, which is that if a "left rioter" had done the same to Rittenhouse under the same circumstances they'd easily be behind bars for life. Rittenhouse, on the other hand, gets a sympathetic judge who's done everything in his power to stymie the prosecution (if only all criminal proceedings were so blessed!)
Hand-wringing about antifa violence tourists seems pointless when there are exponentially more right-wing militia types with the capacity to do this and the legal leeway to get away with it. Nonviolence is the means in no small part because it's all we've got.
"The threat of investment banks is vastly larger to the average poor person of color than the threat of Boogaloo Boys"
This! I'm a Jew, and I don't give half a shit about basement dwelling losers calling themselves Nazis, yelling "Jews will not replace us", or posting allegedly offensive memes on 4chan. Finance, the military industrial complex, landlords, the oil industry, etc are much larger enemies to the average person than these "fascists" will ever be. Guys in suits who talk about "synergy" and "circling back" cause way more harm than to the average person than these Nazi larpers ever will.
Last summer, I made a Facebook post defending riots. It was the old "Well, a burned down building is not as bad as a lost life" kind of line. I realized months later that my post didn't make sense. So why did I write it in the first place?
Because I was scared. Scared of being labelled a bad person and losing friends. Social media was so chaotic at that time, and liberal folks were on the hunt for wrongthink so they could mob and shame people. They would shame people just for being silent! So I felt that if I wrote a post to signal to liberals "okay he's cool, we don't have to worry about him," they'd move on to other targets.
This dynamic is not the least bit surprising to most of us, I'm sure.