Andy Ngo, faux-journalist and enabler of right-wing bigotry, got milkshaked the other day. I approve whole-heartedly of that kind of behavior. Portland Antifa even turned to mass production of vegan milkshakes as part of their protest of the Proud Boys and other fascist groups marching in the city.
@PopMobPDX giving out free vegan milkshakes at the same time Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys are rallying in #pdx streets. pic.twitter.com/asLkHISril
— Shane Burley (@shane_burley1) June 29, 2019
Terrific! I’m all in favor of community action to make their contempt for bigots unambiguous and humiliating for the marchers. “Proud” Boys, my ass.
However, the response escalated. Here’s Ngo getting hosed down with milkshakes and silly string, when someone runs forward and clocks him hard. He was bleeding and went to an emergency room; this is serious violence.
First skirmish I’ve seen. Didn’t see how this started, but @MrAndyNgo got roughed up. pic.twitter.com/hDkfQchRhG
— Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) June 29, 2019
Now I’m getting uncomfortable. Would I do this? No. But since everyone is currently very concerned about free speech, I think we need to be able to objectively discuss the pros of punching out fascist bigots. After all, any attempt to silence conversation about the virtues of antifa would be a violation of people’s free speech rights, and we can’t have that. I think also that Mr Ngo would want us to consider the benefits of seeing him punched in the face.
Here’s Mr Ngo “reporting” on an encounter between antifa and right-wing thugs. There is fighting on both sides, and it gets a bit ferocious. One of the fascists hits a protester, Heather Clark, so hard that he knocks her unconscious and breaks a cervical vertebra, an injury far worse than what Ngo experienced this weekend. Yet in his commentary on this event, he is unperturbed and even tries to justify it as deserved because Clark had disrupted a James Damore speaking event and damaged some sound equipment.
The #Antifa woman who got knocked out cold at #MayDayPDX is Heather Clark. She is the person who tried to shut down the James Damore Portland State panel last year by sabotaging & damaging the sound equipment. https://t.co/a2mPO4hi2K pic.twitter.com/YAqSBT7DVs
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) May 3, 2019
Hmm, interesting. What’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, I guess. If you google “Heather Clark antifa” you will find lots of right wing sites crowing triumphantly over the young woman getting seriously injured. Some of the same sites are now aghast that Ngo has been injured. I guess there’s a peculiar asymmetry at work here — punching antifa is heroic, but punching fascists is bad. You could flip that and say the same of antifa, that they think punching Nazis is heroic, but punching antifa is…except that what I’ve seen of antifa is that they expect to get hurt.
But OK, let’s not play tit-for-tat. Violence against fascists might righteously be opposed because it’s vigilanteism. It’s taking the law into your own hands. We oppose that, right? We believe in the rule of law?
Yes, except that there’s one problem here: the law is not enforcing the law. The Portland police clearly side with the Proud Boys and other such fascist groups, and have been refusing to arrest the right-wing provocateurs who are clearly descending on the city specifically to incite violence. The Portland police even disseminated the ludicrous claim that antifa had made the milkshakes loaded with quick-setting cement — there is no evidence of such a scheme, and it’s actually rather impractical. The police are defending fascists and also acting as their propaganda arm.
To make an argument against vigilanteism, one has to presuppose some trust in the law. That trust has evaporated. The police have been demonstrated time and again to be racist, discriminatory, and violent. Antifa would have nothing to do if the police were doing their job and peacefully removing the right-wing instigators from these events, but they aren’t, because they’re actually favoring them (or afraid of them, which is also a possibility). That precious rule of law is breaking down all across the country, so it becomes a righteous act to oppose wrong directly, without passing the responsibility on to an irresponsible police force.
A better argument might be that Andy Ngo, who is a scum-sucking bottom-dweller and champion of thuggery, has now become a cause celebre among the bigots. If the conflict had been confined to splashing him with dairy products, he would just be a joke right now, and that the blood and bruises are elevating his voice. I’d only ask, if that were true, why are Heather Clark’s injuries belittled, and why is Heather Heyer’s death not a crushing blow to the regressives?
I guess my bottom line is that absent a legitimate police force working to keep the peace, I’ll trust antifa to fight for right, more than I would the Proud Boys or neo-Nazis. I’d prefer more milkshakes and eggs over blood and broken bones, though.
Another twist: Seth Andrews wants Ryan Bell fired for not criticizing antifa. It’s weird how, under capitalism, economic violence is not considered harmful.
Ive lived in Portland nearly my entire life (now 64). My father was a Portland police officer/detective for 25 years. During the Viet Nam War the Portland police supported the government and the war. They routinely beat protesters. My father told me I could not participate in any anti war movements because they had communists at the back of the demonstrations pushing people forward. All a bunch of bullshit and lies. Portland police have a long history of being racist, misogynistic, lying, killers. It is no surprise they support the far right crowd now. Its their base of support. They have only worked to protect and serve the white people in this city, now you have to be on the political far right, and have money before they will serve and protect. The illusion of safety projected by law enforcement is strong in Oregon.
The lies coming out of the right wing are more brazen than ever. And the usual suspects are carrying the water for them. Spent my Canada Day afternoon fielding the most ridiculous trumpist mobbing after I called out Ricky Gervais on Twitter for only speaking up in defense of fascists when they get milkshaked.
It’s been an entertaining lazy afternoon, at least, attempting some engagement with these clowns.
It’s a decent form of protest, I definitely agree with the sentiment of milkshaking someone. But honestly I’m more comfortable with the punching of facists/nazis/etc. than I am with milkshaking. I can’t help, having been part of a food for the needy group, but think it’s a waste of food.
I guess I understand why people think punching facists/nazis in the face is bad and instead wants to discuss the issues with them. I get that. But what is there really to discuss? We’ve had this discussion about these people (facists/nazis) before, and we decided to punch them.
Another thing about the Portland police: citing “staffing problems,” the Portland metro police are now relaxing hiring standards in two ways. First, officers will now only be required to have a high school diploma or equivalent rather than requiring an additional two years of higher education. Second, beards and neck tattoos will now be allowed.
Beards and neck tattoos have long been part of the far-right identity. At this point, the police are signalling that they no longer going to bother making even a pretense about their affiliations.
Let’s just agree that punching Nazis is good, and some may view that as throwing punches, and others can view it as dousing them with punch.
Beards? I wore a beard most of my life, only shaved it off when It went grey.
And what if that scruffy fungus on PZ’s face?
I was very curious about the “concrete milkshake” claims. This looks like a debunking. https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-antifa-throw-concrete-milkshakes/
Anyone who wants to make this incendiary claim had better have some evidence.
My one and only problem with punching fascists is that I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s too late. When the Nazis marched in Skokie, that was the time for a USian Battle of Cable Street. Up through the 1980s, 90s, 2000s, we should have been out there pelting these Nazis fucks, and the cops who side with them, with rocks and refuse. That was the time to punch the assholes.
Relying on peaceful protest alone has been an abysmal failure. The things the staunch defenders of such pacifism assured us were mere overheated fantasies- fascists in the legislature and White House, Nazi sympathizers infiltrating the police force in large numbers, a massive legal assault on women’s rights, the construction of concentration camps- have come to pass.
Now, I’m not sure anything can save us from something worse than the Second World War. The nightmare has come true, and the new Nazis have the nukes. Study the resistance in Nazi-occupied countries during WWII, and make preparations accordingly.
@#8, vucodlak:
Oh, don’t be such a grumpy-pants. I’m sure that if the Democrats just run a few more pro-war pro-rich centrists, who admit that they would be Republicans under Reagan and think it’s more important that government be bipartisan than that it be effective, everything will just pop back to normal.
Good to see you apply your standards to yourself as well:
@10 starfleetdude:
Not sure what point you’re making. If someone is willing to threaten PZ, surely they’re be willing to have him publish identifying information so as to avoid having made anonymous threats, just as Mr. Ngo is asking for people to “Please help police identify those who attacked and robbed me.”
@efogoto
Agreed (I think). The point was so muddled that I wasn’t sure whether “apply your standards to yourself” was sarcastic or not. I believe that PZ applies consistent standards and see no evidence to the contrary in this case.
No reasonable person would expect PZ or Ngo to respect the privacy of someone who was threatening him. The top priority is personal safety in that case. I believe it’s mostly a matter of courtesy to keep any unsolicited email private (but I guess it gets complicated https://ask.metafilter.com/45888/Quoting-from-email-intellectual-property-or-privacy-issue ). I do not send emails to anyone with the expectation of privacy. I would be annoyed in the unlikely event that they were somehow profiting from republishing my words, but I would try to be careful in the first place. If someone is making a threat, it is common sense that they have waived any expectation of privacy.
@12 PaulBC: Exactly. I think starfleetdude missed the explanation that “[PZ] think[s] also that Mr Ngo would want us to consider the benefits of seeing him punched in the face” in the very next paragraph: “One of the fascists hits a protester, Heather Clark, so hard that he knocks her unconscious and breaks a cervical vertebra, an injury far worse than what Ngo experienced this weekend. Yet in his commentary on this event, he is unperturbed and even tries to justify it as deserved because Clark had disrupted a James Damore speaking event and damaged some sound equipment.” Were Mr. Ngo to dispassionately review the assault on himself, surely he would see the parallels and be “unperturbed and even tr[y] to justify it as deserved”. That both he and PZ want those who make threats and assaults to be identified is a separate issue.
Hmm. Not getting through. Either I’ve been flagged as spam or I’ve been banned. Either way, my apologies.
Just want to point out, because it seems to have been forgotten in the chaos, that the original name of the protest was #Him-Too. As a male sexual assault survivor I do not want these assholes speaking for me. Also, last year these same Patriot Prayer and Proud boys counter protested the Victims March. That also turned into a riot.
That “protest” was a deliberate provocation. Andy-boy got just what he wanted. He looks like a victim. I personally think I’ve bleed more shaving in the shower.
<
blockquote>Were Mr. Ngo to dispassionately review the assault on himself, surely he would see the parallels
<
blockquote>
never going to happen. because there is a real big difference he thinks he is right and she is wrong. he will use any advantage he can any spin that is handy that perpetuate that “fact”
uncle frogy
that’s weird!
I find it interesting that Seth Andrews wants someone fired, since Seth has no job other than conning willing idiots out of money online.
Well, if you associate with Nazis, you can expect to be punched. Ngo has only himself to blame, for choosing to side with Nazis.
I read through Seth’s little thread there. Hoo boy. At one point, he RT’s something from Ian Miles “Ant-boy” Cheong. A man affiliated with GamerGate, which threatened violence against gaming media they didn’t like, mostly women, and the incel movement, which threatens violence against women who don’t believe that men are entitled to women’s bodies. And yet he puts this in the same thread as his claim that he unequivocally denounces violence and extremism. Of course, once called on his dubious “source”, the choir of crickets sang their little buggy hearts out.
[unclefrogy @17, you didn’t put the slash to close the blockquote tag, interpreter tried to parse]
stroppy @14, I suspect you might have triggered keywords, been dumped into the (no doubt extensive) moderation queue. To which only PZ has access, in his copious free time.
No apologies needed, and I encourage you to persevere, since I obviously saw your comment.
I have a suspicion that the only thing that really benefits from Nazi punching is the puncher’s ego.
I watched a Thought Slime video about antifa just yesterday.
We’ve got an Asian guy lauding white, racist thugs and he doesn’t think that this is against his interests. Oh what a world we live in.
It’s time to move on from milkshakes. I propose throwing (sterilized!) urine, followed by releasing some goats.
#26: Or they could at least get more creative with the milkshake recipe. Make it a straight up durian puree. Or if a ripe durian isn’t to be found, add some salad dressing, parmesan cheese and random condiments for a nice barfy effect.
“If antifa has no recourse but violence, how can you condemn them for taking action?”
Your own post andswers this- they do have other recourse. Milkshakes instead of punches. All they have to do is obstruct fascist rallies rather than attack them; this puts the people they are obstructing in a bind- attack and prove that they are the only ones resorting to violence, or back down and be laughed at.
“Hmm, interesting. What’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, I guess. If you google “Heather Clark antifa” you will find lots of right wing sites crowing triumphantly over the young woman getting seriously injured. Some of the same sites are now aghast that Ngo has been injured. I guess there’s a peculiar asymmetry at work here — punching antifa is heroic, but punching fascists is bad.”
Yes, that means they are hypocrites. You too are a hypocrite, if you approve of assaulting Ngo while opposing the assault on Clark. Do you? You seem to, or at least your opposition to it is extremly weak tea: “don’t do that! …Well, not much of it anyway”
gijoel “We’ve got an Asian guy lauding white, racist thugs and he doesn’t think that this is against his interests. Oh what a world we live in.”
Check out Jesse Peterson, but only with a barf bag handy.
@20
Nothing hypocritical about this, unless you think it’s also hypocritical to send criminals to jail and not innocent people.
@ aramad88, #28
Throwing stuff on people is still violence. Woefully insufficient to the problem at hand, but violence nonetheless.
Mere obstruction has been tried. It failed. The fascists have only grown stronger.
Absolutely no one gives a shit. No decent human being believes there is anything good about the Nazi scum to start with, and no honest human being believes that Nazis are non-violent. Essentially every human being witnessing Nazi marches today knows exactly what they are about, and only the most willfully ignorant fools are surprised that Nazis actually mean to do what they say they mean to do.
Yours is not an argument that can be made in good faith anymore. Then again, given your ‘nym, I probably shouldn’t be surprised. But, on the off chance that you’re merely naïve, I’ll tell you this: “88” is a well-known Nazi meme, with each 8 standing in for the eighth letter of the alphabet, and being a “clever” way of saying “Heil Hitler.” Maybe don’t use it while whining that people are being mean to Nazis.
“Throwing stuff on people is still violence. Woefully insufficient to the problem at hand, but violence nonetheless.”
No, it varies. Throwing a hard object at someone’s head is violence, throwing fluid to stain their clothing, injure their dignity etc. is not. Milkshakes are the second one.
“Mere obstruction has been tried. It failed. The fascists have only grown stronger.”
Oh really, all of them? Here’s an example of one succeeding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street
Notice that even with police on their side, the fascists were forced to back down, because to proceed would require them to be the aggressor. The much larger crowd would then be free to defend itself.
Has antifa tried this, and if so, where?
“Absolutely no one gives a shit. No decent human being believes there is anything good about the Nazi scum to start with, and no honest human being believes that Nazis are non-violent.”
By definition then anyone that disagrees with you is designated either indecent, dishonest, or both. This must be very convenient when you wish to dismiss their position!
“Essentially every human being witnessing Nazi marches today knows exactly what they are about,”
Which is why the obstruction method works so well. By forcing nazis to be either the initiator of violence (or wimps that back down), outrage against them only grows stronger.
“Then again, given your ‘nym, I probably shouldn’t be surprised. But, on the off chance that you’re merely naïve, I’ll tell you this: “88” is a well-known Nazi meme, with each 8 standing in for the eighth letter of the alphabet, and being a “clever” way of saying “Heil Hitler.” Maybe don’t use it while whining that people are being mean to Nazis.”
I didn’t think of that when making the account :(
I was born in 1988, and aramad is a portmanteu of my first and last names.
Dude, the Battle of Cable Street was not just obstruction, and was not non-violent. From the very wikipedia page you linked to:
Sounds more violent than Antifa are being right now.
This right here is precisely how civil wars begin. We are seeing an absolutely predictable progression: thrown food escalates to fists. Fists escalate to sticks and bricks. Sticks and bricks escalate to tear gas and molotov cocktails, which escalate to guns. It’s happened in many countries of the world, and it’s happened in the US of A a hundred and fifty years ago, and there’s no reason at all it won’t happen here again.
If you advocate violence against your foes, you’re advocating civil war. And if you’re advocating civil war, then you ought to be planning right now whether that’s a war that our side is likely to be able to win. Because you know what? Their side is a whole lot better armed than our side — not to mention the fact, as others here have commented on, that the police and military are likelier to side with the Nazis than with us. Good luck signing people up to your cause when you’ll probably be losing out of the gate.
MLK Jr. faced the exact same situation. He didn’t advocate non-violence because he was some kind of a saint, and it’s not because the Nazis of his era didn’t deserve to be punched — he did it because he calculated his odds and realized that he was more likely to win in the court of public opinion than fighting urban warfare. And he was right — by any objective measure, bigotry and nazism have gone down since the 1920s. So violence is not only a losing strategy, it’s likely to erase all the progress made in the last hundred years.
There are two battlefields that count in America. One is the hearts and minds of the mass of people. The other is an actual battlefield. Before you go around advocating punching Nazis, I want you to explain to me how this is going to lead to a victory in either one.
@brucegee1962 History shows quite clearly that unless met with strong resistance, fascists will become bolder and bolder and violence will be inevitable sooner or later. The sooner the cancer is nipped in the bud, the better, because the less violence overall is needed to deal with them. There is no peaceful coexistence possible with fascists. They are already killing people. Violence already started.
And did you read some different history than everyone else? MLK was assasinated despite being peaceful, and he had Black Panthers Party as contemporaries. And the Battle of Cable Street did not lead to civil war.
What you are doing here is fascist apologetics. “Oh sure, they already have people in government and police, so we should just let them march to not escalate it into violence.” That won’t work. Nazis interpret any form of peaceful opposition as a weakness to be exploited.
That’s one heck of a slippery slope! Who knew every food fight was the first salvo in a new civil war?
As mentioned in another thread – the American neo-Nazi / alt-right / militia movement has been breaking skulls, shooting people, and blowing stuff up for ages. If you’re correct, then you’re already a good long way down that road, and taking the high road doesn’t seem to be helping.
As for the inevitable invocation of MLK – he wasn’t operating in a vacuum. There was also Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, and Huey Newton. There was plenty of violence in the struggle for civil rights – it’s just that comfortable middle-class white people prefer not to remember it. Then there’s the gay rights movement, which was born out of the Stonewall Riots…
“Dude, the Battle of Cable Street was not just obstruction, and was not non-violent. From the very wikipedia page you linked to:”
Did you ignore the part where I said that the obstruction forces the other party to either attack or back down? Or the part where I said that being attacked frees the larger crowd to fight back? The Cable street protesters did that to a t. They interposed themselves in the path of the fascist rally, were attacked, and defended themselves. The big big difference is that the violence they committed was as the defender, and NOT as the attacker.
A big PR victory, as well as moral victory of course.
aramad88
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
@ aramad88, #32
I’m not going to spend all day quibbling with you over definitions, but throwing anything at someone, or even spitting on them, is considered assault, and it is a violent action. This is something every kindergartener understands.
As jefrir points out, they were forced to back down because they got their asses kicked, not because “to be the aggressor” would have made them look bad. It ain’t called “The Battle of Cable Street” for nothing. What the anti-fascists did at Cable Street was more extreme than anything antifa has done in recent years, and it got the job done.
Only every single time they take the field. Of course the fascists spin it as the evil anti-fascists attacking them while they were just minding their own business and handing out flower to children or something- that’s how propaganda works. And you’ve fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
Do you disagree, when I say that Nazis are bad and/or evil? Then you’re a shitty human being. Do you disagree when I say that Nazis are violent? Then you’re a liar or a fool. This really isn’t a complex issue.
Oh bullshit. Most people don’t give a damn if a bunch of fascists beat down a bunch of hippies, and a large minority of people will cheer on the fascists. That much has been abundantly clear since the 1960s at least. I’ve heard more than enough people fantasizing about murdering peaceful protestors against police violence or gender discrimination in just the last few years, and I’ve seen the utter indifference of the great masses of the people to violence against those protestors to know how people really feel.
Do you know why peaceful protest works? It’s not because people are moved by the sincerity and committed pacifism of the marchers. It’s not because of catching slogans or clever signs. It’s because behind every crowd of picketing, chanting peace marchers there’s a pissed off mob with bricks, clubs, and molotovs who had just about all they can take of being stomped on and beat down, and they’re ready to make their grievances know in a spectacularly violent fashion if peace doesn’t work.
The reason that the peaceful protests are portrayed so positively, while violent elements are demonized or erased entirely, is that peaceful protests don’t upset the status quo. That’s why children are taught that nonviolence is the only way to get change- because nonviolence alone doesn’t work. If it did, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
@chigau
Thanks! I will use it.
Dunc
Strawman – Brucegee did not claim every food fight leads to a civil war. He said civil war begins small before going big. As antifa themselves point out, awful outcomes don’t arise fully formed in one day, they are a cumulative escalation. Look at concentration camps as an example. They start as a bunch of prisons for an undesired group, often refugees etc, then the atrocities are added 1 by 1.
Small can lead to big is the same as saying big starts from small. Brucegee’s point.
@vucodlak
And yet there is sufficient difference between those activities to make the difference between misdemeanor and crime, and this is the distinction I am talking about.
And as I pointed out to jefrir, when the larger crowd of protestors fought back, they fought back justifiably as defenders which is the right of anyone that is attacked. And no the fascists didn’t withdraw because “they got their asses kicked”. They couldn’t have, they weren’t even participants in the melee at that point and yet they lost heart! Did either of you even read my comment, or the page I linked??
I have seen clear and unobstructed footage of antifa punching people in the back of their head, aggressive rather than defensive violence, which is exactly not what I suggested. Again, with extra for clarity: has antifa done something like the Cable Street protests, namely interposing themselves and barricades in the path of a facsist rally, and fighting only when others make the aggressive move?
You misunderstood my point, but then again the point was minor so I am ok with dropping it.
So have I, but maybe my hearing is sharper than yours because I have also heard those same people complaining that the people they would like to fight are peaceful. You see, what the fascists want is for the antifa to be the attackers – because if the fascists are under attack, this frees them up to fight by giving them the excuse of self defense. They want it both ways – all satisfaction for their violent urges, but also the legal cover of not being the attacker.
See again the Cable Street example: the fascists were rebuffed by the protesters occupying the defending role. The fascists could not proceed without being the attacker – putting the bloodshed on their hands in the eyes of the already angry populace – and so they had to retreat without getting their martyr fix.
Excuse me but I never said ‘pacifism’, multiple times I specifically talked about fighting back as the defender. So this would be a strawman.
Also, are you saying every single peaceful protest has had an angry mob weilding “bricks, clubs and molotovs” backing them up? What an amazing claim! Please support it with ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL.
And if there are some peaceful protests that work without that backup, then you have just agreed with me that peaceful protest can work.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. All it takes is a single counterexample to your claim.
And… once again, your absurdly superficial knowledge of history is exposed (as in your ignorance of the significance of “88”, and your belief that the Battle of Cable Street was an example of purely defensive violence, when the police were showered with missiles, rubbish, etc. The British didn’t abandon India wholly or even mainly because of Gandhi, but because (a) they realised that they were no longer capable of holding it either militarily, if serious resistance began, or financially, being hugely in debt to the USA, which disapproved of all imperialism other than its own in the immediate aftermath of WWII, and (b) because it was no longer profitable, because instead of India owing Britain vast amounts, on which it paid interest every year, Britain owed India – again, due to WWII. I recommend Cain and Hopkins British Imperialism 1688-2000 on these points.
Gandhi is one of the most over-rated figures of the 20th century. A defender of caste privilege, who made appaling racist comments about Africans and had weird and creepy attitudes to women and sex, he recommended that Britian resist Hitler by non-violent means. There are indeed times and places where NVDA (non-violent direct action) is the appropriate tool for political struggle – and I’ve been involved in it myself on several occasions – but it only works when the opponent is inhibited in their own use of violence, as the British authorities were in India – the Amritsar massacre of 1919 had shown them the high political cost of employing lethal force against peaceful demonstrators, and they knew they simply did not have sufficient troops or administrators to hold India by force.
@ aramad88, #41
I don’t even know what you’re trying to say here. Assault charges can be brought whether you’re throwing milkshakes or punching. Any instance in which you can be brought up on criminal charges is, by definition, a crime.
Oh for fuck- the antifascists blocked/barricaded the street. The march was legal. The barricades were illegal, as well as a clear aggressive challenge to the fascists coming down the street. The cops tried to clear the street, a legal and not even necessarily violent action. The antifascists went after the police. That’s not only highly illegal, it’s also highly aggressive.
I absolutely agree with what the antifascists did that day, but in no way was it passive, non-violent, or non-offensive. The only way you can call what the antifascists did a defensive move is if you concede my point that supporting fascism in any way is an inherently violent act.
In other words, the mere fact that the fascists exist is an aggressive action on the part of the fascists. In which case every time antifa punches a fascist it is, as I have been arguing all along, self-defense.
Ah yes, the “If only…” people. I know them well. There’s a certain progression the “If only…” people follow, which is always a little bit different but goes something like this-
First it’s: “If only they were nonviolent… I’d be on their side if they weren’t so violent.”
Then it’s: “If only they wouldn’t destroy property… I’d be on their side if they weren’t so destructive.”
Next comes: “If only they didn’t block traffic or disrupt business… I’d be on their side if they weren’t so disruptive.”
After that: “If only they weren’t so in-your face and obnoxious… I’d be on their side if they weren’t loud and arrogant.”
And again: “If only I they’d stop antagonizing the [bullies/abusers/fascists]… I’d be on their side if I really believed they didn’t bring it on themselves.”
Then finally: “Who? If only they’d said something in just the right way, while being perfect and innocent, I’d have been on their side. It’s their own fault, really.”
-the outcome, however, is always the same. There is nothing the victims or those actually support them can do to gain the support of the “If only…” people. The only thing the “If only…” people will ever find acceptable is if the victims go away and never trouble them.
What fascists want is for the rest of us to either live beneath their boots, or die. They’ll do anything, tell any lie, violate any principle, and kill any number of people to make that happen. They care about the law only insofar as it can be used as a weapon against those they despise. They care about optics only when they don’t yet have the power to crush anyone who objects to their behavior.
They ran at Cable Street because they knew they’d lost before the battle was even joined. Fascists are cowards and bullies- that’s the real heart of everything they believe and do. They saw the more numerous police getting their asses handed to them, and they did what cowards do when they know they can’t win an easy victory. They ran. Screw the optics- they only cared about saving their own miserable skins.
I’m saying that successful peaceful protest movements, when they come up against authoritarian elements who hold greater physical might, all have an undercurrent of “or else” in the background. ‘We’re asking nice this time. The next time we’ll bring a fight.’
To believe that peaceful protest alone works, I’d have to believe that the vast majority of human beings are kind, thoughtful, generous, and ever mindful of the big picture. Unfortunately, I’ve lived on this Earth long enough to know that humanity isn’t any of those things. We change when we’re forced to change.
-ultimately succeeded because the British Empire was badly debilitated by two world wars and fighting over its many colonial holdings. They could ill-afford to fight a massive rebellion on the other side of the world.
Or, what @ KG said better in #42.
…By the residents of the houses along that street. Not the protesters, who were instead blocking the fascists’ path.
Yes, financial and political factors compounded the peaceful resistance… but the fact that the protest was very shrewd in its timing to benefit from those things (potentially accidentally) does not overturn the example of a successful peaceful protest.
Oh and 88 is my birth year, I should have remembered to use 1988.
“I don’t even know what you’re trying to say here. Assault charges can be brought whether you’re throwing milkshakes or punching. Any instance in which you can be brought up on criminal charges is, by definition, a crime.”
Or a misdemeanor, and the difference is made on the basis of potential harm. I really don’t know why you are trying to argue that throwing drinks is the same as punching when the courts see them differently.
*
“Oh for fuck- the antifascists blocked/barricaded the street. The march was legal. The barricades were illegal, as well as a clear aggressive challenge to the fascists coming down the street. The cops tried to clear the street, a legal and not even necessarily violent action. The antifascists went after the police. That’s not only highly illegal, it’s also highly aggressive.”
No, the defended themselves from the police advancing on them. And then yes, as mass protests do, it turned into a big melee. But the defensive principle was there – they forced the choice of actively moving them via aggression onto the police – I don;t know why you are trying to call defending attacking and vice versa.
Also, I never called their action passive nor non-violent, so those 2 are strawmen; and it was not offensiv in the sense that they attacked anyone.
*
“The only way you can call what the antifascists did a defensive move is if you concede my point that supporting fascism in any way is an inherently violent act.”
No it doesn’t, I explained this already. They were the defender in that clash because they other people actually attacked them. A choice forced on them by being obstructive.
*
“h yes, the “If only…” people. I know them well. There’s a certain progression the “If only…” people follow, which is always a little bit different but goes something like this-
First it’s: “If only they were nonviolent… I’d be on their side if they weren’t so violent.””
I think you need to reread what I said, you misunderstood it.
*
“They ran at Cable Street because they knew they’d lost before the battle was even joined.”
Sorry this is just a lie. If it were true, there would not have been bloodshed at all, they only called it off after the clash had been joined. Also, that would only make my point for me: showing up and being obstructive in order to force the other side into the choice (attacking or running) works and and works without needing to attack them.
Thank you for agreeing with me?
aramad88
I don’t know about the USA, but in the UK you can assault someone verbally ie without touching them and be charged with a criminal offence, milkshaking someone would certainly count as criminal assault should the CPS decide to prosecute anyone.
Bottom line is telling people actually affected by fascists how they should respond from a position of safety is a slug move, don’t do it unless you want to be considered as a fellow traveller.
And now you know how 88 is going to be viewed you could change it, but I notice that you haven’t … which also makes you look like a fellow traveller.
aramad88@44
Srsly? You think the residents and the protesters were two unrelated groups of people? Desperate stuff, trluy desperate.
You’ve got the timing completely wrong. The sequence of events is complex, but you can read about it in sufficient detailhere. Gandhi was most active before WWII, but achieved little in concrete terms. He opposed Indian participation in WWII, but his attempts to prevent it failed completely. He was imprisoned from 1942-44, and while he was in prison, Jinnah’s Muslim League, which favoured participation in the war and a separate Muslim-majority state, grew enormously in strength, leading to the disaster of partition, during which around 1 million people died in Hindu-Muslim strife. The decision to grant independence was taken by Attlee’s Labour government, on the gorunds I’ve already set out (and genuine anti-imperialism among left elements of the party). In short, Indian independence would have happened at around the same time if Gandhi had never lived, and quite possibly with far less loss of life.