Peter Beinart produced an
unusually timely article for The Atlantic:
The Rise of the Violent Left. It was written before what has been called “The
Battle of Charlottesville,” but it arrived in the mailbox just as events there
were unfolding. In it, he introduces a
growing movement that goes by the name Antifa, which is a shortening of some
version of a label consisting of the term anti-fascism.
There were anti-fascist groups active in Europe in the
1920s and 1930s as fascism became popular.
Anti-fascist activism came to the fore again when neo-Nazi movements
sprouted in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Various other objectionable groups have
appeared throughout Europe over the years and kept the antifa groups active. It was inevitable with the candidacy and the
presidency of Donald Trump that neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups would
become more visible. The equally inevitable
response was that European-style activism would spread to the United
States. Beinart suggests that several
widely reported events tinged with violence have already occurred and are
likely associated with this movement.
“On Inauguration Day, a masked
activist punched the white-supremacist leader Richard Spencer. In February,
protesters violently disrupted UC Berkeley’s plans to host a speech by Milo
Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart.com editor. In March, protesters pushed and
shoved the controversial conservative political scientist Charles Murray when
he spoke at Middlebury College, in Vermont.”
“The movement’s secrecy makes
definitively cataloging its activities difficult, but this much is certain:
Antifa’s power is growing. And how the rest of the activist left responds will
help define its moral character in the Trump age.”
White nationalists have long resorted to violence. The
events in Charlottesville indicate there is no reason to expect that tendency
to disappear. There is also widespread
concern among liberals that Donald Trump is an existential threat to our
polity.
“For progressives, Donald Trump
is not just another Republican president. Seventy-six percent of Democrats,
according to a Suffolk poll from last September, consider him a racist. Last
March, according to a YouGov survey, 71 percent of Democrats agreed that his
campaign contained ‘fascist undertones’.”
So this is the question that progressives must ask
themselves.
“….If you believe the president
of the United States is leading a racist, fascist movement that threatens the
rights, if not the lives, of vulnerable minorities, how far are you willing to
go to stop it?”
The official position of the Democratic politicians is
that the right to assembly and to express noxious opinions is sacrosanct. They will counter Trump as best they can and
plan for regaining control of government in future elections. Is playing by the rules going to be enough? The antifa crowd thinks not.
The purpose of antifa is to prevent the white
nationalists from even having a forum to express their opinions and they are
willing to use violence to make that happen.
Can this possibly work as a long-term strategy?
Beinart fears that the antifa activists will be
counterproductive and encourage the growth of the very groups they are
contending against.
“Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the
government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like
never before. As the president derides and subverts liberal-democratic norms,
progressives face a choice. They can recommit to the rules of fair play, and
try to limit the president’s corrosive effect, though they will often fail. Or
they can, in revulsion or fear or righteous rage, try to deny racists and Trump
supporters their political rights. From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland, the
latter approach is on the rise, especially among young people.”
“Revulsion, fear, and rage are understandable. But one thing is clear. The
people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Portland
may consider themselves fierce opponents of the authoritarianism growing on the
American right. In truth, however, they are its unlikeliest allies.”
Mark Bray is a
visiting historian at Dartmouth College.
He has studied anarchy and anarchical movements in the past, a label
that is probably appropriate for the antifa activists. Bray has a book titled Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook coming out soon. He seems somewhat sympathetic with need for
activism and provides a perspective worth considering. The following quotes are from Bray in an interview with Brooke Gladstone on WNYC
(February 10, 2017).
When asked
about the intention to prevent fascists from speaking, Bray replied:
“So, in your open you mentioned
the popular slogan that liberals have adopted from Voltaire that, ‘I may
disagree with what you have to say but I will defend to the death your right to
say it.’ Anti-fascists fundamentally disagree with that premise. They argue
that, given the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka, the destruction that Nazis
have caused, that fascists, white supremacists shouldn’t be granted the right
to express their ideas in public, in part because, they argue, had that been
done earlier in the 1920s, the 1930s, we might have been able to bypass what
ended up happening.”
Is that restriction of a fundamental right consistent
with a free society?
“Germany has a prohibition
against advocating for Nazis publicly. That doesn’t mean that Germany is a
closed society where people can’t say whatever they want to say. You can have
some prohibitions against speech without going all the way. In the context of
an increasing number of hate crimes — the Southern Poverty Law Center cited
over 800 such crimes immediately following the election of President Trump —
the idea is that the people who carry out these crimes are listening to Richard
Spencer speeches, going on Stormfront websites, imbibing this hateful doctrine,
and that, to the degree that we can shut it down, we will have fewer people
copy-catting them into attacking vulnerable populations.”
“Most
people would agree that it was acceptable in the 1930s and 1940s to organize
armed resistance to the Nazi regime. The question is: how terrible does it have
to be before that becomes legitimate? And the anti-fascist answer is: you need
to nip it in the bud from the beginning.”
People don’t mind limiting the free speech of leftists, why
not apply the same rules to extremists on the right?
“The liberal ideal is that the
government is a referee in a game that all parties are invited to play. But, in
actual fact, whenever left groups have become threatening, you get Red Scares,
you get repression, you get COINTELPRO in the 1960s and 70s. And so,
anti-fascists are arguing that we want a political content to how we look at
speech and society which is drastically different from a liberal take, and that
this entails shutting down the extreme manifestations of fascism and
neo-Nazism.”
How does antifa operate?
“Under that specific banner, it
is still relatively new and it’s finding its way. But a lot of anti-fascist or
Antifa groups have formed in different cities around the United States. A lot
of what they do is researching information on local white supremacists, who
they are, where they live, where they work—sometimes pressuring their employers
to get them fired, sometimes making sure that if they organize private events
at local venues for white supremacists, they try to pressure the venue owner to
try to cancel the event. So, that research and coalition-building with groups
that are affected by various forms of fascist or white supremacist violence is
a lot of what’s done. What gets more of the headlines is when the
demonstrations come out onto the street. And so, as I’m sure you and a number
of listeners are well aware, there have been high-profile incidences recently,
such as in Berkeley, of
trying to physically shut down events, that has raised the profile of
antifascism.”
Can this be a viable strategy?
“The question is: if we want to
prevent something along the lines of what happened in the 1930s and 40s from
happening again, how do we do it? And the liberal prescription for doing it is,
essentially, free and open debate and dialogue, and if Nazis do something
illegal then hopefully the police will stop them. Antifascists recognize that
in the 1930s, 1940s, the police supported fascism. The fascists didn’t actually stage a revolution
to come to power; they worked within the political system. And all the
reasonable dialogue and debate that one could muster did not do the job.
The argument is that, if we want such a horrific crime to not reoccur, it needs
to be nipped in the bud, through a variety of tactics, but one of which is
through violently disrupting Klan rallies, neo-Nazi speeches, and so forth.”
Bray provides this insight into the long-term goals of
the antifa activists.
“The other thing to remember is
that anti-fascists identify as communists, as anarchists, as socialists, and
want to organize for a revolutionary rupture with the prevailing political
system, and that this is in-line with that. That’s also another reason why the
two philosophies don’t quite jibe.”
That last revelation by Bray, if correct, indicates that
antifa activists are not a bunch of angry Democrats, they are something else
entirely—something the Democrats have little control over. On the Republican side of the ledger, that
party is dominated by a president who considers their politicians his personal
servants who are to do as they’re told.
They own the government but have little control over it—or at least they
have not yet chosen to exercise much control over their president.
If both the white nationalists and the antifa activists
are propagating objectionable viewpoints and both are willing to resort to
violence, can the future hold anything but escalation. The extremists on the right would seem to
have much more firepower when it comes to violence. There are already moves afoot to call upon
armed right-wing militia groups to provide protection instead of depending on
police. That cannot end well.
Perhaps the thing that needs to be nipped in the bud is
the Trump presidency. Perhaps the sight
of armed battles occurring on our city streets might awaken Republican
politicians from their reveries of massive tax cuts and arouse them
sufficiently to finally do the honorable thing and send their president to
history’s junkyard. When white nationalist
demonstrators are shouting “Heil Trump,”
something has to happen.
We are certainly living in interesting times.
The interested reader might find the following articles
informative:
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