The Harmful
Effects of Antifa
By Diana
Johnstone
October 23,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- An historic opportunity is being missed. The
disastrous 2016 presidential election could and
should have been a wakeup call. A corrupt political
system that gave voters a choice between two
terrible candidates is not democracy.
This should
have been the signal to face reality. The U.S.
political system is totally rotten, contemptuous of
the people, serving the corporations and lobbies
that pay to keep them in office. The time had come
to organize a genuine alternative, an independent
movement to liberate the electoral system from the
grip of billionaires, to demand a transition from a
war economy to an economy dedicated to improving the
lives of the people who live here. What is needed is
a movement for the pacification of America, at home
and abroad.
That is a
big order. Yet this approach could meet with wide
support, especially if vigorous young people
organized to stimulate popular debate, between real
live people, from door to door if necessary,
creating a mass movement for genuine democracy,
equality and peace. This is as revolutionary a
program as possible in the present circumstances. A
moribund left should be coming back to life to take
the lead in building such a movement.
Quite the
opposite is happening.
Provoking a
new Civil War?
The first
step toward preventing such a constructive movement
was a false interpretation of the meaning of the
Trump victory, massively promoted by mainstream
media. This was essentially the Clintonite excuse
for Hillary’s loss. Trump’s victory, according to
this line, was the product of a convergence between
Russian interference and the votes of “misogynists,
racists, homophobes, xenophobes, and white
supremacists”. The influence of all those bad people
indicated the rise of “fascism” in America, with
Trump in the role of “fascist” leader.
In this
way, criticism of the system that produced Trump
vanished in favor of demonization of Trump the
individual, making it that much easier for the
Clintonites to solidify their control of the
Democratic Party, by manipulating their own leftist
opposition.
The events
of Charlottesville resembled a multiple provocation,
with pro- and anti-statue sides provoking each
other, providing a stage for Antifa to gain national
prominence as saviors. Significantly,
Charlottesville riots provoked Trump into making
comments which were seized upon by all his enemies
to brand him definitively as “racist” and “fascist”.
This gave the disoriented “left” a clear cause:
fight “fascist Trump” and domestic “fascists”. This
is more immediate than organizing to demand that the
United States end its threats against Iran and North
Korea, its open and covert project to reshape the
Middle East to ensure Israel’s regional dominance,
or its nuclear buildup targeting Russia. Not to
mention its support for genuine Nazis in Ukraine.
Yet that trillion dollar policy of global
militarization contributes more to violence and
injustice even in the United States than the
remnants of thoroughly discredited lost causes.
The Left
and Antifa
All those
who are sincerely on the left, who are in favor of
greater social and economic equality for all, who
oppose the endless aggressive foreign wars and the
resulting militarization of the American police and
the American mentality, must realize that, since the
Clintonian takeover of the Democratic Party, the
ruling oligarchic establishment disguises itself as
“the left”, uses “left” arguments to justify itself,
and largely succeeds in manipulating genuine
leftists for its own purposes. This has caused such
confusion that it is quite unclear what “left” means
any more.
The
Clintonian left substituted Identity Politics for
the progressive goal of economic and social
equality, by ostentatiously coopting women, blacks
and Latinos into the visible elite, the better to
ignore the needs of the majority. The Clintonian
left introduced the concept of “humanitarian war” to
describe its relentless destruction of recalcitrant
nations, seducing much of the left into supporting
U.S. imperialism as a fight for democracy against
“dictators”.
Antifa
contributes to this confusion by giving precedence
to the suppression of “bad” ideas rather than to the
development of good ones through uninhibited debate.
Antifa attacks on dissidents tend to enforce the
dominant neoliberal doctrine that also raises the
specter of fascism as pretext for aggression against
countries targeted for regime change.
Antifa’s
excuses
Antifa has
several favorite arguments to justify itself to
those who criticize its use of force and
intimidation to silence its adversaries.
1. Its
violence is justified by the implicit violence
attributed to its chosen enemies who if left alone
plan to exterminate whole groups of people.
This is
demonstrably untrue, as Antifa is notoriously
generous in distributing the fascist label. Most of
the people Antifa targets are not fascists and there
is no evidence that even “racists” are planning to
carry out genocide.
2. Antifa
is engaged in other political activity.
That is
completely beside the point. Nobody is criticizing
that “other political activity”. It is the violence
and the censorship which are the hallmarks of the
Antifa brand, and the target of criticism. Let them
drop the violence and the censorship and get on with
their other activities. Then nobody will object.
3. Antifa
defends threatened communities.
But that is
certainly not all they are doing. Nor is that what
its critics are objecting to. Actual defense of a
truly threatened community is best done openly by
respected members of the community itself, rather
than by self-styled Zorros who arrive in disguise.
The problem is the definition of the terms. For
Antifa, the victim community can be a whole category
of people, such as LGBTQI, and the threat may be a
controversial speaker at a university who could say
something to hurt their feelings. And what community
was being defended by Linwood Kaine, younger son of
the Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate,
Senator Tim Kaine, when he was arrested in St Paul,
Minnesota, last March 4 on suspicion of felony
second-degree riot for attempting to break up a
pro-Trump rally at the State Capitol? Although
Kaine, dressed in black from head to toe, resisted
arrest, the matter ended there. What downtrodden
community was the young Kaine defending other than
the Clintonite Democrats? His own privilege as a
family member of the Washington political elite?
4. Antifa
claims that it is in favor of free speech in
general, but racists and fascists are an exception,
because you can’t reason with them, and hate speech
is not speech but action.
This
amounts to an astounding intellectual surrender to
the enemy. It is an admission of being unable to win
a free argument. The fact is that speech is indeed
speech, and should be countered by speech. You
should welcome the chance to debate in public in
order to expose the weaknesses of their position. If
indeed “you can’t reason with them”, then they will
shut down the discussion and you don’t have to. If
they resort to physical attack against you, then you
have the moral victory. Otherwise, you’re giving it
to them.
5. Antifa
insists that the Constitutional right to free speech
applies only to the State. That is, only the
government is banned from depriving citizens of the
right to free speech and assembly. Among citizens,
anything goes.
This is a
remarkable bit of sophistry. Bullying and
intimidation are okay if done by an unofficial
group. In keeping with neoliberalism, Antifa is out
to privatize censorship, by taking over the job
itself.
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Verbal
Violence
The verbal
violence of Antifa is worse than their physical
violence insofar as it is more effective. The
physical violence is usually of minor consequence,
at most temporarily preventing something that will
happen later. It is the verbal violence that
succeeds most in preventing free discussion of
controversial issues.
Alarmed by the proliferation of pro-Antifa articles
on
CounterPunch,
I ventured to write a critique, Antifa in Theory and
Practice. My criticism was not personal; I did not
mention the authors of those pro-Antifa CounterPunch
articles and my mention of author Mark Bray was
respectful. The result was a torrent of vituperation
on
CounterPunch’s
FaceBook page,
as well as in a hostile email exchange with star
Antifa champion
Yoav Litvin.
This culminated with a hit piece by
Amitai
Ben-Abba published on CounterPunch
itself. Note that both Litvin and Ben-Abba are
Israelis, but pro-Palestinian, which provides the
two with impeccable left credentials.
These
reactions provided a perfect illustration of Antifa
discussion techniques. It is a sort of food fight,
where you just throw everything you can pick up at
the adversary, regardless of logic or relevance. On
the FaceBook page, Litvin, on the basis of my past
carefully objective articles on French politics,
accused me of “shilling for Marine Le Pen”.
Irrelevant and inaccurate.
In his hit
piece Ben-Abba dragged in this totally off-topic
assertion: “Much in the same way that her early
’00s pseudo-historical denial of the massacre in
Srebrenica worked to embolden Serbian nationalists,
her present analysis can embolden white
supremacists.” Need I point out that I never denied
the “massacre” but refuse to label it “genocide”,
nor did Serbian nationalists ever need my humble
opinion in order to be “emboldened” – especially
since the war was over by then.
I happily
grant that there are issues raised in my initial
article that deserve debate, such as immigration or
whether or not the “fascism” of the early twentieth
century still exists today. Indeed my whole point
was that such issues deserve debate. That’s not what
I got. Ben-Abba came up with this imaginary allusion
to the immigration issue: “ ‘antifa’ is a broader
umbrella term that allows formerly unaffiliated
folks (like the sans-papiers migrant baker who makes
Johnstone’s croissants) to participate in defense of
their communities against neo-fascist intimidation.”
Very funny:
I am exploiting some poor undocumented baker and
preventing him from being defended. Aside from the
fact that I very rarely to eat a croissant, the
bakers in my neighborhood are all fully documented,
and moreover this largely immigrant neighborhood is
the scene of frequent peaceful street demonstrations
by African sans-papiers clearly not intimidated by
neo-fascists. They obviously do not need Antifa to
protect them. This fantasy of omnipresent
neo-fascism is as necessary to Antifa as the fantasy
of omnipresent anti-Semitism is to Israel.
Antifa
rhetoric specializes in non sequitur. If you agree
with some conservative or libertarian that it was
wrong to destroy Libya, then you are not only guilty
of association with a pre-fascist, you are a
supporter of dictators and thus probably a fascist
yourself. This has been happening in France for
years and it’s just getting started in the United
States.
The Antifa
specialty is labeling anti-war activists and writers
as “red-brown”, red for left and brown for fascist.
You may pretend to be on the left, but if we can
find the slightest association between you and
someone on the right, then you are a “red-brown” and
deserve to be quarantined.
By claiming
to defend helpless minorities from a rising fascist
peril, Antifa arrogates to itself the right to
decide who is, or might be, “fascist”.
Whatever
they think they are doing, whatever they claim to be
doing, the one thing they really are doing is to tie
the left into such sectarian intolerance that any
broad inclusive single-issue anti-war movement
becomes impossible. Indeed, it is precisely the
imminent danger of nuclear World War III that leads
some of us to call for a non-exclusive single issue
anti-war movement – thus setting ourselves up as
“red-brown”.
That is why
Antifa – unwittingly let us say – is running
interference for the war party.
It is most
unfortunate to see CounterPunch become a platform
for Antifa. It didn’t have to. The site is quite
able to reject articles, as it has systematically
rejected contentions about 9/11 or as it rejected
David Cobb’s and Caitlin Johnstone’s (no relative)
right to respond. It could have taken a principled
stand against calls for violence and censorship. It
did not do so. It is one thing to encourage debate
and quite another to sponsor mud wrestling.
This
article was originally published by
Paul
Craig Roberts
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