Tuesday, August 15, 2017

White Supremacists Were Not The Only Thugs Tearing Up Charlottesville

The conflict between anti-fascists and fascists has been simmering for decades as they’ve been firing shots at each other and gathering recruits.
The violence in Charlottesville reveals not who we are as Americans, but who we might become if we allow radicalism and totalitarianism to become normalized. In America today, that possibility is most likely to come, not from the radical Right, but from the Left.
To understand this trajectory, we need to know who the players were in this weekend’s violence. Those behind the protest and the counter-protest were not average Americans, but two extremist groups: anti-fascists (Antifas) on the Left (the counter-protestors) and white supremacist nationalists on the Right (the protesters).
Antifa members at ‘Unite The Right’ rally in 
Charlottesville, VA. [Scott Olson/Getty Images]
These groups did not suddenly appear with the inauguration of Donald Trump. They’ve been around for a very long time. As Peter Beinart explains at The Atlantic:
Antifa traces its roots to the 1920s and ’30s, when militant leftists battled fascists in the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. When fascism withered after World War II, antifa did too. But in the ’70s and ’80s, neo-Nazi skinheads began to infiltrate Britain’s punk scene. After the Berlin Wall fell, neo-Nazism also gained prominence in Germany. In response, a cadre of young leftists, including many anarchists and punk fans, revived the tradition of street-level antifascism.
In the late ’80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began following suit, though they initially called their groups Anti-Racist Action, on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than fascism. According to Mark Bray, the author of the forthcoming Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, these activists toured with popular alternative bands in the ’90s, trying to ensure that neo-Nazis did not recruit their fans. In 2002, they disrupted a speech by the head of the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group in Pennsylvania; 25 people were arrested in the resulting brawl.
By the 2000s, as the internet facilitated more transatlantic dialogue, some American activists had adopted the name antifa. But even on the militant left, the movement didn’t occupy the spotlight. To most left-wing activists during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, deregulated global capitalism seemed like a greater threat than fascism.
Read the rest from The Federalist HERE.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The question is whether the right is going to continue to be hijacked by Trump and Co.

He is the figurehead for white nationalists, and he refused to condemn them by name on Sat because he can't. They are his home-boys.

He calls out war heroes, women, CEO's, GOP leaders, Hispanics, etc.

But he can't and won't condemn racists and Putin.

Is that really who you want the GOP to be.

I've never been so happy that I disavowed the GOP.

-Martha

Anonymous said...

Long past time for Ryan and McConnell and every GOP leader to DISAVOW TRUMP.

They made the wrong call. They sold the GOP soul.

The longer they wait to dump Trump, the more damage to the GOP.

What the hell happened to formerly sane people?

I would say that Trump is WORSE than I expected, but he is not.

He is EXACTLY what I knew he would be.

The worst president in American history, x 5000.

You Trump dingbats, congrats.

-Martha