The antifa and neo-Nazis

Well... the antifa has been on the front page of my local newspaper the past two days and I assume is on others as well as probably being big news on every right or right leaning news outlet.  Yesterday's headline here on the Santa Barbara News Press (one of the only papers in the country that endorsed Trump for president) was "Attack on Free Speech."  Today's front page article condemned Democratic elected officials for not speaking out loudly against the antifa.

Let me begin by speaking out.  I am a pacifist and believe that violence is never justified.  That is another post.  I know there are folk across the political spectrum who are happy to find ways to justify their actions based in some myth of redemptive violence.  I condemn those actions by the antifa as being immoral.    Second, in this case, violence is particularly poorly planned.  It allows the neo-Nazis to be portrayed as the victims of radicals seeking to deny them their rights as Americans rather than the hateful radicals they are.  We see that alternative narrative already moving to the foreground as in both of the articles I referenced above.  So, I condemn the antifa's violent actions as being counter productive.

That said, I find it particularly troubling that those on the right are making some kind of equivalency between the alt-right and the antifa.  There is no equivalency here.

Let us begin by the simple observation - "antifa" is short for "anti fascist."  That strikes me a good thing.  Indeed, you could easily have labeled the entire US as "antifa" during WWII.  Certainly the US military was acting as an "antifa" organization.  I am not arguing that a group of thugs dressed in black is the equivalent morally or in any other way to the US military - but the basic orientation and goal of the antifa falls solidly within our historical values.  The neo-Nazis and other alt-right groups fall solidly outside of everything we claim to be as a culture.  It is important to underscore that the core values of the neo-Nazi movement enshrine violence against black folk, immigrants, LGBTQ folk, Jews, and basically anyone else who do not fit into their immediate community.  That is unAmerican.  Clearly there are some anarchists and far left folk who are part of the antifa... but I would argue that even those political views are more closely aligned with what it means to be an American than the views of the neo-fascists.

The goals of the antifa movement are based in positive ends.  They were in Charlottesville to protect protestors from the alt-right demonstrators, many of whom had come ready for violence carrying everything from semi-automatic long rifles to plywood shields decorated with swastikas.  In other instances they have sought to curtail hate speech, often by inappropriately violent means, that calls for and advocates violence against members of any number of marginalized groups.

I would be thrilled to see the antifa movement embrace non-violent ways of standing up to the alt-right.  Examples have shown that they are much more effective and do not feed the desire of the alt-right to be portrayed as persecuted victims.  In the meantime, I refuse to remain silent when people make the false equivalency between them and the alt-right.