Antifa groups are not centrally organized and do not have
established doctrines. There are,
however, common themes and practices that warrant some praise and some condemnation.
1. Antifa is right in its unequivocal and total
opposition to all forms of fascism, quasi-fascism, semi-fasicism,
proto-fascism, and fascist tendencies including neo-Nazism, white supremacy,
and nostalgia for eras of slavery and Jim Crow.
2. Antifa is right in taking these developments to
be more serious than their numbers and influence at this moment would warrant,
and right in bringing forcefully to the attention of the world their growth,
their influence, their connections, and the cover given them by politicians, including
The "Leader of the Free World."
3. Antifa is right in making public and dramatic
show of its detestations.
4. Antifa would be right in protecting its own
meetings, demonstrations, members and allies against attacks from the right where public
policing fails to do so.
5. Antifa is right not to be intimidated by the
open display of guns or the semi-military trappings of the right wing
“militias.” The few Antifa demonstrators
are wrong who posture with guns. Even if the point is to convey their readiness
to defend themselves against deadly attack, it will be reported as a readiness
for deadly aggression.
6. Antifa is right to assault the right verbally,
but wrong to assault physically even outright fascists. Use of physical force,
and particularly with a weapon of any sort, is dead wrong, except in the most
unambiguous self-defense circumstances.You are not in occupied France, and
acting as if you were is wrong in principle, strategically, and tactically.
7. Antifa is wrong to prevent even the most
reprehensible promulgators of right wing and racist hate from speaking in a
college auditorium or from marching down a street or assembling in a public
space. The rights of free speech and
free assembly are fundamental -- not niceties that can be sacrificed even in a good cause.
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