"Anti-fascists", or "antifa", has gained a lot of traction in the past year and a half, not only in the United States but pretty much everywhere else in the western world, mostly thanks to the strange psychological phenomenon that's informally called "Trump Derangement Syndrome".
In a way, antifa is very similar to feminism, in that it has essentially hijacked and appropriated a past movement, and tries to ride on its fame in order to enact policies that are rather different.
In the case of feminism, modern feminism tries to ride on the so-called "first-wave" and "second-wave" feminist movements, which fought for women's suffrage and equal rights, but are now trying to enact policies that often go contrary to fundamental human rights. In the same way, "antifa" is trying to ride on the fame of the resistance movements that opposed Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, and other fascist dictators of the past.
Like feminism, also antifa has changed the definition of words, and drastically changed the policies they are fighting for. To them, "fascism" does not mean anymore what the political stances of dictators like Mussolini and Franco, and their regimes, were. Instead, the word "fascism", like so many other buzzwords (like "racism" and "sexism"), is a nebulous malleable term that has pretty much lost all of its meaning, and is pretty much solely used as a blanket insult and accusation that carries no specific meaning, but still rides on the negative perception that the word carries. It has got so bad that anybody who supports universal free speech for everybody is called a "fascist" (which, ironically, is pretty much the exact opposite of what actual historical fascism really stood for. Dictatorships have never been very keen on supporting people's free speech.) The word means nothing. Other than, perhaps, a blanket "anybody who disagrees with us".
Antifa members also don't seem to be able to decide whether they are anarchists or communists. The exact same person may support both, and call himself both. Even though those two things are mutually exclusive. Communism is a form of government and economy, and requires a government in order to be enacted and enforced. Anarchism opposes any form of government, no matter how small. (Not my definition; it's their definition. I'm not even joking. They literally have a problem even having one person leading a group of ten people, because they see it as a form of government, and oppose it on principle.)
In this post, however (and after this too long of an introduction), I would like to concentrate on those members of antifa who very strongly support communism and Marxism (which is the vast majority of them, really. I think you would be hard pressed to find even a single antifa member who opposes communism, or even takes no stance.)
They embrace all the teachings of Karl Marx. They say that they are fighting for the proletariat, ie. the working class. They think that the working class should unite and raise, and take the entire capitalist system down, and end all the upper societal classes with it. As Marxist communists, they believe themselves to be fighting for the working class, for their rights and benefits.
There are several forms of irony and hypocrisy here.
For starters, the vast, vast majority of antifa members are middle-to-upper class rich kids, high school and university students, professors, academics, and so on and so forth. The vast majority of them do not belong to the proletariat, the working class, that they claim they are fighting for, and the vast majority of them haven't done a single day of hard labor in their lives. They themselves are part of the so-called middle class, the "bourgeoisie", which Marxism opposes.
Secondly, the people they oppose, the ones they call "fascists"? The vast, vast majority of them are working class. They are part of the largest and lowest societal class or people who do hard labor and have very modest and even low income, who don't have much property, no rich parents, not many luxuries. Precisely the people who get hit the hardest by economic recession and by ultra-liberal immigration policies. Precisely the people whose wages get lower and lower as economy goes down the drain, and as the country is flooded by cheap labor. Precisely the people who suffer the most from this. These are the people who communist antifa members claim they are fighting for, yet who are regularly attacked (sometimes even physically), derided and defamed by them.
Thirdly, and perhaps most ironically, the absolute communism they are rooting for would hit these antifa members themselves quite hard, precisely because most of them are rich members of the middle-to-upper class. Their own property, everything they own, their homes, their possessions, everything would be appropriated and taken away by the communist regime they are trying to establish.
They aren't fighting real fascists. They are fighting the working class. Which they claim they are fighting for, not against. And they are rooting for an economic system that would hurt themselves the most. And they are completely oblivious of this.
In a way, antifa is very similar to feminism, in that it has essentially hijacked and appropriated a past movement, and tries to ride on its fame in order to enact policies that are rather different.
In the case of feminism, modern feminism tries to ride on the so-called "first-wave" and "second-wave" feminist movements, which fought for women's suffrage and equal rights, but are now trying to enact policies that often go contrary to fundamental human rights. In the same way, "antifa" is trying to ride on the fame of the resistance movements that opposed Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, and other fascist dictators of the past.
Like feminism, also antifa has changed the definition of words, and drastically changed the policies they are fighting for. To them, "fascism" does not mean anymore what the political stances of dictators like Mussolini and Franco, and their regimes, were. Instead, the word "fascism", like so many other buzzwords (like "racism" and "sexism"), is a nebulous malleable term that has pretty much lost all of its meaning, and is pretty much solely used as a blanket insult and accusation that carries no specific meaning, but still rides on the negative perception that the word carries. It has got so bad that anybody who supports universal free speech for everybody is called a "fascist" (which, ironically, is pretty much the exact opposite of what actual historical fascism really stood for. Dictatorships have never been very keen on supporting people's free speech.) The word means nothing. Other than, perhaps, a blanket "anybody who disagrees with us".
Antifa members also don't seem to be able to decide whether they are anarchists or communists. The exact same person may support both, and call himself both. Even though those two things are mutually exclusive. Communism is a form of government and economy, and requires a government in order to be enacted and enforced. Anarchism opposes any form of government, no matter how small. (Not my definition; it's their definition. I'm not even joking. They literally have a problem even having one person leading a group of ten people, because they see it as a form of government, and oppose it on principle.)
In this post, however (and after this too long of an introduction), I would like to concentrate on those members of antifa who very strongly support communism and Marxism (which is the vast majority of them, really. I think you would be hard pressed to find even a single antifa member who opposes communism, or even takes no stance.)
They embrace all the teachings of Karl Marx. They say that they are fighting for the proletariat, ie. the working class. They think that the working class should unite and raise, and take the entire capitalist system down, and end all the upper societal classes with it. As Marxist communists, they believe themselves to be fighting for the working class, for their rights and benefits.
There are several forms of irony and hypocrisy here.
For starters, the vast, vast majority of antifa members are middle-to-upper class rich kids, high school and university students, professors, academics, and so on and so forth. The vast majority of them do not belong to the proletariat, the working class, that they claim they are fighting for, and the vast majority of them haven't done a single day of hard labor in their lives. They themselves are part of the so-called middle class, the "bourgeoisie", which Marxism opposes.
Secondly, the people they oppose, the ones they call "fascists"? The vast, vast majority of them are working class. They are part of the largest and lowest societal class or people who do hard labor and have very modest and even low income, who don't have much property, no rich parents, not many luxuries. Precisely the people who get hit the hardest by economic recession and by ultra-liberal immigration policies. Precisely the people whose wages get lower and lower as economy goes down the drain, and as the country is flooded by cheap labor. Precisely the people who suffer the most from this. These are the people who communist antifa members claim they are fighting for, yet who are regularly attacked (sometimes even physically), derided and defamed by them.
Thirdly, and perhaps most ironically, the absolute communism they are rooting for would hit these antifa members themselves quite hard, precisely because most of them are rich members of the middle-to-upper class. Their own property, everything they own, their homes, their possessions, everything would be appropriated and taken away by the communist regime they are trying to establish.
They aren't fighting real fascists. They are fighting the working class. Which they claim they are fighting for, not against. And they are rooting for an economic system that would hurt themselves the most. And they are completely oblivious of this.
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