this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Politics
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No, it's a dangerous, generalized statement that if you're against what the far right is doing, you have to align with what we stand for. If not, you're the far right. That is literally what it's saying, and folks might add on some stuff in their head when they interpret it, or some additional hidden intention when they utter it. But ultimately, it will distill down to the literal meaning.
Who said you have to align with a certain set of beliefs to oppose the far right? (Beyond thinking nationalist, xenophobic views are shitty) All kinds of varying political views hate nazis. Anti-facsism is a very large tent.
Reminds me of all the "if you don't agree with antifa smashing up your city you must agree with the fascists" nonsense the other year. No, I don't want facism, I just don't think that bricking a Starbucks is going to help with that.
i think that's a bit of an alarming stance, to be honest. authoritarians have a pretty long history of characterizing protest movements as looting and rioting, characterizing protestors as "outside agitators", and other nonsense as a way to justify violent oppression, and the vast majority of the time for the vast majority of participants it really isn't the case.
maybe there's some people who would say that (are these like twitter guys or something?), but in the vast majority of cases the actual objection to "antifa smashing up your city" was "no, actually, the amount of smashing being done is much less than what right-wing media sources are saying, "antifa" is often broadly applied to the protest movement in general, and police officers coming in with tear gas and rubber bullets often leads to escalating violence from protesters in response."
I've seen Antifa and the Black Bloc disrupt otherwise peaceful protests in the UK long before they picked up in the US the other year. They're not a helpful force in my opinion and never have been.
Antifa and "the Black Bloc" are not organizations that disrupt protests, they are decentralized left-wing political strategies that do quite a bit of organizing for protest movements. they are just protesters, and the vast majority of the people who self-identify as antifa demonstrably don't do violence. but again, right wing groups designate any kind of left-leaning of liberal protest action as "antifa", so the actual utility of opposing "antifa" is kind of dubious to me. the entire BLM protest was called antifa by the right, despite the protest on average being quite peaceful.