Pro-fascist, anti-fascist.... both love the color black and silencing opposition. Horseshoe theory at it's finest. — BitconnectCarlos

Red fascists love red, I would assume.

All right-wing nutters agree with this.

What fascism?

American police, you mean?

I think you know what I mean. Of all the people who have been assaulted, have had their businesses and property destroyed, none of them had anything to do with the death of any criminal.

Was this based on due process? I'm joking. Fascism doesn't do due process. Allow me to rephrase. Was this based on the testimony of people who murder black people? — Kenosha Kid

That's ridiculous If you're going to arrest someone and they pull a gun on you you can't give them "due process."

There are witness reports which seem to back it up, but we're just not going to ever completely know the truth. His murder of Danielson was captured on video.

The organization is very openly violent, Kenosha. You should listen to people when they tell you who they are. Are you really going to make the case here that they're simply violent and assault-prone and not in fact murderous?

What fascism? — NOS4A2

Fascism

Fascism is right-wing, fiercely nationalist, subjectivist in philosophy, and totalitarian in practice. It is an extreme reactionary form of capitalist government. Fascism began in Italy (1922-43), Germany (1933-45), Spain (1939-75), and various other nations, starting generally in the time between the first and second world war. The origin of the term comes from the Italian word fascismo, derived from the Latin fasces (a bundle of elm or birch rods containing an ax: once a symbol of authority in ancient Rome). Benito Mussolini adopted the symbol as the emblem of the Italian Fascist movement in 1919.

The social composition of Fascist movements have historically been small capitalists, low-level bureaucrats of all stripes (see petty bourgeoisie), with great success in rural areas, especially among farmers, peasants, and in the city, lumpen proletariat. Meanwhile, fascist leadership invariably comes to power through the sponsorship and funding of big capital. These capitalists along with the top-tier leaders they create become fascism's ruling aristocracy.

Fascism has many different forms: the Italian fascism of Mussolini was often against Hitler’s Fascism, calling it “one hundred percent racism: Against everything and everyone: Yesterday against Christian civilization, today against Latin civilization, tomorrow, who knows, against the civilization of the whole world.” When Hitler began achieving impressive military conquests, which Mussolini had started in Ethiopia in 1935, the two formed an axis of power in June of 1940. The birth of fascism in Germany was aided by Western governments, who for two decades viewed it as the ideology that would successfully crush the Soviet Union. Not until Germany’s tanks were on the borders of England and France did those governments ‘switch’ sides: now it was their imperialist domination being threatened.

While Mussolini had once been a member of the Socialist party (banished from the party for his rampant support of World War I), Hitler fought leftists from the first. Thus it is not without irony, that in the name for his party Hitler used “socialist,” (Nazi = National Socialist) conceding to the engrained consciousness the German masses had for leftist ideals. It should be noted that fascism supported the community ideal, but not the grass-roots power of direct community democracy as Socialism demands, but the unity and obedience of the community to vanguard of the Nation. Further, orthodox fascism constantly parrots the Communist lexicon of working class struggle, etc., for reasons of populism. Neo-fascism is authoritarian but disdains any trace of Socialist/Communist terminology in their labels, and instead appeals to new populist roots: the modern aspirations of many workers to be wealthly, to be stronger than others, etc.

Fascism championed corporate economics, which operated on an anarcho-syndicalist model in reverse: associations of bosses in particular industries determine working conditions, prices, etc. In this form of corporatism, bosses dictate everything from working hours to minimum wages, without government interference. The fascist corporate model differs from the more moderate corporatist model by eradicating all forms of regulatory control that protect workers (so-called "consumers"), the environment, price fixing, insider trading, and destroying all independent workers' organisations. In fascism, the corporate parliament either replaces the representative bodies of government or reduces them to a sham and the state freely intervenes in the activity of companies, either by bestowing favouritism, or handing them over to the control of rivals.
“to believe, to obey, to combat”

There are several fundamental characteristics of fascism, among them are:

1. Right Wing: Fascists are fervently against: Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, Environmentalism; etc – in essence, they are against the progressive left in total, including moderate lefts (social democrats, etc). Fascism is an extreme right wing ideology, though it can be opportunistic.

2. Nationalism: Fascism places a very strong emphasis on patriotism and nationalism. Criticism of the nation's main ideals, especially war, is lambasted as unpatriotic at best, and treason at worst. State propaganda consistently broadcasts threats of attack, while justifying pre-emptive war. Fascism invariably seeks to instill in its people the warrior mentality: to always be vigilant, wary of strangers and suspicous of foreigners.

3. Hierarchy: Fascist society is ruled by a righteous leader, who is supported by an elite secret vanguard of capitalists. Hierarchy is prevalent throughout all aspects of fascist society – every street, every workplace, every school, will have its local Hitler, part police-informer, part bureaucrat – and society is prepared for war at all times. The absolute power of the social hierarchy prevails over everything, and thus a totalitarian society is formed. Representative government is acceptable only if it can be controlled and regulated, direct democracy (e.g. Communism) is the greatest of all crimes. Any who oppose the social hierarchy of fascism will be imprisoned or executed.

4. Anti-equality: Fascism loathes the principles of economic equality and disdains equality between immigrant and citizen. Some forms of fascism extend the fight against equality into other areas: gender, sexual, minority or religious rights, for example.

5. Religious: Fascism contains a strong amount of reactionary religious beliefs, harking back to times when religion was strict, potent, and pure. Most but not all Fascist societies are Christian, and are supported by Catholic and Protestant churches.

6. Capitalist: Fascism does not require revolution to exist in captialist society: fascists can be elected into office (though their disdain for elections usually means manipulation of the electoral system). They view parliamentary and congressional systems of government to be inefficent and weak, and will do their best to minimize its power over their policy agenda. Fascism exhibits the worst kind of capitalism where corporate power is absolute, and all vestiges of workers' rights are destroyed.

7. War: Fascism is capitalism at the stage of impotent imperialism. War can create markets that would not otherwise exist by wreaking massive devastation on a society, which then requires reconstruction! Fascism can thus "liberate" the survivors, provide huge loans to that society so fascist corporations can begin the process of rebuilding.

8. Voluntarist Ideology: Fascism adopts a certain kind of “voluntarism;” they believe that an act of will, if sufficiently powerful, can make something true. Thus all sorts of ideas about racial inferiority, historical destiny, even physical science, are supported by means of violence, in the belief that they can be made true. It is this sense that Fascism is subjectivist.

9. Anti-Modern: Fascism loathes all kinds of modernism, especially creativity in the arts, whether acting as a mirror for life (where it does not conform to the Fascist ideal), or expressing deviant or innovative points of view. Fascism invariably burns books and victimises artists, and artists which do not promote the fascists ideals are seen as “decadent.” Fascism is hostile to broad learning and interest in other cultures, since such pursuits threaten the dominance of fascist myths. The peddling of conspiracy theories is usually substituted for the objective study of history.

Source: Marxists Internet Archive Encyclopedia

Not “what is fascism”, but “what fascism”?

But thank you nonetheless.

Not “what is fascism”, but “what fascism”? — NOS4A2

"The absolute power of the social hierarchy prevails over everything, and thus a totalitarian society is formed... Some forms of fascism extend the fight against equality into other areas: gender, sexual, minority or religious rights, for example... Fascism adopts a certain kind of “voluntarism;” they believe that an act of will, if sufficiently powerful, can make something true. Thus all sorts of ideas about racial inferiority, historical destiny, even physical science, are supported by means of violence, in the belief that they can be made true."

I mostly agree with you here, I just think each instance where cops kill someone needs to be taken as an individual case and it's not fair to lump them all in as one so I get annoyed when people take every death-by-cop case under one umbrella. In those cases where cops did kill someone unjustly they should face criminal charges, not just be fired.

Do you see this version of fascism somewhere?

The leftists have their own definition of fascism under which mainstream right wing thinkers qualify as fascists.

I just think each instance where cops kill someone needs to be taken as an individual case and it's not fair to lump them all in as one so I get annoyed when people take every death-by-cop case under one umbrella. In those cases where cops did kill someone unjustly they should face criminal charges, not just be fired. — BitconnectCarlos

This seems like common sense to me. The biggest problem I have with identity politics is that they negate specifics in general, which is its own kind tyranny. What is most damaging in this way of approaching the world is that it destroys class awareness, which is vital to a focused, cooperative emancipation from oppression.

His murder of Danielson was captured on video. — BitconnectCarlos

That's not true.

I just think each instance where cops kill someone needs to be taken as an individual case and it's not fair to lump them all in as one so I get annoyed when people take every death-by-cop case under one umbrella. — BitconnectCarlos

And yet one guy dies during a BLM protest and every anti-fascist is a criminal. The hypocrisy is incredible.

His murder of Danielson was captured on video. — BitconnectCarlos

This is untrue.

and every anti-fascist is a criminal. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, this is an instance of fascism as provided in the definition above.

And yet one guy diesis murdered during a BLM protest and every anti-fascist is a criminal. The hypocrisy is incredible. — Kenosha Kid

FTFY. I never said every anti-fascist is a criminal either so you're straw manning me now. Strictly speaking I'm an anti-fascist.

Lets start here: Do you believe the group is violent/promotes violence? Also if they're not violent, why in a crowd of hundreds did basically no one step in to stop the assault on Andy Ngo as he was assaulted by dozens of men dressed in head to toe in black?

This is untrue. — Kenosha Kid

It was captured on cell phone video. It doesn't even matter though the guy admitted to it in a vice interview.

Antifa are fascists who call themselves “anti fascists” in order to justify themselves to the lazy thinkers that dont bother looking at their behaviour closely enough to see it for what it is: fascism. The woke left and BLM protesters provide cover for their activities (knowingly and unknowingly) because you can’t force people to talk, act and think the way you want without thugs to enforce it. They don’t know their history, they will be among the first to be sacrificed if the fascist uprising is successful.
But what has any of this to do with Trump specifically?

Come to think of it, class awareness has kind of fallen by the wayside with identity politics/BLM nowadays. I actually find discussions of class to be much more interesting than discussions of race, personally. At least you can do something about class; no one's changing race anytime soon.

Supreme Court Update: The six Republican Senators who will have the biggest parts to play are as follows, Collins of Maine, Murkowski of Alaska, Romney of Utah, Gardner of Colorado, Alexander of Tennessee, Roberts of Kansas.

All have been silent following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Prior to her death, Collins and Murkowski claimed they would not vote to confirm another SCOTUS nominee before the election. They are both Pro-life and so would be the most likely to vote against a new justice nominated by Trump, as this could potentially lead to the Supreme court overturning Roe v Wade and lead to abortion being made illegal in the united states, again. Collins is also facing an extremely tough re-election in her home state. Part of this is due to the pushback she received from her constituents when she voted in favour of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme court.

Romney, being the only republican to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial, is known to have the courage to stand up to Trump and the rest of the Republican party.

Gardner faces and extremely tough re-election in Colorado but is probably still likely to vote with his party.

Alexander and Roberts are considered to be pragmatic institutionalists and are retiring at the end of their terms. Meaning they won't have to fear any bombastic retaliation from President Trump but it's really anyone's guess as to how they will vote.

All six will be under immense pressure from both parties in the upcoming months.

FTFY. I never said every anti-fascist is a criminal either so you're straw manning me now. — BitconnectCarlos

You characterised the entire organisation as violent on the grounds of overbroad definition of fascism and cited as evidence a single person killed by police who claimed that person killed a fascist. At the same time you insist that the police, who have been murdering thousands of black people with impunity for decades, should not be judged as a whole for its systemic racist violence but should be considered distinct from each individual, however many, who commit those acts. You're not being misrepresented. Your problem is you apply one criteria for systematic violence against black people and another for occasional unorganized violence against fascists, as evidenced here:

I just think each instance where cops kill someone needs to be taken as an individual case and it's not fair to lump them all in as one so I get annoyed when people take every death-by-cop case under one umbrella. — BitconnectCarlos

and here:

Lets start here: Do you believe the group is violent/promotes violence? Also if they're not violent, why in a crowd of hundreds did basically no one step in to stop the assault on Andy Ngo as he was assaulted by dozens of men dressed in head to toe in black? — BitconnectCarlos

White cops killing black people forever = bad individuals
A few people roughed up by anti-fascists = bad anti-fascism

I wonder how predictable this can get. For instance, I would guess you agree with the following dual standard as well:

The extraordinary numbers of hand-picked Trump staff involved in crimes and collusion with Russia = a few bad apples
A few opportunistic looters piggybacking on a peaceful protest against murder of black Americans = bad BLM

Amirite?

You characterised the entire organisation as violent on the grounds of overbroad definition of fascism — Kenosha Kid

no i characterise them as violent based on their beliefs and also actions. antifa is more of an ideology than an organized group. it's the belief that we ought to be quick to be use violence if "fascists" are active because their very presence is a threat. they are very openly quick to violence. no they don't have a giant death count but neither did hitler's brownshirts in the early 30s. would you even consider the brownshirts a violent group before they killed anyone? or was it fine because they were just assaulting some people and doing some marching and chanting?

Since when has Antifa been active and what do you know of their history? What do they believe according to you? How often have they instigated violence? How often has that resulted in deaths?

antifa is more of an ideology than an organized group — BitconnectCarlos

I agree, it's not an organised group like a police force. It's more like an identity, or a hash tag. I don't think it quite constitutes an ideology. Most anti-fascists believe in liberal non-violent protest. Some believe that if they are attacked by fascists, those fascists are fair game for retaliation. You obviously do not. And inevitably, as with rioters and looters who piggyback any protest, there are people drawn to it for aggressive purposes.

But then that illustrates why this:

i characterise them as violent based on their beliefs and also actions — BitconnectCarlos

is hypocritical. Because "their beliefs" are not fundamentally or ubiquitously violent, nor are their actions. It is sufficient for you to label a movement of anti-fascists fundamentally violent if a few people who identify as Antifa are so, even though they are not organisationally linked to the vast majority or even any of the movement whatsoever, which is far from logical by itself. But to simultaneously claim that the police forces that endlessly churn out and protect racist murderers bear zero responsibility for the death they cause speaks to an intense bias.

The irony of course is that the aggression between fascists and anti-fascists pre-exists the latter. It's not like right-wing, racist thugs were harmless placard-wavers until Antifa showed up. Racism and fascism have always been violent, be they in the form of the KKK, skinheads, or the police. That violence has been condemned by the left, thumbs-upped by the right, and been ignored or even propagated by the police for decades. Now a left-wing movement has said, 'We'll go where the right-wing goes and hang the consequences' and suddenly the right wing, like yourself, *sometimes* has a problem with it, i.e. has a problem with the left meeting the right on its own terms. A white supremacist drives a car into a group of left-wing protesters. Fine, so long as no one retaliates, right?

When you're fine with racist organisations, including police, repeatedly murdering people but you feel you have to take a stand when anti-fascists say and act like they're not going to be intimidated as they peel swastikas off walls, you declare the prejudices that are necessary to support such blatant bias. When you say that only individuals can be murderous racists but even in a non-organised anti-racist movement every member shares the blame for its worst elements, you are taking a firm position on the side of violent fascism.

Since when has Antifa been active and what do you know of their history? What do they believe according to you? How often have they instigated violence? How often has that resulted in deaths? — Benkei

I don't know when they started, at least 2017. I'm dealing with them in their modern form. The core belief is that fascism ought to be physically fought and the problem nipped in its bud. It's an entirely reasonable belief on the surface because we all think back to Hitler, but it's when we put this into action and expand our definition of fascism is when things get tricky. There is some association between, say, nationalism and fascism but to treat them as the same is not fair and it's what we're often seeing today. Nobody is going to have exact statistics for frequency of violence instigated but plenty of cases have been caught on camera.

Its history goes back to the 1920s. It's more modern form 70s and 80s.

Maybe read up a little before coming to a judgment.

But overall, far-right extremist plots have been far more deadly than far-left plots (and Islamist plots eclipsed both) in the past 25 years, according to a breakdown of two terrorism databases by Alex Nowrasteh, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

White nationalists; militia movements; anti-Muslim attackers; I.R.S. building and abortion clinic bombers; and other right-wing groups were responsible for 12 times as many fatalities and 36 times as many injuries as communists; socialists; animal rights and environmental activists; anti-white- and Black Lives Matter-inspired attackers; and other left-wing groups.

Of the nearly 1,500 individuals in a University of Maryland study of radicalization from 1948 to 2013, 43 percent espoused far-right ideologies, compared to 21 percent for the far left. Far-right individuals were more likely to commit violence against people, while those on the far left were more likely to commit property damage.

President Trump spoke Tuesday at Trump Tower in Manhattan.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
“We find that the right groups and the jihadi groups are more violent than the left,” said Gary LaFree, one the researchers and the director of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The data set is in the process of being updated, so it does not reflect current state of extremism, Professor LaFree cautioned, but “in general, we’ve been seeing this fairly robust trend in right-wing cases.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-alt-left-fact-check.html

And yet the right-wing message, from posters here up to the President, is that the problem is a violent left wing.

I said it above but it's worth reiterating: this violence is pre-existing fascist violence. If you remove anti-fascism, fascism remains, and kills, and destroys. If you remove violent fascism, there is no Antifa.

I fear it’s more arbitrary than that. The term “fascist” is thrown about pre-emptively, before any fascism can be demonstrated. “Fascism” is thus used in the Orwellian sense, as a pejorative, but even worse, as a means to dehumanize and incite violence against political opponents.

I don't care if their movement has extensive roots dated back to the 1920s and a heroic history of fighting oppression, the moment dozens of them begin assaulting gay minority journalists (see the andy ngo assault) and random business owners as they did in Portland you're just shit. I don't even care if they label themselves the biggest anti-racist and anti-sexist to ever exist, they're still shit. I don't care what they were in the 80s or 90s or even early 2000s. I'm talking about today's crop.

Yeah I dunno why anyone expects people like Bit to need to know pesky things like 'facts'. The media he swallows like so many unborn babies have told him that they are bad, so, they are bad.

And of course, these shitsticks will want to wait until people are in ovens before they may get an inking of the fact that hey, maybe we should have done something about the fascists before we got to this point.

It's not like Americans are scooping out the reproductive organs of those housed in concentrations camps or - no, wait, that's exactly what they're doing.

fear it’s more arbitrary than that. The term “fascist” is thrown about pre-emptively, before any fascism can be demonstrated. “Fascism” is thus used in the Orwellian sense, as a pejorative, but even worse, as a means to dehumanize and incite violence against political opponents. — NOS4A2

Living languages are fluid. It's ok if people make it up as they go.

What's clear is that Antifa is presently impotent, so understanding it would be a rambling psychological quest.

So you admit knowing next to nothing and then even illustrate you don't know anything about the current situation.

Keegan Hankes, a researcher and analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, previously told Rolling Stone. “It got a lot of media attention and it reinforced something the Proud Boys have pushed for years, which is the real threat is the violent left.”

The issue with this narrative is that this is verifiably not the case; though members of antifa have committed violent acts, that number is dwarfed by those committed by far-right extremists, says Hankes. That’s also the truth according to FBI director Christopher Wray, who has said that white supremacists constitute “the vast majority” of domestic terrorism threats. And when considering the very real, very immediate threat of far-right radicalization, promoting the conspiracy theories of a huckster like Ngo serves as little more than a distraction. — Rolling Stone

God, I should just listen to you Streelight because you obviously have all of the facts. In fact, you're so full of facts and knowledge of reality that you don't even need to look into actual details of events or happenings... the reality just follows from your mind, like for instance if we know that anti-fascists can't possibly be bad, then every instance where antifa supposedly assaulted someone is really just fascist propaganda or the fault of the fascist with antifa just defending itself. Thank you the instructive lesson. I feel much better know that I've been cured of my confusion.