33
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Police pulled fake ‘Antifa’ list from neo-Nazi site and used it to target random people who’d signed an anti-Trump petition
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- Authors
- Noor Al-Sibai
- Published
- Aug 31 2018
- Word count
- 275 words
Wow, targeting citizens for their political views based on falsified evidence of terrorism. The police look more like facists every day. This is straight out of a gestapo handbook.
This is why citizens opposed to fascism need to buy firearms and train with them. Non-violent resistance hasn't been effective in years, and we're rapidly approaching a state where non-violence is not only ineffective, but downright suicidal. People who are serious about resisting authoritarianism need to arm themselves, organize, and train so that they are prepared when the fascists resort to open violence.
We shouldn't fire the first shots, but we should damn well be ready to return fire.
You are advocating outright civil war?
The “leftists” - which I have an issue with, anti facists = normal people/everybody.
Armed “leftists” shooting at people is exactly what a fascist government would want... Fox News: see we told they were violent, just like Trump said. Then leftists are the real enemy. Now your leftists are using their AKs and hand guns fighting every well trained police force, national guard unit with tanks, drones, etc - martial law is declared and we achieve true fascism.
The fight against fascism is fought in the media, it is a fight for “hearts and minds.”
Edit: I should add that I laugh at the right wing theory that all their personal weapons will be able to take on the government. It’s laughable no matter which side uses that logic.
I disagree with the above user's near-call-to-arms (I support arming ourselves in principle though) but this is incredibly wrong and dangerous. Fascists will not be swayed by debate and people with fascists sympathies will not lose those sympathies because the media says fascists are bad. Fascism must be opposed by any means necessary. That doesn't mean we should immediate start an insurrection, but we must be willing go to beyond the bounds liberal ideology sets for political engagement.
The civil war is already happening, and has been for 200 years. I'm not saying anti-fascists should shoot first. But we should be prepared to return fire once the fascists stop pussyfooting. They haven't been stockpiling weapons for shits and giggles.
As far as the fascists are concerned, anybody who isn't one of them is a "leftist".
It worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't it?
Considering the recent trend of police militarization and the fact that the US has been in a continual state of emergency since 1979, the US is practically under martial law already.
Hearts and minds won't save you when fascist cops kick down your door. Neither will a good bolt-action rifle, of course, but at least you might take one or two of the bastards with you. Then again, who knows what a few thousand determined and royally pissed-off anti-fascists armed with rifles might manage if the police, National Guard, and regular Army aren't willing to go all-out against other Americans?
You're assuming that the heavily conservative military wouldn't side with the people. Also, 300 million+ guns... if I were a betting man, my money is with the people over the government.
If we have a military assisted coup, then we are truly effed, personal firearms or not. But if armed antifa or some crap like that broke out shooting at cops, even fascist cops, then that’s exactly when right wing militias and the fascist parts of our police and military would align.
If antifa weren’t complete useful idiots, they would be proudly not wearing masks and only be armed with livestreams.
So they could be tracked down and arrested on phony charges?
Easy solution to that, don’t call yourself antifa. The branding game has been lost there.
Just be a normal person who is against fascists. Document and publish fascist acts all over the place.
That's the problem though, isn't it? The status quo isn't an ideology, it's a scale. There's a balance to it. The left isn't inherently good and the right isn't inherently bad, while the extreme elements of both are often terrifying and oppressive; equally destructive but simply with different ambitions.
I would like to think that I ain’t falling for nothing. I don’t think that most antifa folks are violent. But it only takes a couple documented rioters, who start fights with whoever/whatever because they are worked up, to ruin a movement. This doesn’t even have to be a real member. See the historical evidence of FBI agent provocateurs in the Black Panthers as an example. I support the core tenants of antifa and the black panthers, but they are both crappy movers in the movement.
Let’s take two historic victories against what I would consider forms of fascism for example:
The civil rights movement in the USA is largely remembered as a victory of Martin Luther King(normal people who are against facists,) not the Black Panthers(Antifa). The stunning imagary that we all think of is the documentation of peaceful protestors crossing a bridge and getting fire-hosed and attacked by dogs. That is the seminal image. Not anything to do with Black Panthers or The Nation of Islam. Those latter groups are just too easily compromised by human nature and agent provaceteurs.
Ghandi used peaceful protest to overthrow his fascist English colonial overlords. He was even honest about IIRC, something like “we would have used any means, even violence, but the English would have won the game of violence, so we used the best technique we had.”
Regarding your grandfather, and memebers of my own family.. they were not scared of getting punched in the face for being racist by some kid in a mask. They were scared of being ostracized by the global community because normal peaceful protestors had denormalized racism in open society.
Edit: just to be clear, I totally see the appeal of punching fascists and racists and colonial overlords in the gd face as hard as possible, but it’s counter productive.
Edit2: all kinds of phrasing corrections
Ghandi and his fellow Indians were the minority? In the case of India, the English were the minority.
I would argue that in the case of the civil rights movement, the majority was pro-civil rights when you look at the entire country as a whole.
Also, we are mostly anti-facists in the USA, no matter how loud the alt-right/Trump/Fox bullhorn gets.
My argument is that parts of movements like antifa, are counter productive becuase they do not, and cannot, shut down violence within their own ranks. How can any anonymous and decentralized group have any accountability?
The KKK wears masks and uses violence. We have truth and virtue on our side, we don’t need masks or violence. Even the threat/tinge of violence is a disservice to the movment. I believe that a photo of a single gray haired granny holding an anti fascist sign is worth more than a picture of 10000 people in masks belonging to whatever “antifa” is.
They would be arrested for inciting riots and being violent. We have a judicial system in this country that's the fairest in the world. They would not be convicted on phony charges.
Please tell me you're joking here.
All true. But that's doesn't refute my statement that we have the best judicial system in the world.
Where in the world has a better system, if you're disagreeing?
I'm asking you, not a Rule of Law Index that doesn't track what we're talking about and that also doesn't provide their methodologies for each ranking (that I can see). That also doesn't take into account the constitutional foundations behind each system, etc. etc.
you can read their methodology here
This sounds like baseless American exceptionalism to me. I think the burden of proof is in you here, you're the one making the more unlikely claim.
The military isn't going to side with the people unless the conflict is started extremely quickly and over something obvious. Any realistic conflict would have plenty of time for a narrative to develop that easily provides cover for all personnel who at best would formally disagree but wouldn't do anything to a significant degree.
This should be more food for thought for people who think alt-righters speech is unusually suppressed by de-platforming. Leftists often face much more serious threat from the state and fascist groups (and there's lots of overlap on that particular Venn diagram).
The problem is that regular conservatives are lumped together with the alt-right and their speech is violently being shut down. Ben Shapiro needs 400 police officers when he goes to speak at Berkeley, for example. If you honestly think that the orthodox-Jew who has been the #1 target of the alt-right is a member of the alt-right, may I suggest that you don't know what you're talking about at all.
Also, which specific fascist groups on the right are you talking about?
There are no "regular conservatives" in America, Trump has a 90% approval rating. Their may be some internal divides but none of the blocks are anything close to sane.
Ah, see... this is where I disagree. The problem with us regular fiscal conservatives is that we get caught into a trap when we receive a question about Trump. It doesn't even matter what the question is, say the poll asks "do you support the budget that Trump has recently passed." Us fiscal conservatives say "HELL NO" but then we think that this is actually going to be used by the media as a referendum on Trump and not for the question itself. That's why no matter what the question is, they always have the same % yes/no. BUT! If you isolate the questions and don't include Trump into the question, the responses are much more aligned with what the person answering the poll is actually thinking. This has been well documented, and it's very unfortunate because it makes all of the recent polling basically useless.
And you can see that it's working, because people like you (no offense, don't mean that in a bad way) see these answers as a referendum on Trump itself saying that he has a 90%+ approval rating, when I know for a fact that this is not true because I do a lot of political volunteering for libertarian/fiscal conservative causes and talk to people all the time about Trump and what he is doing to ruin the Republican party and the true conservative message.
I agree with you, I'm just saying what I hear constantly from multiple different people. The polls are not accurate when it comes to questions about Trump, and that's why you get different answers if you simply take the word "Trump" out of the question.
But you didn't have a media that would exploit your answers to the poll if you were asked.
Let me quote me again because you seemed to have missed it...
And a third time...
All I'm simply doing is explaining what's going on with those poll questions with the other thousands of people answering them. Most people (on both sides) don't think ahead about the consequences of their actions. They just see the immediate punch and take it.
Okay, I apologize for my wording. I just wanted to have a disclaimer of where I was politically so you knew coming into the conversation. I would answer my conscious, I was not a Trump voter. I voted for Paul in the primary and abstained in the general election. If I was asked I would say "HELL NO" because it was fucking atrocious and the budget/deficit is one of my main rallying points.
I just wanted to refute his claim that:
Because it's just simply not true at all.
Spot on. No matter where you are politically, it sucks to not have a voice. We have Paul, Cruz, and Lee... but that's basically it. And putting Cruz in there is very lenient. Populism kills parties, and we are seeing this on both sides of the aisle, unfortunately moreso on the right because we just so happened to win in 2016.
I would like to say that I support the Libertarian party, because I do in theory, but they're such a joke in reality that I cannot get myself to donate or volunteer for them.
Worth noting that Shapiro isn't a "regular fiscal conservative," being incredibly socially conservative (to even more extreme extents than DJT.)
There are many, from the Proud Boys to Atomwaffen to militias. It's been an issue for a long time: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/