1908 Antifa, Just Another Form of Leftist Oppression
It may seem pessimistic, but given human nature and the witness of history, there will always be extremist minorities in every society. The keys to their influence are their skills of opportunism and the health of the nations they infest.
Popular discontent is always the weakness which extremists exploit. Some of the best-known examples come from 1930’s Germany and Italy. It was the period of the Great Depression and the aftermath of World War I. Italy was poor and many of its citizenry disillusioned with the government’s handling of post-war conditions. Mussolini fed off that unrest to take power and eventually establish his extremist Fascist dictatorship. Germany was in similar condition and Hitler’s extremism exploited every weakness. After coming to power, the Nazis initiated huge social spending programs and began a massive military buildup. Eventually, in both countries, the abuses created fertile ground for the birth of opposing left-wing extremist groups.
Economic and political conditions in the post-Civil War South were seized upon in the same way by Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Those kinds of conditions are light-years from where we are in contemporary America. Yet, there has been an alarming increase in our own home-grown extremism from the fringes of the Right and Left. We have learned to celebrate the creation of different kinds of vulnerabilities now. “The American People” have become “peoples” categorized by color, indexed by income, and separated by social justice warriors into victim groups.
Fascists are master manipulators of disunity. They glorify centralized authority, forced suppression, and strict social structure. Fascists came to power in Italy and Germany by promising disadvantaged groups that if given power, they would forcibly impose security in place of insecurity, bestow an economic leg-up, and give voice to various groups who felt they did not have one. America’s Klan and Neo-Nazis may not have that kind of political clout, but their loyalty to authoritarianism and intimidation is the same.
Whether they claim the fascist “right” side of the spectrum as does the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups or the left side which accepts no authority but themselves, such as BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) or Antifa (Anti-Fascist), they all operate from their own rationalized distorted morality.
In America, the latest news maker and one of the fastest growing movements on the opposite side from the control-freak, power-pushing, regimentation of fascism, is Antifa. In recent years the group, masked and clothed in black, called “black bloc”, has had a growing presence in the news cycle because of initiating violent protests on college campuses and being at the core of riotous confrontations in various cities.
One of the latest incidents took place in Portland, Oregon on June 2nd. Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist was covering an Antifa march/protest when members of the group assaulted him. As a result, authorities in Portland are considering laws that would restrict wearing masks during protests, hoping to curb violence. President Trump recently announced his intention to declare Antifa a terrorist organization. Homeland Security had already labeled them “domestic terrorists” in 2017.
Antifa has a long sordid history but they began to gain ground immediately after the election of President Trump. They first appeared prominently in 1999 in Seattle, Washington during the World Trade Organization protests and then again within the Occupy Wall Street movement. According to its website, its goal is to make America “ungovernable”, through “mass insurrection” and “all manner of physical violence. The justification? “Fascism” cannot be reasoned with. Only force is effective. The problem is that the Antifa’s definition of “fascist” includes not just the likes of the KKK or neo-Nazis, but corporations, conservatives, capitalists, and government itself.
The obvious question should be, “How are our young people being drawn into such radicalism?” Gabriel Nadales has written an important OpEd through Foxnews.com: (“I’m a former Antifa member and enough is enough – Antifa must be stopped”.) He traces a truly disturbing proliferation of anarchist doctrine such as is espoused by Antifa on college and university campuses by professors. The very “professionals” that well-meaning parents trust their children to.
There is a dizzying array of extremist verbiage being thrown around, but it can be distilled into two opposite doctrines. Whether it is the violence and oppression of fringe “right” supremacists or the same from the lawless fringe “left” like Antifa, they are an existential threat to our nation. They feed off the splintered, “hyphenated” (###-American) people(s) we have made ourselves into. Clearly, we need to cultivate another way in order to survive.