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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Anti-racism sites are being knocked offline... and some people still think that white nationalists and nazi's are completely uninvolved in the street violence we've been seeing. Yeah right. This is Anonymous/4chan M.O., and it and "Antifa" are fake labels which white nationalists are using to cloak their violent plans.

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So, some script kiddies buy a botnet and take down a few websites, and that means that the arson, looting and general violence is all the fault of white supremacists? That makes no sense.

Do you have any indication that the attacks were performed by script kiddies or that the targeted websites were even susceptible to such attacks?

that post doesn't require any proof because his parent didn't cite any proof either. responding to a hypothetical with another hypothetical is fair.

Same goes for the other hypothesis. People are talking out of their asses, can't you see?

No one suggested it was all the fault of white supremacists, but unless you're suggesting that anti-racism protestors are DDOSing their own websites it does seem reasonable that white supremacists (which is synonymous with pro-racism) are involved.

Several of the "anonymous" (the hacker pseudo personality) accounts were moving in support of the protestors. It wouldn't surprise me if that triggered a backlash internally.

So you probably have people from 4chan/Anonymous who are for the protestors.. and people from 4chan/Anonymous who are against it.

I wouldn't use that as evidence Antifa isn't involved. I think the video evidence makes it clear there are plenty of people involved in the violence.

> So you probably have people from 4chan/Anonymous who are for the protestors.. and people from 4chan/Anonymous who are against it.

4 Chan for the protesters? Have you ever visited their page?

> I wouldn't use that as evidence Antifa isn't involved. I think the video evidence makes it clear there are plenty of people involved in the violence.

FBI stated that they found no evidence of antifa involvement.

FBI field office in Washington stated that they had no intelligence currently that Antifa was involved.. in the Washington area.. as of the 3rd of June, with the caveat that it was early and they were still looking at facts and investigating.

Yes, I read that headline too. It's important to read more than just the headline.

if they didn't have evidence as of 3rd of June, then where does trump accusation come from, did he pulled it from where sun doesn't shine?

He picked an organization out of thin air, accused it of being responsible for looting and riots, even announced that they will be classified as a terrorist organization without ANY evidence? It doesn't look like something that should be happening in a free country. It is especially dangerous, since because antifa isn't a real organization anyone could be labeled as being from antifa and wouldn't have any way to defend themselves.

There's a whole lot going on here, so I'm going to unpack this in a few different points.

1. Anytime someone (especially a politician) suggests something both incendiary and unlikely (putting a domestic organization on the foreign terrorism org list), the goal is the same as a stage magician making a joke - it's to distract you. The correct question then to ask is what are you being distracted from.

2. It's hard to say Antifa isn't involved when they stated they are attending. As you say, they are not a monolithic organization but neither are white supremacists or most street gangs - we don't have a problem holding them accountable. Antifa does have a specific ideology based on pre-emptive violence, and they do have ideological founders and a history of violence.

3. Regardless of who you think may be responsible, this is a good point to realize that it's not smart to be associated with violent groups. They don't have the monopoly on use of force (that would be the state[^1] by definition) and therefore they'll eventually attempt to use violence, get noticed and get dismantled one way or another. Usually that process isn't peaceful when both sides are committed to violence, and there's a reason the state tends to win.

As I often point out with software, theory is great but reality tends to be something else. When your claim to fame is that you show up and commit acts of violence against people you don't like, well, you've sort of signed up to be blamed when you attend a rally and acts of violence start happening.

[^1]: The state here should be taken to mean the organized government as a singular entity

Not just them, but also more recent stuff like the boogaloo movement[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement

Edit: RE: Antifa as a "fake label". This might be true in specific cases, but there's an actual anti-fascist movement happening as well.

Sounds like this group is developing it self along the line of /r/thedonald.

Starts as a satire and slowly it shift to attracting more and more people with extremist views that replace the sarcastic group members.

I wonder if this phenomenon has more specific name than just "radicalization". "Rule of goats"[1] comes close.

[1] https://twitter.com/popehat/status/858722120620265473?lang=e...

We need another rule for when the ironic goatfuckers have been taken over by actual goatfuckers and the latter are now ironically pretending to be the former.

Other labels which may be useful are "ha ha only serious" (ironic racism is in and of itself still racism), and "stochastic terrorism", the circulation and planting of propaganda, ideology, and conspiracy theories that leads to mass shootings.

The NZ mass shooter and Anders Breivik manifestoes are examples of this. There's an entire nutcase ecosystem out there who cite each other in their murders.

"LARP-leak"

I don't think it's likely the group started with sarcasm, more like they excused themselves with /s and Hey it's only sarcasm

We only do it for the lulz.

>but there's an actual anti-fascist movement happening as well.

Movement as in organized movement, or just more people identifying as antifa?

As the ability to coallese around an idea instead of an organization increases due to the cost of communication continuing to drop I think we'll continue to see more and more actual movements that can not really be thought of as an organized movement. Occupy wall street was an actual movement, BLM has no centralized leadership, 2011 london riots were actually reasonably well coordinated, but lacked any centralized leadership.

Antifa are very well organised and very much a real thing. Of course like minded people get involved locally as well, so there are probably a lot more people 'identifying as Antifa' than long term Antifa people, but they are a persistent organised group and some people are into it full time. Luis Enrique Marquez is a well known example.

Antifa doesn't really have leadership, it doesn't even have set of rules to follow. There are even disagreements between people regarding their approach.

It is just bunch of smaller groups that use the term to identify themselves.

Yes, I agree completely. I think those attributes, for a movement like that, are a strength. They're pretty effective at doing what they're aiming to do.

What institution can credibly provide a sense of the size of phenomena?

It is outright silly to discount either neo-nazi or antifa involvement. The only worthwhile discussion to be had would be to figure how much of the police provocation dumped onto them (or in case of neo-nazis collaborated with). Don't ignore all the Neiman Marxists out for activism tourism.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-move...

Feeling doubtful about this Wikepedia article and the recent MSM coverage of "boogaloo" stuff.

I've been members of "boogaloo" groups and followed "boogaloo" pages on FB for years now. They've all been "left" in terms of message and the majority of members. Never seen a single far-right one until now, so I'm wondering how much of this is being manufactured.

You’re right, it specifically involves the /k/ board and Facebook groups among other platforms. The levels of subterfuge and dog whistling are a whole meme subculture unto itself.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-move...

In one side we have plenty of long running antifa twitter accounts pushing for violence, on the other we have bogaloo meme pages of people who appose gov abusing their 2A rights.

But now we are supposed to believe antifa and BLM has nothing to do with the death and destruction in the riots. The push for this propaganda is everywhere and it looks like the scapegoat will be the bogaloo meme pages.

Some people (countries?) just want chaos

> Anonymous/4chan

Anonymous has had nothing to do with 4chan for like 8years. Anonymous a leftwing organization through and through.

4chan is not an organization but an open forum, so if this was organized there, then you should be able to provide evidence.

You are throwing out hypotheses up that sound plausible and go along with the narrative, which is fine, but then everyone is jumping to treating it like established fact.

Why not arrest and interrogate the ones causing violence and find out if they’re white nationalist, antifa, or something else? It’s not like we’re forced to just spitball conspiracy theories here.

Your question seems to be: "Why don't the police do their job?"

I think you may be missing the main point of the protests.

People are out in the streets in order to bring attention to the fact that, in general, police have been doing a bad job.

.. or police provocateurs?

We have. Unfortunately it turned out to overwhelmingly be locals, and people who maybe got a bit too swept up in the groupthink mentality of a protest - which doesn't help either side and so nobody really cares to mention it.

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