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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

>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.

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

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.

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.

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