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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

> The ads targeted the far left group Antifa

So are we just accepting this now? It’s not a group, at best it’s an ideology.

Why do people bother with antifa moniker anyways? Is one syllable worth the loss in clarity that would come from having your opposition be forced to speak the word anti-fascist? To rule out willful ignorance of the public to discount "antifa" (strangely pronounced with the accent on the i, undermining the reception of the "anti" prefix) as some foreign set of concepts when in reality it is the basis of this nation.

It's because saying you're anti-anti-fascist would make you sound like an asshole.

This lets them pretend they're talking about something different, but all the dogs hear the whistle.

Naming is irrelevant. You can make a group named anti-evil do anything. They would say "Are you anti-anti-evil? Are you for evil? What is wrong with you?"

Until reading your comment, I didn't know that was what Antifa was short for. That's probably why they don't use the full name.

And it's certainly not "far left". Being against Nazis and other Fascists seems like a pretty middle of the road idea.

Essentially everyone is against Nazis/etc. Antifa has rather different goals--otherwise we'd just call them people.

“Essentially everyone is against Nazis/etc.“ I used to think that, too, but I think the last few years have made it clear that there are still plenty of “Nazis/etc” out there—certainly enough of them that the rest of us should be concerned.

Unfortunately normal folks may begin to appear as "Nazis" when you have been sufficiently radicalized. Very little has effectively changed in the past few years, aside from the extreme polarization of the media.

Unfortunately Nazis may also appear to be “normal folks“ if you have been sufficiently radicalized.

Antifa originated in 1930s Germany … where, obviously, plenty of people were not against Nazis or fascists.

Antifa today is still pretty firmly focused on anti-fascist action.

I thought you were going to link them to the brownshirts. Certainly they seem similar in many regards. I can't think of anything good to say about someone who thinks vigilante violence is a noble act.

Are you claiming they're descended from the Reichsbanner? Do you have a source for that?

No, I mean the label Antifaschistische Aktion and its abbreviation Antifa literally originated with labor groups opposing the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

I'm not a historian, but understanding is that there isn't real continuity between that antifa (labor and communist anti-Nazi groups) and the modern antifa (the punk-direct-action-aesthetic antifa), which came about much later in the century, but that the name and association was adopted intentionally.

Don’t get mistaken by their name. I’m a German, and here in Germany people who identify with Antifa call for and execute physical attacks on other people. People of this ideology have hate in their heart. They even hate democracy. They are beating up people who peacefully demonstrate for maintaining our democracies. Would you have guessed by their name that Antifa was that brutal?

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