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Comment by exogeny | Hacker News Reader

Can you describe to me what you think Antifa is?

A loose organization with regional groups, ranging from random protesters by proximity to political activists to violent criminals and terrorists, with various claims from generally left/socialist ideologies to outright radical extremism.

I would say "completely disorganised" rather than "loose organisation" and I can't see that changing.

The left is a vast collection of competing factional ideas that in many cases the only common purpose is a demand for change.

Environmentalists can't agree with each other, let alone animal welfare activists who can't agree with native/traditional rights; and theres a range of single issue movements that end up diluting support for bigger picture issues simply by association. I'm not saying that they are wrong or their demands invalid but it draws attention away from the messages everyone could get behind if there was better focus.

It happened with the "Occupy Wall Street" and "BLM" will likely go the same way if it doesn't simply stick to one core message.

I'm on the left, and can concur. Many of us were pissed about Bernie losing, and thinking yeah now's the time for the Green party to win...

Then there's like at least 3 groups trying to start 3 new political parties, those of us pushing for the greens, more pushing for one of the socialist parties, and some even pushing for the libertarian party (I'm a leftist/socialist libertarian, but the libertarian party is NOTHING like a left/libertarian), and some voting for Trump out of spite, or insanity, and the rest probably cow-towing to vote for Biden.

Just ideas alone it's pretty disjointed. No organization. I mean the right/tea party at least was pretty coherent and had a pretty good structure to accomplish their goals.

Leftists though have their own purity tests, and their own minds made up and can be rather stubborn about how to accomplish goals, what those goals should be, etc...

I think we all have ADHD or something.

However, there's no 'terrorism' on the left, or very rare. antifa is not a terrorist org. Show me the deaths, the bombs, etc. I can show you plenty of those on the right though, an antifa terrorist is probably some kid egging or graffit-ing a building. That's about as serious as they get, because most on the left are also pacifists.

The Greens in Australia are a sad case in point. They turn over people like crazy and I suspect that is largely due to the stress and pressure of basically herding cats. I've been silently wondering whether they were even infiltrated by a fifth column who exasperated these internal divisions to break their hold in the Australian Senate as the deciding vote for most issues.

Bernie was unfortunately an outsider who never stood a chance without the power brokers in the Democrat party stepping forward to back him, but the Greens seem to just eat their own.

A group of communists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion

I think all time travelers should be welcomed on Twitter with welcome arms, be they from 1933 or 2933.

I say, could someone explain this preponderance of sharp signs?

First of all, from this link:

> was a militant anti-fascist organisation,

emphasis mine. People who self-identify as anti-fascist nowadays have little to do with communism. Why not link this page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism

Second of all, is "communist" a slur on HN? Is that supposed to sound scary or something?

It’s a slur, a belief that these people are extreme card-carrying Marxists educated at Karl Marx University and completely conversant with Das Kapital in the original german.

But I’ve never met someone complaining about them who could name one of them. It’s like some Boys of Brazil meets George Soros thing with them.

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