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But this comment is just unhinged nonsense. This is akin to the claims that Jan 6 was a coup attempt. “The left” is not a homogenous organized force (rofl, come on, the trope is that the left eats itself) which has organized militants on standby.
Antifa and Patriots are both larping idiots alike. It’s the contagion and mutation of bad ideas that’s a bigger problem. A semantic pandemic.
America isn't at that point, but we do ourselves no favours by pretending that it can't happen here. The ingredients are available, even if the execution isn't yet.
Just looking from 1850 to Mao, there was: The Taiping Rebellion (30m dead), 2nd Sino-Japanese War (20m dead), Dungan rebellion (15m dead), Miao rebellion (5m dead), Red Turban rebellion (1m dead), Panthay rebellion (1m dead), Punti–Hakka wars (1m dead), Nationalist purges (1.5m dead), various Warlord Era conflicts (500k dead), 1911 revolution (200k dead), Boxer Rebellion (100k dead), and 1st Sino-Japanese war (50k dead). Not to mention residual deaths from the two World Wars not directly attributable to the conflicts above, but which would still number more than the losses the USA suffered in both wars.
The American Civil War was about ~750k dead. There is absolutely no comparison between the traumatic social conditions of 1940s China with even 21st century China let alone the United States. They were definitely not "role playing".
And the exercises of forced public contrition if you violate the orthodoxy are right in the middle of the cultural revolution. As is the gilt of class (now “whiteness”), or the liberal use of "fascism" in every sentence (now "white suppremacy" associated with everything in America on MSNBC).
Right-wing violence, no matter how apparently haphazard or the result of lone-wolf action, is the result of a tightly coordinated network of fascists taking orders (through covert "dogwhistle" channels) directly from conservative leadership, up to and including the White House if a Republican is in office, acting on a master plan to undermine democracy and overthrow the government in a coup.
Corollary: We're not the conspiracy theorists, the far right are the conspiracy theorists.
Here in Germany they have "alternative housing projects" complete with strategies to prevent the police from entering. Of course the organize and talk strategies. And they also have government support, politicians applauding when antifa beats up memebers of the opposition. They will also threaten third parties like restaurants that host meetups of politicians they disapprove of.
They are always on "standby" because they often have no jobs and hang out consuming drugs until a chance arises to get some action.
i) dweeb grad students who have read too much Left "theory" but are really just liberals,
ii) liberal punks whose primary goals are keeping cryptofascism out of their communities and cooking veggies from the local farmers market (not necessarily in that order), and
iii) anarchist punks whose primary goals are keeping Nazi punks out of dive venues and cooking vegan chili from dumpster veggies (not necessarily in that order)
You will have more success herding cats than in getting that motley crew to agree on a single policy action, let alone organizational action.
That such a group have invokes for you a specter of Weimar-era Nazis is kind of embarrassing, and speaks to an utter lack of diversity in social experiences. The teen smoking weed in a Dead Kennedys hoodie down the street from you has probably has an Antifa sticker on his laptop, and perhaps he'd love to throw a brick through a Starbucks window... but that's not Kristalnacht.
Taleb btw is nowhere near as fragile as to fear Antifa as some vanguard force for e.g. Nazism or sectarian ethnic militancy. He's literally more concerned about random bitcoin fanatics.
Turns out even "dweeb grad students" sometimes like to beat up folks, apparently.