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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

The person I'm replying to is posting in bad faith, as others on this thread have inferred from the fact that "months of BLM and Antifa rioting" only happened in the poster's mind. Starting with the fact that Black Lives Matter is a police reform movement and Antifa isn't an organized group at all.

Meanwhile the police departments in cities where there was unrest (and in many other places) were subsequently shown to be infiltrated members of brownshirt gangs that are very real organized armed groups. They have names like 3%'ers, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other named organized armed neofascist groups, several of which participated in a coup attempt in the nation's capital with the coordination of members of the Trump White House inner circle.

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This is the first post about which I have received threatening messages. If you know some hothead who would send such messages via guerrillamail.com, or have experienced something similar, you can contact me via info in my profile. He seemed particularly concerned about pointing out that police departments have a problem being infiltrated by brownshirt gangs.

> Starting with the fact that Black Lives Matter is a police reform movement and Antifa isn't an organized group at all.

clearly wrong. First of all, BLM is a way for a few guys at the top to steal money and live in mega mansions at the expense of to some degree goodhearted fools that have been misled grossly.

and Antifa is extremely organised, you have no idea what you are talking about. I would strongly urge you to look (much) further into the subject, and you will soon find that there is a lot of it

Could you point me toward a starter link or source? Ideally I would love a link that points me to the leader (or group of leaders) of Antifa, or some sort of organizational chart reflecting their structure. I searched myself but was unable to find anything of that nature (aside from some discredited claims from a trump lawyer). Thank you, I appreciate it!

Is this a gotcha comment?

Organized does not necessarily mean brimming with marketing material about their organizational structure. Antifa obviously has members and planning. They make great effort to counter who they perceive to be their political rivals. Analyzing from the outside, I imagine they would prefer their structure remain as opaque as possible for pragmatic reasons. I can’t point you to a “starter link” of my local Catholics; yet they exist and are organized.

Your curt inquiry should be directed at journalists, who for whatever reason are delinquent in their duty to investigate this organization.

So was your comment supposed to be cute? An invitation to a purported dead-end investiture? I assume you think yourself adjacent politically to Antifa. I find that most “fellow-travelers” tend to be the most vocal defenders of them online. Would you be this cavalier and flippant if your political rivals were doing the same thing Antifa is doing but for the opposite political “team?”

Just a thought.

Forgive as I am not sure I completely follow your comment and overall implications. To clarify — your contention is that:

1) no source confirming the existence of such an organization exists but-

2) that this absence is due to an endemic and total failure on the part of the conservative media (Hannity, The Hill, Lincoln Project, etc) to properly investigate as-

3) the organizational structure DOES exist so apparently that its obviousness renders a source unnecessary.

Is that accurate? Because if so I have to say I remain unconvinced.

And while I certainly have many cherubic qualities, I think calling someone “cute” for asking the most basic questions in response to a claim of comprehensive organizational structure is, at best, misguided. At worst, one might consider it an attempt to gaslight and minimize realistic obstacles to winning over people to your POV.

Just a thought ;)

You make some very wild claims in your post. Requesting supporting evidence supporting is not a "gotcha comment" - it's a sensible thing to do when confronted with such - honestly pretty conspiratorial - claims.

And no; it's not a journalists job to investigate every accusation out there; journalists - and people tend to forget this these days - ought to have credible sources.

Antifa is as organized as Anonymous.

And my the way, Anonymous emerged from antifa, and is probably the most prominent antifa group online. Do they feel organized to you?

> Anonymous emerged from antifa

Post DJT (US) AntiFa that came well after US Anonymous, or ~ 1935 Spanish Civil War Antifa ?

Either way, it bears no relationship to any discussion of either group at any time that I'm aware of.

But by all means expand on that and provide solid referenced details.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(hacker_group)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)

What, the Guy Fawkes mask isn't enough? Do you need the list of US target anonymous attacked too? White supremacists, Bolsonaro, authoritarian agencies and governments? Their support of BLM or the arab springs? Their attacks on corporations like paypal?

Or simply, i was in an Antifa group from 2010-2013. Not in a street occupation group, but in a "search and confirm" group where we observed far right events and took notice of who went there, correlate that with police/military files (or politics). Social media watch too. The scandal about actual Nazis in the French army came from a parallel group from mine (i was in the west, the scandal is from a similar group in the east is think, i don't have that much info).

I was also an anonymous script kiddie between 2007-2010, anonymous pushed me towards local antifa groups. And this is one reason why i went into tech btw.

So your personal story confirms an unsurprising overlap.

Is everybodys story identical to yours?

Did one group actually spawn the other (given the timelines, loose structure, and global diffusion) or is it merely the case that some members in common moved from one group to other?

Arg, lost my dissertation...

Short answer : I don't really know. Antifa is way older than anonymous, but the intersection could have happened naturally, as both groups have the same "anarchist" ideology. That would mean that anarchism as a way to organize is somehow viable? Not sure.

You might want to try to find some better sources of information than the ones you're relying on now.

The good news is, nothing in your second paragraph is true, that's all QAnon-style made up stuff, no different than stories about pedophile rings hidden in pizza shops or the Earth being flat. The bad news is, you probably need to find some new websites to get reliable information from.

Quote:

a significant number of U.S. police instructors have ties to a constellation of armed right-wing militias and white supremacist hate groups, a report that adds to a fast-growing body of evidence showing a deadly threat inside U.S. police departments.

The analysis found that some of the instructional information presented by police trainers was explicitly racist, and that some instructors endorsed and interacted with white supremacist criminal groups such as the Proud Boys.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/prevalence-white-su...

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