Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

So far as I can tell “anti-fascism” and “fascism” are like anti-matter and matter. Anti-fascists see fascism everywhere (your local police department) the same way the John Birch Society saw communism everywhere (Dwight Eisenhower.). Or maybe they are just jealous that the fascists have cool uniforms and boots. Or maybe they think their life isn’t meaningful enough and it has to be like a comic book or a WWII movie.

View on HN

maybe you've been watching too many movies or reading too many comics if you think that anti-fascists are only in the fight because they're jealous and have meaningless lives.

perhaps anti-fascists see the fight for a just and equitable society to be more than that. the people i've worked with who organize for a better society don't tend to live lives like you see in a movie or comic. they're out there feeding the homeless, starting scholarship funds, and teaching people how to garden.

Look, people were organizing for equality and justice long before “anti-fascist” started glibly rolling off people’s lips ten years ago. You can work for all the positive things you say and more and not be accusing anyone who disagrees with you in any respect of being a “fascist”. It’s just toxic. (For the record, I’ve organized to get greens on the ballot, put Chomsky audio lectures on the internet before most people had ever heard of the internet, …)

(BTW, I know people at a baptist church that many people would accuse of being “fascist” because of their religion who do all three of those things you say.)

"I know people at a baptist church that many people would accuse of being “fascist” because of their religion who do all three of those things you say"

The Nazis weren't totally against charitable works. They were against charitable works that benefitted "inferior" humans.

Such as kids with genetic diseases? Doctors encourage eugenic abortions all the time.

> Anti-fascists see fascism everywhere (your local police department)

with things like civil asset forfeiture, qualified immunity, "thin blue line", use of decommissioned military equipment, "law and order" "america first" politics (I can go on)... it's not that big of a stretch to believe something like this despite not being entirely accurate... in many ways it quacks like a duck

Things went really well in Portland without the police. No crime whatsoever.

I'm not sure you meant to respond to me because this comment seems completely irrelevant. It doesn't negate (or even address) any of my points, and I didn't advocate for no police.

Maybe people wouldn't see facism in local police departments if there wasn't facism in the local police departments.

"Police Chief Pat Flannelly said Officer Joseph Zacharek, hired in June, was called into the police station Friday night after claims started showing up on social media that he was linked to Iron March, a neo-Nazi forum disbanded in 2017 but that had its database exposed on the internet in late 2019."

Yay that he was fired, but how many haven't?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com