Is Antifa even relevant anymore? I haven't heard any news about them since before COVID. What sparked this now?
A week or two ago I browsed Eric S. Raymond's Twitter/X, and he keeps banging about it as some organisation that ruins everything. He also still keeps banging on about BLM in a similar fashion. Curious people. (also: don't do this; it's not good for your blood pressure – the guy is literally calling for segregation of "low IQ savages" now; he's gone full KKK).
They didn't take the Jordan Neely verdict very well either. Someone joked right after the verdict on Twitter that we should brace for more riots. Whoever runs the account said that sounded like a good idea.
You know how the war on terror gives the federal government, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, etc., a ton of power and tax payer money, for pretty much no effort or return on investment because you can't wage war with an ethereal idea? Do you know how it gives the government power to jail people it perceived as its enemies, sometimes without due process?
This is the same thing. Trump is looking for justification, manufactured consent, pretense, etc., to use this power against his political enemies who might happen to not be Muslim.
He's also trying to act strong in a time of weakness, while Putin laughs at Trump and does incursions in Poland, Trump knows he can't lash out at him, so he takes it out on his own constituents.
If, for example, I call you out for being a fascist (or even falsely accuse you of such) then I must be anti fascist and therefore a terrorist, an enemy of the state, someone that can be seized from the streets and cast into a black hole somewhere.
The particulars don't matter, be it Red Scare (and under the bed), Yellow Peril, Anti-Fa, et al. the playbook is familiar.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/socialist-rifle-association-l...
I’m not sure how you haven’t heard of them since “before COVID”. They were far more active post COVID and George Floyd. You can find lots written about their activities online, and lots of videos as well.
Andy Ngo has done a great job documenting this. I’m sure someone is going to respond to my comment with character attacks on Andy Ngo but his journalism is solid. He wrote a book about Antifa (https://www.centerstreet.com/titles/andy-ngo/unmasked/978154...) and also has a lot of content on his website (https://www.ngocomment.com/)
https://www.reddit.com/r/BreadTube/comments/10cxkk2/getting_...
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/journalist-andy-ngo-...
Sounds like ICE
> There is an alternate universe out there in which we never have to ponder, let alone read, “Unmasked,” provocateur Andy Ngo’s supremely dishonest new book on the left-wing anti-fascist movement known as antifa.
[. . . ]
> The right is always reminding us that ”facts don’t care about your feelings,” so let us set out some facts. Ngo writes that the “numbers and influence” of right-wing extremists “are grossly exaggerated by biased media,” while antifa poses “just as much, if not more, of a threat to the future of American liberal democracy.” He frequently references [2020’s] anti-racism protests, conveniently eliding the point that 93% were peaceful, according to a study from Princeton. A brief published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, hardly a lefty outfit, found that antifa had a “minor” role in what violence did occur, most of which was driven by local, autonomous actors, and that the organization’s threat was “relatively small.”
> January 6th administered the coup de grâce to Ngo’s already teetering thesis. It should not have taken this long, however. Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security warned last October that “white supremacist extremists” would remain the “most persistent and lethal threat” to the American homeland.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-...
My suggestion - if you’re genuinely curious about this topic, go watch videos of antifa in cities like Portland or Seattle and decide with your own eyes what you want to believe.