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Comment by theultdev | Hacker News Reader

I was against the Feds designating Juggalos as a "loosely-organized hybrid gang". That was ridiculous.

But this is not the same. Antifa leaders and cell members have been charged and convicted, getting caught coordinating riots.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-no...

And we all saw the "summer of love" in 2020. Personally I want to see more accountability.

I know Antifa may be popular here, but those riots ruined businesses, got people killed, and caused an enormous amount of damage.

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> And we all saw the "summer of love" in 2020. Personally I want to see more accountability.

I presume you mean starting with accountability for the police riots? State organized mayhem is much more of a pressing problem than violence by individuals - it's exactly the coordination dynamic you've invoked, but at an even larger scale.

Witness: we already have straightforward avenues of accountability for individuals caught engaging in violent acts while protesting - they're simply crimes already written down, enforced, and prosecuted every day. While state-supported violence, even with open and shut video evidence (eg lines of police marching down a street and slashing every car's tires), gets handwaved away as some kind of perversely necessarily official action. The former is eminently legible to the justice system, while the latter is basically illegible. Never mind how the far right terrorist contingent has now found an official home in federal "law enforcement" where they're encouraged to summarily execute uppity women and 2A enthusiasts.

Who is the leader of Antifa?

Does a charge and conviction mean that this action is good or morally justified? If so then your issue with the feds designating Juggalos as a hybrid gang would be contradicted.

This action follows the administration's established pattern of trying to tie political dissent in the US to unrelated foreign actors (often the Kurdish PKK) so that they can lay the legal footing to prosecute Americans as being actors under the control of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations"

That's a silly rubric. Loosely organized groups have cells with leaders, not a single one.

That specific Antifa chapter's cell leaders can be found in the link above.

The KKK didn't have a single leader either after WWII, it was distributed chapters. So does that mean they weren't a terrorist group anymore?

And the Juggalo fans didn't coordinate to go riot / cause violence, not the same as either of those.

The leaders of the Klan are well known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaders_of_the_Ku_Klux_Klan

That doesn't disagree with what I said.

After WWII they were distributed chapters (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Invisible Empire, Imperial Klans of America, National Knights, etc.)

Those later leaders are only leaders of that chapter/cell, not a single leader.

Distributing your hate does not make you immune is my point.

> After WWII they were distributed chapters (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Invisible Empire, Imperial Klans of America, National Knights, etc.)

Right, terrorist groups with organizational structure and national leadership, spawned from the original KKK. We're confused about the national organization which you seem to be referring to, because "anti fascist" is not a group.

How is membership or leadership determined? How is a cell determined in this case?

In the case of the Klan (which you conveniently bracket to only after WW2) it, in fact was an organization with a single "Imperial Wizard" at the helm before being broken up in the 20's. The "distributed chapters" (themselves organizations with membership roles and defined leadership) were only "distributed" after the national organization was dissolved to bow out of a legal battle with the IRS.

There absolutely exist fans of ICP who have coordinated to cause violence, crime, and mayhem. (Though I don't believe that people should be prosecuted or persecuted for enjoying a goofy rap rock band)

It’s the rubric the government is using here: Trump designated the mythical centralized organization as a terrorist threat.

What are your thoughts on January 6th?

It's laughable to call that an "antifa cell", especially as they're abusing terrorism charges to send someone away for life for moving zines.

We have white-nationalist groups actually organizing and training. Shipping in Khaki clad warriors in box trucks to shout slurs and intimidate people.

We have videos of said groups doing weapons training like the Al Qaeda training videos of the 2000s.

Antifa? Your primary source is one of the greatest abortions of justice we've seen this decade.

> they're abusing terrorism charges to send someone away for life for moving zines.

You can make anything sound idiotic if you simplify it enough. They're trying to send someone away for hiding evidence.

Using your logic you could say that someone arrested for shooting someone is being put away for moving their index finger.

What were the Zines evidence of? Protected speech?

We have days worth of footage of storming the Capital and yet dozens were given full pardons. They're political charges.

> What were the Zines evidence of? Protected speech?

Evidence of conspiracy.

> We have days worth of footage of storming the Capital and yet dozens were given full pardons. They're political charges.

So just because something bad was allowed to happen, any other bad thing should be allowed?

> So just because something bad was allowed to happen, any other bad thing should be allowed?

I was illustrating that the charges levied were politically motivated from the highest levels, as proof that they don't seriously care about political criminality unless it suits them. If the Jan 6th charges stuck, it'd be a different conversation entirely.

They are illegitimate because they have already proven disregard for the law.

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