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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

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... But also, there's no organization called antifa, and no antifa members. It's an accusation levied against people the right wing wants to call terrorists.

> But also, there's no organization called antifa, and no antifa members

Left wing extremist groups absolutely exist. The fact that they don't go around wearing matching uniforms with the letters ANTIFA on them doesn't change that.

Your demand for an exact membership list is simply not how extremist organizations work. Terroristic groups have always been fairly amorphous.

Am I a member of a terrorist organisation? How do I check?

Are you going around planning terrorist attacks, vigilante violence, sabotaging critical infrastructure in groups or consistently materially supporting those who do? If so then yes.

If you aren't doing anything even close to this then no you wouldn't be.

You're missing the distinction between individual action (however abhorrent) and an actual terrorist organization. Organizations fund, cultivate, and organize attacks, as opposed to lone wolf terrorists, and therefore are much greater threats.

Timothy Mcveigh (and Terry Nichols) weren't members of a terrorist organization, but they were terrorists. Meanwhile, the ku klux klan has actual initiations, membership, and organizational structure. As do Isis and al qaida.

> You're missing the distinction between individual action

No I'm not. I specially said "in groups".

Yes you are you left out the rest of the sentence:

> … and an actual terrorist organization.

A group is not “an actual terrorist organization”. You’re trying to say all groups committing a crime against the government are actual terrorists organizations, and they all belong to the same organization, Antifa. That’s not the case. If that’s the case then MAGA is also a terrorist organization — at least they have a clear leader.

> You’re trying to say all groups committing a crime against the government are actual terrorists organizations

No, I only said that the ones that are committing terrorist attacks, or similarly serious vigilante violence or sabotaging critical infrastructure in groups are.

Mere "crimes" aren't the same as targeting a powerplant for example.

> the ones that are committing terrorist attacks

They said Good and Pretti were domestic terrorists, they were summarily executed, so not really the line you think you're drawing. NSPM-7 makes "politically motivated trespass and civil disobedience" a terrorist act. So it's not like all you have to do to avoid being labelled a terrorist is to just not blow up a power plant. Helping someone ICE knocked down during a protest is enough.

> so not really the line you think you're drawing.

It actually is a pretty good line. I am sure there are some edge cases, but the vast majority of designated terrorist organizations did more than enough to deserve being put on that list.

Yes, I am sure there is "Insert random one off exceptions here" or grey areas, but they would almost certainly win their court cases through the legal system, most of the time the world is pretty good at figuring out who the terrorists are.

Additionally, no, neither Good and Pretti were ever charged with terrorism. You can have your opinions on unfortunate incidents of use of force or officer training failures or about any overly zealous bad apples in our law enforcement personel, but when it comes to official designations the law is actually pretty reasonable here.

And how large a percentage of those who identify with the umbrella term "antifa" do you think are actually members of violent terrorist cells?

Like the anarchist groups that dress in all black and attack people/infra/stores in the middle of the night during riot?

Its hard to say, because political violence is a spectrum and the border is very blurry between being an organized violent rioter and someone engaging in terroristic activities. Both are bad in their own way.

But fundamentally there doesn't seem to be a huge categorical/technical difference between violent rioting and "terroristic" activism other than that terroristic attacks are simply the more serious/worse version of political violence.

EX: Once it gets to the point of targeting actual critical infrastructure, we can call that terrorism, and just getting into a fist fight at a roudy protests wouldn't be (even though both are technically political violence).

That being said, serious riots can cause a lot of damage and even kill people, but the blame is more collectively spread out towards a large group of people, as opposed to a few small groups causing the large amount of damage.

Are you antifa?

I don't go around dressed in black with anarchist symbols and wearing a mask, attacking people or destroying stores at riots in the middle of the night, no.

I generally stay away from that type of stuff and instead support non-violent, political change that happens within the system and I think those destructive groups are engaging in ineffective and bad tactics.

Are you antifa?

As I said before, the answer is no I don't go around dress in black or wearing anarchist symbols and getting violent at riots.

I do not do that so that would make me not fall under any type of anarchist label like that one.

> or consistently materially supporting those who do

Yeah, I pay taxes.

That's not true. Black Panther was a group. CNT was a group. Even on the other side of the spectrum, KKK and Boogaloo Boys are groups. They all have a name, membership, and identification.

There's no "antifa" organization because antifascism is a concept with different branches of thoughts and practices. Calling antifa an organization is akin to calling "science" an organization. Sure a dictator can arrest millions of people of the "science" terror organization and jail them for their dangerous subversion, but that doesn't make the "science" organization any more real.

Let me fix that for you.

Lots of maga are idealists (even if their ideas are not based in the real world), a number of them are LARPers and a small number are hard core intent on eliminating “the enemy”. To think that no maga member is violent and entertains violent options, is denying reality. Also it’s disingenuous to think they are all out of their minds looking to overthrow the government. Many just have ideals that don’t align with the mainstream.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153982516232...

https://www.gettyimages.com/videos/jan-6

That doesn’t work. maga aren’t idealists, they are deeply cynical, atavistic reactionaries.

Its not controversial to say that right wing extremists exist, some of which even commit violence, so your analogy isn't the brilliant whataboutism gotcha that you intended it to be.

So yes, just like some very far right people exist, that can justifiably be called terrorists, so to do some very far left individuals.

> just like some very far right people exist

The difference being they have support from the president. Whereas on the left, it's just some random "person" on Twitter.

Republicans and MAGA literally supports terrorists. This isn't a debate. It's fact.

No, its not random people on twitter. If you read the statements that were put it, it involved actual terroristic actions of a variety of groups to sabotage critical infrastructure.

Name the people in the US government on the left doing this? Go ahead.

You can't. You can't even name the people that I weren't even referencing. It's random people.

But I can point to the literal President of the USA.

Yeah so I said this: "it involved actual terroristic actions of a variety of groups to sabotage critical infrastructure."

I would say that people who are sabotaging powerplants count as being called far left terrorists. And that is both dangerous and bad. It is not just a random person making tweets. Instead its people sabotaging powerplants.

It is silly to dismiss that all as just being on twitter. When power plants are sabotaged that can kill people.

Let's not forget far left communists disrupted power in Germany last year, directly leading to deaths.

https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-how-dangerous-are-left...

Name the people in the US government on the doing this? Go ahead. I'll wait.

Oh wait...

Go ahead and show me the the people in the German government on the left doing this?

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