This administration is on a witch hunt for anything they can identify as "antifa" when no such central organization insists. Instead it's being used as an over broad label to attack organized opposition to it's broadly unpopular policy agenda.

(If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)

▲

none_to_remain 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> (If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)

Smart enough to reject abusive little word games?

I see "fascism" and "antifascism" more like "matter" and "antimatter" - pretty much the same thing, just there's a violent reaction when the two collide.

	▲	ball_of_lint an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is a terrible take. Were the Allied powers antifascist?

▲

xboxnolifes 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> (If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?

You cant judge a group by its name. Otherwise, Make America Great Again is great, the National Socialist German Workers' party seems fine, etc.

	▲	cdrnsf 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not an organized group. It's a label being used as a cudgel to attack anyone who doesn't like the current president (who also happens to have the world's most fragile ego/thinnest skin/whatever his soul crushing pathology actually is).
	▲	culi 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's not a group. There are several smaller orgs that call themselves antifascist but there's no such centralized group or political structure. It's not even a specific ideology. It's just oppositional to fascism

▲

henearkr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly. Antifa is short for "opposed to fascism". Which, you know, is the bad thing where you hurt a lot of people just because they are different from the "group" you defined, with the aim of spoliating the outsiders to enrich the members, or make them an inferior cast, etc...

Having to explain why fascism is to be fought against...

Ugh, what a world. Not even science-fiction writers dared to write such a nonsensical reality.

▲

drak0n1c 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Nomenclature alone is meaningless. Is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which professes anti-fascist messaging and motives both democratic and anti-fascist? I wouldn't assume every "antifa" group is principled and accurate in its diagnosis of what fascism is and who are acceptable targets for their outgroup directed aggression.

▲

cdrnsf 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps not, but this administration is in no way principled or accurate in its diagnosis of anything so their labelling of any group doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

▲

henearkr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

NK is a dictatorship. I don't know where you got the misunderstanding that they would be "anti-fascist".........

Anti fascist => anti dictatorship.

Anti fascist means that you don't like fascism and that you are not going to let it happen passively.

(Tired of explaining the obvious. But I guess that somebody has to.)

A dictatorship mechanically leads to a situation where the governing group is working for their own wealth, thus in this case the "group" is the governing class. The extent and definition of that class is voluntarily limited so that wealth and power converges to them.

Now you see it? Yes that is a fascism, meaning that:

dictatorship => fascism

And the reverse stems from the "groupism" (i.e. tribalism) of fascism, which entails that you need exclude large portions of the population from the political system.

As this "group" definition becomes narrower and narrower (in order to make more wealth converge to the alleged "true humans" of its center), it becomes a harsher and harsher dictatorship, and finally a strongman regime.

fascism => dictatorship

▲

drak0n1c 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The point is that people who proclaim themselves "antifa", be they in dictatorial power over half of Korea, or merely a band of organized activists, are not automatically due credibility and trust because of some grammatical fixation that magically guarantees alignment. Do you only become skeptical when the message is twisted after winning power?

"Antifa" factions in the Spanish Civil War ultimately did not win and accidentally enable a Spanish DPRK, but they still were perfectly capable of being and doing evil, such as committing mass rape and shooting of nuns.

	▲	henearkr 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And you are factually wrong. You are probably thinking about the Communist factions among the Republican forces opposed to Franco. ALL of the Republican factions were opposed to Franco and to fascism, not only the Communists. And, besides, nobody was calling themselves "antifa" at that time, because that was damn obvious that if you were in the Resistance, you were opposed to that despicable tyrant. But they were absolutely anti fascists, all of them and not only the Communists.
	▲	henearkr 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		What somebody says != what somebody does. If somebody says something nice and does nothing, that's good. If at the same time somebody does something bad, that's bad. That does not remove the evaluation (nice or bad) of the speech alone. Saying "I am against this thing that is objectively despicable" is GOOD. So, saying to be anti fascist is good. Saying to be anti fascist and doing fascist things is bad. I don't know how much more obvious things I am supposed to explain... I guess there is no limit to it.
	▲	hackable_sand 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You are assigning this magical reality and then getting mad about it. Anti-fascists are not concerned with the magical weight of this in-group designation. They are concerned with all things non-fascist.

▲

includenotfound 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If this wasn't so poorly written I'd have assumed it's GPT-3 slop.

OP's point is that a group's name does not necessarily hold any link to their activities, so an "anti fascist" group could very well be doing fascist activities themselves, name notwithstanding.

	▲	henearkr 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And if a Christian group is doing Demonic stuff that's a problem. And seeing slop where there is not, you are being rude to me without purpose. Not everybody is born in an English-speaking country. I laid down the ideas logically, maybe that is what sounded foreign to you. By the way you are the person writing nonsensical stuff such as "Antifa is a terrorist organization", while everybody is repeating tirelessly that it is just an adjective meaning to be opposed to fascism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483072

▲

einpoklum 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> when no such central organization insists

No any such organization exists. It is a movement, and a description one can describe one's self or actions: "anti-fascist".

But of course, their logic for sanctioning-by-association would mean that they all - Trump, Bessent, Rubio etc. - with their innumerable contacts with "violent terrorist groups and regimes" everywhere around the world, and just themselves really - should have been sanctioned, arrested, tried, or just disposed of like the US does with so many it dislikes.

▲

cdrnsf 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes. The president fomented a violent insurrection and then pardoned its participants (who should all still be in prison). He shouldn't be in office and you could similarly sanction his own social media platform, X and any other number of their supporters.

▲

einpoklum 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, maybe that too, but I meant the Gaza genocide and the slaughter of civilians in Iran, Yemen, on Venezuelan boats etc.

	▲	cdrnsf 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Or the long tail of bodies that will come out of the USAID cuts.

▲

breppp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> (If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)

Communist parties around the world killed 80+ million civilians, and were also vehemently anti-fascist, will opposing that make you fascist?

	▲	cdrnsf 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		While we're doing hypotheticals, what does Elon Musk's destruction of USAID and the downstream deaths resulting from it make him?
	▲	kg 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If someone is opposed to Communism they should oppose Communism, not anti-fascism. Seems pretty straightforward Oddly the US is very cozy with some modern Communists!