Let's Actually Learn About Antifa

I have an idea for a detective novel. I'm really proud of my lead character, she's the most brilliant detective in the world, a real genius, with out-of-the-box thinking leading her to breakthroughs in the case nobody else sees coming. Problem is, I'm not a genius, I would really love to devise a case that show-cases her brilliant lateral thinking capacities, but here's what I've got so far: A man reports his wife missing and (spoiler) turns out he did it, after none of the cops think to treat him as a suspect, she wakes up in the middle of the night and is like 'what if the husband did it? He reported her missing to throw us off the scent!'

There's a trope to help me out in my writing aspirations 'Informed Ability' that's where if you yourself don't know how a super-detective would go about a case, or even how a particularly well-thought out criminal conspiracy could work, you just have people claim your detective is brilliant, or that the criminal plan was genius.

Bringing us to Antifa, once Trump started attacking Antifa and building it as one of his more solid 'Law & Order' campaign platforms, I've been dismayed by the number of thinkers whose scrutiny of 'Antifa' has consisted of 'What's Antifa? It stands for Anti-fascist, well I don't like fascism so nothing to see here.'

I'm honestly surprised how many people aren't able to see the problem with this failure to engage. To make it a little easier to spot:

'What's 'Pro-Life'? They are people who support a right to live, well I'm not 'pro-death' so nothing to see here.'

'What's 'Pro-Choice'? They are people who support the right to choose, well I like choices so nothing to see here.'

I guess Antifa coast on a lot of informed attribute. Fascism is bad, therefore the opposite of fascism, anti-fascism is good. Except you probably couldn't define fascism, I can't, largely because fascism is itself vaguely defined. 

I have looked into Antifa, tried to give myself a rudimentary understanding of them after reports of their activities tickled my 'they sound like dicks...' bone. 

It can be hazardous for me to make these inquiries, as given Antifa's participation in criminal activities, asking a friend to create an electronic paper-trail of their identifying as Antifa might have present or future legal implications.

I eventually found this youtube video that lasts a little over an hour giving a detailed explanation of Antifa. That proved I think an invaluable resource, particularly to individuals like me, who are reluctant to read a whole book.

Though I'm aware of my potential to inject bias, I felt both relief and vindication in the past days when Dr. Todd Grande finally posted a concise summary of Antifa which I'll embed, because it's contents are really the main dish of this post:

Now, Oliver Thorn, proprietor of 'Philosophy Tube' channel strikes me as a sincere and sensitive young man who does do a lot of research and puts a lot of effort into his videos. His channel and content are also well received and reviewed. I've watched enough of his content now though for him to discuss topics and subjects that I have acquired enough expertise (like Economics) to detect that he speaks out of turn. Kind of a 'in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king' or functionally.

I suspect but can't prove, if I were able to investigate his fanbase, the value-proposition of his business model is to - for example - give an uninformed or illiterate audience permission to believe something they want, like 'don't worry, no need to research Marx, I have and it passes the Olly Thorn test.' In much the same way Jordan Peterson, or Christian Apologists in general serve for many the function of 'Don't worry, I've read the Bible and actually it's much more brilliant than it lets on.' 

(For example, go to the description and just check out the *impressive* bibliography Olly lists - that I assert serves the main function of impressing upon anyone who cares to check that Olly 'really knows his stuff' and discourage scrutiny. The bibliography includes works like 'Manufacturing Consent' by Herman & Chomsky, 'Leviathan' by Hobbes, 'Mein Kampf' by Hitler, 'On Liberty' by John Stuart Mill and MANY MANY MORE. Yet, having watched the videos, it's not clear as and when or even if, he is engaging with the materials listed in the bibliography, nor am I confident he has read all the works he lists, and while it might be clear that he rejects the thesis of 'Mein Kampf' it is not clear for example whether he rejects or accepts the arguments presented in 'On Liberty'... he lists Dinesh D'Souza's 'The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left' in there, and I have no idea how it relates to the video content; leading me to suspect the function of the Bibliography is to create the impression that watching his video is as good as reading all those books.)

Steering back to the subject of Antifa, the subject at hand, Olly's hour long video reminds me of Thomas Friedman's pro-Globalization book 'The World Is Flat' where after writing a whole book on how wondrously wonderful globalization is, he throws in a sub-heading 'Too many Toyatas' where he mentions as an afterthought, that the economic/lifestyle aspirations of those emerging from poverty in China, India, Brazil etc. to have a home, a car, a flat screen tv... would require 6 planet Earths, rendering pretty much all of the preceding book a complete waste of copy. (In my opinion, 'The World Is Flat' is well reviewed, though it has its critics, unlike Olly Thorn, probably owing to the fact that Thomas Friedman is much higher in public profile.)

My synthesis of Olly's hour long video is this:

1. Fascism and its opposition are fundamentally asymmetrical because while a fascist can decide to stop being a fascist an ethnic Jew can not decide to stop being Jewish, a Gypsy can not decide to stop being a Gypsy, a Homosexual can not decide to stop being homosexual etc. so there is no satisfaction point at which the fascists will go home.

2. Therefore, fascism must always necessarily end in violence, because that which offends fascists have no recourse to not offend them, they offend them by existing. Antifa is morally superior because that which offends them can choose not to offend them through altering their behavior. 

3. Therefore, fascism must be opposed by any means necessary.

Then the 'Too many Toyotas' moment arrives:

4. Of course, many fascists don't call themselves fascists or Nazis, they use *secret codes* and/or dogwhistles.

I find it useful when presented with an hour or so of content, to collapse it down to what is functionally being said:

A group that isn't a group (more a meme like 'planking' or 'harlem shake') that reserves unlimited powers to fight fascism where what constitutes fascism is defined by the people fighting it, who are not an organization.

Which brings me back to the concept of 'chmess' which cites Donald Hebb's dictum:

"If something isn't worth doing, it's not worth doing well"

In which case, to be clear, opposing fascism, and other provenly inhumane and bad systems of government is worth doing. Spending an hour explaining the 'philosophy' of a group with no organizational structure and subsequently, no quality control is not worth doing, because there is nobody with the authority to determine whether you are living up to or transgressing the philosophical ideals. 

Bringing us to Dr Todd Grande's analysis. I'm pleased to see Dr Grande excise pretty much all the bullshit and look at Antifa as practiced. 

1. Antifa avoid the label of 'organization' and identify as a 'movement' however, they are functionally a 'disorganized' organization, lacking a headquarters etc similar to a criminal conspiracy with shared ideology and intention.
2. It is predicated on an interpretation of history/assumption that if people had fought the Nazis in the streets, then the Third Reich could have been avoided.
3. Antifa promote violence on the basis that elites control the government and the media.
4. 'Free speech' does not apply to far-right voices as they categorize this as 'hate speech' 
5. Violence and anonymity are part of their modus operandi, demonstrating a commitment to recklessness and a contempt for the law.
6. The group resent false attribution of violence and criminal acts, while advocating violence in attempts to deny free speech.
7. Members lack an understanding of history, Nazism, World War II, Fascism etc. and clear goals.
8. Possible motive of members is a combination of frustration at injustice and excitement seeking drives - rationalizing their own desire for violence by linking it to a social justice cause.
9. Antifa are on the decline, owing to their lack of organization. 

When Joe Biden in the first of the 2020 Presidential campaign debates' said 'Antifa aren't an organization, it's an idea' he left himself wide open to the retort 'I'd agree, you can write a letter of complaint to an organization, but not to an idea, if you have complaints about Antifa, I suggest you register them as a vote for me.'

Fortunately for Biden, his opponent is Donald Trump who barely understands the office of President, despite holding it for 4 years and whom I have no confidence could prosecute an Anti-Antifa campaign, particularly if he feels groups like 'the proud boys' are doing good work.

By the way, lest one think Dr Todd Grande is a right wing commentator with something against Antifa, he has looked at other 'dickhead groups' in the recent weeks including 'Sovereign citizens' and 'Proud Boys' etc. 

Now I want to explore why Antifa a dickhead group based on unjustified beliefs, slip under most people's bullshit detector.

For one thing, using a hueristic of 'if the Republican Party/Fox News are hysterically critical of it, it's probably a good thing.' is a reasonably reliable heuristic. 

The other is that I think most people have heard and accepted as a proverbial truth the following analysis:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me.

And it is high time this famous poem was questioned - first and most obviously is that the 'me' for which there was no one left to speak for 'me' wrote this poem. Second and less obvious is that this is a slippery slope argument, third and most importantly is that the poem should finish 'then they waged war simultaneously with two large imperial powers and were defeated.'

Which brings me back to Dr Grande's 7th point - Antifa don't appear to demonstrate an understanding of history, fascism, WWII etc. Comedian Andrew Doyle, creator of Titania McGrath 'the world's wokest woman' is good on this point - people don't realize that Antifa failed to stop the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and that there were anti-hate speech laws in place in the Weimar republic and that the same tactics employed today were cited by the Nazis as justification for their increasingly authoritarian rule, much as the Trump-Fox alliance do with the modern watered down versions.

The above video is good. I suspect that by and large, most people think of WWII with a great amount of hindsight bias, thinking that the reason countries like the UK and Commonwealth, USA etc. opposed Germany's expansion was because of the Holocaust. The Holocaust wasn't learned about however until the Eastern and Western fronts started liberating the death camps. It was the world's largest ever imperial power (The British Empire) and the largest Communist empire (Stalin's USSR) trying to quash Hitler's upstart empire. Antifa, were highly ineffective in the whole mix, even potentially counterproductive, as they are now.

Have you heard of Antista? No. It stands for 'Anti-Stalinism'. Well, no problem there, everyone knows Stalin was bad. Except that Antista is something I made up, and could easily describe fascism. They are the thugs that believe Communism inevitably results in violence and thus must be resisted at any cost.

A big part of the problem with getting Antifa the scrutiny and criticism it deserves, and many progressive 'movements' is that people don't understand the concept of 'methodology'.

We're flipping a coin, to decide whether Hitler was bad or good. You and I agree that Hitler is bad. If the coin lands 'heads' Hitler is bad. If the coin lands 'tails' hitler is good. The coin lands tails up, so you and I agree that flipping a coin is a garbage methodology. We try again and the coin lands heads up, so you and I concur that flipping a coin is a sound and trustworthy methodology.

This is a garbage methodology, for evaluating methodology, but I suspect this is what most people do quite absent-mindedly.

Antifa turn up to protest the police as a 'fascist white-supremacist institution' in the wake of yet another death of a black person in custody. Now let's take Antifa as being a model of legitimate positive social change and use them as inspiration for police reforms:

Scrap police badges, ID numbers or other identifying factors. Remove police 'chain of command' and encrypt police communications to prevent scrutiny or oversight. Put police in masks so they cannot be identified. Remove police stations and any other avenues by which to lodge a complaint. Extend to the police the right to destroy property as it does not count as 'violence', scrap all entrance requirements to the police apart from demonstration of a shared ideology etc.

I have no problem with objecting to fascism, but I have a problem with Antifa's methodology. Almost all of it. These are unworkable 'Double Standards' like the coin flip being legitimate contingent on it coming up with the result we want. 

To my knowledge, Antifa as an organization is yet to be responsible for the death of anybody, but they are remarkably similar to a movement like 'Boogaloo' in terms of being a loose disorganized movement with no quality control. And Boogaloo do kill people. They also believe they have a monopoly on 'the truth' and particularly who has the right to govern etc.

On this subject of methodology, I'd apply to Antifa UK Labour Politician Tony Benn's Five Questions to Power, and lacking an Antifa member to ask, and also distrusting Antifa to a) understand their own philosophy/ideology/special pleading b) answer honestly. I'll answer to the best of my ability to determine:

Question 1: What power have you got?

Unlimited power to resist fascism, also the power to unilaterally determine who is a fascist upon their own authority.

Question 2: Where did you get it from?

Self appointed, by their own individual interpretation of history.

Question 3: In Whose Interests do you Exercise it?

Everyone's, without consultation or consent. If you don't like it, you potentially qualify as a fascist.

Question 4: To Whom Are You Accountable?

Functionally nobody, we are not an organization, with no constitution or charter. We can No True Scotsman any member.

Question 5: How Can We Get Rid of You?

Education probably. A vote for Trump is likely a vote for Antifa, and vice versa, they have a symbiotic relationship, polarization drives both organizations recruitment.

When Macchiavelli wrote 'the ends justify the means' there is a built in assumption that the means can guarantee the ends, I will leave you with the homework of understanding the terms 'goad' and 'grist' and 'self-fulfilling prophecy' perhaps with some literary examples like Oedipus and Jonah and the Whale where the very efforts to avoid an outcome serve to bring it about.