It's very hard to document the activities of Anti-Fa because anyone who attempts to criticize them or cover them will face a deluge of hate and propaganda. (Yes, I capitalize this term where many don't because I believe it to be a cadre secret society, a cult, organized, resourced, determined, duplicitous, and conspiratorial.) I have watched these groups for many years, in Europe, the US, and Eurasia, and I have formulated this conclusion.
Most journalists don't want to ruin their careers with accusations that they are "neo-cons" or even "fascists," naturally; while it is easier to dismiss the latter charge of "fascist" as overblown craziness when applied to liberals and leftists, the former charge of "neo-con" is one that all too often sticks, despite the fact that actual "neo-cons" are very few in number these days, have very few media personalities, and their supposed influence in "starting wars" seems to be diminished as first Trump pulled out of Syria and planned to pull out of Afghanistan; then Biden pulled out of Afghanistan to a chorus of angry and anguished objections, and the war in Ukraine was so very, very clearly started by Russia -- and in fact eight years ago.
Among the worst propagandistic mantras in the US, the Anti-Fa thugs wield is the notion that they somehow represent the heirs of those who fought fascism before, during, and immediately after World War II.
They don't.
They find it harder to get away with this in Europe where people are more educated and experienced and grasp the nuances among those who fought fascism.
There were lots of movements and formal armed forces that fought fascism. Among them was the Communist International, a front of the Soviet Communist Party which purported to fight fascism to promote communism, called anyone even on the left a "fascist" if they didn't agree (Lenin said, "Social democracy is social fascism"); and murdered any socialists who were critical of Moscow. You're really lying through your teeth when you show a picture of the American soldiers landing on the beach at Normandy and claim that they are "Anti-Fa". Um, no, because they aren't socialist thugs. They are US soldiers, generally more conservative as a social category. Like a boss I once had, injured in the battle at Normandy, who had a distinguished career with Russian language skills at RFE/RL, the CIA, the DoD, teaching at West Point, and working at various non-profits who helped refugees and immigrants. He would be horrified at the thought that throwing a Molotov cocktail at a courthouse in Portland is "like" fighting the Nazis in France because he also fought the Soviets. Did Anti-Fa? No. No, because the Soviets created and/or backed and funded them in many places.
Anyone who has followed the violent socialist movements of the last 100 years and seen their outcome with the Bolsheviks in Russia and beyond doesn't have trouble recognizing the patterns in effect here. I have suggested reading Double Lives which provide in copious detail information about the workings of the KGB and the infiltration through the Comintern of leftist and peace movements abroad. There is the story of Willi Munzenberg who began as a leftist German Communist, exposing the Nazis for accusing Communists of starting the Reichstag fire. He himself was involved in undermining and turning leftist groups in Europe toward Moscow. But he ended up critical of the Kremlin when he saw the reality of what was happening in Soviet Russia on visits -- and ultimately he himself was assassinated, likely at their hand as the author, Stephen Koch, explains. Double Lives is dismissed as too overly zealous, yet Stephen Koch has gathered enormous amount of historical documentation and bothered to interview figures like Munzenberg's widow when others have not. Seriously, did any of you ever go talk to Munzenberg's widow?! Ok, then. PS I recall Stephen Koch at a lecture in NYC many years ago where he was very early in explaining that Putin was, indeed, corrupt -- but corrupt with the Germans, viewed as less corrupt than other nations, so it was all good. And here we all are now.
It remains the case that most documentation of Anti-Fa is done by those with an axe to grind -- conservative or even neo-Nazi figures who want to focus on Anti-Fa violence to distract from right-wing violence. Even those who may have begun in good faith may end up unbalanced especially after the harsh treatment meted out to them by Anti-Fa cadres. Then there's President Trump himself, who called for Anti-Fa to be designated as a terrorist group -- thereby ensuring that they likely never would be. The threshold for getting the US government to designate a group as "terrorist" is rather high, and can be politicized. I'm not sure it can be met for Anti-Fa even with a rigorous, unbiased investigation.
It is very hard in a climate when the president of the United States made ill-informed and unlawful calls like this to go on criticizing Anti-Fa -- whose violent acts are real and which are then inevitably seized on by Trump and his followers. Rather than documenting and condemning Anti-Fa too, most of the liberal media inevitably addresses this situation by diminishing and down-playing Anti-Fa. You know you can find that a group espouses violent goals and means and an extremist ideology and condemn that surely, but it is another step to prove they are terrorist in nature, i.e. to go beyond throwing a Molotov cocktail at a symbol of what they view as injustice such as a court-house; even to randomly burn down an immigrant-owned store; or to even shoot one of their own -- to shooting a mass of strangers at a supermarket or a school or an office, or set a bomb to kill random strangers at a large event like the Boston Marathon.
Anti-fa uses the classic Bolshevik and KGB disinformation tactics that are familiar to many who study these movements. Whether its Leninist precepts, KGB manuals, or Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radical," they amount to the same thing -- and PS Alinsky doesn't have to be affiliated with the Communist Party or the KGB whatsoever for these leftist methods to percolate through social movements and become practical tactics. The main themes are to "freeze the target" -- emphasize and exaggerate one part of the enemy that will help discredit him (why are you voting against abortion rights when you helped pay for your mistress to have one?); find things that he values and then shows how in fact he doesn't value them and is hypocritical (you're all for opposing abortion, but you just cut funds on school lunch and after-school programs); find things he values, then show that the leftists in fact value the same thing, but more altruistically (we have our own Socialist Gun clubs), and so on. These methods have become so pervasive that nobody remembers where they came from, especially as they migrate over to the right. I do. I have translated KGB and GRU handbooks and followed the countries where Russian intelligence is active, including our own, for decades.
Hence the plethora of posts with the meme of the troops landing at Normandy, fighting the Nazis, and the sarcastic comments that these were the first "Anti-Fa," i.e. fighting fascists -- what, we're going to call them terrorists, too? This takes even more ridiculous forms with a meme asking sarcastically whether Trump will now disinter World War II soldiers' graves as they are now declared terrorists. The method is designed to trip up and shame anyone who might be critical of violence and extremism by doing a switcheroo to claim that Anti-Fa is "like" those revered in the US who fought the Nazis, such as the US Army.
No sale.
I respond by pointing out what a bad argument this is; troops in Normandy didn't loot stores, break windows, torch banks, and cover monuments and government buildings with radical graffiti, nor deliberately target civilians. It's absurd. Yet the absurdities of these arguments on Twitter know no bounds. I was once pointed to the bombing of Dresden as an example of how US troops at Normandy weren't the heroes imagined (they wanted to pick a World War II event).
OK, who could justify the bombing of Dresden and killing of civilians? But wait a minute. Wasn't your point in sardonically calling the landers at Normandy "Anti-Fa," to play off their hero status? So hey, since they aren't heroes because of Dresden how can you use them at Normandy in sarcastic memes? You see how this works? You're juggling memes to try to keep your opponent off balance and we realize: it doesn't matter. You don't care. Internal contradictions in your propagandistic messaging matter not to you. You aren't real. You are thugs, trying to obtain power and smash things.
There are plenty of posts on Twitter showing how Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and supporters who protested along with them, called out Anti-Fa in the midst of vandalism and graffiti in many cities. How can you tell these vandals are Anti-Fa? For one, there are clearly more white members of Anti-Fa visible at demonstrations than Black. But that's not really the point.
Because they reiterate the slogans, colors, markings of Anti-Fa and even self-identity -- that's how. But oh, you say, Anti-Fa is a loose organization that anyone could ally with, so you can't tell. This is repeated again and again, as it was for Occupy and before them Anonymous and 4chan. Yet behind these "loose-knit groups" are always organized cadres who have a detailed and definite agenda and the ability to manipulate others who are clueless. and their chief modus operandi is to deny the obvious of what they do -- commit violent acts. Deny, deny, deny. You must be imagining things.
These supposedly fluid and free movements have surprisingly little actual internal freedom and democracy; there can be cult-like obedience to strong figures who emerge and outrageous punishment to those within the ranks who object to any method or meme. When no one has a name and no act has consequences, the GRU or the Proud Boys for that matter can easily enter and manipulate young and clueless people online, or even golf-playing executives in their 40s with families -- but with no education in civics or literature or religion.
Polygraph is a column run by Voice of America which analyzes propaganda and exposes it. Most of the posts are about Russia and its allies because that is where most of the disinformation is practiced. But because they are under pressure to be "balanced", VOA covers some US propaganda as well. That's fine. I worked for Polygraph some years ago back when it was a joint project of RFE/RL and VOA; when VOA took over the column completely, those of us contracted by RFE/RL were let go and our contracts not renewed. Of the two US-funded broadcasting stations, I have a lot more respect for RFE/FL, for which I have worked in various departments over the years. I would not work for VOA, because I find there is a decided effort there to "balance" to the point of excusing authoritarian regimes abroad, and a kind of entrenched, rabidly ideological bureaucracy -- unchecked -- that survives all presidents and resists any change and tends to produce more anti-Americanism than it stops. I was entirely dismayed when a long-time cunning Kremlin apologist was hired at VOA -- and yes, that "Kremlin apologist," sometimes called "Putin-whisperer" is how to understand this elaborate shtick that endlessly finds fault with actual critics of the Kremlin, feigns to criticize the Kremlin on a few days to round out the legend, and generally distracts and confuses. Why? Sometimes this type of persona is explained by vanity, the desire to row against the tide, the desire to be appear "balanced" and more clever than your yahoo neo-con bumpkins online, and so on. And sometimes it is more sinister.
I continue to re-post Polygraph essays because I think they are very professionally done for the most part and I know their fact-checking and editing is rigorous. They accurately expose the propaganda that is clear to the good-faith analyst at home and abroad. I praise Polygraph, for example, for calling out apologist Mark Bray's deceptive and contradictory statements about Anti-Fa (most news outlets never get past breathlessly quoting him as an "expert" although he is a zealous apologist). But then I question why the conclusion is that "there isn't any proof" that Anti-Fa is causing violence. There's plenty. For one, there's that same Portland police force and state government that occasionally prosecutes Anti-Fa, even if they let it off the hook on too many occasions. If you are enamored with Anti-Fa, I doubt you'll accept any evidence anyway so I won't spend time on it now.
It's hypocritical that so many accept Mark Bray as "having a beat" -- writing a great deal on one topic, from his perspective, which is pro Anti-Fa. In fact, I would have to agree with this take that journalists writing on Anti-Fa are "pro". Meanwhile, others who write on Anti-Fa from a critical perspective are not viewed as legitimate and vilified -- again, as the Bolshevik tactic described above.
As long as there are so few journalists willing to write critically and do unbiased research on Anti-Fa, I'll RT Andy Ngo. Sure, he is simply wrong about some of his claims which can be checked, e.g. that there were all these Anti-Fa in Portland who were school-teachers. Some were, but for college and not high school; and maybe a few were substitute teachers or something. But all too often he digs up a case of someone arrested for actual violence that can't be disputed. Is this story true? Well, I'd want to check it, calling the group, calling neighbours, calling the police, trying to get more to the story and find out what happened.
But what, this story isn't true? Likely it is true because the source is a police web site. But sure, check it as a real journalist should by determining what priorities the police had on a busy night which might make sense, how many officers to deploy, etc. How about this story? Well, I don't re-tweet snapshots of tweets generally; I try to see if that person really tweeted that. I totally get that the screenshot is tweeted because of the problem of how people at the other end of a "gotcha" might delete their tweets. I did see that this person did in fact tweet such a claim. Let's leave aside the question of whether this person in RL, distinct from their Twitter persona which is deliberately provocative, could actually biologically become pregnant or reach the Supreme Court rather than taking a bus to a neighbouring state where they could obtain an abortion, if that's the issue. Is it an incitement to imminent violence such that Twitter should remove it? They have 350 followers.
In any event, will mainstream or independent media follow up on such local violence indeed incited by in fact an organized group? Unlikely, for all kinds of reasons. Until it comes for them, as it has in a few cases.
Oh, you say Anti-Fa isn't organized and is fluid and has no address? That's completely ridiculous; of course it is organized and PS not so fluid and likely in fact undemocratic and authoritarian in its beliefs and practices, just like Anonymous or 4chan. Say, 4chan isn't so edgy and cool any more, is it? Type "Socialist Gun Club" into Twitter and give it a look-see. Oh, you say, how can you prove these lefty gun clubs are precisely Anti-Fa? There's a frank admission that John Brown is "Anti-Fa" based, as are others.
But look, this is not my cause on which I want to spend time, tracking down, checking, and publishing stories of Anti-Fa violence which I know to be the case from the research I've done so far. Because I think the FBI is correct, as well as the liberal media, that the problem of white supremacist extremism and terrorism, such as the person who shot dead Black 10 shoppers in Buffalo, indicted as having committed a hate crime and terrorism, are the far greater problem. If the media and the government want to spend their resources on a far greater problem that is growing worse, that's fine.
Will this remain the case? I don't know.
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