Antifa's influence may be exaggerated, but it's not a mythical Snuffleupagus, either, as they showed in attacking reporter Maranie Staab from our partner News2Share this past weekend.
My go to comment about all things Antifa: You're wearing black shirts and using street violence against your political opponents. Are you sure you're the anti-Fascists?
They're more numerous than one would think and fairly organized though not in any sort of top down vertical way. I went to a few protests in Raleigh, NC simply observing and was shoved immediately for simply standing on the side of the street, in my pink bicycling spandex, and filming their march. I was called a racist white piece of shit, a fascist, a gentrifier etc. The local news affiliate interviewed me due to the physical altercation and I stupidly gave them my name. Since I own my home antifa used my name from WRAL and found my home vandalizing it with the words "cracker" "fuck you die whitey" and "racist narc."
I never did anything to these people other than show up to their protests to observe them in objective manner as our local news didn't seem to be as critical of their tactics often leaving out their more violent acts.
At one point a photog from the N&O the major paper yelled at me, "you're making our job hard" I guess my mere presence causing such angst and vitriol amongst the protestors wasn't the narrative they wanted.
I have voted D my whole life, but the cognitive dissonance surrounding the left and Antifa is astonishing. Extremism of any type, left or right, is dangerous, but from the evidence I've seen leftist extremism is currently causing more damage to society.
Respect Matt, but his fair and balanced schtick gets old. ANTIFA groups are not just "not insignificant." They played a major part in the most protracted, most socially and economically damaging riots in our history.
I saw it in the 60's. A certain percentage of "protesters" were simply angry sociopaths who gravitated to whatever scene would give them cover to act out their violent impulses. Nothing they say will ever make sense because it's not about ideas but rather raw rage and a mental/emotional disconnect from society and reality.
"Protesters" don't hide their faces. They instead march loudly but peacefully during the daylight, don't generally advocate violence, and welcome the press to cover their activities in order to spread their message.
"Terrorists" hide their faces and prefer to operate under the cover of darkness, commit violent personal assault using the most cowardly and underhanded weapons and methodologies -- including, and especially, against anyone who attempts to film their atrocities. Their "message" is conveyed in the piles of rubble and bodies they leave behind.
And sorry Matt, Trump is absolutely correct. Antifa is an organized and funded nationwide domestic terrorist group. The FBI, etc. has simply chosen to ignore this fact and not only target but infiltrate and subversively support and entice right wing groups. Unfortunately they couldn't find any collective right wing plot behind January 6th.
My brother has lived in Portland, Oregon for more than 25 years. Antifa existed long before BLM or any of the other social movements that have popped up in the last few year, and they've been causing havoc and showing up for events that lead to violence and destruction. My brother would tell me about a riot at a nearby park, which would lead to a march through the city and vandalism of local merchant's places of business. The thing that frustrated him the most, was the lack of coverage by local news organizations, or worse, reporting that the the march's were largely peaceful. Antifa's violence has only escalated since George Floyd's death with no end in site. A good friend of my brother's owned two restaurants in Portland. After Oregon shut down due to the pandemic, his restaurants were struggling to keep afloat. Antifa ended that dream when they came through on one of their "peaceful marches" (at least that's what many news organizations were calling it) and destroyed his restaurant. Needless to say, those restaurants are gone for good. It's a bit of an irony that so many small business owners are gone due to some of the tactics employed by Antifa, but the big corporate businesses had the finances to overcome those riot and in some cases flourish without the competition.
My brother and several of his friends in the Portland area have been taking quick trips to places like Idaho, N. Carolina and Tennessee looking to relocate. It's truly sad to see what happened to such a beautiful city.
Prelude to civil war. There are real things, a pervasive system of inequality that cannot be addressed, cannot be changed. AirBnB's war chest to fight 100,000 cities simultaneously in court, while continuously losing money being a major cause of the housing crisis propagating across the Western World. Blackstone buying up real estate only to hold it, empty, so that its portfolio will rise, also causing the housing crisis. Good-hair politicians like Newsom snuffling up to money without regard to the monstrous inhuman effects of certain parts of the Silicon Valley money vacuum machine.
We have passed a tipping point on climate. 118 degress in the high arctic means massive methan surge. This is the predicted self-reinforcing runaway train that is arrive much earlier than anyone predicted. The younger generation is crushed by student loan debt that gets larger and larger as they pay it. Everyone, left and right, sees liars, money grubbing sociopaths and hopelessness. Some react with denial. Some react with despair. A very few, like myself, have the intellectual tools to try to shift things and show people what we must do to deal with it.
We spent trillions on a war for no visible object, with no visible outcome except worsening everything. Stupidity walks the halls of power, arm in arm with decrepit venality, hollowing out the middle and working class for profit.
This frustration, combined with young men wanting to have an excuse to fight, generates this sort of thing. No, @Matt Taibbi, neither side trusts the media, and why should they? That media lies about everything. That media says they don't exist. That's why you, @Matt Taibbi, have a following. You aren't a liar, and you aren't a faithless parrot of party lines, or corporate drivel.
Antifa is mostly wrong-headed, but it is understandable. Equally so are the Proud Boys. They also don't trust the media, and again, @Matt Taibbi, why should they? Those out there on the street are also young men who want to have an excuse to fight. They have found a cause.
So call this what it is. These are seeds of civil war. They are small, they can be averted. But that is what they are. Both sides (these are minor in terms of extremism) are spoiling for a fight.
You, @Matt Taibbi, need to spend more time understanding them and understanding the Proud Boys and what motivates these people. It's like the mask rebellion. It's trivially easy to call the names. It's a stupid man's game to gasp and say it's awful and wring your hands. But the mask rebellion was a rebellion against the economic oppression of lockdowns. While the computer jobs class got an improved life working from home, the working class got shoved into poverty. They aren't intellectual enough to be able to enunciate all that clearly. But you are.
Think more @Matt Taibbi. Don't play the stupid man's game because that greases the road to civil war.
Matt, it is not atrocious behavior, it is criminal behavior which should be prosecuted. As should the attacks on Andy Ngo. He used to cover these demonstrations but it is too dangerous for him.
Antifa are primarily upper-middle class white kids who are angry at their lot in their world, probably hate their fathers, and are looking for a reason to belong. Their movement has little to do with with "fighting fascism". If it did, they should probably decamp from Portland and head to China, where they are actually putting people into concentration camps.
But they won't, because fighting actual oppression is dangerous and hard, and usually comes with terrible 5G service for your iPhone. So in the meantime, they will co-opt every and all protest movements for their own critique against capitalism, America, and the emptiness in their lives.
I'd take exception to the comment that Antifa is not dangerous. I'd say 100+ straight days and nights of violence in Portland last year by Antifa and BLM would put them in the camp of dangerous. They are also heavily involved in the tragedy that is now Seattle, Oakland, LA and others. They value violence and excuse themselves because their left wing cause is just. If you don't take that threat seriously, then you haven't spent much time out west.
Antifa has taken advantage of the press's anti Trump bias to operate comfortably as quasi terrorists combined with a dash of street punk. They need a significant beatdown. Until that happens this kind of stuff will keep occurring.
Matt, this reads like you just woke up from a protracted progressive slumber. Antifa isn't really progressive after all? The mainstream media isn't covering this issue fairly? Shocking!! Where's the Marquess de Queensbury to organize riots fairly? How about doing a DEEP dive on Antifa?
There's nothing "progressive" about these street criminals. They profess anarchy as a creed while their "anti-fascist" credentials are made more ridiculous with each passing incident in which they terrorize the Portland streets. They are a disgrace to our city and especially to our incompetent mayor and city council who either overlook or justify their violence with the typical racial memes. Meanwhile in what used to be a reasonable and fairly calm urban center, citizens are now hiring private security to patrol their streets since the police are entirely undermanned and not answering calls for "common" crimes. Enough was enough a year ago in Portland but I'm glad Matt that you're adding your voice.
My go to comment about all things Antifa: You're wearing black shirts and using street violence against your political opponents. Are you sure you're the anti-Fascists?
They're more numerous than one would think and fairly organized though not in any sort of top down vertical way. I went to a few protests in Raleigh, NC simply observing and was shoved immediately for simply standing on the side of the street, in my pink bicycling spandex, and filming their march. I was called a racist white piece of shit, a fascist, a gentrifier etc. The local news affiliate interviewed me due to the physical altercation and I stupidly gave them my name. Since I own my home antifa used my name from WRAL and found my home vandalizing it with the words "cracker" "fuck you die whitey" and "racist narc."
I never did anything to these people other than show up to their protests to observe them in objective manner as our local news didn't seem to be as critical of their tactics often leaving out their more violent acts.
At one point a photog from the N&O the major paper yelled at me, "you're making our job hard" I guess my mere presence causing such angst and vitriol amongst the protestors wasn't the narrative they wanted.
I have voted D my whole life, but the cognitive dissonance surrounding the left and Antifa is astonishing. Extremism of any type, left or right, is dangerous, but from the evidence I've seen leftist extremism is currently causing more damage to society.
Respect Matt, but his fair and balanced schtick gets old. ANTIFA groups are not just "not insignificant." They played a major part in the most protracted, most socially and economically damaging riots in our history.
I saw it in the 60's. A certain percentage of "protesters" were simply angry sociopaths who gravitated to whatever scene would give them cover to act out their violent impulses. Nothing they say will ever make sense because it's not about ideas but rather raw rage and a mental/emotional disconnect from society and reality.
I've been told that in Italy there are two kinds of fascists 1) fascists and 2) anti-fascists.
"Protesters" don't hide their faces. They instead march loudly but peacefully during the daylight, don't generally advocate violence, and welcome the press to cover their activities in order to spread their message.
"Terrorists" hide their faces and prefer to operate under the cover of darkness, commit violent personal assault using the most cowardly and underhanded weapons and methodologies -- including, and especially, against anyone who attempts to film their atrocities. Their "message" is conveyed in the piles of rubble and bodies they leave behind.
And sorry Matt, Trump is absolutely correct. Antifa is an organized and funded nationwide domestic terrorist group. The FBI, etc. has simply chosen to ignore this fact and not only target but infiltrate and subversively support and entice right wing groups. Unfortunately they couldn't find any collective right wing plot behind January 6th.
Seems to me that they've been doing stuff like this to Andy Ngo for years. How is this news?
My brother has lived in Portland, Oregon for more than 25 years. Antifa existed long before BLM or any of the other social movements that have popped up in the last few year, and they've been causing havoc and showing up for events that lead to violence and destruction. My brother would tell me about a riot at a nearby park, which would lead to a march through the city and vandalism of local merchant's places of business. The thing that frustrated him the most, was the lack of coverage by local news organizations, or worse, reporting that the the march's were largely peaceful. Antifa's violence has only escalated since George Floyd's death with no end in site. A good friend of my brother's owned two restaurants in Portland. After Oregon shut down due to the pandemic, his restaurants were struggling to keep afloat. Antifa ended that dream when they came through on one of their "peaceful marches" (at least that's what many news organizations were calling it) and destroyed his restaurant. Needless to say, those restaurants are gone for good. It's a bit of an irony that so many small business owners are gone due to some of the tactics employed by Antifa, but the big corporate businesses had the finances to overcome those riot and in some cases flourish without the competition.
My brother and several of his friends in the Portland area have been taking quick trips to places like Idaho, N. Carolina and Tennessee looking to relocate. It's truly sad to see what happened to such a beautiful city.
Prelude to civil war. There are real things, a pervasive system of inequality that cannot be addressed, cannot be changed. AirBnB's war chest to fight 100,000 cities simultaneously in court, while continuously losing money being a major cause of the housing crisis propagating across the Western World. Blackstone buying up real estate only to hold it, empty, so that its portfolio will rise, also causing the housing crisis. Good-hair politicians like Newsom snuffling up to money without regard to the monstrous inhuman effects of certain parts of the Silicon Valley money vacuum machine.
We have passed a tipping point on climate. 118 degress in the high arctic means massive methan surge. This is the predicted self-reinforcing runaway train that is arrive much earlier than anyone predicted. The younger generation is crushed by student loan debt that gets larger and larger as they pay it. Everyone, left and right, sees liars, money grubbing sociopaths and hopelessness. Some react with denial. Some react with despair. A very few, like myself, have the intellectual tools to try to shift things and show people what we must do to deal with it.
We spent trillions on a war for no visible object, with no visible outcome except worsening everything. Stupidity walks the halls of power, arm in arm with decrepit venality, hollowing out the middle and working class for profit.
This frustration, combined with young men wanting to have an excuse to fight, generates this sort of thing. No, @Matt Taibbi, neither side trusts the media, and why should they? That media lies about everything. That media says they don't exist. That's why you, @Matt Taibbi, have a following. You aren't a liar, and you aren't a faithless parrot of party lines, or corporate drivel.
Antifa is mostly wrong-headed, but it is understandable. Equally so are the Proud Boys. They also don't trust the media, and again, @Matt Taibbi, why should they? Those out there on the street are also young men who want to have an excuse to fight. They have found a cause.
So call this what it is. These are seeds of civil war. They are small, they can be averted. But that is what they are. Both sides (these are minor in terms of extremism) are spoiling for a fight.
You, @Matt Taibbi, need to spend more time understanding them and understanding the Proud Boys and what motivates these people. It's like the mask rebellion. It's trivially easy to call the names. It's a stupid man's game to gasp and say it's awful and wring your hands. But the mask rebellion was a rebellion against the economic oppression of lockdowns. While the computer jobs class got an improved life working from home, the working class got shoved into poverty. They aren't intellectual enough to be able to enunciate all that clearly. But you are.
Think more @Matt Taibbi. Don't play the stupid man's game because that greases the road to civil war.
Matt, it is not atrocious behavior, it is criminal behavior which should be prosecuted. As should the attacks on Andy Ngo. He used to cover these demonstrations but it is too dangerous for him.
Antifa are primarily upper-middle class white kids who are angry at their lot in their world, probably hate their fathers, and are looking for a reason to belong. Their movement has little to do with with "fighting fascism". If it did, they should probably decamp from Portland and head to China, where they are actually putting people into concentration camps.
But they won't, because fighting actual oppression is dangerous and hard, and usually comes with terrible 5G service for your iPhone. So in the meantime, they will co-opt every and all protest movements for their own critique against capitalism, America, and the emptiness in their lives.
I'd take exception to the comment that Antifa is not dangerous. I'd say 100+ straight days and nights of violence in Portland last year by Antifa and BLM would put them in the camp of dangerous. They are also heavily involved in the tragedy that is now Seattle, Oakland, LA and others. They value violence and excuse themselves because their left wing cause is just. If you don't take that threat seriously, then you haven't spent much time out west.
Annoying and ludicrous they call themselves “antifa”. They seem to easily appropriate fascist techniques.
Antifa has taken advantage of the press's anti Trump bias to operate comfortably as quasi terrorists combined with a dash of street punk. They need a significant beatdown. Until that happens this kind of stuff will keep occurring.
Matt, this reads like you just woke up from a protracted progressive slumber. Antifa isn't really progressive after all? The mainstream media isn't covering this issue fairly? Shocking!! Where's the Marquess de Queensbury to organize riots fairly? How about doing a DEEP dive on Antifa?
There's nothing "progressive" about these street criminals. They profess anarchy as a creed while their "anti-fascist" credentials are made more ridiculous with each passing incident in which they terrorize the Portland streets. They are a disgrace to our city and especially to our incompetent mayor and city council who either overlook or justify their violence with the typical racial memes. Meanwhile in what used to be a reasonable and fairly calm urban center, citizens are now hiring private security to patrol their streets since the police are entirely undermanned and not answering calls for "common" crimes. Enough was enough a year ago in Portland but I'm glad Matt that you're adding your voice.