3 ms·

Antifa doesn't really exist? Please explain people waving antifa flags, wearing antifa badges / clothing, putting antifa in their social media profiles? With th

Antifa doesn't really exist? Please explain people waving antifa flags, wearing antifa badges / clothing, putting antifa in their social media profiles? With this kind of logic, no terrorist group really exists.

buttercraft 1mo ago
There was a pride festival recently during which people were wearing rainbow clothing and waving flags. Do you think all of those people are part of an organization with leaders and "cells" or whatever? Or, maybe, they were all just expressing the same sentiment and using flags and colors and badges to do it?
ranger_danger 1mo ago
I think they mean it is not an "organization" in the sense that there is no structure or hierarchy, no boss, no headquarters etc. They might as well be called "Anonymous".
- tinfoilhatter 1mo ago
  Okay - but Antifa is still a thing, it exists. There are antifa telegram groups, there were people that identified as being antifa who came together and attacked immigration and customs enforcement officers and are in prison for it. The statement that antifa doesn't exist is not the same statement as antifa is not a hierarchal or centralized organization. Also, just FYI, one of the more prominent early members of the hacker collective anonymous was a federal informant named Aubrey Cottle (aka Kirtaner) who was a long-time Something Awful forum member with a very sordid past. Anonymous really wasn't that anonymous - it was full of feds and essentially a psyop.
  - scarecrowbob 1mo ago
    What you're missing is that while it's certainly true that there are plenty of small groups working from the antifacist position, the claim isn't simply that these groups exits- the claim (by the US gov) is that these groups are organized and funded in a top-down manner. Hence the "puppet master" style operations that they so hilariously failed at running against these groups. The idea that they can find the folks organizing and funding these "cells" is a big part of the US gov's premise on how it is going to "fight" these "cells". It's not stated as explicitly as that, so it's not surprising that folks don't pick up on that distinction between "distributed groups who agree on principle but don't have any material connections" and "top down, hierarchical structures funded by singlular sources". But the folks running the US gov don't even see the folks who disagree with them as human, much less as having a legible and understandable grievance. So it's not surprising to me that they just project their own authoritarian and top-down organizational preferences onto other groups of humans doing stuff. So sure, "antifa" exists. But it's categorically different than how the US government is trying to say it exists, and that's an important distinction.
  - ranger_danger 1mo ago
    Yes, when someone says something "doesn't exist", that doesn't automatically mean "in all conceivably possible ways". Different people have different perspectives and context in their mind when they say things like that, so we have to be careful in how we interpret their words as they don't always mean them as literally as others might assume... language is hard. Sometimes it helps to ask clarifying questions like "what do you mean they don't exist?" instead of assuming their perspective is the same as yours, and then sending a reply that doesn't make sense... that's a very easy way to start an argument.
    - tinfoilhatter 1mo ago
      Or they could take the effort to communicate more clearly, and choose words that accurately articulate what they are attempting to convey.
      - ranger_danger 1mo ago
        Sure, they could, but not everyone feels the need, or has the foresight or intelligence, to be so careful and articulating in their speech with every sentence they speak. But instead of unprofessional and rude comments like the equivalent of "people should just be smarter"... instead we can either educate people on how to communicate more clearly, or simply ask follow-up questions without resorting to attacks or assumptions.
        tinfoilhatter 1mo ago
        I didn't attack anyone - I simply replied that if we follow their logic to its conclusion, no terrorist group really exists. Trying to educate anyone in anything on this website is a hopeless cause. Typing anything that contradicts a popularly held belief, even when true, earns downvotes into oblivion. People on this platform don't want to learn anything - people want to prop up the status quo, control narratives and further enlarge their already giant egos.

buttercraft 1mo ago

There was a pride festival recently during which people were wearing rainbow clothing and waving flags. Do you think all of those people are part of an organization with leaders and "cells" or whatever? Or, maybe, they were all just expressing the same sentiment and using flags and colors and badges to do it?

ranger_danger 1mo ago

I think they mean it is not an "organization" in the sense that there is no structure or hierarchy, no boss, no headquarters etc. They might as well be called "Anonymous".

tinfoilhatter 1mo ago
Okay - but Antifa is still a thing, it exists. There are antifa telegram groups, there were people that identified as being antifa who came together and attacked immigration and customs enforcement officers and are in prison for it. The statement that antifa doesn't exist is not the same statement as antifa is not a hierarchal or centralized organization. Also, just FYI, one of the more prominent early members of the hacker collective anonymous was a federal informant named Aubrey Cottle (aka Kirtaner) who was a long-time Something Awful forum member with a very sordid past. Anonymous really wasn't that anonymous - it was full of feds and essentially a psyop.
- scarecrowbob 1mo ago
  What you're missing is that while it's certainly true that there are plenty of small groups working from the antifacist position, the claim isn't simply that these groups exits- the claim (by the US gov) is that these groups are organized and funded in a top-down manner. Hence the "puppet master" style operations that they so hilariously failed at running against these groups. The idea that they can find the folks organizing and funding these "cells" is a big part of the US gov's premise on how it is going to "fight" these "cells". It's not stated as explicitly as that, so it's not surprising that folks don't pick up on that distinction between "distributed groups who agree on principle but don't have any material connections" and "top down, hierarchical structures funded by singlular sources". But the folks running the US gov don't even see the folks who disagree with them as human, much less as having a legible and understandable grievance. So it's not surprising to me that they just project their own authoritarian and top-down organizational preferences onto other groups of humans doing stuff. So sure, "antifa" exists. But it's categorically different than how the US government is trying to say it exists, and that's an important distinction.
- ranger_danger 1mo ago
  Yes, when someone says something "doesn't exist", that doesn't automatically mean "in all conceivably possible ways". Different people have different perspectives and context in their mind when they say things like that, so we have to be careful in how we interpret their words as they don't always mean them as literally as others might assume... language is hard. Sometimes it helps to ask clarifying questions like "what do you mean they don't exist?" instead of assuming their perspective is the same as yours, and then sending a reply that doesn't make sense... that's a very easy way to start an argument.
  - tinfoilhatter 1mo ago
    Or they could take the effort to communicate more clearly, and choose words that accurately articulate what they are attempting to convey.
    - ranger_danger 1mo ago
      Sure, they could, but not everyone feels the need, or has the foresight or intelligence, to be so careful and articulating in their speech with every sentence they speak. But instead of unprofessional and rude comments like the equivalent of "people should just be smarter"... instead we can either educate people on how to communicate more clearly, or simply ask follow-up questions without resorting to attacks or assumptions.
      - tinfoilhatter 1mo ago
        I didn't attack anyone - I simply replied that if we follow their logic to its conclusion, no terrorist group really exists. Trying to educate anyone in anything on this website is a hopeless cause. Typing anything that contradicts a popularly held belief, even when true, earns downvotes into oblivion. People on this platform don't want to learn anything - people want to prop up the status quo, control narratives and further enlarge their already giant egos.