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Never underestimate 'There can't be any "members" of Antifa. It's just an idea, not an organization, bro.'
I get a distinct 'something is off' feeling every time I hear someone say that. I don't know why exactly but I'd like a name for it. Like when you hear something you know is wrong but also know that if you tried to explain why you'd be getting nowhere.
The top comment in /r/law on reddit: https://archive.is/FNOnK
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Because it looks like the person using it is creating a fig leaf of an argument so an allied group will never be held responsible.
It's an attempt at bullshit. It isn't really about truth but is just an attempt to convince (or, more likely, just deflect and waste time long enough to dissipate actionable outrage) so what's the point in trying to get into a factual debate about it?
The person has revealed themselves to be a partisan.
As a side note, that's one of the things I find really annoying about these Leftist activist types. For example, suppose they block a highway and get arrested and prosecuted for it. I would have a tiny bit of respect for them if they would own up to what they did, take their licks, and accept their sentence of 100 hours of community service or whatever. But instead, their MO is to spin, lie, etc., do whatever they can to avoid punishment for their wrongdoing.
What does your tiny bit of respect matter to them compared to not being punished by the laws they believe are unjust?
That's an interesting question and I think it touches on one of the core parts of the issue I was raising. So there are laws against blocking traffic; disrupting gatherings; arson; destroying people's property; etc. Do Leftists believe that these laws are unjust? I tend to doubt it. If someone destroyed their property; disrupted their gatherings; etc., they would freak out and demand that the offenders be punished. So what's really going on is that they simply believe they have carte blanche to break the law because in their self-serving judgment they are "punching nazis" or "fighting fascism" or whatever.
A point that MattyY makes is that acts of civil disobedience work because they play on existing faultlines and sympathies. Which is why stopping traffic for Gaza does nothing. It's just a cargo cult licensing their Main Character Syndrome.
That is why they should care, insofar as they care about their cause at all and it's not an excuse to impose their will: you don't need to earn omw_68's specific respect, but you probably need to earn it from some segment of society if you want to make sweeping changes to very big systems or policies.
I basically agree with this, although I would quibble with your use of the phrase "civil disobedience." To me, "civil disobedience" means that you (1) openly and notoriously disobey a rule which you genuinely believe is unjust; and (2) accept the consequences of breaking that rule as a way of making your point. (So for example, a black person intentionally sitting in the "whites only" section of a bus station.) Nobody who blocks traffic for Gaza is seriously claiming that the rules against blocking traffic are unjust. Moreover, instead of owning up to what they are doing, these people (typically) lie, cheat, and play games in order to avoid legal consequences.
I think that when you block traffic for Gaza (or some other cause), it's more akin to terrorism than civil disobedience. To be sure you are generally not killing or maiming people (although you might be if you end up impeding an ambulance) but you are still inconveniencing people and interfering with their legal rights, albeit in a minor way.
In another discussion, I called this "terrorism-lite"
But in any event, as mentioned above, I basically agree with you. For terrorism (or terrorism-lite) to be effective, there needs to be a minimum amount of sympathy in mainstream institutions such as the news media, college administrations, and so on. With Gaza, at least in the United States, there is some degree of sympathy, but there is also a lot of organized pro-Israel sentiment. So it's difficult to accomplish anything with terrorism-lite.
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Wrongdoing? What wrongdoing. They did no wrong. And besides, punishment would harm their enjoyment of those social acitivities. Taking punishment isn't part of the plan; punishment for socially just acitivities would be injustice, after all! If it can be avoided, then that is justice. And what do they care about your opinion, anyways? You're probably a fascist anyways, or at least a violently-silent bystander who refuses to take the correct side.
They're engaging in a socially accepted and promoted social activity (just not accepted by the wrong people whose opinions are wrong) with a thin veneer of sanctity-within-the-civil-religion, why ever from their own perspective would they want to take punishment for it?
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"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
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Just like the "youth club" one town over isn't an antifa cell, it just so happens to be staffed and frequented by people who organize questionably-legal political activities together while wearing antifa regalia, quoting antifa slogans and distributing antifa media.
It's a good thing we can just close our lying eyes and decide to stop seeing.
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"Antifa activists" is a parallel to "Environmental activists". You can't be a member of "Environmental" either, because it's just an idea, not an organization.
Nobody cares about that fine distinction for environmentalism, like when Sea Shepherd ships ram whalers or when Last Generation Canada members throw paint on museum pieces. Outsiders recognize that the disparate groups (and non-affiliated individuals) all share a common goal and philosophy, and treat them as a coherent entity. This is as it should be.
Antifa is the leftiest of the left wing, so its adherents use tactics like "[not] Fucking Tell[ing] Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand". 1984 may have overreached a bit when it said if you can't name something you can't think about it (hence the Party making Newspeak), but it sure does make it harder to legislate against something if you can't establish a definition first.
Why is it "as it should be" to look at environmentalists using low resolution? Surely there is a significant difference between a scientist studying climate change models who calls for using less fossil fuels, on the one hand, and Ted Kaczynski on the other. And plenty of people make the distinction, indeed it is unusual not to.
Notice that you yourself picked two particularly militant examples of environmentalists.
Even if you mean "nobody cares about that fine distinction for militant environmentalists", that is not true. Most people make a distinction between people who throw paint on museum pieces and Ted Kaczynski, and recognize that not only do their actions have different moral qualities, but they can also in no way be said to be part of the same organization. Indeed, since Kaczynski acted alone, his actions cannot be characterized as being the actions of any environmentalist association whatsoever.
To look at people who share common (or somewhat common) goals and philosophies as belonging to a coherent entity is the type of low resolution thinking that perhaps makes sense in the face of an existential threat, when there is no time to try to use higher resolution and to do so would decrease one's emotional willingness to fight, but even in that kind of a situation it would be just an expedient, not something that is good in itself.
I question your characterisation of Kaczynski as an environmentalist. I don't recall him mentioning climate change or acid rain even once in his manifesto. He was opposed to modernity primarily for what he saw as its deleterious effects on the human psyche, not for its impact on the environment.
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Unless you specifically mean Ted Kaczynski, and not violent eco-activists generally, this is complete nonsense, and of course people think they're a part of the same movement.
The reason Kaczynski doesn't fit is that he was following a different set of ideas than environmentalism, not because he was violent.
Even the militancy is hardly relevant. Few people bother drawing distinctions between violent and not violent Nazis, or violent and non-violent Jihadis.
Jihadis and Nazis, whether non-violent or violent, are pursuing evil aims. At least some environmentalists are pursuing good aims.
Bringing humanity to the light of Allah, doesn't sound evil in and of itself to me, and even a good leftist will find lots to agree with even in the OG Nazi party platform. So I don't see a reason to allow this kind of picking and choosing for one, but not the other.
I don't think this is the same kind of "picking and choosing". Sure, not all the aims of jihadis and Nazis are evil, but all jihadis and Nazis pursue at least some evil aims - whereas many (most?) environmentalists have wholly good aims. Thus any given jihadi or Nazi, even if they're non-violent, has some amount of evil intent, while the same is not true of a given non-violent environmentalist.
(And anyway, insofar as "bringing humanity to the light of Allah" is ultimately a euphemism for "enslaving humanity to the tyrannical will of a supernatural being" I would consider that an evil aim in itself, even before the specific of shariah law are taken into account.)
How do you know that every Nazi / Jihadi signs on to the evil parts as well?
That sounds like something only an evil person would say.
Also, in an attempt to prove that we shouldn't treat all environmentalists as evil, you just condemned not only every Muslim, but every religious person on the planet.
Not every religion teaches that humans should submit totally to the will of the divine in the way fundamentalist Islam teaches. Even among faiths whose teachings could be phrased this way, it is by no means a majority who hold that it is acceptable or desirable to force such submission at the point of a sword, or that people who won't convert should, all else being equal, be killed rather than allowed to live outside the faith, which I would define as the key beliefs that mark a "jihadi".
(I think it's, empirically, entirely possible to be a Muslim without being a jihadi, so I don't mean to be condemning "every Muslim" - though it does require taking certain liberties with the text of the Quran which I don't think any major Muslim authorities would publicly endorse.)
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The same people who say that, also say that "white supremacy" or "nazis" are a real threat to society, despite "white supremacy" also being "just an idea, not an organization," and also literally zero of the people they accuse of being "nazis" self-identify as such.
The term for this is "being disingenuous," aka "pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible"
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I mean, it isn't an organization the same way, say, the NAACP is, where there are local chapters and a national office and membership lists and a full-time staff. It's more like the Crips, where various local crews of a dozen guys will wear the colors but aren't beholden to any larger organization. This is assuming that people still identify as antifa and it isn't just an insult political opponents lob at people they don't like who presumably engage in certain practices.
Indeed, these people didn't identify as Antifa- IIRC, they identified as members of the john brown gun club, one of several groups that people refer to when they say 'antifa'.
Splitters!
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"Corruption" is just an idea too; that doesn't stop us from punishing those who advance its cause.
The difference is that corruption refers to a specific set of practices, many if which are illegal and most of which violate ethics rules. Antifa is a theoretical set of political opinions that can result in illegal activity, but the activit isn't antifa in and of itself, and holding certain opinions isn't illegal.
No, corruption is the idea that your personal goals are so important that you're willing to break the law to accomplish them. Antifa, therefore, is simply corruption by another name.
It isn't illegal to be a member of the Mafia either, but they're never punished for that; they're punished for the evil, corrupt actions that naturally arise from that idea taken to its logical conclusion.
I think this is an overly expansive definition.
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I'd say "betray your responsibilities", not "break the law". Not all corruption is illegal and not all premeditated crimes are corrupt.
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