TruthDig: Chris Hedges: 'How ANTIFA Mirrors The Alt-Right'

Source:Truth Dig- talking about ANTIFA.

“(Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

Editor’s note: A Berkeley, Calif., rally held by a right-wing organization turned violent Sunday after arrival of an opposition group that carried an anarchist banner. // Also: Click here to see an interview in which Chris Hedges responds to criticism of the column below.

Behind the rhetoric of the “alt-right” about white nativism and protecting American traditions, history and Christian values is the lust for violence. Behind the rhetoric of antifa, the Black Bloc and the so-called “alt-left” about capitalism, racism, state repression and corporate power is the same lust for violence.

The two opposing groups, largely made up of people who have been cast aside by the cruelty of corporate capitalism, have embraced holy war. Their lives, battered by economic misery and social marginalization, have suddenly been filled with meaning. They hold themselves up as the vanguard of the oppressed. They arrogate to themselves the right to use force to silence those they define as the enemy. They sanctify anger. They are infected with the dark, adrenaline-driven urge for confrontation that arises among the disenfranchised when a democracy ceases to function. They are separated, as Sigmund Freud wrote of those who engage in fratricide, by the “narcissism of minor differences.” They mirror each other, not only ideologically but also physically—armed and dressed in black, the color of fascism and the color of death.

It was inevitable that we would reach this point. The corporate state has seized and corrupted all democratic institutions, including the two main political parties, to serve the interests of corporate power and maximize global corporate profits. There is no justice in the courts. There is no possibility for reform in the legislative bodies. The executive branch is a dysfunctional mess headed by a narcissistic kleptocrat, con artist and pathological liar. Money has replaced the vote. The consent of the governed is a joke. Our most basic constitutional rights, including the rights to privacy and due process, have been taken from us by judicial fiat. The economically marginalized, now a majority of the country, have been rendered invisible by a corporate media dominated by highly paid courtiers spewing out meaningless political and celebrity gossip and trivia as if it were news. The corporate state, unimpeded, is pillaging and looting the carcass of the country and government, along with the natural world, for the personal gain of the 1 percent. It daily locks away in cages the poor, especially poor people of color, discarding the vulnerable as human refuse.”

Source:TruthDig 

“How ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right’” 

Source:Jamarl Thomas- talking about ANTIFA.

From Jamarl Thomas

Dr. Martin L. King has a lot of beautiful and famous quotes as most of us know. And he has this one quote on violence that goes like this. "Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets greater toughness. Returning violence for for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that."

Dr. King's point on this is that if you fight violence with violence even if you're doing for a good cause like trying to stamp out bigots from a community, you're only going to get more violence in return. That violence will come back at you. Especially if you're fighting back with violence against violent terrorists like Neo-Nazis on the so-called Alt-Right.

I'm not a pacifist myself unlike Dr. King and believe there are times when violence is the only credible and workable option. Like when you're under physical attack yourself. Sure, you could wait until someone comes to rescue you and argue that if you physically fight back yourself you'l just receive more physical punishment from your attacker. Or you could take a stand physically and defend yourself to prevent future damage against yourself and end the attack on yourself altogether. I believe most Americans would choose the latter on that question.

But what the so-called anti-fascist radically socialist and even anarchist group known as ANTIFA is doing is not physically defending themselves. What they're doing is taking on these Neo-Nazis with violence even when they're not under physical assault themselves. In the name of drowning out hate speech and racism. Even if that means cutting off the free speech of other Americans, which is what the Alt-Right are. Un-American as far as their racist and fascist politics, but just as American as people who treat people as people and don't judge others by their race, ethnicity or gender. Because they share the same American citizenship as the non-haters.

When you're talking about ANTIFA, you're not talking about peace loving hippie Socialists from the 1960s. The political movement that Senator Bernie Sanders the only self-described Socialist in Congress represents today. ANTIFA represents the Che Guevara wing of the socialist movement in the country and around the world. The Marxist-Socialist wing that believes to achieve the Socialist Utopia that Socialists want you have to use revolutionary means and that includes violence. And destroying the people who are in power and keeping the liberal capitalist and liberal order in place.

The Communist Republic of Cuba wasn't established through democratic means. But through civil war. The authoritarian Batista Regime in Cuba, against the Fidel Castro-Guevara revolutionaries that wanted to throw the Batista's out-of-power and then establish a Marxist State in Cuba which is what they eventually did. Whatever you think of Occupy Wall Street from 2011-12, they represented the Bernie Sanders peace loving hippie Socialists. And weren't Marxist revolutionaries. Unlike ANTIFA today that feels the need to fight capitalism and Neo-Nazism with violence. 

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