I think it is a mistake to believe that there has been some sudden and sweeping upsurge of neo-Nazi organizing since Trump's election, which is how this situation has often been portrayed in the media... despite the fact that we have to take [the] growth [of extreme right-wing groups] seriously, we must also recognize that in a country of 323 million people, any movement that can only muster 500 adherents for a national convergence is a movement with an extremely limited operational capacity. If we don't pay attention to this fact, then the overwhelming media coverage these events have received may very well make us think that there is already a neo-Nazi around every corner, creating a sense of panic and paralysis that, at this point, is out of proportion to the dimensions of this particular problem.
[B]y overstating the threat of organized neo-Nazi violence we risk missing how the more mundane operations of a structural white supremacy have, since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, proliferated within the mainstream political parties.
Antifa may insist, in a way that amplifies the agita of the #Resistance, that there's a new variable in town, which does create an imminent fascist threat to the presumably non-fascist status quo: Donald Trump. He has emboldened white nationalism in his campaign, and threatens to enact various racist and retrograde policies. He will enable a resurgence of the explicitly racist and fascist right. So everybody who supports Trump or wears a MAGA hat is a target for assault.
By all means, let's confront Trump's horrible policies, and all newly-energized expressions of racism and fascism, with mass, militant demonstrations of our own, as was done in Boston. Outnumbering the right 10-to-1 is a clear political victory. Let's also recognize that Donald Trump has a small and shrinking core of support, that most people who voted for him are less-than-fascist, that he is increasingly despised, caged, and threatened by the ruling elites of both parties, and that the more he talks, the worse it gets for him and his most intransigent supporters.
Donald Trump's electoral victory doesn't signify resurgent fascism of ordinary Americans; it signifies their abysmal political confusion and their increasing and justified distrust of elite-managed politics, conservative and liberal. Trump is only the most obvious pimple, along with the raging acne of reactionary governors, state legislators, and potential post-impeachment presidents, that has erupted from the infectious brew of contemptuous elite disregard for masses of "flyover" deplorables and the relentless "Foxification" ideological campaign of right-wing media, brought to a head with a corrupt electoral system. Did Donald Trump create that problem? Is antifa helping to solve it?
People marching around with torches and swastikas, chanting "Blood and Soil!" and "Jews will not replace us!" will not get any significant support among the populace (or the ruling media and political elite, for that matter). People who get beaten while lying on the ground will. The only thing that could improve white nationalists' standing among the populace is to make them perceivable as victims of bullies.
That's why liberal media were initially favorable to antifa groups in Charlottesville--because the killing of Heather Heyer made the right the aggressors. But if antifa pursues its strategy, there is going to be a Charlottesville that goes the other way, with somebody on the "other" side getting seriously hurt, paralyzed, or killed.
And, if consistent, antifa doesn't care. If you're engaging in a process of seeking fights anywhere and everywhere, you must accept the near-inevitability that something like that is going to happen to a right-wing protestor (or to a bystander, or to someone trying to stop the fighting), and have concluded in advance both that such an outcome is ethically justified and that the likely political blowback is worth it. (Unless you just haven't thought about it at all.)
If you start a fight, you can't in good faith be surprised about your casualties, or pretend you didn't mean or aren't responsible for your opponents'. You can't feign surprise at the damage, both to persons and to the political calculus of sympathy that the fight you started caused.
In any situation, offensive tactics have to be based on a rigorous calculation of the balance of political and material/military forces, on preparation and training, on carefully choosing your battles (fighting only those you can win or must fight), and on the indispensable advice of a most astute analysts on such matters, Mike Tyson: "Everyone has a game plan until they get smacked in the face."
Excuse me if I don't think antifa is there yet.
It didn't take more than a week for the media and the elite's sympathy for the street-fighting "left" in Charlottesville to become denunciations of "left-wing domestic terrorism." They're preparing pre-emptively for their assault on any future left-wing militancy.
Let's not misjudge the strategic political situation. If we had a threatening left movement that had already built mass popular support, in a situation of revolutionary crisis, and we had to launch an offensive attack on the capitalist state and fascist attack dogs it was using to crush us, that would be another story. But we're not; we're in a situation where left and right groups are maneuvering to dislodge masses of people from identification with and submission to the "radical center," which maintains a strong ideological and political grip on the working class (i.e., everybody who doesn't have a decent life from capital income, who has to sell his/her labor-power to a capitalist every week to live at all).
It's certainly true that the smile has been wiped off the American state, The whole felicitous post-WWII construct of the liberal, democratic, capitalist but class-neutral, welfare state has reverted to its core class function, in ways that have become too visible to ignore. It has become all-too obvious that, as Etienne Balibar put it over thirty years ago, the modern capitalist state, ours included, is "expressly organized as the State of pre-emptive counter-revolution."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
5
4
4
