It makes me sad that an institution I used to like and respect, reason.com, seems more and more often to subscribe to the standard (and, taken uncritically, untrue) set pieces of the standard American culture war. This one, in particular, that “antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical”, and also aliasing “antifa” and “blm” as coterminous. The truth is very different, but I fear that many in their libertaria…
How is reason.com being authoritarian here? How is antifa intimidating and attacking political dissenters not closer to a truer authoritarian accusation? I’m not sure where the “antifa is not violent” gaslighting is stemming from, but there’s a tremendous amount of YouTube footage that anyone can objectively discern from what a violent group of people looks like. The violence is not just them, it’s also right wing ag…
E.g. the original antifa was set up by the KPD (pre-war German communist party), but many modern antifa groups use logos that incorporates symbols that were used by the SPD to explicitly attack the KPD and Hitler (and Papen; who eventually demonstrated how dangerous he was by being the person who brought Hitler to power) who they saw as just as authoritarian as Hitler (with good reason - KPD were Stalinists). E.g. you might recognise the 3 arrows from this poster [1].
You'll find antifa groups coming out of groups with political ideologies that are close to mortal enemies. The only things they have in common is opposition to fascism and some general symbolism.
[1] https://antifacwb.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ka003265.jpg?w...