THE DIVIDED STATES OF WEIMAR AMERICA?

How The ‘Anti-Fascists’ Empower The Far-Right

The Rational Times
Aug 22, 2017 · 9 min read

In the early days of last month, as world leaders arrived in Hamburg, Germany, for the annual G20 summit, thousands of protesters took to the streets to express their concern over the capitalist, climate, globalisation policies being discussed.

Although most protesters were peaceful, such as the 76,000 people strong “Solidarity without Borders” march on July 8, there were multiple violent ones. According to CNN, 197 police officers were hurt and at least 83 people had been arrested by July 7. Furthermore, several cars had been set ablaze by the alt-left rioters, who had created a ‘black bloc’ in the city.

Most people have attributed the violence and the ‘black bloc’ to have been caused by the loosely defined far-left ‘Antifaschistische Aktion’ movement, commonly abbreviated to ‘Antifa’ or the ‘AFA’. A group, which originated firstly as a counter-movement against the rising National Socialist German Workers’ Party (N.S.D.A.P. / Nazi Party) during the 1930s, which operates in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Videos by Hamburg residents and visitors showed black-clad disguised black-bloc protesters loot supermarkets, break windows, enkindle fires, etc.

Charlottesville:

Several weeks later, an alt-right white nationalist rally was held in the city of Charlottesville, VA, USA. The protest, called the ‘Unite the Right’ rally, which was attended by notorious alt-right personalities such as Richard B. Spencer, Christopher Cantwell, and former Grand Wizard of the ‘Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’ (a KKK faction) David Duke, stated its intent as being to oppose the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Emancipation Park, Charlottesville.

The day prior, Friday, August 11, some 100 white nationalist protesters marched to the University of Virginia campus carrying tiki torches and chanting Nazi slogans such as ‘Sieg heil’ and ‘blood and soil’. A scene reminiscent of the May 10, 1933, book burning. Whereof thousands of students believing the Nazi message paraded to a boulevard called Unter den Linden in Berlin, where they burned books by among other Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann, many of whom were Jewish, in a major bonfire.

Photo: Andy Campbell

Some ‘Unite the Right’ attendees were so open with their beliefs that they carried the infamous Hakenkreuzflagge, which was the principal symbol for N.S.D.A.P. and Nazi Germany.

The biggest attention grabber of this event, though, was when at approximately 1:45 p.m., a grey 2012 Dodge Challenger ploughed into a crowd of anti-’Unite the Right’ protesters killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. The incident, which seemingly used almost ISIL-inspired tactics, not only led to the tragic and horrific death of a young beautiful woman and the driver, 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., to be charged with second-degree murder, as well as other felonies, but also sparked a nation wide debate regarding the White House’s response.

First, President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisor talked out about it on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’:

“It’s heartbreaking, as a soldier, what you see in our military is men and women from all walks of life, all different backgrounds come together, come together on their common commitment to their country and each other. And then you see them in combat fighting courageously for our nation and values. Everybody bleeds the same color, and we’re bound together as soldiers as we ought to be as a nation; bound together by mutual respect and common commitment to our values … What terrorism is is the use of violence to incite terror and fear, and of course it was terrorism.”

Then, President Trump made several, all heavily criticized and praised statements. First, during a speech in New Jersey on August 12, he said:

“We all must be united and condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Let’s come together as one! We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

After the backlash over Trump’s seemingly avoidance of addressing the white nationalist alt-right as primary focus or at all by name, the White House issued a statement regarding the critizism:

“The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.”

But that did not stop the rampant critizism of the President’s apparent choice to not name the far-right activists, by even members of his own political party, like Marco Rubio and Cory Gardner.

On August 14, the President said:

“To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered. … Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

Alt-righter and Charlottesville organizer Richard Spencer dismissed Trump’s statement as “hollow”, “nonsense”. Others criticized it for coming too late.

Nonetheless, the most interesting statement came on August 15, when Trump appeared before media at Trump Tower after giving remarks on the state of the country’s infrastructure, as well as other issues.

He defended his earlier statements of that there was “blame on both sides,” slammed the removal of Confederate memorials as an attempt to “change history”, and then said:

“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now. You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.”

The particular word he used to describe the “violent” counter-protesters on “the other side” was “alt-left.” A quite recent phrase which became widely used after Fox News’ Sean Hannity started using it, which is used to describe the minority of regressive far-leftists.

Whether or not the alt-left can be said to have played a large part in Charlottesville riots and attack. There is no doubt that the “alt-left” is a major problem we have to deal with.

Alt-left:

The most common, and the one I am interested in, display of the alt-left today is the so called Anti-Fascist movement — most commonly called Antifa, or AFA.

As explained by numerous experts, the so-called anti-fascist movement is largely composed of communists and anarchists. Which is shown in that the flag in the picture below (although it is possible that these flags might symbolise anarcho-syndicalism, even though the red and black should exchange places for it to be an anarcho-syndicalist flag).

An Antifa, anarcho-communist flag. Source

It all started with that during the early stages of the Nazi regime, as well as the post-war era, groups of anti-Nazis launched so-called “Antifaschistische Ausschüsse,” “Antifaschistische Kommittees,” or the more famous “Antifaschistische Aktion” — abbreviated “Antifa”.

Photo from the KPD’s 1932 Antifaschistische Aktion conference. Source

The book ‘Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944–1945’, by Gareth Pritchard, explains the origins of the movement well:

“When the Nazis took power [in Germany], in January 1933, they immediately unleashed a ferocious wave of terror against the organisations of the German working class, in particular the Communist Party (KPD), the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the trade unions. Tens of thousands of activists and functionaries were arrested, incarcerated, beaten, tortured, and in many cases killed.

“Despite the heroic resistance of many thousands of working-class activists, it soon became impossible to sustain any kind of organised underground resistance to the Nazi regime. There remained, however, informal networks of former Socialists and Communists that were based on long-standing personal connections. These ‘circles of friends’ rarely participated in acts of open resistance, but rather confined themselves to listening to foreign radio, discussing the political situation and providing assistance to the families of persecuted comrades as well as foreign slave workers and prisoners of war.

“In many places it was only after the arrival of Allied troops that informal networks of antifascists crystallised into antifascist committees. When troops of the Red Army arrived in Chemnitz, on 8 May, a spontaneous crowd of antifascists turned out to greet them. The antifascists then retired to a local pub in order to found an Antifa.”

It is important to remember, however, that the communists who became antifascists had fought against NSDAP’s S.A. brownshirts in the pre-war era too. For example, author Eric D. Weitz writes in his book, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, when discussing Berlin in the aftermath of World War I:

“Communists dominated the area. By the time of the Depression, Nazis and Communists battled for control of pubs, courtyards, and streetcorners.”

“Three times in the first phase of the [Weimar] Republic Communists were involved in armed uprisings against the state — January 1919, March 1921, and October 1923 … All these efforts failed.”

Nevertheless, following the collapse of Axis powers in 1945, the Antifas virtually disappeared from German politics for nearly four decades. Most people were happy with the new leadership — especially the communists in East.

The new face of the movement, as Loren Balhorn, member of the German democratic-socialist, left-wing populist political party Die Linke, explains, “has no practical historical connection to the movement from which it takes its name.”

“In some ways, these groups were the inverse of their progenitors: rather than a broad alliance of socialists and progressives from separate, ideologically distinct currents, they were single-issue groups, expressly radical but vague and deeply heterogeneous in their specifics,” Balhorn argues, “Rather than a point of departure for young activists into a broader socialist and political left, Antifas outside of major cities are often the only political game in town, and function as a counter-cultural space with their own fashion styles, music scenes, and slang, rather than a component of a rooted mass movement within wider society.”

And yet, especially as a consequence of the Donald Trump phenomenon, the world, more specifically the United States, has seen the so-called Antifa movement’s resurgence.

However, today’s Antifa isn’t fighting a rising National Socialist threat as their predecessors did. Modern day Antifa focuses on violently protesting controversial political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, a famous homosexual partly-Jewish Trump supporter; stabbing an innocent man for apparently having a neo-Nazi haircut, and fear-monger forward a message of intellectual segregation.

Noam Chomsky, the sometimes called ‘father of modern linguistics’ and former Bernie Sanders supporter, threw in his two cents to this argument a few days ago.

“As for Antifa, it’s a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were,” Chomsky said, according to the Washington Examiner. “It’s a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant.”

What Antifa “do is often wrong in principle — like blocking talks — and [the movement] is generally self-destructive.”

“When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it’s the toughest and most brutal who win — and we know who that is,” Chomsky said, a professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s quite apart from the opportunity costs — the loss of the opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism.”

In other words, when the far-left show themselves as this violent, people will think for themselves; are the alt-right guys correct? This will only further escalate the tensions between the two violent sides.

Because of how Antifa members have behaved, as of when this is being written, 247,000 people have signed a White House petition to formally recognize the movement as a terrorist organization. 147,000 more than what is needed to receive a White House response. One which we are currently waiting for.

Conclusion:

Following the Charlottesville riots and homicide, many people feared a second American civil war or something reminiscent of what happened to Germany.

In reality, this is all just fear-mongering from the far-left. The problem, as President Trump described it, is the extremes on both sides — two fringe minority groups on the different sides of the political spectrum fighting each other.

We do not live in 1933s Germany when 40,000 people gather to burn books and listened to a Joseph Goebbels speech. Neither is a new Vladimir Lenin on his way to storm the White House as the famous communist revolutionary did with the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.

What we need to do is to stand up, show both sides that America does not stand for racism, classism, or any discrimination of any kind. The United States was the one who stood for freedom during the World Wars and the Cold War, not the other way around. Show that freedom of speech, freedom of the press, that America will stand strong no matter who are standing in its way.

And not through violence, not through hate, but through civil discourse and discussion. We have already seen what one black man accomplished by just befriending and talking to a group of white supremacists.

Now it is your time to help. Before it is too late.

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The Rational Times

Written by

Independent news bureau, founded in the aftermath of the 2015 migrant crisis in Sweden. Reports appears on social media and sometimes voiceofeurope.com …

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