It
used to happen that, arriving at a party, a perfectly innocent
neighborhood party say, within five minutes I would be engaged with a
fascist. I suppose there's one at every party and I'm for some reason
a magnet and incapable of resisting baiting. This lack of judgement
has had me embroiled in many fruitless on and off-line discussions. I
eventually, however, recognize the futility and back away, always
striving to maintain respect and civility while engaged, sometimes
slipping. In a recent exchange I encountered the idea that the
“violent left” is preparing an insurrection to grab “illegitimate
power”. In the wake of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the murder
of journalists in Maryland, this seemed preposterous, especially when
used to characterize the whole “left” which apparently, from the
right's point of view, is anyone not a fascist. I recall the
provocateurs among anti-WTO demonstrators in 1999 Seattle, breaking
windows, throwing bricks etc; I always thought there were
under-cover police instigating at least some of that violence, a not
uncommon police tactic from the 60s. Once a fringe group starts
breaking windows the police can be turned loose with truncheons and
pepper spray. They don't always need an excuse of course.
So
in the mail comes recently a publication from the Southern Poverty
Law Center (splcenter.org/hatewatch), Hate and Extremism in 2018.
The 32 page tract is a selection from SPLC's Hatewatch blog
investigating the Proud Boys and other elements of the
radical right. Proud Boys is described as a collection of
militaristic hate groups that frequently join neo-Nazi and white
supremacist rallies. The Make America Great Again hats have a
definite presence. Members seem to specialize in knocking critics to
the ground and commencing the fine art of kicking them senseless.
They talk a lot about “freedom” but it's hard to square such
words with their actions. Maybe they mean freedom for them to
violate the liberty of others. And the highly charged word is
probably appropriated for its prestige and crudely associated to
legitimize their violence, if only in their minds. The Oath
Keepers militia planned training sessions for its members to use
“lethal force” at far-right rallies, based on this wild belief
that the “left” is planning violent revolution.
Organizers
invited attendees to bring weapons to Rallies in Berkley, California
and Portland, Oregon which were marked by assaults on
counter-protesters, both by the right and by police. The police seem
too often sympathetic to the right, ignoring their violence or
deeming both sides at fault (tRump's “there are good people on both
sides” remark comes to mind). The FBI seems more interested in
infiltrating and containing legitimate free speech activists like
Black Lives Matter than in right wing hate groups. Two white
neo-nazis, however, were convicted in separate cases in
Charlottesville for exercising their “freedom” to kick opponents
to and on the ground.
Returning
to my confusion around the right's paranoid claims of “left”
violence, the reports include mention of a small faction among
counter-protesters, antifa or antifascist, who do antagonize
and mirror the right in their eagerness for confrontation and combat.
Again, this is small, not characterizing the whole movement, and
subject to the same skepticism about police provocateurs as above.
There is no record of antifascist shooting or killing anyone in the
past several decades but the racist “alt-right” has been involved
in murdering 43 people and injuring 67 over the past four years
alone.
The
right “soldiers” I so foolishly attempted to engage remained
silent when I asked where they got their information. I provided my
sources - Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jane Meyer, Commondreams.org,
Fair.org, The Intercept, Democracynow.org etc; I did visit brietbart
and found it a total bore. Maybe it was a bad day but I saw none of
the outrageous stuff I expected. The SPLC report mentions right
websites and web presence via instagram, twitter, reddit and many
have been banned due to their hateful content. Censorship always
makes me uncomfortable but I have mixed feelings about this stuff.
Milo Yiannopoulous, a racist alt-right figure, was quoted that he was
looking forward to vigilantes gunning journalists down on sight. Two
days later we had a mass shooting, five dead, at a newspaper office
in Maryland. This disturbing report reminds me of the post World War
I. clashes in Germany where the right would provocatively march into
neighborhoods that supported unions and the left and terrorize the
population with assault, even killings. From a recent song on the
album Protection on the cut Random Rifle Fire, “There's
something awfully dreadful running through our age, lingering from
last century ferocious karmic rage.”
https://thinkspeak.bandcamp.com/track/random-rifle-fire
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