AntiFa ate my baby: Today in Tweets

I just don’t think it’s the ideal tactic.

Along with worrying about optics constantly, we need to be worried about whether our tactics are not just acceptable or even good, but whether they are literally ideal.

Look here, Leo, you care so much about optics, but “good optics” is not the actual goal. No Nazis in my backyard and yours is the goal. Whatever achieves or works toward that goal is a positive thing.

Obsessing about optics is just a form of respectability politics. What you are asking for is for the oppressed and allies of the oppressed to act respectably because white people with delicate feelings need to be gently persuaded that minority groups are nonthreatening, and then someday those groups will be generously granted the right to live normally. This doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It serves the interests of emotional white people who don’t want to have to think very hard about how life isn’t peachy-keen for everyone, and serves nobody else. That magical time when disadvantaged groups are lifted up by privileged white people as a reward for being so quiet and meek never fucking happens.

“Allies” who insist on respectability politics are the worst kind of people, so congratulations on being that person, I guess?

@Pee Vee
Going out there with the active intent of using force is a tactic that’s being advocated, that’s the point here. Given Dali has yet to specify precisely how much force is acceptable, or whether that matters, I’m not sure if bike locks are in or out.

If people weren’t advocating going out intending to beat up Nazis/the Alt-Right (the latter will include people pretending to be innocent defenders of free speech), I would not be saying ‘not sure if that’s a good idea right now’. If they were only saying ‘we’ll use force only if we need to in immediate self-defence, or in immediate defence of others’, that’d be fine with me too.

@Policy of Madness
I think ‘not ideal’ is fairly mild. It’s not a condemnation. It’s not an insistence on legality, never mind respectability.

I see the actual goal as changing the underlying system, not just getting rid of these Nazis right now.

@Bobbie LobBomb
Thank you, I’m really glad you can see I’m discussing it in good faith, even if we disagree. : )

http://i.imgur.com/8AAPljb.jpg

@Leo:

I know the media will spin it anyway. But I think there’s a difference between acknowledging that they will, and suggesting that therefore there’s no point not going out with the active intention of using force.

But you’re talking about optics!
You are here acknowledging that the optics will be unchanged by actual Antifa actions, but at the same time you’re arguing against thinking there’s “no point not going out with the active intention of using force.”
Optics-wise, that is the exact point you conceded!
So, having left the argument about optics, would you like to present a new argument for letting neo-nazis, oh, sorry, ‘alt-righters’ is it now? For letting ‘alt-righters’ commit violence unopposed?
Now, should you feel dismissed or belittled by me, given that you’ve bought the re-branding of neo-nazi into ‘alt-right’ wholesale, any such feelings would be accurate assessments. As an ally against fascists, you’re about as useful as a pool noodle, given that you’ll accept their framing at the drop of a hat. You’re a hop, skip and a step away from claiming that “the Nazis had Socialist in their name, therefore they were left-wing”. Which, I feel an urgent need to tell you, is an old, well-worn bit of fascist rhetorical chaff that alleged educated adults keep falling for. Mostly American.
Also, when you keep talking about Republican outrage, it never occurred to you that the actual source of outrage was “You weren’t supposed to show those flags in public”? Because I’ve been thinking about shirt-colours and the concept of outliving ones usefulness a lot these last few years.

Feline says:

So, having left the argument about optics, would you like to present a new argument for letting neo-nazis, oh, sorry, ‘alt-righters’ is it now? For letting ‘alt-righters’ commit violence unopposed?

Leo still hasn’t decided if this totally not-hypothetical violence actually happens, though.

That morally bankrupt POS Trump ended DACA.

Still Fiqah, looks pretty suspicious, doesn’t it? Hmmm.

@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs

lol,asking how to take the ‘high ground’ by not kill nazis in a wolfenstein game. That is brilliant.

This thread. I don’t even know what to say about it. I think this sums it up.

For the past three pages it’s been

Leo: But, but…optics!

Everyone else: Here’s why worrying too much is ineffective

Leo: I realize all that, but maybe it will effective this time. Because reasons!

BLM frequently marches peacefully, and for their trouble, get labeled as riotous thugs. Mainstream media outlets will blithely say “law enforcement officials say that the protest was non-violent and peaceful” while showing clips of screaming protestors throwing rocks and getting pelted with tear gas.

We do not control the optics. Establishment media does. Patriarchy does.

(And yes, lurking trolls, you don’t control the optics either. Your agenda moves at the whim of those who would profit from it. Your operations succeed only when they are useful in earning rich people a whole lot of money on the backs of the vulnerable and poor.)

If they wish to paint Antifa as villains, they will, regardless of the actual events. If they want to make Antifa heroes, they will, regardless of the actual events.

It’s one of the biggest hurdles in white-person activism, in my opinion. The first hurdle is understanding the problem at all. The second one is understanding that the social systems that have silently supported you all your life are now working against you, and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it.

I take heart in this new perspective. It fills me with determination.

Antifa have been doing this awhile, they’ve got a good understanding of what it takes to halt fascistic violence and spread. Please consider the possibility that they may understand the “optics” issue, and have come to the conclusion that it’s either not viable or not useful to consider what you’re suggesting.

<3 my ducks. Stay dry out there.

S.U., You may be reacting to me, when I said that some (claim) they want peaceful relocation. I also, elsewhere, pointed out that ‘moderate’ Nazis back in Germany said that too…. that they first planned to relocate non-‘Aryans’ to Madagascar, then the idea was to create a U.S. style reservation in Poland, then it basically became ‘too hard, too expensive. Killing is more pragmatic’. That’s why it was known as the final solution. So if you are reacting to what I said, please know that my greater point is that any engineering to create an ‘ethnostate’ will always turn to genocide regardless of what that group’s stated intentions may be. I was not in any way trying to suggest that we can take such claims seriously, or give credence to the notion that there could ever be a ‘peaceful’ solution to these reprobates. Genocide is always the endgame. If that was unclear, the failure was mine in not communicating the idea clearly.

(When I say ‘reprobates’, I mean the Nazis, of course. No peaceful solutions to the engineering effort they yearn for. Sorry, I do have difficulty communicating clearly sometimes.)