Slashed
More on some “Antifa” people (weird that they don’t realize they ARE fa) perpetrating violence against women.
Word is it was Antifa counter-protesters who did that. I suppose there will be news coverage later.
Tip Jar
More on some “Antifa” people (weird that they don’t realize they ARE fa) perpetrating violence against women.
Word is it was Antifa counter-protesters who did that. I suppose there will be news coverage later.
It appears this woman felt obliged to wear body armor in order to peacefully protest in support of single-sex spaces for women.
Just saw this on Ovarit:
In my experience, most authoritarians hail from the Right. There are no doubt authoritarians who also support the Left. (I have met one or two of them in my time.) But when any development brings shame and discredit to any side in a political struggle, one must ask ‘who benefits?’. The corollary ‘who pays the political cost for this?’ is also a question worth asking.
The agent provocateur stalks many a page and chapter of history.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/who-are-antifa-and-are-they-threat
Here’s the link to the Ovarit post Sastra quoted.
The problem is that while Leftist goals are antithetical to Rightist goals and thus definitionally anti-authoritarian, achieving the goal requires an exercise of power. (Effecting change against the preferences of others or is to exert power over them in any analysis.) It’s the fundamental tension of any movement that seeks to decrease hierarchical power, no matter the starting point and ultimate goal state. If the political orientation is Leftward of the opposition, then limiting the movement’s actions to those consistent with the ideology cedes a power differential to the opposition.
Nullius @5 The antiauthoritarians becoming the authority. That’s just dripping hot with irony. :D
There was a quote from a local political leader in Portland, Oregon, commenting that if the police stand back, the radicals and anarchists impose their OWN laws…and they are often brutal.
I also disagree that leftists are more typically anti-authoritarian. Heck, look at history, even modern history. French Revolution, 1917 Russia, Mao, Maduro’s Venezuela. ANY group that is 110% convinced of its righteousness can be violent and authoritarian. I always wonder if, as toxic as late stage capitalism is, if it would really be much of an improvement to replace Bezos and the Kochs and their ilk with “Assistant Professors of (Victim Group of the Month) Studies and self criticism sessions popular among the woke?
Good point Brian @7, looks like the making of a fiery crash and burn to me.
Robert Altemeyer’s work on authoritarianism focused on what he called Right-Wing Authoritarianism, a personality type that describes somebody who is naturally submissive to authority figures, acts aggressively in the name of said authorities, and is conformist in thought and behavior. He has his reasons for calling this “right-wing”, and he did not find significant presence of what he would call left-wing authoritarianism, but he’s working to a specific definition, and he may have changed his mind in the years since I read his writing.
Sackbut @#9:
I have seen Joseph Stalin held up as a ‘left-wing’ authoritarian, but I would classify him as just to the left of Genghis Khan. The (mercifully few) genuine lefty authoritarians I have known in my time have all been Stalins out of power.
#6 twiliter
Left leaning groups using authoritarian tactics to gain power, and then keeping those tactics after ascension to maintain dominance, is how many authoritarian regimes got their start.
It all depends how you define left-wing doesn’t it? Was Stalin and genuine leftist? If he was once, did he remain so once he got power and became a totalitarian? Was he never a leftist and just someone who rode the coat tails of others to gain power? Looking through history though, I think we have to accept that there have been governments that are undeniably left-wing, but not the touchy-feely liberal progressive ones we like to acknowledge.
I can see though how a group like anti-fa wouldn’t meet Altemeyer’s definition. They don’t have the power or authority of the State and frankly FSM help us if they ever do. Anyway, on that topic, how can any action be ascribed to ‘anti-fa’? Seriously? It’s not like it’s a registered organisation with a named leadership, membership, published rules, dues, or a comprehensible and known list of activities. My understanding is that it’s more like a concept – almost a meme – where a fluid group of like minded left-sympathists and anarchists work together in fluid groups to take action against fascists (and the police, but much the same thing in the US). A bunch of arseholes beating up women and dressed in black may call themselves anti-fa or not, but who gets to say they are or are not. If I was a TRA wanting to intimidate people and appear to have more support than I really do, would I turn up dressed in duck-egg blue and blusher-pink, or black combat fatigues and body armour?
Re #12
Altemeyer’s definition is of a personality type, not a group of people wielding authority. “Right-wing authoritarian” describes people who would support and fight for those wielding authority.
A person who supports Antifa might easily meet the definition if that person valued submission to some version of authority (perhaps that of left-wing activists or leaders), acts aggressively in support of those authority figures. and was actively conformist in thought and behavior. I think points number 2 and 3 are pretty strongly obvious, and that only point one is in question: who constitutes the authority to whom Antifa supporters submit? It’s not as obvious as a fixed set of leaders and influential people, but I think a good case can be made, and thus Antifa supporters would fit the definition.
Much of the counter-argument about “left-wing authoritarian” was, if I recall correctly, that people on the left were more open to questioning their own leaders and to evaluating new evidence. This may, at the very least, be less the case now than in the past, if not completely wrong now.
Ah. Thanks for the explanation. I suspect your last point is correct. I think many (most?) people in general have surrendered the ability think critically.
Let me just mention that one of the most frightening aspects of Altemeyer’s study of RWA personalities is how susceptible they are to manipulation. Convince them that you are on their “team” and they’ll believe what you say and do what you tell them. Politicians who understand this make efforts to establish the “team” and then work toward their agenda with their loyal unthinking followers in tow.
It seems to me that this very much describes activity on the left these days, notably in gender ideology, because one is deemed clearly on the wrong “team” if one dares to ask questions, and they’ll follow people who act aggressively toward the “bigots” and “transphobes”.
I don’t think our definitions of left and right are very helpful anymore. Was Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge leftist, they certainly claimed to be communist. Where the NVA? How about the Chinese Communist Party, on this 100th anniversary? Also, the libertarian to authoritarian scale is not necessarilty an overlap of a left-right scale. It’s also viewed by some as an “abscissa” on a grid, while “left-right” is the mantissa. For a better picture of this, we should realize that they are both independent variables in political science.
But, further, in this case the “antifa” are enforcing a misogynistic definition of gender, even if they don’t realize it. The idea that gender roles are tied to a specific sex is conservative and sexist, while the idea that gender needs to be divorced, as it were, from sex is logically a radical and also “leftist” position. So, the idea that if a man believes he is feminine, so he is female, is more closely tied to fascism than to freedom. And self-described leftists approved a few years ago of “punching Nazis.” When people compare “TERFs” to Nazis, and the San Francisco Public Library celebrated weapons and violence against “TERFs” it wasn’t a great leap to think that these violent vigiantes of the anti-fascist brigade would leap at the chance to commit violonce against women.
But authoritarans can easily be leftist. Daniel Ortega has certainly proved his authoritarian nature in holding on to power in Nicaragua. Hugo Chavez is another example. Whenever there is a revolution, the new boss needs to fight the counter-revolutionaries. We want to believe that the left are the non-violent peace marchers, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Michael:
I would add that in making their revolutions, the revolutionaries operating as ‘liberators’ are commonly as sincere as you like. The trouble is, it seems to me, that in overthrowing corrupt and autocratic regimes: tsarism, the pro-Nazi gangs of Chetniks etc in Yugoslavia, Chiang Kai Shek’s outfit in China, Batista’s in Cuba, not to mention colonial regimes as in French-occupied Vietnam… the liberators make an awful lot of enemies as they go, who they know will be out for revenge if they can get it. The revolutionaries dare not hold elections even if so inclined, because hostiles could win and purge them all.
The English Revolution against aristocratic power arguably began in the 1640s, led straight into the Restoration and purge of the regicides in the 1670s, and is still a work in progress and not complete today, and will not be as long as entitled people in the House of Lords can veto legistlation coming up to them (nice phrase) from the House of Commons. Mind you, the last time it was used was over the Public Education or some such Act around 1910 or so as far as I am aware.
Thinking in Marxist terms (useful at times) England’s bourgeois revolution got off to a slow start in England in the 1640s, but was only consolidated and rendered irreversible by the events in the American colonies after 1776. The 19th C in Britain became a long, drawn-out battle between reformers and reactionaries, with the American Republic shining like a lighthouse on the whole scene, and constantly showing how things could be improved; even right through the American Civil War period.