SUNDAY PROTESTS ON PAULISTA AVENUE People throwing stones at the police. In a tweet of May 2020, American President Donald Trump announced Antifa as a terrorist group. Why would the president of the most powerful nation in the world be against an organization that fights fascism?
Think of the power of the word fascism, the weight of the word fascism, in the twentieth century. Think of the words lifesaver, bowl, rice, fascism. It has a very heavy weight.
And suddenly, when in the 21st century, in the second decade of the 21st century, you create a movement called Antifa, it gives the impression that you are either part of that movement or you are a fascist. Including the propaganda. Look on the social networks.
Any journalist who doesn't understand anything about history has no idea that Antifa has existed before. He speaks openly: "Look, you are either antifa or you are a fascist. " In fact, it is curious to think of Trump’s maneuver.
Defining a group as a terrorist group has enormous consequences. For example, a person who logs into Facebook and posts an Antifa logo, may have a visa application denied when planning a trip to Disney. So, Trump’s maneuver has enormous consequences that people have not yet thought of.
In the 1920s, the Germans were devastated and humiliated by the nations that won the World War I. In addition to pay fortunes in reparations, neighboring troops constantly invaded German territory to confiscate lands, industries and raw materials. Generating a serious economic crisis with hyperinflation and unemployment.
In 1919, one American dollar was equivalent to 4. 50 German Marks. In December 1923, the same dollar was worth 4.
2 trillion. The chaotic scenario and the lack of hope were catalysts for radical political movements to spread out. When Germany lost the war, it also lost the German empire.
In other words, they lost a country much larger than Germany today. Parts of Poland, parts of several countries in Central Europe. It had lost all of that.
Then, practically from one month to the next, that entire structure is broken, and you need to build again a country that had just been unified, about 50 years ago, again, from scratch. As you are building a country again, it is very easy for you to adopt all the policies, all the new, modern and extremely radical ideologies that arise. You had, on the one hand, the idea of Nietzsche, that God had died, meaning that religion no longer had the power to unify people.
There were a series of questions about how the society should organize itself based on this new model. So, in that chaotic times, it is easier to understand the emergence of movements like fascism. The Weimar Republic, the time in Germany between the two wars, was an extremely radical time.
If you think the world today is polarized, it’s because you don’t know the Weimar Republic. The new revolutionary ideologies were represented by political parties that fought for power in the streets and on the platforms. In 1918, the Communist Party of Germany was formed.
Two years later, the National Socialist German Workers' Party was founded in Munich. The Italian communist party was founded in 1921 by Antonio Gramsci. A few months later, Benito Mussolini turned his armed militia into a political party.
In the following year, the revolution led by Lenin murdered the Romanov family, won the Russian Civil War and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Eric Hoffer said that mass movements do not arise because of a great God, but mainly because of a great demon. Fascism was winning people over on the left and right wings in Europe.
He gained over monarchs, aristocrats, the common people, the bourgeoisie, the businessmen… It has a much greater appeal than the communist propaganda. Spain is proof of that; Portugal is proof of that. I mean, England itself is proof of that.
Even among its great intellectuals, even among socialists. George Bernard Shaw wrote in favor of fascism. Even Lenin had written in favor of Mussolini.
Shortly after Mussolini's split from the socialist movement, Lenin himself regretted that Mussolini has left, as he would be the ideal person to take the communist revolution to Italy. Lenin himself said that. "What a waste that we lost Mussolini.
He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. " So, it was very clear that the goal of turning fascism into something bad was more or less like the Brazilian Social Democracy Party speaking ill of the Workers' Party and vice versa. Deep down, they agree on almost everything but are enemies.
One tries to present the other as something really bad. Then Trotsky himself, who was one of the main agents of the Russian revolution, one of the main theorists of the Russian communism, began to be treated as an agent of imperialism and an agent of fascism. So, we have an idea of how it became basically a curse and a way to create a rivalry between very similar projects.
They didn’t need to be heralds of a supposed hope, but had to be the great warriors against a great demon. This was the great enemy at that time. The first group with the name of antifa Was the "Antifaschistische Aktion", proclaimed by the German Communist Party in 1932, in its newspaper "Die Rote Fahne".
Its logo with two flags remains a symbol widely used by militants to this day. The early 1930s saw growing tensions due to clashes between Nazis, Communist and Socialist militants on the streets of major European cities. Berlin became a stage for violent clashes between the groups.
The 1920s and 1930s, above all, are marked in Europe as the decades of paramilitary groups. Paramilitary movements are, in practice, large movements of hooligans. And that in this cultural despair, in this environment in which all the explanations of his childhood were wrecked, either because the religion did not work, the empire did not work, the social cohesion did not work, the nobility did not work.
. . Then you join paramilitary movements with a future ideal of society and terrorize the local population to force them to be part of your ideal.
This is actually the genesis of black shirts, sometimes brown shirts. . .
And the antifa emerge just like the large paramilitary group of communists. After the second war, there was a massive condemnation of fascism, because of the exposure of all the crimes that were committed by fascists, especially German fascists. And it actually became a curse.
In practice, post-World War II communist propaganda remained anti-Nazi. In other words, we are good, because we are anti-Nazis. And the Nazis don't just leave as defeated militarily but as the great evil.
With the defeat of fascism n the second world war, antifascism loses its public relevance. And it remains active only among communist intellectuals. So there was practically the death of the movement.
It was back in vogue, it was resurgent but in a very marginal way in the late 70s, early 80s, when there was a resurgence of neo-Nazis, skinheads and everything. Antifa then would be movements contrary to these types. As in the 1930s, in the 70s and 80s, the movement will once again be directed by young people.
That is, you have the music scene, the underground scene, the scene of pubs and bars dominating political ideologies. This is very strong in the passage from the 70s to the 80s, mainly because of all the criticisms that were made in England. What they saw as a very backward society.
England, at the time, still has customs that for continental Europe seem very backward. Every song, whether punk or Pink Floyd, will be in unison complaining about the government, complaining about a British society that is still very rigid, monarchical, completely Victorian in some customs and so on. Once again we have the radicalization for the exact opposite appeal.
Groups like the Ramones, who are against authority. They don't like authority. And they don't even like non-political authorities.
For example, the cliche of the 15-year-old boy who is having arguments with his mother because she won't let him drink vodka on the weekend. Or things like that. But the Ramones is not only an American group, but also, a group opposed to the well-established authorities and would never accept a highly political unionist political model of life, like the communists.
In other words, it’s a group that is taking the idea of anarchy to an almost playful level. We don't want to know anything. We want to party over the weekend, criticize politicians, the church, religion and everything.
The Sex Pistols are not the same. They are still linked to the English left wing, which is solid. It has its resources and its way of acting since the 19th century.
They are really waiting for the communist call. Perhaps they are not waiting for the revolution because the English model is not extremely revolutionary. But they are waiting for an order from above.
They are waiting for the big moment, when they will start to beat up. But it was never important. It never had a political weight.
Basically, they were marginal movements. Returning once again to Germany, the great country of the 20th century, in 1980 the German anarchists were thinking of a new tactic to get rid of what they consider to be a great Americanization of German society. That is, the capitalist West Germany.
They invent a tactic called Black Bloc. The Black Blocs were never a movement. They consider themselves just a tactic.
They try to explain all the time. We are not a movement, there is no Black Bloc membership card. There is no place where the Black Blocs come together.
The Black Blocs demonstrate the value of violence for violence. They began to export their model to Italy, to France, to Brazil, to the United States, to various places in the world. But this is a new moment of a lack of proposals from the left wing.
That is, the left knows that it has lost. It will fall, but it will fight. Black clothes, masks covering the face and a lot of determination to destroy property and face the police.
In the protests that have been taking place in Brazil, a group of protesters has been catching the attention for promoting episodes of violence and vandalism. They call themselves anarchists and are known as the Black Blocs. In 2013, Brazil also had its revolution.
Obviously the main subject in each country was very singular. In the case of the USA, it was the money of Wall Street. In the case of Chile and Spain, it was the student movements.
Brazil tried to have manifestations with a very clear subject: transportation. The biggest cities of Brazil have a serious problem with transportation and this problem is not from the left or the right. This is an objective, clear and factual problem that affects someone daily for at least 2 hours in these cities, thus is was good to focus its efforts in demonstrations involving transport.
All of us, Brazilians, have followed with much attention the manifestations that are happening in the country. They show the strength of our democracy and the desire that the youth has to make Brazil move forward. RIO GATHERS 100,000 PEOPLE, THERE WERE SMALL RIOTS.
Suddenly, it seemed the only way to guarantee freedom in Brazil and guarantee all the changes for a country with so many political-economic problems was to go out and support these people. In these June 2013 demonstrations, everything started exactly like that, with about 500 thousand people. In a matter of 5 weeks, it increased to 1 million people.
And the approval exceeded 80%. They had more approval setting fire to buses than Lula giving family allowance. In 5 weeks.
This is the revolutionary model. There is an interesting tool, Google Trends, where you can see, since 2005, the terms and how many people search for them. There are practically zero occurrences of the term “antifascist”.
Or even "fascism" or "fascist". There are very few uses. When did it begin to appear on Google Trends?
In 2016. At the same time that Donald Trump took office for his 1st term, some members of the group Antifa burnt a limousine and plundered stores a few blocks away from the inauguration ceremony. Trump creates the movement “America First”, with which he will be elected, which is a political platform placing America’s interests first.
That goes totally against the Obama’s administration, that being an administration of anti-colonialist ideology, thinks “about the evil that America did to the world, to Libya to Mexico and other countries. ”, according to their ideology. When Trump begins to show his government platform.
. . the natural trend, an easy explanation of the left, is call him fascist, racist, xenophobic.
. . After Trump’s election, Antifa became prominent in the media.
In 2017, militants went to Berkeley College, California, in a protest that resulted in more than US$ 100,000 of damages. Milo is an English columnist, also homosexual, openly, and was prevented from giving a lecture at Berkeley through use of widespread physical violence. A large group was there, rioting, setting fire at the university, hitting the cops and the lecture had to be canceled.
He's a young Englishman, of Greek heritage, gay and at the same time catholic, defender of the West and etc. It's a very difficult person to argue with, because the left isn’t logical anymore. It uses identitarianism.
What do you do then? The goal itself is not to cancel that specific lecture, the goal is to send a message to any university that wants to receive a non-allied speaker: “If you do that, bad things will happen to you. You’ll be bothered.
" In 2020, after George Floyd’s death, a new wave of protests emerged and antifascist militants gathered in several American cities. After George Floyd’s death, there are several protests that will set Antifa’s idea as completely famous. A black cop has been killed, a black salesman has been killed.
. . There are more black people killed than George Floyd.
George Floyd actually had an extensive criminal record, he had pointed a gun at the belly of a pregnant woman and had so many drugs ingested in his body, that he’d probably die of an overdose that same night simply because he swallowed a lot of drugs so he could escape from a trial for drug trafficking. Without taking for granted the police assault, which was wrong, but he had an overdose of fentanyl, he had fentanyl in his body, which is a heavy drug, that could’ve killed him and we know that fentanyl causes death by suffocation. His lung was 3 times larger than normal.
These are details which, obviously, the press did not comment. From this moment, you have a confluence among "Black Lives Matter" and Antifa. You do not have any clarity about where one starts the other ends.
And they start creating "Soviets". Some cities in the USA, begin to have the model of Soviets. This happened in Seattle, Chicago and several cities.
You take a part of the city for you and, again, this community organizer model, of a small block geographically set, and you create your own city with your own rules and your own system, including police repression. They create this, in the USA, the land of liberty, in the cradle of capitalism, in the 1st amendment model, they create a Soviet model in 2020. And what is the logic in these protests and why do they continue?
Because in these places, district attorneys, responsible for accusing someone of a crime, they simply do not accuse. So, the police catch someone that caused a riot, is arrested, then comes the district attorney, who makes the accusation, the promoter of justice, and simply doesn’t press charges. There’s another aspect that few people know.
In the US, these prosecutors are elected. Cities elect prosecutors. Guess who financed the campaign of almost every far-leftwing prosecutors in these cities?
Whoever spoke George Soros got it right. LEFT GROUPS SPENDING SO MUCH TO ELECT THE NEXT PROSECUTOR. SEROS RECRUITING PROGRESSIVES.
PROSECUTORS SUPPORTED BY SERUM. LIBERAL ACTIVISTS CONFRONT THE POLICE. The images of explicit violence, vandalism, assaults and murders shocked the world.
Thanks to social networks, we may witness the chaos that took over the country. Since the resurgence of the Antifa movement, many books and articles were written trying to unravel the movement and categorize its actions. According to leftwing authors, the actions of Antifa are directed against white supremacists in the attempt to publicly identify them so they get fired of their jobs or suffer other types of reprisals.
One of the Antifa organizers told CNN USA that the movement’s philosophy is based on direct confrontation. The idea of Antifa is to go where the rightwing goes. This hate speech is not freedom of speech.
If you put people at risk with what it’s said to the actions behind that, you have no right to do that. Then we cause conflicts. Shut them up wherever they are.
Because we don't believe that any Nazi or fascist should have a voice. What is the logic of Antifa? I have the right to be violent with you and shut you up because I’m preventing the worst, preventing the birth of a new Hitler, preventing the birth of a fascist movement that will be totalitarian, in other words, I am authorized to make a preventive attack because if I let you talk, you will create a movement that will make this country totalitarian.
In addition to physical combat on the streets, part of the Antifa work is on the internet, where groups report profiles and channels to get them off the air. This phenomenon is known as “deplatforming”. It already caused banishment and censorship of several social networks’ pages.
For militants of movement, everything they consider fascist should be excluded from public discussion. And no one is saved from the new inquisition. For them, fascism is all that is not aligned with the left agenda.
If you don't believe in the climatic alert, you are a fascist. If you don't believe in systemic racism, you are fascist. If you don't believe the redistribution of wealth through the state, with the state charging more taxes and offering more allowances and social benefits, you are fascist.
And so on. If you think about it, who defended violence against politic opponent? Who defended attacks and shutting up the opponent using any subterfuge?
It was exactly the Italian Black shirts. It was exactly Hitler’s SA. So when the media starts to put the name fascist, supremacist groups and far-right in everything they disagree, it creates a very dangerous situation.
Not only bad for the debate. But of physical danger. Because now any threat to a right-wing is legalized.
It is considered justified by the media. Now imagine if a right-wing did what the left does? Imagine a Trump supporter surrounding a part of the city and saying: "Now we rule here and will not follow the American Constitution.
" Imagine a Trump supporter setting fire to a grocery store, gas station or church, for being against those who go to that church. The KKK did exactly that. This media double standard is not something to only be criticized and become a MEME.
It's the most dangerous thing of the 21st century. People believe in their own words. They are deceived by words without substance.
And they watch on Paulista Avenue, in 2020, protesters extremely violent, with covered faces, using white weapons, threatening the population, saying that they are there for the democracy. They march just like paramilitaries of the 1930s in Germany, in Spain. .
. We start to harass these guys on the streets. First we curse, then start to beat, then close their store, then you start creating laws to justify that.
And finally you kill. This is very dangerous. When you start accepting violence as an instrument, a political weapon that is part of the game, you enter a cycle which we've already seen and may happen.
What you try to do with this so-called antifascist fight is simply catalog people in little ethnicities and groups that can only be tutored by a larger state, in other words, the black needs the quotas, the woman needs policy of a socialist party that will make the revolution based on feminism. This will make people once more incommunicable. When people are incommunicable, and there is no longer this evangelization, the trend towards philosophy, to convincing and converting what is from the other, you have the total control of a gigantic state, guarding all of the relationships between people.
