Sounds like you're advocating violence as a useful tool, on occasion, for social progress. Is there much evidence of that?
It was entirely predictable in the US for all sorts of reasons, sadly.
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Sounds like you're advocating violence as a useful tool, on occasion, for social progress. Is there much evidence of that?
It was entirely predictable in the US for all sorts of reasons, sadly.
That wasn't the point, wouldn't be surprised to see them go on a march regarding his comments.
That's what happens when you share your political views with bigots. Occupational habit. They'd get no sympathy from me. And that's speaking as someone whose views would be to the right on at least some issues.
Are you equating Nazism and communism?
Nope. Just odd how they're perfectly fine with the mass deaths under communism.
Now its being reported the suspect previously was reported to the police by his own mother who is disabled. In seperate incidents, he threatened her with a knife, attacked her and locked her in a room.
Stalin killed more communists then anyone else.
So that makes it okay to carry communist flags?
The implication being that mass deaths haven't taken place in capitalist states...or any other political system we've ever created?
Surely they're not communist flags, but Soviet?
Anyway. Anti Nazi movements are by definition ant nazi - not communist, or there will be some crossover.
I am anti Nazi. I have marched peacefully against Nazis, and been physically assaulted, including by the Police. I not a communist. I do believe Nazis, who are literally genocidal, must be fought although only physically as an absolute last resort.
Well, quite.
One side are literally advocating a political ideology (Nazism) and the other are against that ideology.
Now protests in Seattle!
I'm not implying that.
Perhaps, but it is clearly not a communist vs Nazi confrontation is it?
Shouldn't you be asking people who decided to take the communist flags to those rallys?
There's this worrying vibe coming from this thread that communism is actually okay and there's this sense of justification for it.
Here we go again....
Communism is wide ranging political and economical idea with various interpretations, someone holding a hammer and sickle flag doesn't mean the person is advocating authoritarian rule or gulags.
Well I bet some of those nutjobs that do the nazi salute say 'I wasn't okay with the Holocaust'.
Also, there's a difference between being a socialist and a communist.
What's a communist flag? There wasn't a communist side to this march was there?
There may be communists within the crowd, I don't know what they intend to signify with the Soviet flags frankly (which bore as much resemblance to a functioning socialist state as Apartheid RSA did to a functioning Capitalist one, but that's a moot point). The Soviet's were a terrible, oppressive regime.
As an Anti Nazi march veteran, the anarch-punks and hard core revolutionaries are a pain in the arse and don't help, but they tend not to be wanting whole sections of the population slaughtered, although they may have an interesting view point on the control of property and means that can get pretty extreme. Some sections can get violent, but anti nazi movements tend to be on the whole peaceful in the majority.
The other side was openly Nazi, proclaim themselves to be so and are emboldened by, and scarily maybe linked to, the actual government supported by a fully armed militia. There is no direct comparison here.
What is it you're saying, precisely?
What I take from it is communism is bad...
...because if you support communism, you support the deaths of every proponent of it in its history...
In which case, why wouldn't the same logic apply to supporters of capitalism...or any other political system we've ever created?
I don't see the difference between that and saying people who practice Islam also support the violence from extremists who also practice it. There's a term for that. If that's not what you're saying then I apologise, but it's difficult to interpret it another way when you're throwing vague statements out there supported by single refutations, without any explanation.
@Kostur, could you elaborate?
Sure, on which part? Communism actually not being cool? Number of confirmed death by the USSR communist regime? Number of confirmed deaths en general by communist regimes?
Communism does not equal USSR. Capitalist regimes death counts equitable. What has this got to do with Anti Nazi protests?
I'll give them a shout.
In the interim, would you concede that it wasn't a communist protest (although there may have been people who equated the Soviet flag with communism, suggesting a poor understanding of communism) but the other side were actual, self confessed, genocidal ideology touting, white supremacist Nazis and therefore equivalency is false?
Democratic Socialists of America, which was involved in the counter-protests, is (axiomatically) a socialist group, but it is opposed to USSR-style states, and particuarly to Stalinism. Many of the red flags in pictures were of DSA members. The woman who died was also a DSA member.
There are different types of anti Nazi protest. There are ones organised by normal people that I frequently have joined in my life; these are important. And there are those by Anti-fa, who are not just anti fascists, but almost always supporters of terrible ideologies. Once they are starting to carry UdSSR flags, masks, weapons or other symbols associated with authoritarian/totalitarian states/ideologies, I most definitely consider them lunatics, that have to be isolated as well.
The choice isnt between two different groups of idiots (even if they might not be equally bad in all aspects), but between idiots and normal liberal-ish people.
We can now pretend that antifa are just misunderstood but that's just beyond stupid. Additionally, those who are from eastern Europe or those who have some connection to this place and it's history naturally understand what communism and socialism look like outside the dreams of rebellious students.
Of course, I don't think it was a communist protest, I agree that it was an anti protest to those who I'll describe in a second. But I'll also have my guess about those communist flags there if you will: they've brought the communist flags there as a symbol opposing the nazis, so the 'type' of communism they've brought in is indeed the USSR one, one that's responsible for millions of deaths too. May that be due to whatever reason, limited knowledge, wanting to piss the nazis off. But that's just my wild guess.
As for those idiots who gathered there, to make myself 100% clear, they're scum. What you call them though is the type of semantics I feel we're jumping into when we're discussing communism here in this context. So basically, is every white supremacist a nazi? Is every racist a nazi? What constitues a nazi, how many 'I'm a lowlife scum because:' boxes have to be ticked for someone to be called a nazi? What about the 'socialismus' part? Hope you see what I'm heading at. For what it's worth, for me they're lowlife utter scum, white supremacists, nazis, you call them.
On how generalisations like that differ from bigotry directed at Islam alluded to in the video I posted. It seems irresponsible to link communism to murder in the case of the USSR, and ignore the comparison @Fingeredmouse made about apartheid in South Africa and the political system it took place in. It seems very similar to linking female genital mutilation with Islamic countries, and ignoring the female genital mutilation in Christian countries. The more appropriate link in that case is Central African ideas on female genital mutilation, not Islamic ideas, and the more appropriate link in your case is to autocratic regimes, not communist principles.
Put my views across too vaguely. Pedro and Kostur's post above is the kind of sentiment i was trying to put across.
I have never heard of Antifa until this week. Anyone who understands history knows the lessons to be learned from both the despotic communist regimes and the facist and Nazi states.
Those from Eastern Europe cam testify to both sides of that coin I'm afraid.
Is it being suggested that the events in the US are a battle between some totalitarian old school Trotskyists and Nazis? That seems implausible, but I will look into it as much as I can through the filter of the US battleground media. The rise of of a movement called "Antifa" with those kind of very extreme Soviet ideologies in the US both seems counter intuitive and worryingly associates anti-fascism with extreme left revolutionary politics. Do they call themselves Antifa out of interest?
The choice is not between two equal groups of lunatics. Whatever the hell Antifa is, they are, as you point out, often niaive studenty types and idiots. The other side is a well funded, well armed bunch of genocidal racists on the rise across the West and directly associated to the US government. Who funds Antifa? Whip rounds? Venezuela? Russia? People with interests in false flags?
Pretending these sides are in anyway equivalent in threat or intent will not further the cause of liberalism, nor does opposition to Nazis make you whatever the hell Antifa is. You must see this?
I see that I have one more person in my ignore list
I take it there's no point in asking this, but why?
Antifas's origins links to German Communist Party and there on to Stalinism is easily traced.
That's... sort of an extreme reaction to someone asking questions.
The only US Antifa I can find was founded in 2013...this can't be the same one surely?
It's basically what @PedroMendez said combined with what I've responded to @Fingeredmouse. Sorry but I don't want to dive into the Islam comparison, it's for various reasons, one of them being me just not knowing much about the mutilation part apart from knowing that such thing happens.
So yeah, back to the communism though, what Pedro said basically encapsulates my problem with it, and not only mine as I see thankfully. Communism as a political system, in the European and global context always came with authoritarian regime and, for the death toll it has taken, I don't really think it should be split, and in the heads of people who actually have lived through communism in Central and Eastern Europe, it is not split. It will always come with the negative connotation, that's why you hear about 'socialist' model more often than the communist one. You can make claim that there is a country with a model that bases on nationalism and socialism, two concepts that separately bear no negative connotation most of the time, but if you mix them together you receive nazism, and without authoritarian part of it you can also pretend that 'there's nothing wrong with nazism'. Nobody sane will say that because there's an instant connotation to it, and righfully so, for some reason the same connotation didn't stick to communism, or actually it didn't outside of Eastern and Central Europe.
It will probably sound ignorant on my part but I think that people from countries who haven't suffered from communism won't fully understand this sort of logic. As I've said in my response to @Fingeredmouse, once they've brought communist symbols to the anti-nazist/anti-white-supremacist/anti whatever the feck it was there rally, it's a symbol in a certain context and it's a symbol of mass murder on the scale that was as big (even if we take just USSR into consideration) as what the nazis did.
Antifa's creation traces back to being Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands' paramilitary group.
Basically speaking, the GB's AFA is not the same thing as Antifa really.
Ok, it's a new one on me. I'm reading up on it.
I'm not sure what the origin of antifa has to do with today's antifa in the US, but anyway:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/antifascist-movements-hitler-nazis-kpd-spd-germany-cold-war
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/antifascist-movements-hitler-nazis-kpd-spd-germany-cold-war