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Whatever happened to Antifa? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Or to Anonymous for that matter?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There’s no organization called “Antifa,” though. It’s just a concept. There’s organizations calling themselves “Black Lives Matter” but most of them are (or were) just trying to (a) organize or (b) get donations and do nothing. Both are just ideas meant to unite disparate groups.

It’s like saying there was an official organization called La Résistance in France during WWII. It’s distributed, small, independent groups with similar ideologies that got a name in retrospect. There’s no central organization.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, the joke you're making is about Anonymous, and the authorities trying to find the leader of them.

Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion, Anti Fascism) on the other has and will periodically form into local chapters (usually out of members of other more permanent anarchist, communist, and protest groups), to participate in protests, produce things like stickers or book drives, run pop-up or community libraries, events and form other organizational structures, events, or projects.

You're confusing temporary, and anarchistic, with not existing.

From Wikipedia:

The contemporary antifa movement has its roots in the West German Außerparlamentarische Opposition left-wing student movement and largely adopted the aesthetics of the first movement while being ideologically somewhat dissimilar. The first antifa groups in this tradition were founded by the Maoist Communist League in the early 1970s. From the late 1980s, West Germany's squatter scene and left-wing autonomism movement were the main contributors to the new antifa movement and in contrast to the earlier movement had a more anarcho-communist leaning. The contemporary movement has splintered into different groups and factions, including one anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist faction and one anti-German faction who strongly oppose each other, mainly over their views on Israel.

So yeah, antifa is a movement which does periodically have people participate in it. They're just usually temporary and anarchistic.

Likewise with the French Resistance, or Marquis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_(World_War_II) - yes there were various groups, and they had different structures, some of which were independent detached cells, but at various points some were aided with more official supply, intel, organization, and assistance from allied forces, and required more communication and so some become more "official" due to this. So it was mixed, some completely independent, others less so.

This is part of what makes these organizations effective, and difficult to stop. It's not the same as them not existing.... Not having set and formal national leadership, being temporary, or anarchistic, is not the same as not existing, or having no members.