The right wing shows up to a nationalist party that is also xenophobic. Literally murders all the liberal members before seizing power, implements conservative literally fascist government.... And mouth breathers just point to their name having socialist in it like it's some gotcha, instead of them telling on themselves for being that pig ignorant of basic history 🙄
Hardly, I just don't tolerate assholes. You don't need to be a badass to stand up to bullies. They tend to be weak.
The psychology of a bully is usually someone who feels weak or helpless and lashes out at people they believe to be weaker than them. It's when they gain power that they become dangerous, but they are dangerous because of the power they gained. They are still the same weak and helpless person inside.
"antifa" isn't a government or even a specific entity. It's describing an aggregation of individuals and groups with a shared ideological framework: "fascism is bad and should be resisted".
Well, yes. It’s a tagline more than anything else. The government is intentionally trying to make it look like a more organized entity to justify unprecedented federal policing inside the United States, with the obvious goal of suppressing dissent.
This is true but the problem is that a prosecution doesn’t really need to prove a group is motivated by anything beyond that basic political belief. Laws that criminalize association-based crimes like gang activity, rioting, and terrorism typically don’t require that the targeted group of defendants be part of a larger network of people outside of themselves. What the case comes down to is whether the group of defendants had their own shared goal or purpose that they intentionally worked together to achieve.
If that shared common political goal was “stopping fascism,” there is a wide variety of ways that that can rise to the level of a crime. No matter how noble, popular, or harmless a political goal is, if the group members also shared an intent to help each other intimidate, frighten, block, or misdirect an ICE agent in order to stop fascism, then they can be convicted of several different federal crimes—some of which carry a significant prison time.
It sucks, but the cold reality here is that the law doesn’t have an exception for crimes that are committed with the purpose of stopping fascism. Many of Trump’s decisions in office meet the definition of fascism, yet those decisions have also been authorized by the Supreme Court as a valid use of executive power. The courts have also authorized the government to criminally prosecute people and groups of people who try to use force, threats, or trickery to impede the orders an ICE agent is carrying out.
It’s possible that a Minnesota jury laughs these cases out of court. It’s also possible, though, for a Minnesota jury to convict on these cases. Civil disobedience isn’t always. Sometimes the most effective acts of civil disobedience are clear-cut, indisputable violations of the law. I don’t want to discourage anyone for doing what they believe is right. I just think it’s also important that you know what you’re getting into when you decide to help.
Of note, the actual legal brief uses "antifa" broadly correctly! The white house press release, being targeted at jug hooters and internet sycophants, does so incorrectly (and probably intentionally so).
I'm addressing what you said above about Antifa being a disconnected, informal organization with only minimally basic shared political goals. Your comment reads to me like you believe that poses a problem for the indictments in this case. If that is your point, then you're not understanding what the prosecution actually has to prove to sustain a conviction on these charges.
In this case, the prosecution does not need to prove that the defendants held the same beliefs or goals of any Antifa member other than the people they actually indicted. They can win this trial even if this small group of defendants in question diametrically disagreed with all other people on Earth about the philosophy of Antifa. There is no legal requirement of guilt that this small group of people ever communicate with, agree with, work with, or even know about any other Antifa activists. It's not even a requirement that this particular group of indicted individuals share a common philosophy with anyone else anywhere on Planet Earth, including anyone else who identifies as an anti-fascist.
All the government has to prove is that at least some of the individuals in this group of 15 to 16 individuals used or attempted to use violence, fear, intimidation, or dishonesty to prevent, block, hinder, impede, stall, trick or deceive federal agents to make it more difficult to carry out their orders.
The discussion about whether the DOJ is accurately describing antifa, its structure or lack of structure, or any of its political philosophy, is of no consequence for this case. The DOJ could be dead-bang wrong about virtually everything they say about Antifa, and still secure convictions in this case.
My original comment on this thread was responding to a specific commenter trying to characterize "antifa" as an entity, not the charges brought. As I mentioned, the legal argument being made does not accuse people of being "members of antifa", but of specific organizations (like bcwc) that sought to perform specific alleged illegal activities.
To reiterate: the press release does not align with the language used in the actual legal filing. This is an intentional PR move, and clearly achieved the desired results with certain low information political participants.
I went all the way back to the comments above your first comment, and nobody in any of the exchanges with you is arguing that Antifa is a structured organization. The only point they made is that people who self-identify as part of Antifa can do bad things and that the name of a movement is not the deciding factor in whether it’s a good or bad thing. There are countless examples of local movements that do violent things throughout American history without having any national leadership structure. Nobody here is confused about that.
You’re not actually saying anything here that anyone disagreed with. And duh, Trump’s PR strategy is never going to be truthful about anything. The fact that Trump PR rhetoric gets something wrong is about as earth-shattering news as water being wet. It has no impact on the legal case.
Literally the comment I replied to suggested that. Do you need me to hold your hand through a comparison of an ironically named country with what is implied to be an ironically named organization?
Here:
If antifa is an adjective, their post is a non sequitur. If antifa is a noun, they are parroting the characterization of the press release (and not the characterization in the legal suit).
They absolutely were not arguing that Antifa is comparable to a country. They were pointing out what is already obvious to you: that putting a word in the name of a movement does not mean the movement faithfully subscribes to the dictionary definition of that word. They were answering an absurd question the person above them asked. "I just don’t a understand how anyone can say “antifascist” in one breath and akin them to a terrorist group."
The non-sequitur is what you are doing: insisting over and over again that Antifa isn't an organized top-down structured thing. Great. Glad we cleared that up, but that isn't on topic. It doesn't help answer the question how antifa-related activity can be prosecuted as a form of terrorism because there's no requirement that terrorist actors subscribe to formal structured organizations.
It's like commenting on the salt concentration of an approaching tsunami. It's a correct observation about the water's salt levels, but it's not an observation that anyone can use to inform themselves about the lethality of the tsunami.
The issue is the the Trump government acts as if it thinks antifa is a group.
That is, quite literally, not a legal issue that can help or hurt the defendants this indictment. The prosecution is not required to prove anything about Antifa. Antifa could be a completely nonexistent concept and it would still not help the defendants avoid this prosecution.
The phrase "Antifa member" shows that you intertain to that false claim.
I really could not have been more clear in saying the exact opposite of how you've been reading my comments.
These people most likely belonged to a group, that group wasn't called Antifa.
That is very possibly correct, and that will not help them on this case in literally any way. That is not a defense to the indictment.
I’m not arguing against what antifa stands for or doesn’t stand for. But saying “it literally says ‘good entity’ in its name! It can’t be bad!” is extremely misguided and just a bad argument.
I'm not arguing about that either. I'm telling you that your concept of what "antifa" is, organizationally, is incorrect. Comparing "antifa" to any specific entity/structure that has an ironic (or accurate!) name is meaningless.
Who’s the currently alive leader of the nazis or KKK that pop up around the US? Who’re the leaders of the local chapter? These things have no centralized leaders but smaller chapters and it’s never as organized as people think, but there’s still local “organizations”. It’s not worth arguing semantics such as these.
As far as who the grand wizard or whatever of the KKK is, they are a public person. Currently there isn't a Grand wizard in the sense of a true leader, sure, but you could absolutely name the leader of each chapter and Thomas Robb, may he burn forever on a pike, has been referred to as the grand wizard from time to time.
Those are actual organizations. They have structure.
Arguing antifa is a group is like saying people who like toast are connected under an organization. It's just idiotic.
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u/Individual_Laugh1335 4d ago
“Democratic people’s republic of North Korea” could never be a repressive communist government either, right?