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[Per]

Btw, re: the declaring Antifa a terrorist organisation:

The president has periodically criticized antifa, but it was not clear that Mr. Trump’s declaration would have any real meaning beyond his characteristic attempts to stir up culture war controversy, attract attention and please his base.

Antifa is not an organization, and it does not have a leader, membership roles or any defined, centralized structure. It is a vaguely defined movement of people who share common protest tactics and targets.

More important, even if antifa were a real organization, the laws that permit the federal government to deem entities terrorists and impose sanctions on them are limited to foreign groups. There is no domestic terrorism law despite periodic proposals to create one.

“There is no authority under law to do that — and if such a statute were passed, it would face serious First Amendment challenges,” said Mary B. McCord, a former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/g ... ntifa.html


Just so you know. Trump is once again talking out of his butt.
It's sometimes hard to tell the difference, because his lips really do look like a sphincter...



The President of the USA is a powerful position, but the founding fathers made sure to impose restrictions on what a president can do, so he still has to abide by the constitution and some powers lie with the legislative and judicial bodies rather than with the executive.

[Per]

From the Anti-Defamation League's homepage:

Antifa: Definition and History:

The anti-fascist protest movement known as antifa gained new prominence in the United States after the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, in August 2017. In Charlottesville and at many subsequent events held by white supremacists or right-wing extremists, antifa activists have aggressively confronted what they believe to be authoritarian movements and groups. While most counter-protestors tend to be peaceful, there have been several instances where encounters between antifa and the far-right have turned violent.

These violent counter-protesters are often part of “antifa” (short for “antifascist”), a loose collection of groups, networks and individuals who believe in active, aggressive opposition to far right-wing movements. Their ideology is rooted in the assumption that the Nazi party would never have been able to come to power in Germany if people had more aggressively fought them in the streets in the 1920s and 30s. Most antifa come from the anarchist movement or from the far left, though since the 2016 presidential election, some people with more mainstream political backgrounds have also joined their ranks.

These antifa sometimes use a logo with a double flag, usually in black and red. The antifa movement began in the 1960s in Europe, and had reached the US by the end of the 1970s. Most people who show up to counter or oppose white supremacist public events are peaceful demonstrators, but when antifa show up, as they frequently do, they can increase the chances that an event may turn violent.

Today, antifa activists focus on harassing right wing extremists both online and in real life. Antifa is not a unified group; it is loose collection of local/regional groups and individuals. Their presence at a protest is intended to intimidate and dissuade racists, but the use of violent measures by some antifa against their adversaries can create a vicious, self-defeating cycle of attacks, counter-attacks and blame. This is why most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive.

The current political climate increases the chances of violent confrontations at protests and rallies. Antifa have expanded their definition of fascist/fascism to include not just white supremacists and other extremists, but also many conservatives and supporters of President Trump. In Berkeley, for example, some antifa were captured on video harassing Trump supporters with no known extremist connections. Antifa have also falsely characterized some recent right wing rallies as “Nazi” events, even though they were not actually white supremacist in nature.

Another concern is the misapplication of the label “antifa” to include all counter-protesters, rather than limiting it to those who proactively seek physical confrontations with their perceived fascist adversaries. It is critical to understand how antifa fit within the larger counter-protest efforts. Doing so allows law enforcement to focus their resources on the minority who engage in violence without curtailing the civil rights of the majority of peaceful individuals who just want their voices to be heard.

All forms of antifa violence are problematic. Additionally, violence plays into the “victimhood” narrative of white supremacists and other right-wing extremists and can even be used for recruiting purposes. Images of these “free speech” protesters being beaten by black-clad and bandana-masked antifa provide right wing extremists with a powerful propaganda tool.

That said, it is important to reject attempts to claim equivalence between the antifa and the white supremacist groups they oppose. Antifa reject racism but use unacceptable tactics. White supremacists use even more extreme violence to spread their ideologies of hate, to intimidate ethnic minorities, and undermine democratic norms. Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years; they have murdered hundreds of people in this country over the last ten years alone. To date, there have not been any known antifa-related murders.

Antifa: Scope and Tactics:

Today's antifa argue they are the on-the-ground defense against individuals they believe are promoting fascism in the United States. However, antifa, who have many anti-police anarchists in their ranks, can also target law enforcement with both verbal and physical assaults because they believe the police are providing cover for white supremacists. They will sometimes chant against fascism and against law enforcement in the same breath.

While some antifa use their fists, other violent tactics include throwing projectiles, including bricks, crowbars, homemade slingshots, metal chains, water bottles, and balloons filled with urine and feces. They have deployed noxious gases, pushed through police barricades, and attempted to exploit any perceived weakness in law enforcement presence.

Away from rallies, they also engage in “doxxing,” exposing their adversaries’ identities, addresses, jobs and other private information. This can lead to their opponents being harassed or losing their jobs, among other consequences. Members of the alt right and other right wing extremists have responded with their own doxxing campaigns, and by perpetuating hateful and violent narratives using fake “antifa” social media accounts.

Because there is no unifying body for antifa, it is impossible to know how many “members” are currently active. Different localities have antifa populations of different strengths, but antifa are also sometimes willing to travel hundreds of miles to oppose a white supremacist event.

https://www.adl.org/resources/backgroun ... are-antifa

Since there is no Antifa organisation, it is safe to assume that any social media accounts claiming to be the official Antifa account is actually posted by the alt right or Russian trolls (It is often hard to discern between the two, since they work in unison).

It is also ludicrous that Antifa would be calling to attack "the white hoods", since that would be where 90% of them live.
The core of Antifa are anarchists.

Have you ever met an anarchist who did not have a college degree and wealthy parents?

[Megaterio Llamas]

I have never met an anarchist I could stand to be around longer than a couple of minutes. And I have been around for a long time.

Meanwhile, rioters set old homeless man's camp on fire:

Ian Miles Cheong
@stillgray
·
Antifa set fire to a homeless man's only possessions. This is how we defeat racism.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/12 ... 47776?s=20

[Per]

I have never met an anarchist I could stand to be around longer than a couple of minutes. And I have been around for a long time.

Meanwhile, rioters set old homeless man's camp on fire:

Ian Miles Cheong
@stillgray
·
Antifa set fire to a homeless man's only possessions. This is how we defeat racism.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/12 ... 47776?s=20

So why would you (or whoever posted that) assume those who did it were Antifa?

As anarchists, or communists, or general leftists, they often attack the police, the banks and various multinational entities.
I really cannot see why anyone who identifies as Antifa would mess with the homeless, unless the homeless person is a nazi, of course....

But these riots seem to be full of lots of groups with lots of agendas. There may certainly be those who want to get rid of the riffraff, but those are probably not Antifa.

Also, I saw some comment on that link yo posted, that linked Soros and Antifa, which is beyond ridiculous!

Soros is a liberal Jewish investment banker who is promoting liberal democracy in Eastern Europe.

Antifa is a loose group of people who think violence is the best way to fight fascism. Their core is made up of anarchists, but they also attract other people on the left, mainly communists and hardcore socialists, but also others that are just anti-racist or anti-capitalist.

Even though both Soros and Antifa oppose fascism and racism, so do the vast majority of people, and these two are so far apart on the political spectrum that the idea that they would somehow cooperate is mindblowingly stupid.

Soros is trying to strengthen the young democracies in Eastern Europe.
Anarchists scoff at representative democracy and sees it as an attempt to legitimize the oppression of the working class.

Anarchists (and most other Antifa members) hate banks and capitalism.
Soros is a successful investment banker. Nuff said.

Now, if you are a fascist (or alt right or KKK) you may have problems discering the difference, because Jewish bankers and anarchists alike are your enemy. But that's just crazy. Liberal democracy is at the core of western civilisation, and Soros is trying to spread this and strengthen it in the young democracies of Eastern Europe. Antifa is scoffing at it and saying it's way overrated, a thin veil to protect capitalist interests.

They're not the same, even if they share some enemies.

[Per]

This is Antifa:

Seven things you need to know about Antifa
Online battles between far right groups and anti-fascists – or "Antifa" – are now regularly spilling out onto the streets of America. But who are Antifa and what do they represent? Anisa Subedar and Mike Wendling went to the West coast of America to find out for Seriously... podcast Political Violence in America. Here are seven facts you need to know.


1. How long have Antifa been around?
Some Antifa groups date the origins of their movement to fights against European fascists in the 1920s and 1930s. Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, says the modern American Antifa movement began in the 1980s with a group called Anti-Racist Action. Its members confronted neo-Nazi skinheads at punk gigs in the American Midwest and elsewhere. By the early 2000s the Antifa movement was mostly dormant - until the rise of Donald Trump and the alt-right.

2. How do you pronounce Antifa?
According to Bray, there are multiple different pronunciations. In the United States most people say an-tee-fa. In Europe it’s sometimes referred to as anti-far, which Bray believes has been influenced by the Italian word antifascismo. He says an-tee-fa but doesn’t correct people who pronounce it differently.

3. What are they opposed to?
Neo-Nazis, Neo-fascism, white supremacists and racism, and these days the movement that encapsulates some of those ideas: the alt-right.

We spoke to secret Antifa groups in Oregon. They said they come from a variety of political backgrounds but they were united in their opposition to fascism, and they have an anti-government streak. They said they see creeping authoritarianism in the current American administration that they are looking to build "a movement that really insulates us from the policies of Donald Trump".

"It's not just resisting the federal administration but also resisting moves that can lead to fascism," one member told us, "and those happen locally whether from local officials or from local alt-right movements."

4 Why do they all dress in black?
Like other protest movements dating back to Cold War era West German anarchists, Antifa supporters will often dress all in black, sometimes covering their faces with masks or helmets so they can’t be identified by opposing groups or the police. It's an intimidating tactic – known as a "black bloc" – which also allows them to move together as one anonymous group. There are also offshoots - one Antifa group in Oregon said they also have a "snack bloc" of people who provide food and water for their allies during protests.


5. What tactics do they use?
Antifa look to disrupt alt-right events and far-right speakers. They use a variety of tactics to do this – including shouting and chanting and forming human chains to block off right-wing demonstrators. Some are unapologetic about their online tactics, which include monitoring the far right on social media. They also release personal information about their opponents online, commonly known as "doxxing" – they’ve gotten some alt-right supporters fired from their jobs after identifying them online.

Antifa groups also use more traditional forms of community organising like rallies and protest marches. The most extreme factions will carry weapons like pepper spray, knives, bricks and chains – and they don’t rule out violence.

6: How violent are they?
Their willingness to use violence marks out Antifa from many other left-wing activists, although the Antifa members we spoke to said they denounce the use of weapons and violent direct action. They said if violence does occur, it’s as a form of self-defence. They also make historical arguments to justify their position. For instance, they ask, what if opponents of the German Nazi Party had been more forceful in their opposition in the 1930s, could World War Two and the Holocaust have been averted?

Antifa have been directly and sometimes physically confronting the far right on the streets and, in some cases, they have been successful in postponing, cutting short or cancelling rallies and speeches up and down America.

7. Do women join Antifa groups?
Traditionally direct street action has been a mostly male domain, but significant numbers of women are members of Antifa groups and have been arrested at counter-demonstrations against the alt-right in California and elsewhere. Female members of Antifa groups told us they view the current administration as being anti-women. They point to White House policies on immigration, affordable health care, abortion rights and voting rights and say they disproportionately affect women and minorities. We spoke with Sunsara Taylor from the Antifa group Refuse Fascism who told us women are motivated to respond to "what hits them".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl ... out-antifa

[Per]

This is George Soros (from the horse's mouth):

George Soros is one of the world’s foremost philanthropists. He has given away more than $32 billion of his personal fortune to fund the Open Society Foundations’ work around the world. He is also the founder and primary funder of the Central European University in Budapest, a leading regional center for the study of the social sciences.

Under his leadership, the Open Society Foundations have supported individuals and organizations across the globe fighting for freedom of expression, accountable government, and societies that promote justice and equality. The foundations have also provided school and university fees for thousands of promising students who would otherwise have been excluded from opportunities because of their identity or where they live.

This giving has often focused on those who face discrimination purely for who they are. He has supported groups representing Europe’s Roma people, and others pushed to the margins of mainstream society, such as drug users, sex workers, and LGBTI people.

Soros has experienced such intolerance firsthand. Born in Hungary in 1930, he lived through the Nazi occupation of 1944–1945, which resulted in the murder of over 500,000 Hungarian Jews. His own Jewish family survived by securing false identity papers, concealing their backgrounds, and helping others do the same. Soros later recalled that “instead of submitting to our fate, we resisted an evil force that was much stronger than we were—yet we prevailed. Not only did we survive, but we managed to help others.”

As the Communists consolidated power in Hungary after the war, Soros left Budapest in 1947 for London, working part-time as a railway porter and as a night-club waiter to support his studies at the London School of Economics. In 1956, he emigrated to the United States, entering the world of finance and investments, where he was to make his fortune.

In 1973, he launched his own hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, and went on to become one of the most successful investors in the history of the United States.

Soros used his fortune to create the Open Society Foundations—a network of foundations, partners, and projects in more than 100 countries. Their name and work reflect the influence on Soros’s thinking of the philosophy of Karl Popper, which Soros first encountered at the London School of Economics. In his book Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper argues that no philosophy or ideology is the final arbiter of truth, and that societies can only flourish when they allow for democratic governance, freedom of expression, and respect for individual rights—an approach at the core of the Open Society Foundations’ work.

Soros began his philanthropy in 1979, giving scholarships to black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he helped promote the open exchange of ideas in Communist Hungary, by funding academic visits to the West, and supporting fledgling independent cultural groups and other initiatives. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he created the Central European University as a space to foster critical thinking—at that time an alien concept at most universities in the former Communist bloc. With the Cold War over, he gradually expanded his philanthropy to the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, supporting a vast array of new efforts to create more accountable, transparent, and democratic societies. He was one of the early prominent voices to criticize the war on drugs as “arguably more harmful than the drug problem itself,” and helped kick-start America’s medical marijuana movement. In the early 2000s, he became a vocal backer of same-sex marriage efforts. Though his causes evolved over time, they continued to hew closely to his ideals of an open society.

His giving has reached beyond his own foundations, supporting independent organizations such as Global Witness, the International Crisis Group, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Now in his 80s, Soros continues to take an active personal interest in the Open Society Foundations’ work, traveling widely to support their work and advocating for positive policy changes with world leaders both publicly and privately.

In 2017, the Open Society Foundations announced that Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune towards funding the future work of the Foundations, bringing his total giving to the Foundations since 1984 to over $32 billion.

Throughout Soros’s philanthropic legacy, one thing has remained constant: a commitment to fighting the world’s most intractable problems. He has been known to emphasize the importance of tackling losing causes. Indeed, many of the issues Soros has taken on—and he would be the first to admit this—are the types of issues for which a complete solution might never emerge.

“My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people,” Soros once wrote. That independence has allowed him to forge his own path towards a world that’s more open, more just, and more equitable for all.

https://www.georgesoros.com/

Or, if you want a neutral source:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Soros

[Megaterio Llamas]

I have never met an anarchist I could stand to be around longer than a couple of minutes. And I have been around for a long time.

Meanwhile, rioters set old homeless man's camp on fire:

Ian Miles Cheong
@stillgray
·
Antifa set fire to a homeless man's only possessions. This is how we defeat racism.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/12 ... 47776?s=20

So why would you (or whoever posted that) assume those who did it were Antifa?

As anarchists, or communists, or general leftists, they often attack the police, the banks and various multinational entities.
I really cannot see why anyone who identifies as Antifa would mess with the homeless, unless the homeless person is a nazi, of course....

But these riots seem to be full of lots of groups with lots of agendas. There may certainly be those who want to get rid of the riffraff, but those are probably not Antifa.

Also, I saw some comment on that link yo posted, that linked Soros and Antifa, which is beyond ridiculous!

Soros is a liberal Jewish investment banker who is promoting liberal democracy in Eastern Europe.

Antifa is a loose group of people who think violence is the best way to fight fascism. Their core is made up of anarchists, but they also attract other people on the left, mainly communists and hardcore socialists, but also others that are just anti-racist or anti-capitalist.

Even though both Soros and Antifa oppose fascism and racism, so do the vast majority of people, and these two are so far apart on the political spectrum that the idea that they would somehow cooperate is mindblowingly stupid.

Soros is trying to strengthen the young democracies in Eastern Europe.
Anarchists scoff at representative democracy and sees it as an attempt to legitimize the oppression of the working class.

Anarchists (and most other Antifa members) hate banks and capitalism.
Soros is a successful investment banker. Nuff said.

Now, if you are a fascist (or alt right or KKK) you may have problems discering the difference, because Jewish bankers and anarchists alike are your enemy. But that's just crazy. Liberal democracy is at the core of western civilisation, and Soros is trying to spread this and strengthen it in the young democracies of Eastern Europe. Antifa is scoffing at it and saying it's way overrated, a thin veil to protect capitalist interests.

They're not the same, even if they share some enemies.

You aren't attributing twitter comment section comments to me are you Per? No, I didn't get the sense they were antifa Per, just thugs. That's why you'll note I referred to them as rioters. I think there are many layers to this as well, with many agendas including possibly state provocateurs. Antifa per se has never really found a foothold here in Vancouver to my knowledge but we do have far left activists including anarchists here and they have been active for as long as I can remember. You've probably forgotten now but one of my first posts here on the off topic forum was to highlight their involvement in the local indigenous pipeline blockade crisis which was going on at the time of the COVID shut downs. I'm not interested in their views but I do follow their activities.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11115&p=372887&hili ... ry#p372887

Another left leaning European friend of mine on a sports forum I post at pointed out how quickly Infowars was there on the scene to interview the homeless man. I suggested that maybe the homeless man was an Infowars subscriber who watches at the local library during open hours and they set the whole thing up. That the hobo jungles of America are fertile ground for alt right recruitment

[Cousin Strawberry]

Hobo with a Shotgun is an underrated Rutger Hauer film

[Topper]

Hobo with a Shotgun is an underrated Rutger Hauer film

I watched it about a week ago. LOL

[Topper]

This is all the result of the airline industry shutdown and the lack of chemtrails keeping the populous docile and malleable.

[Mickey107]

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/12 ... 47776?s=20

Feel bad for the guy. Who's the dumb fuck with the back-pack. Hope he fell in a ditch and drowned in mud on the way back to the dorm.

[Per]

The sad thing about protests is that they almost always get high jacked by every one with an agenda.

While the locals try to make a peaceful protest march, they get infiltrated by both the extreme left, the extreme right and criminal gangs who all try to use this to their own advantage.

What shocks me though are the many reports of under cover police initiating a lot of the rioting and looting.
Wtf? Why would that be in their interest?

[Per]

What confuses me is that Chauvin gets charged with third degree murder. Why not first?

He had eight good minutes of time to take his knee off Floyd’s neck, and all i twould have amounted to was a bit of roughing up a suspect that no prosecutor would touch.

But no. He kept pressing on that neck for eight minutes and 45 seconds till Floyd was dead and could not be revived.
Eight minutes and fortyfive seconds. That’s not heat of the moment. That’s not lack of impulse control. That’s not accidental.
It’s as premeditated as it gets. I say first degree murder. He probably even knew the guy.

[Cousin Strawberry]

What shocks me though are the many reports of under cover police initiating a lot of the rioting and looting.
Wtf? Why would that be in their interest?

That's to drum up outrage towards the looting darkies and draw attention away from how dooshbaggey the pigs really are.

If the glass is broken its 100% certain that poor folk will jump in and score free shit.

[Strangelove]

The Russian trolls can't even spell "BlackLivesMatter"...

Well lookie here, a leftie blaming the Russkies for something based upon zero evidence!

That's never happened before!!