So here is the thing I'm struggling with about antifa at the moment

[kaberett]

It is all very well to say "if you are not with the [explicitly violent] antifascists, you're with the fascists" but what these explanations do not seem to include is actual detailed discussion of how or why I can operate on the assumption that these people won't decide that I'm the next target. "Because you're not a fascist!" Okay, right, no, try again. Try again. I have been told, by people still substantively respected and liked in my geographically local community, that being visibly autistic in public is oppressive. I want to know what the fuck system of rules you're working with that means I won't be deemed unacceptable and I won't be deemed an appropriate target.

"Try not being a fascist!"

Yeah, thanks, see above about "me being visibly disabled in public is oppressive". See every interaction I've ever had where my disabilities are an inconvenience to The Cause.

Try again.

I'm really not comfortable with the extent to which people seem to want to shout me down on this one, using that well-known abusive tactic of telling me that if I don't unquestioningly support them in spite of grave reservations rooted in, like, bare minimum historical literacy plus personal experience, I am all that is Bad and Evil.

I am struggling to articulate this any better because of the sheer visceral horror I'm experiencing at a lot of the rhetoric that's happening. But, like, if you want to engage with me on this -- and I am, very definitely, open to being talked to -- please consider starting from a point of "I see your concerns and they're valid, here's why I'm convinced", not "you're a bad person for having doubts".

If, however, you want to ask me how Very Dare I tone-police you on this, I request that you sit this one out.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I think antifa is operating on the principle that there should be, and therefore there are, exactly two sides: them as want to kill you, me, and all we hold dear; people who oppose the first lot.

I DON'T think it's occurred to the willing-to-be-violent subset of the second lot that some of the objections to their violence—such as yours—are legit.

[alexseanchai]

(Wish DW and my tablet would play nice together)

And like. If punching a Nazi face will prevent that person from murdering someone, punch ALL the Nazis! But. ONLY the self-proclaimed Nazis. Which I HOPE is a metric all violence-willing antifa have in place but I admit to not actually having a clue.

[alexseanchai]

Sure would be nice if people generally admitted to the existence of nuance and multitudinous points of view, you know?

And who the fuck told you being autistic in public is oppressive? Fucking GODS I hate ableist bullshit.

[kaberett]

Or, to put it a slightly different way: this is a set of "comrades" who don't care enough about my consent or bodily autonomy to put any effort at all into making it possible for me to attend protests by, oh, rigorously discouraging smoking. For example.

Because that's preposterous. And it's me imposing ~~puritanical morals~~ or whatever the fuck else.

You fucking bet I see you asserting that whether or not I can breathe is an irritation and an inconvenience, and that I'm enacting violence by insisting on it. Oh boy do I see you.

(Spot the bitterness! Prizes to be won!)

[kaberett]

IT'S FUCKING APPALLING and weirdly enough I'm adamantly unwilling to be present in any space they've set up or run!

but tl;dr me flapping (silently!) in response to getting some very exciting news is oppressive and stifles dialogue, and I need to not do that, because it takes up too much conversational space.

no of course they couldn't ask me to leave the room instead of telling me to not flap, even if I directly request that of them, what do I want to do, make them look like some kind of monster.

(there is so much context. SO MUCH. but also: this is why I pretty much Stopped Flapping again in 2012.)

[alexseanchai]

—but you're not saying they shouldn't be able to smoke full stop. You're observing that they, presented with the choice of "asthmatic folks at protests" and "people lighting up at protests", they're opting for the latter.

[alexseanchai]

Fucksakes

[alexseanchai]

Also! As You Know Bob, strict binaries are almost invariably bullshit!

And I gotta admit I would LIKE the fascist/antifa binary NOT to be bullshit? Because saying it isn't actually binary feels like granting permission to self-proclaimed nice people to just sit this shit out? (Elie Wiesel quote on whom silence supports goes here. I forget the exact words but I'm sure you're familiar.)

[alexseanchai]

Buuut if the...core antifa, let's say, are determined to alienate people fascists target, then it's hard to persist in the belief that there's only two groups here.

I have some thinking to do. Perhaps somewhere not in your public-post comments...

[recessional]

Right there with you.

I mean literally as things go on I have been dryly thinking of the saying "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy." :P

My biggest concern is that the fucking asshats really WILL do something fucking stupid. Because the reality is right now we don't need violence - we need the opposite. Because while that may not always be the case it is right now.

We need psychologically-weaponized non-violence, mind. But. We do not need a bunch of idiot nouveau-Marxists on a power-trip.

[azurelunatic]

Well, that's a shit choice they made.

[alexseanchai]

Absolutely

(Why does everything have to have five kinds of ableism problem?)

[azurelunatic]

And if one wanted to get really shirty, one might perhaps point out that historical groups who have said "Hey can you try not being disabled" include, oh, fascists...

[recessional]

Wiesel's comments on the subject are for me forever marred by his absolute silence on anything Israel did or does to Palestinians and his active explicit support of illegal settlement.

Or, if not marred, I definitely consider him an example of "everyone is flawed and everyone's fear and damage sometimes make them do shitty things". And it certainly removes his status as an Unarguable Moral Authority.

So if anything I consider him a very good example of "the binary never holds up".

[alexseanchai]

Which will be heard as "antifa are the REAL fascists" and dismissed as bullshit accordingly.

I mean you're not wrong, but.

[alexseanchai]

I didn't think I was presenting him as a moral authority? More someone who, whatever else he did or failed to do in his life, said a pertinent wise thing once.

(Also I thought I heard he'd died? Hard to actively support anything from the grave!)

But I hear you. (And will Google this. After work...)

[azurelunatic]

MAYBE ANTIFA COULD TRY ACTUALLY PROTECTING THE GROUPS THAT THE FASCISTS WILL TARGET NEXT.

THAT WOULD BE COOL.

[alexseanchai]

ACCURATE

[recessional]

Yes, he's dead, recently; I meant active support when he was alive.

He got VERY incensed with Obama for criticizing settlement.

I think he said many pertinent and wise things! And in fact I don't even disagree with the quote. The thing is in this context, considering the quote as a touchstone and a reason to be concerned that "nice people" would take the excuse to sit this one out, it is being referred to in context of moral authority . . . which means the whole context is also pertinent.

Because he sat that one out. Because things got complicated on him: because suddenly the issues of oppression and repression didn't present him with a nice Clear Cut situation of one aggressor and one victim, but his own victimized people doing unfortunate shit to another people and victimising them, while trying to figure out how to exist, and he just . . . would not engage, reducing things to "politics" and stating that this was "above politics", etc.

So like: tbh, he's right. Silence is always comforting to the oppressor, not the oppressed. It's just . . . then shit gets complicated, as his own life illustrated. Which means that even if it's true, his famous quote (which in no small part gets its authority because of his status as a Jewish Holocaust survivor and I'm not even saying it shouldn't - it should!) . . . doesn't support the binary, because of context.

Because shit never stays that simple.

[kaberett]

well PERHAPS they shouldn't be leaning quite so hard on "strength through unity", then. or -- that may be unfair -- perhaps the people theoretically doing outreach and awareness-raising on them shouldn't be leaning so damn hard on... the concept... of... strength through unity...

[kaberett]

<3

[alexseanchai]

Oh, okay, I follow you now.

[alexseanchai]

...yup

[recessional]

Because really effective anti-ablist work is about as old as I am. Barely. (There is a much longer history and they were very important! But they were also incredibly hampered, limited by circumstance and difficulty to very specific areas, and had limited successes.)

Because as recently as twenty years ago disabled people just disappeared and the vast majority of people knew, if they knew anyone, one otherwise totally cognitively normal person who used a wheelchair due to an injury or amputation.

And because being other than ablist requires not only being aware of the issue and wanting to deal with it but also fully and completely grappling with issues of conditional privilege, competing and mutually exclusive access needs, and all the other wrinkles that most people would really rather . . . not. Or would rather consign to "okay but I have THREE axes of oppression and you only have two, so I win."

/cynicism

[alexseanchai]

It was rhetorical, but yeah. All that.