I am tending to file a lot of recent unrest under "I wasn't there so I don't know what happened," and refraining from much comment. This may be a cop-out on my part. There are certainly a lot of pictures going around Twitter of alleged Antifa violence in one place or another that turn out to be from other protests, and not necessarily Antifa.
I don't trust any media source that attempts to portray all protesters as Antifa or all anti-fascism as violence. I feel like right now that's a more dangerous and likely problem than Antifa deciding people are fascists who actually aren't, BUT that doesn't mean the latter isn't a serious and immediate problem. Thank you for articulating it as such.
I don't think anyone should support Antifa, or any other group, without question. The world is just not that binary.
I think there are several problems; here are some of the ones I can articulate whilst thinking aloud:
1) Some Antifa are probably just going along to these protests because they want to punch someone and punching a fascist is kindof socially acceptable (for now), and there's no effective way to prevent this in the movement as it currently stands. I don't know how to change this, let alone instigate the kind of cultural change that would make in-person protests safer for the rest of us to attend.
2) Many people in the West have difficulty differentiating between fascism and the cultural trappings of Nazism. We've been conditioned by years of films etc that fascist=Nazi=German and the Allied forces were and are The Good Guys. This is unhelpful in recognising fascism when it isn't wearing jackboots and doing a goose step. But it's also unhelpful in talking about oppression, because oppression and fascism are not necessarily the same thing. My white privilege absolutely means I benefit from white supremacist cultures and systems, but it does not mean that I am myself a white supremacist. Where disability is concerned, everyone who has ever told me that I'm "oppressive" in some way actually meant that I am a nuisance, usually when the nuisance factor to me of not having needed accommodations was probably worse. Are there people who will jump from "nuisance" to "oppressive" to "fascist" faster than I can get away? Absolutely. Are they right? No. I hope that Antifa are better than this on actually identifying fascism; it doesnt seem to me that they're going out and punching random people and then calling them fascist. But they're humans, and you are absolutely right to be wary, because humans do make these category errors.
3) If we say "It's acceptable to punch fascists but only if they are marching in the streets wearing fascist insignia and shouting the fourteen words so we know for definitely sure they are fascists" then activists/resistance/protesters/Antifa are basically going to be running around after the (relatively small) subset of fascists who are going on these marches. This is... possibly not the most threatening group of fascists? Like, I'm more scared of May and Rees-Mogg than I am of the National Front in the immediate future.
4) I tend to see violence as a sign that communication has broken down very badly and the perpetrator(s) should go away and think of a better way of approaching whatever the problem is. It's a skills gap indicator more than anything else. Fascists see violence as a way of getting rid of me. I am not certain that anything other than violence will protect me from a sufficiently determined fascist. (This doesn't mean I believe that I should use violence.) Antifa, or some Antifa, recognise this discrepancy and decide to fight fire with fire; they aren't trying to communicate with the fascists, they just want them to not have power, or to stop being fascists. Sufficiently determined fascists see this as escalation rather than deterrent. Not only is it pretty useless to debate fascism, it's also useless to use insufficient force. (Again: this doesn't mean I think force is right.)
5) Even if we decide violence is okay in some cases, we can't tell what is the minimum sufficient violence. I'm going to assume here that more-than-minimum -- being more violent than absolutely necessary -- is undesirable, and not because of efficiency concerns. On a smaller scale this looks like "Is it all right to punch a fascist or will following them around with a sousaphone do the trick with less harm?" (which is actually a Very Complicated Question) but on a large scale it's... much more unpleasant than a punch, and turns into "how many fascists do we have to kill to stop fascism?" which is a question I remember exploring in highschool. I hoped then that it would remain theoretical for my entire lifetime. Ugh. I hope we aren't there yet, I really do. I think some Antifa are probably already there, in their minds, and that does worry me.
6) It's not fair that in the mainstream and/or tabloid media, police violence (for example) is overlooked or praised and self-defence by protesters is demonised (even when it's e.g. property damage, and not violent toward an actual person), but that is the media which we currently have and no amount of pointing out the double standard is going to change it. Insert long rant here about the continued outworkings of the Reformation (no, seriously, ask me about this sometime, it is fascinating).
Very much my own thoughts here...
I don't trust any media source that attempts to portray all protesters as Antifa or all anti-fascism as violence. I feel like right now that's a more dangerous and likely problem than Antifa deciding people are fascists who actually aren't, BUT that doesn't mean the latter isn't a serious and immediate problem. Thank you for articulating it as such.
I don't think anyone should support Antifa, or any other group, without question. The world is just not that binary.
I think there are several problems; here are some of the ones I can articulate whilst thinking aloud:
1) Some Antifa are probably just going along to these protests because they want to punch someone and punching a fascist is kindof socially acceptable (for now), and there's no effective way to prevent this in the movement as it currently stands. I don't know how to change this, let alone instigate the kind of cultural change that would make in-person protests safer for the rest of us to attend.
2) Many people in the West have difficulty differentiating between fascism and the cultural trappings of Nazism. We've been conditioned by years of films etc that fascist=Nazi=German and the Allied forces were and are The Good Guys. This is unhelpful in recognising fascism when it isn't wearing jackboots and doing a goose step. But it's also unhelpful in talking about oppression, because oppression and fascism are not necessarily the same thing. My white privilege absolutely means I benefit from white supremacist cultures and systems, but it does not mean that I am myself a white supremacist. Where disability is concerned, everyone who has ever told me that I'm "oppressive" in some way actually meant that I am a nuisance, usually when the nuisance factor to me of not having needed accommodations was probably worse. Are there people who will jump from "nuisance" to "oppressive" to "fascist" faster than I can get away? Absolutely. Are they right? No. I hope that Antifa are better than this on actually identifying fascism; it doesnt seem to me that they're going out and punching random people and then calling them fascist. But they're humans, and you are absolutely right to be wary, because humans do make these category errors.
3) If we say "It's acceptable to punch fascists but only if they are marching in the streets wearing fascist insignia and shouting the fourteen words so we know for definitely sure they are fascists" then activists/resistance/protesters/Antifa are basically going to be running around after the (relatively small) subset of fascists who are going on these marches. This is... possibly not the most threatening group of fascists? Like, I'm more scared of May and Rees-Mogg than I am of the National Front in the immediate future.
4) I tend to see violence as a sign that communication has broken down very badly and the perpetrator(s) should go away and think of a better way of approaching whatever the problem is. It's a skills gap indicator more than anything else. Fascists see violence as a way of getting rid of me. I am not certain that anything other than violence will protect me from a sufficiently determined fascist. (This doesn't mean I believe that I should use violence.) Antifa, or some Antifa, recognise this discrepancy and decide to fight fire with fire; they aren't trying to communicate with the fascists, they just want them to not have power, or to stop being fascists. Sufficiently determined fascists see this as escalation rather than deterrent. Not only is it pretty useless to debate fascism, it's also useless to use insufficient force. (Again: this doesn't mean I think force is right.)
5) Even if we decide violence is okay in some cases, we can't tell what is the minimum sufficient violence. I'm going to assume here that more-than-minimum -- being more violent than absolutely necessary -- is undesirable, and not because of efficiency concerns. On a smaller scale this looks like "Is it all right to punch a fascist or will following them around with a sousaphone do the trick with less harm?" (which is actually a Very Complicated Question) but on a large scale it's... much more unpleasant than a punch, and turns into "how many fascists do we have to kill to stop fascism?" which is a question I remember exploring in highschool. I hoped then that it would remain theoretical for my entire lifetime. Ugh. I hope we aren't there yet, I really do. I think some Antifa are probably already there, in their minds, and that does worry me.
6) It's not fair that in the mainstream and/or tabloid media, police violence (for example) is overlooked or praised and self-defence by protesters is demonised (even when it's e.g. property damage, and not violent toward an actual person), but that is the media which we currently have and no amount of pointing out the double standard is going to change it. Insert long rant here about the continued outworkings of the Reformation (no, seriously, ask me about this sometime, it is fascinating).
I don't know if any of this helps at all.