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]

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.)

[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]

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...)

[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]

<3

[recessional]

(I mean honestly: this facet of him breaks my heart. BREAKS it. And is in some ways one of the most discouraging things I ever found out, because of how hard it is to have read Night and then know that he just . . . didn't see what was going on right there. And I know how that works, and why, and even have deep compassion for the fact that I'm honestly sure his psyche was so primed in certain ways that it just couldn't GO there but it's also . . .it's incredibly sad, and one of the things that makes me go " . . . how the fuck can we even . . . figure this shit out, as a species.")

(But it just also means . . . okay, so here is another level of human interaction and stuff where we just have to . . . always be thinking. And a lesson about our failings and potential failings as humans and illustration of the challenges we have.)

(And sometimes after thinking these things I have to go to bed and pretend LA LA LA I JUST . . . HAVE STUFF TO DO LOOK A CLICKY GAME for a week or so because otherwise we are in dangerous thought territory. *sigh*)

[alexseanchai]

Oh, okay, I follow you now.

[recessional]

Np - I realized that trying to type up and articulate thoughts like this on my phone was PROBABLY NOT A GOOD PLAN as it encourages editing and shortening which, while probably a relief to people who wish I'd shut up, is not necessarily good for actually saying what I mean. >.> So I came over to the computer.

CN: antisemitic violence

[liv]

Yeah, this is a really good example of why I don't do lefty direct action: if you're Jewish, you have to constantly perform exactly, exactly the right opinions about Palestine, because otherwise you're... a fascist. And at least some people defining themselves as anti-fascist have decided that violence against people they deem to be fascists is acceptable. I'm a target for that sort of righteous violence, though likely to a lesser extent than I'm a target for violence by actual Jew-hating fascists. And I don't have the same ableism to contend with that kaberett does. But there are antifascist groups I'm actually scared of, even if we have a common enemy.

Mind, I completely agree with you that Wiesel was a flawed human being, and I get that you personally would not have advocated violence against him. But this isn't theoretical for me; my brother's friend was murdered when his protesting-against-Bush comrades discovered he was Jewish. It is probable that that anti-colonialist, anti-war, anti all the bad things in the world group was infiltrated, but they were susceptible to being infiltrated because they were completely ready to believe that anyone ethnically Jewish was 'just as bad' as actual Nazis because Israel is an oppressive militaristic state.

I'm less unsafe than kab in that it's not physically impossible for me to march with people chanting 'Jews out!' or carrying banners proclaiming ✡ = 卐. But you might understand why I'm reluctant to join in such a protest. And my reluctance can and will be used as evidence that I'm Bad and Evil and don't really oppose fascism. I mean, if Wiesel is suspect because he criticized Obama about Israel, I certainly don't stand a chance.

Re: CN: antisemitic violence

[recessional]

I'm really not sure what to do with the implication here that pointing out Wiesel's inconsistency about VERY specifically wrongdoing actually committed is tantamount to declaring him "suspect" or "a fascist".

That is in fact the kind of binary thinking I end up not able to do much with. So.

[liv]

Hm, let me rephrase. I possibly shouldn't have hung my comment about how easy it is to get accused of supporting fascism off yours about Wiesel. You are very clear about being against violence and against binary good versus evil thinking.

I was reminded by the direction of the discussion that when people do hold the view that 'if you're not with us, you're with the fash' that Jewish people are by default 'not with us'. So mainly I was agreeing with kaberett that we both have good reason to worry about being considered a legitimate target for (some) violent anti-fascists.

Non-Jews get to resist or fight fascists without having to demonstrate correct opinions about every possible ethnic or territorial conflict in the world. We don't; we're oppressors until proven otherwise (including sometimes if we actively support the Palestinian cause against the Israeli state, as was the case for the murder victim). So the point is that I definitely prefer your attitude, that people can be wrong about some things without being evil and deserving of violence, over the attitude discussed in the OP: if I don't unquestioningly support them in spite of grave reservations [...] I am all that is Bad and Evil. And not just unquestioningly support their tactics as well as their politics against Nazis and their fellow-travellers, but unquestioningly support their views about Palestine even if that's not relevant to the current action.

[recessional]

Oh, dude, the anti-semitism of the Left is honestly a thing I am very aware of and disgusted with, and will actively call the fuck out. And indeed, in the case of Wiesel particularly, he's incredibly important and he did years of incredibly important work and as noted elsewhere I honestly get where the part that saddens me comes from. This shit is complicated.

It just becomes in this case even more a case of . . . if you are going to use his words as support for an Absolute Two Sides Only kind of thing (there is only the oppressor and the oppressed and you are either with one actively and in one specific Approved Way, or you are passively supporting the other) then he . . . doesn't come out well.

And I think that's actually an indicator of why that Absolute Two Sides Only narrative is flawed as fuck when it comes to moral positions and interacting with other humans, and why "you are either anti-fascist or WITH THE FASCISTS" is a hugely fucking flawed position taken to any general extreme.

(And the very specific context of the settlements is also germane here - I mean I realize you don't know me from a hole in the wall! And I wasn't elaborate about it either. So. But it's a very specific issue of a specific injustice, not General Position All Around, cuz that'd be bullshit and the entire area is the definition of "it's more complicated than that".)

And yes, I absolutely grok and to some extent sympathise (from different experience positions) with the "display your credentials" bullshit, and this is in fact part of what I reject, and am rejecting in the context of noting that I don't think that's a great quote (the Wiesel one about silence) to use to prop up the "there are two sides" argument or position.

(And in fact often have to stop from starting fights with "pro-Palestinian" - scare quotes used because they're often using the cause as an excuse for whatever behaviour it is they wanted to perpetuate - people from North America by demanding when they plan on demonstrating in the streets to return Manhattan and surrounding area to the Indigenous peoples run off that land, and so on. Because gosh is it ever easy to espouse that kind of absolutist thinking when it doesn't actually affect you AT ALL. But kids I don't think that 'there are only two sides' position is gonna end you up in places YOU want to be if you actually hold yourself to the standard of fucking applying it without hypocrisy.) (I stop myself because as an apparently white chick it's an inappropriate set of behaviours and my energies are better spent elsewhere but man does it make my blood boil.)

So yeah, I don't think we're . . . in disagreement? In that my primary intent with pointing out that facet of Wiesel's legacy is in fact to say "so I don't think this is the support for the Absolute Binarism that we want to invoke here, because of where it would take us - which is a place I think is inappropriate and wrong, given the Entire Context."

So.

[liv]

Ah, got you, thank you for taking the time to clarify. I read you as saying, don't quote Wiesel as an authority, he was flawed. But actually your point was, don't quote Wiesel to justify the Two Sides Only, with us or with the fascists, bullshit. Because given the context of how he lived his life, that's clearly not what he meant. I don't, indeed, disagree with you nor assume you're ignorant of supposedly leftist anti-semitism.