[Peace-discuss] Antifa

Fri Oct 20 16:44:04 UTC 2017

Well Carl,

I can argue with you about this from now until who knows, but in the end, what good will it do ?

The distraction lately at least on this list has been the constant focus on the merits of ANTIFA, as opposed to moving on and going back to focus on anti-war / anti-racism topics and actions, and perhaps getting out into the community more to find issues of concern for people that we can at least somewhat agree on and how the wars of corporate empire effect these issues ( directly or indirectly ) as opposed to focusing on and emphasizing what divides us.

David J.

From: C G Estabrook [mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 11:00 PM
To: Karen Aram
Cc: David Johnson; David Green; Francis A Boyle; Mildred O'brien
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Antifa

Antifa is the reddest of red herrings for the antiwar movement. It’s a smoke screen (smoked herring? a kipper?), a distraction from the vital work that should be done against neoliberalism and neoconservatism.  And there is not much time. 

Seasoned anti-warriors like Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, and Diana Johnstone are unequivocal on the matter: Antifa is a “gift to the right’ (Chomksy).

The best defenders of Anifa can muster is an obiter dictum from Cornell West (who once supported Obama) under duress.

I don’t want to give a gift to the right; I do want to oppose US war-making; and we’re not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for elite profits.

—CGE

On Oct 18, 2017, at 7:50 PM, Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> wrote:

David

I’ve added back the others in this conversation. They can read your response below, to my response to Midge on anti-fa.

I was addressing Midge’s concerns, you and I have had this conversation many times, and I would have preferred it wasn’t raised again. I was going to delete you from my response because I wanted to retain you as a friend, but felt deleting you inappropriate. Just as your response deleting others is also inappropriate. 

I was not critiquing the IWW, I was critiquing anti-fa. Any suggestion that the IWW like the socialist organizations have not been infiltrated by government provocateurs is ridiculous. There are no “left” organizations in the US that have not been infiltrated and influenced, they’ve had 47 years to do it. Anti-fa is one of the results.

Your insistence on making this personal, you keep addressing me as if I was the only one saying anything on the topic of anti-fa, just as you did the other day in reference to the Bennis article. This leaves me no alternative but to say I’m finished conversing on this topic, which I see as nonsense.

I have one question, where is the anti-war movement? I have yet to see the IWW, the DSA, Socialist Alternative, Anti-fa, Democrats, say anything about US imperialism. And, if they do begin to do so, at this point, I will know its a facade.

On Oct 18, 2017, at 17:27, David Johnson <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net> wrote:

First of all Karen,

You know absolutely nothing about the IWW. I have been a member of the IWW since 2004 and have been to several of their annual conventions and organizing trainings in Chicago and I know and have met Wobblies from all over the U.S., Canada and Europe. The IWW is a big tent in that there are no ideological requirements or dogma. The only requirements to being an IWW member are that you are a Worker including people who are self-employed with no employees, as well as students, retired people and homemakers. The only exception is for anyone who is an agent of law enforcement or a jailer / prison guard.

The IWW has ALWAYS had Anarchist leanings ( Syndicalism ) and believed ( still believes ) in direct action and self-defense.

Nothing has changed within the IWW since its founding in 1905 in regards to its tactics and principles.

I also do not believe in physically assaulting someone including fascists just for speaking.

However, when Klansmen, Nazis and other fascists come in to a community like Charlottesville armed and physically assault people and the police do NOTHING ( nowhere to be found ) than people have a right to defend themselves. Go watch the past episode of Democracy Now immediately after Charlottesville in which  Cornell West described how he and other African American clergy activists were in a church and surrounded by the fascist thugs. West stated ; “ Thank God for the IWW and ANTIFA for arriving and chasing off the fascist white supremacists, otherwise we all would have been either badly beaten or killed “.  I would hardly call that a “ distraction “.

I don’t know where you keep getting your flawed and inaccurate information Karen, but the fact is that ANTIFA ( and the IWW ) ARE ; anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-war. 

You may disagree with SOME individuals who identify themselves as Antifa’s tactics, but to make everyone who is anti-fascist  out to be the enemy ?

I guess I am your enemy now ?

David Johnson

From: Karen Aram [ <mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com> mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 5:27 PM
To: Mildred O'brien
Cc: C G Estabrook; David Green; Boyle, Francis A; David Johnson
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Antifa

Midge

Some support anti-fa because they relate it to the union, IWW and workers movements of the 30’s, a time when violence was perpetrated against the workers and their families by the police and  hired thugs, forcing the people to defend themselves.

Since then the IWW and socialist organizations have been infiltrated by anarchists and others (those anarchists who support chaos and violence) who see no problem punching a “Nazi," for what he “says." 

I do not believe I owe a Nazi a platform, a chair at my table in a cafe, or allow him/her in my home. However, I support his/her right to speak in public venues, or that which is provided by others, along with my right to protest and demonstrate against his/her presence. But with words, signs, or a bull horn, but never physical violence of any kind. 

 Dianna Johnstone’s article is very good, along with many others, by others. She has been under terrible attack as a result. The article below that Carl referred to in Counterpunch attacking “her," made my skin crawl, so I was only able to get through the first half. I’m very disappointed in Jeffrey St. Clair for publishing rubbish. Rubbish which deals little with the issue and is merely a vilification of Dianna and others, like us. 

Anyone who has been politically active, opposing USG aggression should be able to see the machinations at play by government lackeys or paid provocateurs in respect to what is vigilantism, providing the militarized police with excuses to attack protestors. Unfortunately the appeal to the young whose political activism is more recent, buy into it.

Anyone familiar with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights success, understands that working within the law, even when our laws are perverted, utilizing non violent means to achieve our goals is the only tried and true method. 

I support violent tactics only when under occupation by a foreign and cruel entity. We have quite a few nations in the middle east and north Africa, that have every right to use violence against the US and other western powers occupying them militarily and anti-fa keeps Americans distracted from this issue.

On Oct 18, 2017, at 14:07, Mildred O'brien < <mailto:moboct1 at aim.com> moboct1 at aim.com> wrote:

You can call me a wimp or coward, but I fail to see a legitimate interest in making a futile public showing of antagonism toward facist groups like re-invented Nazis who I think are out just to provoke "antifa" types in order to have a target to confront and attract attention.  I could be wrong, but if the facists didn't have a target to attack they might not get their desired attention.  I say better to ignore them by not showing up in the same space, let them have their rant (probably for the MSM who can't resist a story they might sell) and go home.  If they become destructive or violent, let the cops take care of 'em, that's what they're there for. There are other ways to counteract knuckleheads (of course they helped manage electing a precedent sic).  It just seems to me that getting into the fray that no one wins is an exercise in futility. Which is not to say that their ideas (if you can call them that) should not be opposed by intelligent discourse, not provocation.  (Of course, if this was 1937 instead of 80 years later, I would probably have another opinion...)  

There are so many words on this subject, I don't know who to agree with, just wonder if anybody agrees with me?

MO'B

-----Original Message-----
From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss < <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
To: Peace-discuss List < <mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Wed, Oct 18, 2017 3:17 pm
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa

Diana Johnstone's recent article, "Antifa in Theory and in Practice,” begins "'Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists' [Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts]. In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist.  Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political.  It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as 'fascists’…"

'Johnstone (born 1934) is an American political writer based in Paris, France. She has a BA in Russian Area Studies and a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Minnesota. She was active in the movement against the Vietnam War, organizing the first international contacts between American citizens and Vietnamese representatives. Johnstone was European editor of the U.S. weekly 'In These Times' from 1979 to 1990. She was press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. From 1992 to 2000, she was associated editor of the Paris quarterly Dialogue concerned with Balkan geopolitics. Johnstone also regularly contributes to the online magazine CounterPunch.

'After the 2003 publication of her "Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions," Johnstone became the centre of controversy over her claim in the book that there is "no evidence whatsoever" that the Srebrenica massacre of the Bosniaks was genocidal. The book was rejected by publishers in Sweden, prompting an open letter in 2003 defending Johnstone's book—and her right to publish—that was signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali and John Pilger. The signatories stated, "We regard Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade as an outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition” … Richard Caplan of Reading and Oxford University reviewed the work in International Affairs, where he described the work as "a revisionist and highly contentious account of western policy and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. [… It] is insightful but overzealous […] well worth reading—but for the discriminating eye.”

'In April 2012, she wrote about the first round of the French Presidential elections a few days earlier and identified Front National leader Marine Le Pen as "notably" "basically on the left" while also labelling Le Pen as "demagogic". She also rejected claims Le Pen is antisemitic: "There is absolutely nothing attesting to anti-Semitism on the part of Marine Le Pen. She has actually tried to woo the powerful Jewish organisations, and her anti-Islam stance is also a way to woo such groups”.

'Her other books include

• The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe's Role in America's World (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1985)

• Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions (London: Pluto Press; New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003)

• Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (CounterPunch, 2015)'

A member of AWARE has recently been in contact with Johnstone. You can read a typical attack on her at < <https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.counterpunch.org%2F2017%2F10%2F16%2Fthe-nimpe-critique-of-antifa%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4f25c0eef05e4a40a5f008d5166c455a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439576623436142&sdata=sm3dw5ZtIjZasKt8SDk4vBQjdoi9X%2BVuFkmks8fkc9k%3D&reserved=0> https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/16/the-nimpe-critique-of-antifa/>.

To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the < <mailto:peace at anti-war.net> peace at anti-war.net> list, as a call to action - but not of the antifa sort.

AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should regard Antifa as Johnstone suggests: the US is not killing people around the world for white supremacy, but for the profits of the 1%. We should be talking to people about what the US is doing, and why, in order to oppose it - not 'de-platforming' (or punching) people with bad ideas. —CGE

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