Left and Right

The Largest Fascist Rally in Recent Memory Is Expected This Week — Can the Left Unite Against It?

Poor Spencer Sunshine wants to have an “anti-fascism” theme party and no one wants to come. Maybe this guy needs to ask himself why, out of the 320 million people who live in the United States, it’s only a few thousand leftoidal nutcases that feel the need to get worked up about this stuff.

Read the article at Truthout

In practice, since February, few groups outside of antifascist circles have done national-level, longer-term, nuts-and-bolts organizing on the ground against the organized far-right groups. For example, there has been no new wave of regional anti-far-right groups like those which existed in the 1980s and ’90s. These groups did not engage in militant direct action but did build grassroots opposition to Nazi and Klan groups. But, outside of Redneck Revolt, there is not even a sustained effort to create online counter-propaganda. (Although one of the few initiatives by moderate groups has been to limit the far right’s use of social media and online fundraising platforms.) There have been localized demonstrations — in Portland in June after the murder of two men by an Islamophobic racist, and later in the month against a national day of Islamophobic rallies — but these haven’t gelled into any coherent organization or strategy.

In other words, nobody gives a fuck about this guy and his loopy cause. As Ted Kaczynski reminded us,

“Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.”

“Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative,” “enterprise,” “optimism,” etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.”

 

 

1 reply »

  1. It is an embarrassment that so many self-proclaimed “anarchists” devote so much energy to this kind of stuff, i.e. fighting with other irrelevant and marginal fringe groups rather than “attacking the system” per se. Repeatedly, “anarchists” have revealed themselves to be little more that partisan leftists, barely to the left of the Democratic Party. The so-called “J20” protests that took place during Trump’s inauguration are a good example. Would “anarchists” have been organizing such protests if Hillary Clinton had been elected? To ask the question is to answer it, even though Clinton is a war criminal that is responsible for the complete devastation of Libya, among other things. Do “anarchists” devote as much energy to protesting gatherings law enforcement professionals, criminal justice professionals, representatives of the prison industry, etc as they do marginal right-wing groups, even though it is clearly the former that do the greatest amount of harm to the people the “anarchists” and their “anti-fascist” associates say they are trying to defend? Of course not.

    “Anarchists” involved in these kinds of activities are merely play-acting. Essentially, there are no different from Civil War reenactors acting out the Battle of Gettysburg. These “anarchists” are simply dressing up and pretending it is the 1930s.

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