Chat logs obtained from message boards used by neo-Nazis and other far-right groups show a concerted effort to compile private information on leftist enemies and circulate the data to encourage harassment or violence.
The messages were obtained by an anonymous source, who infiltrated and gained the trust of white nationalists and other right-wingers, and has been leaking the material to Unicorn Riot, a “decentralized media collective” that emerged from leftist protest movements.
The chat logs originate from various web discussion communities hosted by the provider Discord and closed to the public. The communities, which have names like “Vibrant Diversity,” “Ethnoserver,” “Safe Space 3,” “4th Reich,” and “Charlottesville 2.0,” range from having 36 users to 1,269 users. The most active, with nearly a quarter million messages over seven months, is “Vibrant Diversity,” a neo-Nazi community forum that includes a channel called “#oven,” where users share racist memes. The 4th Reich server, the second most active, has 130,000 messages over the course of four months and includes a channel called “#rare_hitlers,” where users share propaganda posters and other glorified media from Nazi Germany. The “Charlottesville 2.0” server, which contains 35,000 messages, is where the “Unite the Right” hate rally in Charlottesville was organized.
This article is based solely on chat logs from a community called “Pony Power” (Unicorn Riot published the logs yesterday). The Pony Power server has 50 users, and the chat logs contain just over 1,000 messages, posted over the course of 10 days and ranging in topic from far-right politics to advice about digital and operational security to debates about the legal limits of online behavior. The primary activity on the Pony Power server is posting private information, like names, photos, home addresses, and phone numbers of dozens of anti-fascist activists.
Victims of the outings, also known as “doxing,” described reactions ranging from terror to anger to annoyance, and have variously turned to friends and family for support and locked down their accounts. They said the Pony Power doxing campaign is just the latest in a series of online efforts by neo-Nazis and their allies to marginalize their opponents. The information compiled on Pony Power hasn’t yet been distributed to the larger right-wing extremist community. However, doxing efforts associated with prior online hate campaigns have forced targets to leave their homes in the face of death threats, rape threats, and other forms of harassment. And those attacks were mounted even before President Donald Trump came to power on the back of racist attacks against his predecessor, Mexicans, and Muslims, and before he embraced white nationalists and encouraged violence against protesters at campaign rallies.
People chatting on the Pony Power server spoke openly, as though behind closed doors, often using offensive slurs. So be warned, some of the following conversations are hard to stomach.
Scope of the harassment campaign
During the 10-day span that the Pony Power chat logs cover, from August 17 to 27, so-called alt-right members collected private information from over 50 anti-fascist activists from the states of California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
The information collected often included photographs, social media profiles, home address, phone numbers, email addresses, date of birth, driver license numbers, vehicle information, place of employment, and in one instance, a social security number. The justification for doxing normally put forward in Pony Power was that the targets were part of loosely structured far-left groups known as antifa, or anti-fascists, which has put up some of the most militant opposition to the far right; or they’re judged sympathetic to antifa; or they’ve been seen at protests deemed “communist” by the the far right.
The members of Pony Power often brainstorm methods to increase the effectiveness of their harassment campaigns. One user called “oxycolton” wrote, “We’ve had a lot of people dox antifags but it doesn’t hold,” apparently meaning that the information is lost, in part because they don’t yet have a database to keep track of everything.
“Klaus Albricht,” the most prolific user on the server, suggested a way to accelerate doxing efforts. “We need to separate states by regions and have a set amount of people work on it by region of doxxing antifa, and then work on other regions, or have multiple different teams per region.”
Although this group has collected private information on over 50 anti-fascist activists, it’s unclear how much of it has been made available to the wider right-wing extremist population. “Lupus_Dei – NC” asked if they should post the dox of an enemy to Gab, a social network for hate speech, or if they should wait until they have a full database. User “B1488” responded, “Full database. Dont want to go out all half-cocked.”
Selecting targets
As the neo-Nazis and their allies were preparing for the “Say No to Marxism” rally in Berkeley on August 27, local anti-fascists were busy organizing a counterprotest. Albricht posted a flier for this counterprotest and asked, “So who is going to be there to stand up against Antifa? This is a good chance to dox them so we can have an idea who they are.” He suggested looking at the counterprotest Facebook page and doxing everyone who was attending, as well as everyone who liked the post.
The crew on Pony Power did not just target antifa; anyone who engaged in activism against racism seemed to be fair game. “Lupus_Dei – NC” posted a link to the Safety Pin Box, which describes itself as “a monthly subscription box for white people striving to be allies in the fight for Black Liberation.” With the link, Lupus_Dei posted the message, “These white allies need doxing.”
Organizations that research hate groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, and any leftist groups that work against fascism, were also mentioned as potential targets.
Some of the users feel that doxing anyone that disagrees with their politics isn’t effective enough, and that they need to focus on bigger fish. The user “NSJW” suggested that they should dox journalists and the leadership of activist groups. The next day, NSJW pointed out a specific journalist that they want to dox because the journalist wrote an op-ed NSJW disagrees with.
User “zayl777” suggests doxing “Marxist professors.”
A few days after zayl777’s comment, Albricht wrote, “It’s time we start mapping out the liberal teachers of universities,” because many people who join antifa come from liberal universities.
Harassing a 22-year-old college student because of her shirt
A user asked, “Can we get a doxx on this?” and linked to the Facebook page of a 22-year-old college student. In her cover photo, the student is wearing a shirt that says “punch more Nazis,” and the photo itself is framed with the words “good night alt-right.”
“That woman looks Jewish,” someone commented.
“Fuck, she looks as Jewish as Barbara Shekel,” someone else added.
During this conversation, Albricht described how he tricks suspected antifa members into revealing their IP address by sending them a malicious link. “What happens is the person goes through our link to an actual website, and from there this website logs the IP as it redirects the person without them knowing through their IP tracking website,” he wrote. “It’s perfect to capture these people’s IP addresses from now on.” IP addresses can sometimes be used to ascertain someone’s approximate or specific physical location.
Two hours later, Albricht says he has almost completed doxing the woman. “That one is very active. I have found loads of information. Expect a IP if I can get her dumbass to click the link,” he wrote. “Also there is 2 other people who admitted that they liked her shirt, and that they are either getting one or already have one, so I will be getting their dox too just for future reference if you’d like?”
Then he listed the target’s full name, age, current address, college major and the university she attends, and her username on several social media sites.
“I never clicked the link because it seemed hella sketch,” the woman told me when I reached out to her. The Intercept has granted her anonymity because she’s a victim of a harassment campaign.
“Basically some random guy messaged me on Facebook saying that members of 4chan (a popular hub for troll campaigns) or the ‘alt-right,’ don’t remember which he said, were doxing people who had admitted to being antifa and I should check out this link for details,” she continued. “I checked out his profile, and it was just full of ‘alt-right’ propaganda, so I was like yeah, OK not falling for that and didn’t click the link and instead just blocked him.”
I asked why she thinks Pony Power users might be doxing her. “I’m not going to rallies or like super connected to any main antifa work,” she said, “so my best guess would be because I told some Nazi sympathizers on Twitter to go fuck themselves, because I’m a member of more left-leaning and antifa-supporting Facebook groups, and because I’m more vocal on Twitter about my distaste for Nazis.”
Since I contacted her, the woman has locked down all of her online accounts. She has also warned friends who commented on the photo in which she wears the anti-fascist shirt. “I’m annoyed because I’m going to have be paranoid about everything that I do for a while now, and annoyed because I haven’t even done that much to warrant a doxing, aside from probably just hurting the feelings of someone in the ‘alt-right,’ ” she said.
“I’m also terrified because they have my address, and it’s not just myself who’s at risk, but now also my parents who live here as well,” she told me.
Harassing a survivor of the Charlottesville terrorist attack
On August 12, Emily Gorcenski, a data scientist from Charlottesville, was walking with a group of counterprotesters away from Emancipation Park, where the hate groups were rallying. That’s when a high-speed car, driven by right-wing extremist James Alex Field Jr., plowed into the counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.
“I was there when the attack happened,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian. “Despite the president deeming me — a transgender woman — unfit for military service, I ran toward the attacker with a weapon. I was ready to engage him if he tried to hurt more people.”
On August 17, NSJW posted a link to Gorcenski’s page on a website dedicated to discussing how best to troll victims (the website was not Pony Power), and said “Gorcenski was at the Cville rally, the torch march the night before as well.”
Twenty minutes later, the user “SleepingInRlyeh,” wrote, “Found Gorcenski’s power word (pre-tranny name).” And 15 minutes after that, he posted her home address, links to her website and social media profiles, and a photograph.
Gorcenski told me that she’s been dealing with harassment since well before the “Unite the Right” rally. In March or April, she says that users on the aforementioned website dedicated to trolling discovered the name she went by before Emily, and she sent me a screenshot of transphobic harassment on Twitter from July.
“As far as being a target goes, it sucks,” she told me. “These folks are evidently dangerous, as seen from the events of August 11 and 12. … At the same time, I am accustomed to online harassment and the more energy they pour into me, the less they spend on other folks.”
An armed neo-Confederate from Gainesville, Florida
A Pony Power user called “adolphus (not hitler)” was mostly a lurker, only posting a total of three messages on Pony Power. When another user “ox” posted dox on several alleged anti-fascists from Gainesville, Florida, adolphus responded, “Everything @ox is posting are all key figures in Gainesville antifa. I lost my job because of these faggots so any help is appreciated.” Later on, adolphus stated, “lost my job because I was at [the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville] so I’ve got some scores to settle with my local antifa.”
All told, Pony Power users posted private information, including home addresses, on 10 alleged Gainesville antifa activists.
It’s not clear who is behind the adolphus account, but the case of Jim O’Brien, a 44-year-old man also from Gainesville, Florida (like adolphus), gives one example of the sort of alleged activity for which far-right activists were arrested during the rally. O’Brien was charged with carrying a concealed handgun. A few days later, he, like adolphus, was fired from his job, which in his case was at North American Roofing Services. “We do not support the extremist activities that were on display in Charlottesville, Va. over the weekend or any other similar activity,” a memo from his former company states. “We promote a culture of inclusion and diversity.”
According to Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog, “Footage from the rally appears to show O’Brien, marching with the League of the South, punching a woman repeatedly in the face.” League of the South is a pro-slavery, neo-Confederate hate group.
The Intercept tried calling and messaging Jim O’Brien, but he did not respond. According to his court documents, he’s not allowed to leave the state of Virginia until his case is resolved. His trial is scheduled for September 22.
Right-wing figures like O’Brien have been targeted by leftists for outing that in many ways resembles the doxing Pony Power conducted against anti-fascists. For example, opponents of neo-Nazis identified another far-right figure at the Charlottesville rally where O’Brien was arrested: Peter Cvjetanovic, who appeared bearing a torch at the University of Virginia march. Now that his fellow University of Nevada, Reno students know that Cvjetanovic is a self-described white nationalist, they’ve pressured their school to expel him (university officials said they will not expel him, even though they “unequivocally reject” the views espoused during the rally), and he’s chosen to resign from his on-campus job to avoid trouble.
Anti-fascist activists also publicly identified Cole White, another participant in the Charlottesville rally. Since he was outed, he has lost his job at Top Dog, a hot dog restaurant in Berkeley, California.
But there’s an important distinction between doxing by neo-Nazis and antifa. Neo-Nazis target nearly anyone who vocally disagrees with their political worldview — which essentially means anyone who isn’t a racist white person and is public about their views.
Antifa activists only target members of hate groups, a small but growing subset of American society that Trump refuses to condemn, responsible for mounting terrorist attacks against mosques, black churches, transgender women, and people of color.
“Confirmation that antifa is a Jewish organization”
Michael Novick, a 70-year-old retired school teacher who lives in the Los Angeles area, has been doing anti-fascist activism for over 50 years. In the 1960s, while studying political science at Brooklyn College, he was elected student body president. He was arrested and expelled from school when he, and dozens of others, staged a sit-in at the registrar’s office, demanding that they open admissions for black and Puerto Rican high school graduates. (He was eventually re-admitted and graduated the following year.)
In 1987, at the age of 40, he started the Los Angeles chapter of what would later become the activist group Anti-Racist Action, but only after spending “many decades fanning the sparks of resistance and particularly trying to encourage people of European descent like myself to break with and help uproot and overturn white supremacy and imperialism.”
Because Novick is one of the few people publicly associated with Anti-Racist Action, he has been “threatened many times over many years by various neo-Nazis and fascists.” Last February, when anti-feminist activist Milo Yiannopoulos’s scheduled talk at University of California, Berkeley sparked anti-fascist protests, Novick told me that he received “another spate of death threats,” including a threat to attack “the women in [his] life” — even though he wasn’t in Berkeley that day.
After users of the Pony Power chat server discovered that Novick ran several anti-fascist websites, they decided that he must be the leader of antifa. Albricht announced, “We have our lead guys.” They imagined an organizational chart of antifa, with Novick at the top. “Michael is behind what we know as the power structure,” Albricht said. “Let’s get some more info.”
A few minutes later, Albricht posted the dox, proclaiming “I am very certain he started the movement.”
And then Pony Power members stumbled upon what they considered a breakthrough, a YouTube video of Novick speaking at the 2011 Los Angeles Housing & Hunger Crisis Conference in which he says, “I’m of Jewish descent.” This was just the proof that the right-wing extremists needed. “We have confirmation that Antifa is a Jewish organization,” Albricht announced.
“Everybody has certainly always known I am Jewish,” Novick told me. “My father came to the U.S. in the early 30s as a teenager from Poland, and most of his family (many aunts, uncles and cousins) were wiped out by the Nazis either in Bialystok during a ghetto rebellion or in the camps.”
Back in Pony Power, excited about the group’s discovery, Albricht wrote: “Thank you! Now let’s tear these kikes apart!” Members immediately began spreading the idea that Novick, a Jew, was the leader of antifa, and they began making up an organizational chart of antifa that placed Novick at the top, with other antifa leaders reporting back to him.
“There is no antifa command structure. There is no organization antifa, so there is no organizational chart,” Novick told me. “Some antifa are Jewish. Hardly surprising, given the level of anti-Semitism displayed by the fascists and neo-Nazis.”
When I asked Novick how he felt being a target of a far-right harassment campaign, he assured me that he had support. “I am obviously not happy to be in their crosshairs,” he said, “but I have many comrades and colleagues locally and nationally who have and will continue to support and defend me and have been aware of the most recent and previous threats.”
Is doxing legal?
During the course of doxing, Pony Power members became concerned that they were engaging in illegal activities, for example, by sending malicious links, such as the 22-year-old college student, to learn their victims’ IP addresses.
While IP tracking like this is simple to pull off, the technique itself is similar to a criminal hacker tactic called spearphishing, in which an attacker sends a message in hopes that the target will click a link and visit a site that tricks them into handing over login credentials.
Other techniques used by Pony Power members included querying domain name registration records, as well as DNS servers, which convert domain names into IP addresses.
Members of Pony Power were worried about violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a broad law frequently used to prosecute hackers, and about inviting criminal conspiracy charges. In one particularly lively discussion between Albricht and NSJW, they argue about exactly what laws they might be violating, and how wise it is to discuss it on a server where there might be infiltrators.
“You guys should NOT be talking about anything that violates the CFAA,” NSJW states. “You will get fucked on conspiracy charges quick if you’re not careful.
Albricht responded, “meh, if they were to raid this group, that would be the least of our worries seeing as doxxing is illegal.”
(It’s unclear why the Klaus Albricht’s name changed to “Klaus Schmidt” and his profile picture changed, but an examination of the chat logs show that this is the same user.)
“I don’t see anything here that would be a CFAA violation,” Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told me. “Using WHOIS, using historical DNS services, using reverse DNS … The closest thing that I can see to a CFAA violation would be the phishing, where they’re trying to collect IP addresses.”
While the Pony Power doxing doesn’t appear to be in violation of the CFAA, Cardozo left open the possibility that they were violating state harassment or cyberbullying laws.
“The CFAA is designed to criminalize hacking,” Cardozo said. “These guys aren’t hackers. They’re just trolls.”
Anti-harassment resources
If you’re worried right-wing extremists will come after you, here are a few resources to help you scrub your online presence.
- Feminist Frequency’s Speak Up and Stay Safe(r) guide
- Equality Lab’s anti-doxing guide for activists facing attacks from the “alt-right”
- A Techlicious blog post about removing yourself from people search directories
Update: Article amended to clarify that Michael Novick was expelled from Brooklyn College, not just as student body president.
Top photo: White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” exchange insults with counterprotesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Emancipation Park during the “Unite the Right” rally Aug. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And the commies are not doing the same thing? Please… What a joke. This is war.
“While IP tracking like this is simple to pull off, the technique itself is similar to a criminal hacker tactic called spearphishing, in which an attacker sends a message in hopes that the target will click a link and visit a site that tricks them into handing over login credentials.”
That is incorrect. SpearPhishing does not recognize IP addresses as anyone on any site can obtain said IP addresses. For example, I could make a website on my own server, send the URL to you, you visit it, and then boom, I now have your IP.
Now, how stupid does that statement sound? It’s not malicious at all, and not illegal. I don’t even know where any of you get the notion that capturing IP addresses is illegal. Certainly it is not illegal at all.
As for the “harassment” charges, is anyone calling up these people? Messaging them? These people are being doxxed, and were being placed into a single massive folder, and was intended to be handed over to the FBI the day that Antifa were planned to be placed on the domestic terrorist list.
The notion that Antifa are leaderless is just a ruse to lure people away from the truth. Leaderless structures just don’t happen. There are always people making plans, giving orders, etc etc
But it is nice to see that you’re writing that I am the “Most prolific” person on the server, considering the fact that I only started posting on said server for a few days before leaving.
What peaks my interests, is how YOU and your site are not posting much on Antifa doxxing our people and getting them fired from their jobs. None of us have done anything bad with our dox information, yet you’re treating us like we did something wrong.
“Yes, you’re racist” post several pieces of information on our guys and had them lose their jobs over their political views, depriving them of income to sustain life.
Do I feel sad or guilty? Not at all. They say we are all evil, yet spread lies and filth about us.
They say we were responsible for the death of Heather, yet therein lies the problem. First they tell us not to lump all Muslims into one group because of a few bad ones, yet want to lump all whites into one single evil group because of the actions of 1 group. It’s a complete double standard.
Second, your site completely fails to mention that pictures and video evidence exists that prove James Field’ car was attacked prior to being hit.
Our group went through proper legal channels to obtain permits to protest, and had them revoked, and renewed via the supreme court. Then right afterwards, the police reportedly had a “stand down” issue in place, and allowed attacks on our guys.
The police funneled people into the paths of Antifa. So where’s the outrage at that? Where is the outrage at the violation of the 1st amendment rights of my people?
As a believer in freedom of speech, I’ve been outraged at the violation of your First Amendment rights from the beginning. I also have repeatedly opposed the idea that businesses are supposed to be the judges and owners of employees in their off-time. Whatever amusement the big bosses may get in their power and the demoralization it imposes on every employee, regardless of politics or position, such power represents yet another American corporate burden that Chinese companies don’t have to put up with, since they can leave it to the government to do their censorship for them, if not to disappear the doxxing and complaining entirely.
My position – from the beginning – was that the city of Charlottesville was foolhardy to declare your rally an “unlawful gathering”, then have counter-protesters freely wandering the streets as if they owned them, yelling “whose streets, our streets!” It was a needless injustice and a needless provocation. And there is no virtue in upholding the freedom of speech of the people you think are right! That does not, of course, in any way excuse a terrorist attack on protesters, and while I am always happy to look at any pictures and video evidence you claim shows that the driver was attacked and legitimately panicked, I don’t presently believe they exist.
Be careful here-this is starting t look like the lefties are gang stalking you:
1) lefties getting you fired from their jobs-AFTER they stalked you first!
2)police involved in steering the protesters into violence
3) lies and disinformation
4) electronic harassment
5) MSM runs disinformation
6) mass generalization that you are all “crazy”
Thank you Intercept, for nearly proving beyond a doubt the ROGS is 100% correct
You’re the one who said: “meh, if they were to raid this group, that would the least of our worries seeing as doxxing is not really legal.”
I’m pretty sure you only learned that you weren’t violating the CFAA after you read this article, where I asked a lawyer about it. You may still be violating state harassment or cyberbullying laws though.
Why would you report someone to the FBI for wearing a “punch more nazis” shirt? Do you not believe in freedom of speech?
But really, the plan was clearly to publish the dox and encourage harassment. There are chat logs that prove it, even ones quoted in this article, like the discussion about posting dox to Gab now, or waiting until there’s a full database of doxed antifa to publish it.
You clearly haven’t spent much time in consensus meetings before.
Neo-Nazism and similar white supremacist ideologies are inherently violent, and companies have a right to promote non-hostile work environments by firing people who believe they’re genetically superior to their coworkers. Antifa alone didn’t get “your people” fired, their own bigotry did. (There’s even discussion in Pony Power about how doxing antifa doesn’t get them fired.)
No one is lumping “all whites” into a single evil group. I’m white, and so are many of my colleagues, friends, and family. But we’re not commiting hate crimes or organizing for a white-only ethnostate. It’s just far-right extremists/terrorists that are being lumped together. I apologize for that- I know there are real differences between neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, the KKK, the 4chan hate machine, the “alt-right”, and all the other groups. But to be fair, fascist politics are hard to follow.
Why I Spent the Summer In Mexico
By: Leon Trotsky, senior Class of 2017
Even compelling reports of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupiers, found in key documents from that period, are ignored or discounted out of hand, such as the charge levelled by the legendary Polish courier, Jan Karski, who was made an Honorary Citizen of Israel for his role in warning the West about the Holocaust and cannot be accused of harbouring hostility toward the Jews. Writing in early 1940, at a time when the mass deportations of Poles were not yet underway, Karski reported:
“… The Jews have taken over the majority of the political and administrative positions. But what is worse, they are denouncing Poles, especially students and politicians (to the secret police), are directing the work of the (communist) militia from behind the scenes, are unjustly denigrating conditions in Poland before the war. Unfortunately, one must say that these incidents are very frequent, and more common than incidents which demonstrate loyalty toward Poles or sentiment toward Poland.”
A Jewish woman from Wilno concurred with that assessment, when she wrote during the war:
“… Under Bolshevik rule an anti-Jewish current grew significantly. In large measure, the Jews themselves were responsible for this… . At every turn they mocked Poles, yelled out that their Poland was no more… The Jewish communists dallied with the patriotic sentiments of Poles, denounced their illegal conversations, pointed out Polish officers and former government officials, freely worked for the NKVD, and took part in arrests. …The Bolsheviks on the whole treated Jews favourably, had complete faith in them and were confident of their devoted sympathy and trust. For that reason they put Jews in all of the leading and influential positions which they would not entrust to Poles, who formerly occupied them.”
Soon thereafter Jewish collaborators, in their positions as local officials, police, and NKVD agents, played a key role in populating the Gulag with their Polish neighbours.
Ijust love how thatguy in the picture- the big Odin looking fellah- fits the EXACT physical profile of every undercoover DEA agent ever.
Yeah- I can just see that guy in the picture, staying up late in his mom’s basement, with his biker vest hanging on his bedpost, typing away in cmd.exe
“get /facts and dirt an infermation on the lefties/DOX”
Then, sitting there and waiting for that command to return something. And when THAT doesn’t happen, he chugs his beer and slams the can in the computers face.
MooOOOOOom! Did you pay the computer people this month?!!!
Then, under his breath “what a bitch….”
Or, like Jon Voight said in “Midnight Cowboy”: Suuuuure is a powerful mother, ain’t it?
Nice!
How many neo nazis are there in this country? Articles like this make the case that it doesn’t matter how many there are, but it really does. There have always been extreme rightists-and leftists- in this country. They have always assumed themselves to be some kind of vanguard to whatever masses they felt should following them. Very few were buying. They all use language that is incendiary and repulsive to somebody. The USA is a nation of 300 million, neoNazis, kluxxers, anarcho-coms, Maoists, Trots are all bunched up in one tail or another of the general population. They are marginal. Generally repulsive, but marginal. The intercept might as well start covering the blogs of people who have been kidnapped and inseminated by space aliens.There are probably more of them than there are neo nazis. Lets get real folks.
Yes it was like that, but now one of them is President, so YOU get real, folks.
Go read a history book or something. If Trump is a neo nazi, then you aren’t as big a moron as you sound. Unfortunately for you, he’s not. Better yet, ask Chuck Schumer if Trump is a neo nazi and then go and put a cool compress on your wrists. Leave the comments to people who don’t feel the urge to share there feelings in lieu of ideas
***Applause***
Both the left and he right use the same tactics, but the left is especially hot under the collar that the right now gets to database stalk and DOX and blackmail and harass them.
And really- Joe Biden’s VAWA, and Clint cops put police power (and especially the unchecked power of police unions) into the hands of the neo-con artists.
These database abuses are a two way street, and it seems the sh!tty people on the left don’t like a taste of their own medicine.
researchorganizedgangstalking.wordpress.com
Oops, got a mistake here:
“the sh!tty people on the left”
Sorry, pal, statistically speaking, on the whole, and over millennia the shitty people are always on the right, always have been, always will be. That’s not to say that ALL the people “on the right are shitty,” just usually. The people on the left are like any other group of humans – some good, some bad, some great, some awful, but on whole, the people on the left mean well towards other far more often while statistically speaking, the right commits murder and genocide.
Well, I see I stepped on a lefty.
Art, it all depends upon how you define shitty people. In Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and East German Stasi era, the left spent copious amounts of time building databases and dossier’s full of slander, and that slander with real consequences-and the left notoriously targets men, and pimps the women and children.
We see the exact same forces at work in America today in gray area “secret proceedings” and communitarian policing schemes ranging from family courts to the FISA court.
Secret slander IS the way the left assassinates people. The right sometimes just cuts to the chase, but the left ALWAYS has more victims.
No – the two are not alike. The antifacists don’t mind being “outed” – what they mind are the threats, etc. I’m proud to be anti-facist – it’s what decent people do. Anti-facist people are not driven by conspiracy theories either. These facist asswipes, in reality, know what they are doing is wrong, that’s why they do it in secret; and develp conspiracy theories because they are, at heart, cowards, who have to do that kind of thing to cover their cowardice. The two groups aren’t alike at all.
Yes they are. One just has more political utility to Fabian’s right now, that’s all.
Ad none of the left has a clue how cuckolded the current movements are anyways. Far from the days when “real men” like Hemingway and Louis La’Mour fought the bastards, today’s cuckolded left is a product of inter-generational testosterone replacement therapy, aka “the single mother society,” and it’s attendant lack of masculine virtue.
And that, due in part to the gelding of our propaganda stream by the usual suspects.
Here- give the kids some of this fun reading, and get ’em worked up to fight whitey (a potential ally) first, and thenwhen whitey is all killed off, fight all the fascists that are left (if you can fight them, after you destroy whitey), like Louis La’mour did.
Except then, guess what? Then, you are the only fascists left:
http://www.louislamourgreatadventure.com/TurkMaddenAviators10.htm
Your “right” is talking about genocide, a race war, a return to slavery, bitterly calling everything gay all the time while wearing grey fatigures, and fascism, none of which is very sexy at all and you know it.
Your “left” is talking about health care, education, responding to the threat of global warming, peace, union jobs, and other awesome actually desirable things.
And you talk about not being able to choose. Okay.
Um, no.
Same tribe, same conflict, new era. The right has always been a reaction to the database abuses and gray area sander that the left directs at them as a weapon.
Remember this oldie but goodie?
“The Nazi’s were all pedophiles!!” and who can forget this classic “Hitler liked it when Frau Braun crapped in his face!”
The right is led by gay Jewish kids like Milos Yiannopolous, and Frank Collin, the famous “Nazi” of Skokie IL, and ACLU “defending the rights of Nazi’s, even!” fame.
The left is just young kids raised by old shiksa’s, desperate for relevance.
And as for unions, there are two: the teachers union, aka “the propaganda organ” and then the police unions and other public unions, ala police power directed at those who contradict the propaganda streams narrative.
Oh- and of course those two get health care- every one else gets three hots and a cot.
Global warming? Hahahahaha. Al Gore likely has shares in every coal fired enterprise since forever-and these are the same ppl who are currently covertly cock-blocking new solar enterprises.
Choice, dear friend, is more than binary fascist paradigms shoved in our faces; indeed the binary is the exact hallmark of fascism everywhere.
Some of these people are beyond parody:
“I was there when the attack happened,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian. “Despite the president deeming me — a transgender woman — unfit for military service, I ran toward the attacker with a weapon. I was ready to engage him if he tried to hurt more people.”
I found the op-ed you mentioned ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/15/mr-trump-were-not-same-neo-nazis-charlottesville ). It is generally a reasonable and reasonably persuasive complaint that there is no “parity” between fascists and those protesting against them.
That said, it commits the common and subtle error of blaming an entire group of people for its worst members, rather than its underlying ideology. Yes, the fascists committed several extremely serious crimes. Yes, they are more prone to. But not all of them committed those attacks. The situation is very much the same as with radical Islam, where we don’t blame moderate Muslims for the few who commit dramatic terrorist attacks. We should blame the ideology of fascism and the twisted beliefs of its infamous leaders for the attacks, just as we should blame the ideology of Islam and the twisted beliefs of its founder for September 11th. As a Christian might say, we should “hate fascism, but love the fascist.” Most of the idiots with the tiki torches are confused, misguided kids who are following a wrong answer ONLY because we have not shown them a better one.
The more mundane the annoyance, the more likely either side engages in it. Only one side ran people over; but both sides did vandalism, threw stuff, used pepper spray. From the point of view of those misbehaving in the mass of people, they were not responsible for the car attack and there was parity with comparably poorly behaved folks on the other. But from the point of view of law and order, it may make sense to disparage all the little crimes alike in the hope that they not escalate to bigger ones.
Yet you would not single out the Wahabbis specifically.
So why not blame the ideology of Abrahamism?
Sure, we certainly can. Literally speaking Abraham is said to have made a covenant with God to make his seed as numerous as the dust of the earth. The origin of the master race concept can be found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And yet, from the beginning there were other ideas. Abraham circumcised his servants, and their lineage has been considered Jewish. Such deviations from a literal interpretation follow through to Jesus, immaculately conceived via the rape by Pandera, beloved by a conscripted mother who could shame the Lord for her unconditional love, adopted as a child of God. Many rightly reject Christianity for its prejudices and judgments; while others rightly follow it as a way to avoid prejudice and judgment. So the questions we might ask of religion, any religion, is whether it teaches us and whether it leads us astray. Muhammad might have thought up a funny solution with a tablecloth, but he didn’t go to a cross for anybody either, he ordered executions instead. So I am less than impressed. Yet all religion can go wrong easily.
…It is SERIOUSLY inappropriate to confuse and conflate RACISM with FASCISM.
While I get it that whoever the idiot was who named “antifa” after, supposedly, “anti-fascism” – presuming that’s true (and it sounds like it might well be) – was so ignorant that THEY conflated racism with fascism, WE, all the rest of us, should NOT follow their STUPIDITY.
The use of language properly IS important, DOES have consequences, and in this case, IT MATTERS.
But, we have authors of articles, like this piece, who perpetuate the SERIOUS ERROR of conflating these ideas, with sentences like this one:
“The primary activity on the Pony Power server is posting private information, like names, photos, home addresses, and phone numbers of dozens of anti-fascist activists.”
Sorry, pretty much ZERO of these people have been active against FASCISM; they’re active against RACISM.
Fascism is the merger of state and business power, however achieved.
RACISM is hatred and consequent negative prejudicial actions based upon someone’s supposed race.
These are VERY DIFFERENT.
While both need fighting, a key reason to NOT conflate these now is that the REAL fascists need fighting and we need people to realize who the REAL fascists are!
Who are some well known modern fascists? Sure, Trump, he’s an easy one, but how about President Obama, Hillary Clinton – and Bill for that matter, and of course, Nancy Pelosi. These fascists LAUGH AT ALL YOU “liberals” and “progressives” who think that fascists are just some racist assholes like those described in this story.
DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE FOOLED INTO THINKING THE ACTIVITIES DISCUSSED IN THIS AND OTHER SIMILAR ARTICLES HAVE A DAMNED THING TO DO WITH FASCISM.
And, by the way, some additional support at pointing this out wherever possible is a great idea, too.
We have a lot of battles to fight; let’s be clear which one we’re working on at any given time.
I think it’s important to distinguish between “soft” fascism and “hard” fascism. We’ve been living under a soft fascism for many decades now. Soft fascism is characterized by the merger of State and Corporate power, as you correctly point out.
A “hard” fascism would keep the merger of State and Corporate power but add in a ruthless military dictatorship and police state.
Racism is not an essential ingredient for Fascism, but it has played a large role in fascist regimes over the past century.
I agree with your larger point that it is incorrect to portray every white nationalist as a fascist because these are two separate things. But people who are wearing Nazi clothing adorned with swastikas are inviting the comparison. Even those people probably have no idea what Hitler’s economic policies actually were. I think they’re just trying to be shocking.
Apparently you have no idea wat facism is all about, you idiot.
You are apparently the one who doesn’t know the difference between racism and fascism.
Bet you couldn’t define fascism properly to save your life.
BTW, throwing around personal insults as a reply just shows how little thinking goes on in between the responder’s ears.
You are suggesting that fascists such as the ones you mentioned would be offended to be lumped together with fascists who are racist like Hitler.
I didn’t mean to suggest that, but it’s certainly likely.
I don’t pretend to know what’s in people’s hearts and minds until they show me. For the most part, elected politicians (in the US at least) tend to know on what subjects to keep their fool mouths shut about when in public / on the record.
Given what Bill and Hillary have done to black Americans with their policy positions and actions, it would be reasonable to surmise they’re racists too, but I don’t pretend to know since they might merely be Republicans, all-in for the ultra-rich no matter who or what gets harmed along the way.
What’s incredibly striking about this piece is that numerous Intercept staffers have spent years downplaying or outright denying precisely this sort of behaviour when it was attributed to political factions they support. As the comments below illustrate, The Intercept has very much helped foster this sort of climate.
Bob Mackey, while prolific, has only been with The Intercept about a year or so.
*if that helps to narrow-it down.//
Bingo. Perfectly stated. The Intercept is the Left pot calling the Right kettle black.
A few months ago– before the premeditated Leftist assasination attempt on Republican senators at baseball practice– I was on an Intercept message board arguing that violence at rallies was inexcusable, and that the implicit support given to perpetrators by hacks like Mackey is dangerous incitement.
What ensued was dozens of comments from Intercept leftists who openly discussed why it was OK to attack Trump supporters, and fantasizes about killing large numbers of Trump supporters. This was on The I tercentenary message boards. It was not removed by moderators though one of my comments arguing for less partisanship was.
Look in the mirror, Intercept, unless that’s too much introspection to expect from the crap rag like this place has become.
“What ensued was dozens of comments from Intercept leftists who openly discussed why it was OK to attack Trump supporters, and fantasizes about killing large numbers of Trump supporters.”
Are you claiming that TI staff made these comments? If so, say so explicitly. Otherwise, you are wrong to say TI is responsible for the comments made by its readers. If you really think that, then you should praise them for being responsible for your comments and every comment made here with which you agree.
Yes, the Intercept would be a better piece if they didn’t editorialize with blinders on
In keeping with the longtime neoliberal objective of creating a global economic hegemon, the deep state has been has been incrementally vilifying the political right in this country since the end of WWII.
CNN quite publicly, and shockingly, exposed themselves as outright mobsters by threatening to dog some guy for making a silly gif of their network and Trump.
The goon squad is on the LEFT.
The Intercept is reading like ANTIFA’s mouthpiece.
Very bizarre stuff guys
dox^
You’re an excellent example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
You are almost precisely correct. This crap happens on the Left and the Right and is inescusale wherever it occurs. But there is a crucial difference.
Despite the fever dreams of Leftists who wake up in a pool of sweat every morning and wring their hands asking themselves how it’s possible that half of the population (those who voted for Trump) have been secret KKK grand dragons all along?!?!!!….. Despite those idiots, the number of “White Nationalists” and “White Supremacists” is vanishingly small. It is minuscule. In fact, having lived all over the South, I’ve come to know thousands of southerners from all classes, and I have only met a handful of enthusiastic racists. And, unsurprisingly to a thinking person, the racists were evenly represented by race. Blacks, hispanics, whites, etc— they are all equally likely to be racists. But I have never once met a single person– even someone who who would support any form of White Supremacy. Never.
The seething throngs of “White Nationalists” that the Leftist media like the Intercept and CNN/MSNBC/CBS/NBC/ABC push is as real as this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LeJfn_qW0
Newsflash to Leftists: Identity Politics is YOUR bag, not the Right’s. 98% of people on the Right do not obsess about their racial and gender identity every day, and they don’t make those things central to their political belief system either.
So, back to my initial point about the crucial difference between the Left and the Right in the methods outlined in this article. On the Right, the number of people who use these tactics is infinitesimal, and the larger community on the Right does not support it. In the Left, these tactics are widespread, openly used and openly advocated, and they are supported openly by the wider Leftist community like the Intercept, and major print and tv news outlets. When the Left does it, it’s justice.
It’s very unlikely that anyone has any really solid numbers on these types of things, but you’re quite wrong when you assert that the percentage of racists is vanishingly small.
For one thing, most people are completely unaware of their racism and it only really comes out in rare circumstance when something crosses some internal line in their willingness to accept society as they see it now.
For another thing, people are reasonably smart about keeping their mouths shut about such things unless they know the person really well.
I would agree with you, however, that certainly half the country isn’t racist. My guess would be more like 20% or so, but again, I don’t have any solid data either. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t millions of these racist bastards out there. …If my guess is “about right”, that still makes some 64 million. Even if the number were as low as 1%, which is HIGHLY doubtful, then there would be over three million in the country, and that’s plenty enough to cause great harm.
As for “the left” and “tactics”, it’s readily apparent, and has been proven time and again in studies in the humanities for many decades that the right is far more likely to use violence than the left, but it has always had the great advantage of having its violence willfully hidden by the state and other powers of the ultra-rich. There’s even a term for it, “hidden violence.” But in modern times, I think “the left” is starting to become more aware of itself and some long hidden frustrations about “the way things are” are starting to come to a boil, especially since we’ve had such a very long lag time on _this_ cycle of the proverbial pendulum swinging from right to left; there hasn’t been ANY significant swing left since FDR, and since the mid 1970s, it’s been harder and harder and harder to the right, while the ultra-rich have put the screws to people so hard that it’s harder now than ever to fight back, having to work multiple jobs to keep a roof / food, unaffordable health-care, etc, etc, and some are starting to say screw it.
As JFK said, he who makes peaceful revolution impossible makes violent revolution inevitable. The current powers that be are pretty damned stupid in this regard. You can tell from the increasing fever pitch that something’s going to blow soon. I just hope that what results is a more and not less just world those who survive it (and to me, that means the end of the un-just rule of the right).
Despite the fact that JFK’s quote was a warning, not a justification… while he was doing drugs and models in the White House, MLK, Jr. was in the streets organizing the peaceful protests that changed the nation.
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
OraleHohms, famously missing the point on purpose _again!_
Violence, endangerment, and discrimination harm the victims more than the perps. So of course we may “obsess” more than the perps.
My daughter was telling me about this. I had no idea. Thanks for giving me more information.
The Intercept is just a huge disappointment. I thought the idea was not to duplicate the same hackneyed propaganda methods of the MSM, but here we are.
Should we be shocked that supremacists have adopted the tactics of their opponents? Please.
Speaking of doxxing, I would like to take a moment to express my appreciation of these guys:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/equifax-cyberattack.html
After getting special laws passed to enshrine them in a special role as national credit reporting agencies — after decades of threatening consumers with economic blackballing, with trying to shake down people for money just so they could find out the lies being told about them — then not really giving them the real report anyway — after trying stupid name games and saturation advertising to push consumers away from the report site a court mandated — after telling enough lies to cause economic crisis — after acting as the official unofficial gatekeepers of the mandated idiotic lack of security that comprises the government’s security questions — after trying to force the whole damned world to think that what their racket thinks of us is somehow a major characteristic of our lives — is it not supremely beautiful to see a “Big Three Credit Agency” finally get hit with a big, ugly, readily avoidable cyberattack! “May there be many more” is the line I’m singing.
I don’t for a minute think it will happen at all, but oh, I do wish I could hear the bankers telling Equifax “Sorry, you should have guarded your credit information better … you have to understand we can’t do business with you.”
I don’t know who died and made Equifax (& the ‘big three’ credit agencies) the official/unofficial ‘doxer’ of America’s credit worthiness, but they have more/most personal information on Americans than the NSA & FBI combined!
While U.S. Security Agencies are measuring everybody ‘three hops’ out for terrorist connections, legions of credit default companies are robo-calling folks night and day for that $100 overdraft you may, or may not, have incurred at Wally world.
A pox on their dox.
Evidently, the gov. is farming-out digital (non-terrorist) security operations to America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani et el . ..
Meanwhile… here’s what really happens: http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/07/pf/victim-equifax-hack-how-to-find-out/index.html Being terribly sorry for “your identity being stolen” via the breach of the records you never asked them to make on their server, Equifax offers you the opportunity to sign up for a one-year free trial membership to their premium credit monitoring service. (I wonder if that’s as easy to cancel as the infamous ‘free credit reports’ of previous TV spam infamy, which offered the same kind of “free” service?)
Also by signing up you agree to binding arbitration and waive your rights to sue in court if you are damaged.
Read the “bargain” they are offering
I am just waiting for someone to say “gang stalking isn’t real! Those unfortunates!”
Where’s Mona when you need her biting sense of cognitive dissonance?
Oh Look at all of Milo Yiannopolous’s followers! It’s just amazing the kind of hate that gay Jewish boys are able to encourage in others!
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-neo-nazi-skokie-march-flashback-perspec-0312-20170310-story.html
If only those gay Jewish kids would turn their LOVE on people like my dear, sainted mother Andrea did!
I will never forget how she loved us so-and men especially. She used to say(with love) that she would not rest in her actions of (love) until every man had a pair of high heels and a voice with which to speak through them!
Yay!
Oh, how I miss mommy dearest-ly. No one knew more about love, and harmony between the police and militants everywhere.
“Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.”
“Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.”
“Only when manhood is dead – and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it – only then will we know what it is to be free.”
I have often wondered what my dear grandfather did to her that made her so loving, and so caring about others, especially men, but I guess some things are just great big behemoths loaded with the seeds of love and mystery.
I have a monolith to her love in my top dresser drawer. It’s has three settings on it: slow, fast, and Andrea in my ass.
Whoops..two unmentionables in one post..yikes..here they “come”
I keep waiting for them to show up, but they never seem to kick in my door anymore, or tip over my rash cans, or send me fundraising telephone calls from the Fraternal Order of Police as I peruse porn on my NSA computer.
Maybe I bore them now:(
Or, maybe the manila envelope full of “me” got too unweildy-I don’t think Kinko’s carries three foot thick manila envelopes anymore.
I think Antifa needs to change their tactics.
Instead of breaking the law anonymously, they should follow the law openly.
By that I mean instead of using non lethal violence illegally to make their point, they should use the implied threat of lethal violence to make their point.
By that I mean they should form their own Militias. Train with military grade weapon. Study military tactics. And work out. A lot. Oh and they really need to eat something too.
These cowardly alt right scum bags are a mere shadow of actual nazi’s. They’re a bunch of spoiled trust fund brats that wouldn’t know a hard days labor if it lept up and sent them to gulag.
If today’s leftists demonstrated the kind of militant strength that the Communists of old possessed, these ‘nazis’ would crumple like the paper tigers they are.
Not a single bullet, nor fist, would need to be thrown.
This really is the interesting test ahead of us.
I’m genuinely curious what’s going to happen when some left groups will get militarized and start playing the intimidation game too. Within the law, just like the Nazis.
I have a feeling the US would see one of the fastest amendments to the constitution in its history if BLM or Antifa showed up with assault rifles like the Nazis did. I bet Congress and the President would amend the 2nd amendment overnight to make sure guns stay out of certain people’s hands. That or we’re gonna see the police act more like an occupying force and start treating us citizens like an insurgency.
That is certainly possible.
The positive side is it would expose the US government for what it is, a unconstitutional oligarchy.
I have faith in the revolutionary spirit of America to make things right from there.
You know why California isn’t an open carry state anymore? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act:
So….was the Mulford Act a good idea??
Interesting. Thank you for the link.
MS- ” when some left groups will get militarized and start playing the intimidation game too”
Naive little child-the left doesn’t need guns- the Domestic Violence industry provided domestic armies called “police” to help all of their pet causes.
You know- all of those “community policing” initiatives where the womens shelter advocates and the “human rights groups” use the DHS tipline like it’s the federal grant hotline, calling in “anonymous tips” to the cops every time they ‘overhear’ their neighbors mention non-gay stuff in their back yards.
Who needs guns in a Democrat led police state anyways?
Moron
They facist are the government of this country. Wake the hell up Dummy
Divide and conquer
“Moron”
“Divide and conquer”
Hm. Seems to be working nicely.
The reality is that neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have been killing people.
Anti-fascists haven’t.
The claim that antifa are “more violent” or “more dangerous” or even “just as violent” flies in the face of the facts, and insults the survivors.
Do you have evidence to back up these claims? I know of the one person killed in Charlottesville, but I haven’t seen any other reports of neo-Nazis killing anyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have killed others, and I’m willing to be corrected.
I don’t think it matters much if Antifa is just as dangerous, slightly more dangerous or slightly less dangerous than neo-Nazis. At a certain point, groups become so reprehensible in both ideology and tactics that you can comfortably reject both without feeling the need to defend one group against the other.
Peacefully demonstrating against white nationalism makes perfect sense to me. You can do so without aligning with Antifa.
I’m counting white supremacist murders in general. So, for example, murders by Jeremy Christian, James Harris Jackson, Adam Purinton, Dylann Roof, the Phineas Priesthood, the Brothers Schweigen, etc.
This Intercept article attempts to distinguish between right-wing doxxing and left-wing doxxing, but you aren’t able to rigorously specify anything that’s worse about the right-wing kind. Just because neo-Nazis are far worse than antifa in general doesn’t necessarily mean that right-wing doxxing is more aggressive than left-wing doxxing. I’d be interested in knowing which of the two is worse in its doxxing, but your article doesn’t manage to be impartial enough to make a fair comparison. When you try to explain why you think right-wing doxxing is worse, the only thing you say about what the right does is this:
> But there’s an important distinction between doxing by neo-Nazis
> and antifa. Neo-Nazis target nearly anyone who vocally disagrees
> with their political worldview — which essentially means anyone
> who isn’t a racist white person and is public about their views.
That sounds exaggerated to me. It clearly is not literally true that neo-Nazis dox nearly anyone who vocally disagrees with them. As Godwin’s Law shows, huge numbers of people have made clear online that they strongly disagree with Nazism, and the vast majority of them don’t get doxxed and don’t get targeted in other ways by neo-Nazis. When companies, mainstream politicians and educational institutions issue statements rejecting neo-Nazism and similar views, neo-Nazis generally do nothing. Even most liberal Jews don’t get doxxed. I suppose it’s fair to say that the doxxing part of the white supremacist movement is willing to dox those who they see as their main opponents, to the extent they have time to do it. But how does that differ from the strategy of any other group that does doxxing? You haven’t said enough to convincingly show the neo-Nazis are worse. When you try to show that antifa are better, you say,
> Antifa activists only target members of hate
> groups, a small but growing subset of
> American society that Trump refuses to
> condemn, responsible for mounting terrorist
> attacks against mosques, black churches,
> transgender women, and people of color.
The problem here is that you don’t really clarify what counts as “hate groups”. I know it’s fairly common nowadays to speak disparagingly of “hate groups”, but the people who do so don’t have any fair standard of what a hate group is. For instance, SPLC’s definition of a hate group is clearly pretty arbitrary — it includes some groups that aren’t violent and aren’t motivated much by hate, while other groups that appeal prominently to the emotion of hate are never counted as hate groups by SPLC and its ilk. Since hate is a fairly common emotion in politics and related areas, those who dismiss their opponents as “hate groups” are usually people who aren’t honest enough with themselves about how much role the emotion of hate plays in their own political activity. So just stating that antifa only targets hate groups isn’t saying much — that may be how allies of antifa perceive what antifa is doing, but it could just as fairly be said that many militant leftists are in “hate groups” or belong to a movement where “hate groups” play a prominent part. At a global level, there’s a lot of mutual hate between many Arabs and many Israelis, or between many Americans and many people in (for example) ISIS, and global politics has encouraged many people who sympathize with one of these sides to share some of that hate and to wrongly assume that their opponents are all hate-driven. So saying that the people you sympathize with more will only target “hate groups” is basically just repeating propaganda that allows you to feel better about yourself without looking too closely into exactly who is being targeted. You also portray antifa’s targets as mounting terrorist attacks, but is it really true that antifa only targets those who mount terrorist attacks? Not unless the word “terrorism” is defined in a way that’s broader than how most people use the word.
I give you credit for realizing that there’s a need to address the topic of whether left-wing doxxing is as bad as right-wing doxxing. And I’d learn from a journalist who writes something that addresses the issue conscientiously. But this Intercept article, after raising that important issue, quickly tries to dispel it with vagueness and glib dismissive stereotypes, without looking further into the specific facts. That’s what shoddy mainstream journalists do, and the Intercept at its best is better than that.
Spot on. It’s a good article as far as reporting and fact-diving goes. But that passage you quoted is clearly inadequate (logically, rhetorically…) and really stood out to me too.
Just my personal view is that doxxing sucks no matter who it’s done too. If I thought otherwise I’d think doxxing is fine no matter who it’s done too. In no way would my mind try to put forward some lame excuse for why doxxing is bad for one favored group but good for one disfavored group.
Additionally–it’s interesting that the one woman’s shirt is described by the author as “the anti-fascist shirt”. The shirt reads as per the article: “Punch more Nazis. Good night alt-right”. So, another choice of description might be: “the call for violence shirt”. It also seems to refer to that nazi getting walloped in the face, which liberals share videos of gleefully on various websites. I’m a liberal but I don’t like violence even against a nazi as long as not in self-defense and no imminent threat.
Does Micah think it’s okay to punch certain people in the face, but not other people?
Finally a bit off-tangent: On certain feminist blogs whenever a GOP or terrible woman is featured in an article, it’s quite popular for the readers to rag on her about her appearance. Yet if someone did that to Hillary or someone, it would be anathema. As it should. Both should be anathema to a proper feminist. Body/appearance-shaming should either be okay for everyone or not okay for everyone.
Cleaving out exceptions, especially based on faulty logic (or faulty ethics such as “punching up is okay”) is the sign of a fair-weather subjective tribalist who doesn’t want to face the troublesome consequences of their own solid values. Same for recent shitting on the ACLU, by people who’ve apparently never heard of Skokie. Same for outrage over Trump for deportation, despite little over Obama when he was the deporter-in-chief.
Take a damn stand and abide by it and apply it equally to everyone.
These fringe Nazi groups are not trained or supported by the USA. On the other hand, the Intercept has memory-holed the training and arming of real Nazi groups in the Ukraine:
Obama armed racist Nazi groups in the Ukraine, two months before an election:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/12/u-s-house-admits-nazi-role-in-ukraine/
After the coup, Obama then put Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, on the board of the largest gas company there:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/14/hunter-bidens-new-job-at-a-ukrainian-gas-company-is-a-problem-for-u-s-soft-power/
The Intercept has never addressed the fact that our nation materially supports Nazis. That is a much bigger story than the existence of fringe groups. Furthermore, the author has disingenuously set himself up as anti-fascist crusader, but alas the owner of the Intercept, Peirre Oymidar, was heavily involved in the Nazi coup in the Ukraine.:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/04/ukraine-omidyar-and-the-neo-liberal-agenda/
Lee should consider where his paycheck comes from before he sets himself up as a champion of anti-Nazism and gives himself that proverbial pat on the back. Anyone who really cares about Nazism should research our material support for Nazis in the Ukraine — if not it they are only useful idiots for the two corporate parties.
I am SO proud that Los Angeles has decided to name a stretch of the 134 Freeway after Obama! Also some street in South Central!
Probably in 100 years the people will actually learn some history and change those names! I can only hope.
I have been observing what I believe are militias in their various forms in the large university city where I live. It ranges from carrying guns and rifles in public spaces to patrolling the gentrified neighborhoods. What remains unsaid; It is a the soft right who consider themselves liberal who do their own form of policing in gentrified areas, making people of color or poor people feel uncomfortable or banning them from places for inane reasons.
The Alt Right, KKK, whoever… is merely a more vicious form of discrimination and gentrification practiced every day by our government, our police, and our local and non-local leaders. Just because someone can stay politically correct in speech does not make up for the fact that people of color still experience racism from those very people.
That being written, I do admit to being more physically afraid of the Alt Right types because they appear to be able to commit violent acts right in front of the cops.
Same for antifa.
They also commit violent acts right in front of cops.
I wouldn’t go to any major “demonstration” today regardless of the issue for fear antifa terrorists would show up and bash my head in.
After the videos I have seen, I fear these thugs more than any others.
Antifa are just standing their ground, excercising their right to free speech. They were forced to defend themselves when the cops let the Nazis act violently and confrontationally. Nazis disobeyed the cops and moved or side-stepped barricades. Antifa actually did the cops jobs since they were too scared to stand against the Nazis and their armed paramilitary militia. When the cops decide to do nothing, then the people have their 2nd amendment rights to defend themselves.
And the Nazis are the ones with the body count so far.
If you honestly believe there’s equivalence here, then you have a serious empathy problem and you may be a sociopath or at the least a Nazi sympathizer.
I am not a Nazi sympathizer or a sociopath.
I do believe in freedom of speech and allowing people to make asses of themselves.
While exercising their 2nd amendment rights as well?
This doxxing shit they’re talking about? Neo-Nazis did that to me. They found my name, my address, my *sexual orientation*, my parents names, where they live, and threatened me in German. You know who didn’t do that? Antifa.
You “fear these thugs more than any other” because you’re less interested in weighing threats and more interested in justifying your preconceived world view, and you insult those of us who have actually been effected by these Nazi shitheads. Get your priorities in order.
I like how you don’t even acknowledge the fact that antifa and the far-left are doing the exact same thing. I guess it’s only bad if the other team is doing it. Journalistic integrity at its finest, right here.
Antifa and others are at fault when the police decide to watch fights instead of doing their jobs? People defending themselves from an attack are wrong? They’re just supposed to take beatings and physical taunting as a form of “free speech”?
I guess it’s only self-defence for one side of the fight, huh?
Unless, of course, you support the rights of BLM and leftists groups to come to their rallies exercising their 2nd amendment rights.
BS. Any sane person can see that antifa initiates and starts the violence. The vast majority of violence currently is coming from left. I am progressive and very liberal in all my believes and all I can see is scam using my believes to justify violence. I despise this “left scam” like antifa, then any racist. With cheerleading articles like this, the scam has no reason to stop, but the anger is bowling up and at some point even progressives like me will have enough and will crash this antifa scam.
Why wait if you’re so correct in your analysis? Why don’t you “real progressives” take the reigns and steer the beast where you want it? I often see that criticism here, yet nobody has a good idea what “real progressives” actually are.
This is probably why the left will lose ultimately. Just like the Communist revolution it will burn itself down in self-righteous ego trips arguing over tactics as they consistently lose ground.
I applaud Antifa for standing up for defending the innocent when the cops, whose jobs and our tax money pays, stand by and watch. That’s the bullshit right there. The cops had no issues breaking up BLM protests in Ferguson, Baltimore, or Oakland with tear gas and riot gear. They didn’t even stop the Nazis from moving barricades. They never lifted a finger.
Your false equivalency is showing you have an empathy problem or major cognitive dissonance. Perhaps both.
Real progressives face hate and racism with love and care not violence. Let the racist scam talk whatever they want and if they commit crimes the law should handle it and if the law fails us then we should protest peacefully. Antifa doesn’t stand up for anything, they just use an excuse to hurt people. They are scam just like any other racist.
P.S. One last thing. I have empathy for all human beings, even the racists, which in your case is empathy for people you agree with or like. So don’t lecture me on empathy when you support violence against another human you moron.
I was not aware psychopaths were “humans” since they are incapable of empathy and therefore being true socially conscious creatures. I’m not saying I will seek these freaks out, but if one, or a gang of them, seek to oppress me or my family, then I will defend myself. When the law fails, then it’s up to the people.
The Nazis don’t care about the law, in fact, they manipulate law to justify their psychopathy.
I’m all for peaceful defiance, but if they’re coming to kill you or harass you, how is dying or taking a beating a protest? I will sooner go to jail than get drafted into their military, I’ll defy and denounce every chance I get, and if they attack me or my family I will stand and defend with my life if I must.
We all have our protest against the authorities. That’s fine if you think my right to individuality is wrong in your eyes. I respect you and your supposed empathy for those who feel some humans aren’t worthy of living.
Will you please stop posting about Antifa. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about with respect to Antifa. You are taking up space and wasting people’s time.
Enlighten us then, oh wise one.
Or is that all you have to contribute to this discussion? If so, thanks for your suggestion. I will kindly disregard it and speak my mind as I wish.
Oh bullshit.
Antifa is a group of people who’ve been abused enough, had their friends / family abused enough, and are reacting to how they’ve been bullied and in the one now famous case of some neo-Nazi who got his ass kicked, the Antifa person who responded was actually defending because the racist who got their ass kicked had been pepper-spraying people in the face (right in front of the cops), and for all anyone knew was about to do it again.
The WORST you could say about that incident for Antifa was that their response was a little late and should have come WHILE the asshole was doing the pepper spraying. But sometimes, for people unaccustomed to taking physical action, it takes a moment or two to build up one’s courage to act.
“The right” has been murdering people since time immemorial and it continues to this day as a “hidden violence” because it’s got the protection of the state and media hides it.
You, a progressive? Not likely. In any event, get yourself better informed.
Why would you assume I would say leftists groups can’t defend themselves? Of course they can exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, same as everyone else. Unlike you, I don’t dehumanize people simply because they have different views from me. I believe in equal rights for everyone, regardless of political beliefs, skin color, heritage, ability, or any other factors.
The smart people on the left know that antifa is their worst enemy because it is giving credibility and visibility to fringe groups on the far right. The rallies at Charlottesville, Berkeley, and others would never had made the news if antifa hadn’t shown up and instigated violence. They gave the neo-nazis exactly what they wanted: attention. This is bad for everyone because when a few thousand loony extremist get to have major influence on the national political dialog, it brings us all down to their level. Antifa and the neo-nazis win and the rest of us lose.
Man, this would be such a great discussion if your head wasn’t crammed so far up your own ass. Your feigned moral superiority and pedantic condescension without any respect for my thoughts or opinions really shows. You’re so progressive lol!
But hey, you believe Antifa is justified if they are allowed their 2nd amendment rights too. Not sure what the issue is with you. They defend themselves when they’re being attacked by a Nazi group who is ostensibly supported by the government. What’s the issue there? They were supposed to get beat up and possibly shot, so some progressives have some martyrs to parade for some fund raising? I don’t get the strategy here.
Sounds like you think ignoring the problem makes it magically go away. That’s how you guys were gonna stop Trump too, right? And you’re the really smart group, right?
What’s your plan then? Voting in 2018 for a Dem? Waiting and hoping the Nazis will treat you nice? Maybe you’re a opportunist waitin to see which side is gaining ground?
Liberty made a great point. 1st antifa is clearly the instigator of violence, their actions are not done in self defense. You are delusional if you truly think that way. Your hate for right wingers blinds you and you can’t see that scam for the monsters that they are. As liberty said antifa is a true enemy of all progressives. They don’t represent us and they have support of media and other institutions. They are cowardly thugs, nothing more. They use fascist tactics and claim to fight fascism. This would be hilarious if it wasn’t sad and scary. I don’t support doxing in any way, but left created the rule book on doxing and online bullying, so this writer needs to get some integrity and explore the issue properly and not be a mouthpiece for scam.
There you go again with the insults and hysteria. You should ask yourself why you can’t have a disagreement without attacking the other person. Are you that insecure in your position that your only weapon is insults and changing the topic at random? Let me know if you decide to calm down and have a reasonable discussion.
You already ended the discussion. You said the progressive position is inaction and that Antifa are justified in their actions as stated in the 2nd amendment. Not much else to discuss here.
…I haven’t enough time to read everyone’s remarks but yes, MS is very insecure. Two days ago, I think it was, I gave him WAY too much credit when he had launched into someone a bit over the top. Clearly the guy was “on the other side” but MS’ attack wasn’t helping any. Not only would no minds be convinced by his articulations, he was likely either making new enemies for “the left” or cementing in negative perceptions started somewhere else. And therefore he wasn’t helping. So, I gently suggested he find a more fruitful way to communicate and perhaps sometimes just let it go.
I got back a very egoistic rant that had nothing to do with my comment so far as I could see, but he did say that he knew he was being a jerk but justified it because it made him feel better.
I just don’t have time for such crap.
…In this thread, I’m pretty unsure what to think of Orez, sometimes seemingly a progressive but sometimes showing a bit of right-wingishness, though as I said, I can’t read everyone’s posts – no time for that. And … I’m unsure about you, either, but your comment here I’m replying too struck a chord, quite aside from MS’s insecurities; yes, we should be a lot less prone to throw insults and a lot more prone to clear articulation of views and reasoning; let the best ideas win on their merits!
“we should be a lot less prone to throw insults and a lot more prone to clear articulation of views and reasoning; let the best ideas win on their merits!”
Well said; my thinking exactly. The problem with MS’s view is it is based on a false dichotomy. In his or her mind, the only choices are either “let the fascists have their way” or “violently attack them for saying stuff I don’t like.” Believe it or not, there is a reasonable middle ground that involves peacefully combating bad ideas with good ideas. That’s the course I advocate for fighting fascism and all other terrible extremist ideologies.
Also, it’s best not to try and place me on the left/right sliding scale. I don’t fit neatly into that way of looking at the world. I base my worldview on principles, not on party politics or reactionary lashing out, and thus some of my views fall to the “right” and some to the “left.”
You purposefully distort my views to make yourself look better when you could just read my comments again. I explicitly stated I do not seek to committ violence against those I disagree with. I promote defiance, not passive resistence, to violent authoritarianism. You contort my view as “You support violence against those who would commit it.”
It’s infuriating to constantly hear or read someone dismiss you categorically just because you disagree with a perspective I’m sharing. Shall I infer from your comment that this is your “best idea” when confronted with challenging views? Ignore and dismiss because my tenor was incorrect in your view? What happens after that?
Very well then. You are pushing away a potential ally because I didn’t fit into a neat box of your world view. I ask questions and challenge dismissive views, and this is what I receive.
Disappointing, but not the least bit surprising when you realize most people enjoy the current state of affairs.
Your reply to Joe completely misses the point: for you, it’s clearly all about you. You use the word “I” so many times it’s silly. You’ve clearly got some kind of pride / ego thing going. Whatever.
I think the best way to be effective in venues like this is to simply articulate your views leaving your own damned self out of it as much as you reasonably can – and I’m not talking here about avoiding constructions like, “I don’t think so.”
Nobody cares about your infuriation at anything unless you’re sharing a narrative that many of us find systemically around us that’s perhaps worth looking at. Get yourself out of your posts and you’ll find less useless clutter in your posts – both yours and the ones others make in reply.
Okay… I’m confused now. So you’re suggesting I speak for some “we” when I only can speak of my own life and experiences? Who do you speak for? Every single human on this planet? You feel you can speak with that level of authority? And I have an ego problem?
And if my infuriation is so easily dismissed by you, why is your anger justified? Because it fits inside this echo chamber? How do you expect to have any new ideas in a disucssion if you categorically dismiss opinions when you decide they don’t fit?
Fine, I get it. You just want me to shut up and follow orders once you decide things need to change. My voice doesn’t matter because it doesn’t fit the narrative you’re trying to promulgate.
It’s really no surprise young people kill themselves. Your narrow narrative is all I heard my young life, and we know exactly what we get from your plans for us.
Crybaby.
You’ve never heard MY narrative but on the very few occasions I’ve posted on The Intercept’s site – probably only those few times I posted directly in reply to you.
I am unique, like us all.
MY view is even more unique because I come from a time where there was no boom, so there are very few with my background. But whatever MY situation may or may not be is STILL not the point.
Are you truly so artless that you can’t see others, have compassion, empathy, understanding so you can understand the paths others walk even while you only walk your own? EVERY “great religion” has this same thread in it where the practitioners are asked to think about the plight they find others in and do something. It’s hardly unique. And yes, I’m suggesting you do that too. It’s no real great trick, only involving opening your eyes, your mind, your heart, and looking for what is giving others pain and try to understand it, and if you can, do something to alleviate it.
That is, ultimately, what being “on the left” is all about.
SURE, you only have your own experience, but you CAN learn and gain from the experience of others. For example, while I am not a black woman, I can well appreciate that she is among the most abused in our society because I can see this abuse first hand in my own life, as I walk my path. Can I understand walking in her shoes as well as she can? HA! No, of course not! BUT, that doesn’t mean I can have no understanding whatsoever. … About the only group likely LESS well treated than a black woman in America is a Native American woman, and I admit I know less about her plight, but only because I see far fewer of her in my life. But STILL I can understand and well imagine the footfalls she takes.
Age has NOTHING to do with this, rather, how open your character is to seeing, clearly, though certainly maturity DOES have something to do with it. … I would hope by now that you well know that age and maturity have only the weakest of correlations…
Best wishes to you in your travels.
Wimp.
Best of luck to you too.
You presume a great deal about me as well, which is too bad. You’ve only read few of my posts. But like you said, we’re all on our own pathes and I can respect it.
You’re being dismissed because of the irrational and unconstructive tone of your comments, not because of your message, which is one we hear all the time on social media and sites like this. If you want to have your point of view respected and considered, you should find a rational and constructive way to communicate it. There’s nothing wrong with having passion (I personally love people with great zeal), but insults and other personal attacks serve no purpose in this type of dialog. The best approach is to temper your passion with logic; only then will you then be able to sway people’s minds, or at least have them respect your opinion even if they disagree with you.
I suggest following your own advice then. If you start a conversation with false equivalency then be prepared to defend it.
I would be happy to defend anything I have said, so long as you state your challenges in a civil way. Would you like to start again? I’d be glad for a clean slate and another attempt at this discussion–hopefully in good faith this time.
We can start with this: what was the false equivalency that you think I made?
Your first post.
Lol, this is cute. I understand how authorities get scared of passion, especially those who consider themselves moral or intellectual authorities. I get called insecure because there’s emotional weight behind my questions, I guess that’s fair? I dunno. I get it a lot from self-proclaimed intellectuals of all political stripes. It’s rough talking about politics when you can’t agree with any particular group’s ideaology, so I’m kind of a person without a tribe in your political turf wars.
No big. I’m not trying to convince you or anyone else. I’m just asking questions to gain a wider perspective on the conversation. Mostly so I know who to hide from because only bad things happen when ideaologues get into mobs.
Self defense? Like driving a car into a crowd injuring 19 and killing 1 human being? Or perhaps you mean rioting in Berkeley, where I’m sure the property they damaged just looked at them funny or something.
Don’t make the mistake of classifying Antifas as good guys just because they are against neo-nazis. They’re anything but.
Where’s your source?
Great article, one tends to think in the way one leads their lives, if you enjoy yourself and are happy you tend to think others do as well, an article like this at least wakes you up enough to know there are people out there who really waste their lives trying to make others unhappy, rather than go about their own business. The mentality of those people is so alien to me, it’s still very hard to comprehend.
This is the future of political activism of all stripes. Organized groups no longer need the infrastructure of existing political parties to organize their activities and make contact with like minded individuals. Now, they cannot only do all that themselves online, but they can identify their opponents and collect information about them: who they are, how they are organized, and what they do. That can then be used as part of their political campaign.
One key to success for any organization will be to find a way to tap into the repository of information on all Americans, which the NSA has so obligingly collected. That is the mother lode of data that will give an enormous advantage to whomever can wield it as a weapon.
The next 20 years should be interesting!
The deep state”Theys” already have and are using this information everyone else is an amateur trying to play in the big leagues. Yes, Organized Groups” can hurt the “Others” but real power is reserved table.
These “groups” can also post ads on Craigslist offering payment for people to show up and expos whatever they are told to.
The sadly funniest video I saw recently was when a group of “protesters” started chanting, “Hey, Soros! Where’s my check?!”
I see where a White House petition garnered the 100,000 necessary signatures yesterday calling for an investigation into Soros and his hired goon squads. Not sure if the Trump White House has the same policy as Obama’s where a formal response to such a petition is guaranteed.
And to think that back in the day I had to hire a babysitter and shell out for gas and poster materials in order to go down to The Federal Building for a protest! Nobody wrote me a check!
That is illegal and deserves nationwide attention.
WOW !!!! I’m shocked, and all this time I thought it was the Southern Poverty Law Center who harassed and stalked groups of people.
Do you mean the same Southern Poverty Law Center that moved $67 million off-shore?? THAT SPLC???
Maybe they are worried about all the lawsuits coming their way after they labeled various Christian groups as “hate” groups?
That’s funny. Thanks for the one-liner. I have serious objections to how SPLC does its stuff but I have to admit that they’re better than aggressive doxxers, and I do think that SPLC’s work is at times useful.
All this social media stuff sure is great for deepening and enhancing participation in the democratic process.
If there are two things that males of european descent are masters at is stalking and passive-aggressive harassment. oh man, those guys are like idiot savants when it comes to stalking and harassment.
Racist much?
This article is likely true in the substance of it’s claims, yet is misleading because it implies that the offenses attributed to Neo-Nazis are unique to them. To the contrary, as many have already said, this practice of doxing, exposing and harassing people has been a common tactic for the left against the right for several years now.
I don’t know how to compare neo-Nazis with Antifa and violent leftist groups other than to state that I find both reprehensible. It should be noted though that the later enjoy far more institutional support than do far-right groups. Neo-Nazis are abhorred by nearly everyone in society and nearly all right-of-center groups will go out of their way to condemn them. They deserve the criticism they receive, but don’t be conned into inflating the threat they pose to society beyond what is warranted.
In the age of social media ghettoization, extreme groups will find ways to band together and harass decent people. But to pretend that this phenomenon is unique to the Right and has no parallel among the Left is just dishonest.
The difference, as I’ve said, is that radical Marxist groups enjoy substantial institutional support from much of the media and academia, while the radical Right does not.
Any normal person has far more cause to be afraid of running afoul of some Social Justice Warrior crusade because he innocently tweeted the wrong thing, thus losing his job and possibly career, than he is of being harassed on Facebook by some skinheads.
What a stupid post by an alt-right windbag. Social justice people are doing a world of good by opposing alt-right terrorists which you clearly support. You are most likely an alt-right racist stalker who despised blacks, Jews, Muslims, etc. As a generalization, alt-right racists are poor white men who have a lower IQ. They are often against college or university education–as you imply on this thread ‘Marxist academia’, which is utterly ridiculous and self defeating. So what are you going to do? Don’t go to university because it is a bastion of Marxist leftists? Good luck with that plan of action in a world increasingly hi-tech, where jobs increasingly require advanced degrees. Buy maybe that’s the sliver lining: alt-right haters, fearing big bad Marxists at universities don’t go to college and accordingly don’t get any good jobs, but instead work menial service sector jobs such as janitors, fast food servants, Molly maids, etc. Indeed, that’s right where angry alt-right racists belong in life :-)
I’m not on the Alt-Right, or any Right whatsoever. I’m an anarchist, individualist libertarian.
I explicitly stated that I find both neo-Nazis and Marxist Antifa reprehensible, and you took from my comment that I’m “most likely an alt-right racist stalker who despised blacks, Jews, Muslims, etc”?
I agree with you that alt-right racists are generally poor white men who have a lower IQ. You gave a very good reason why they are unlikely to pose a long-term threat to society.
My ideology of non-aggression and anti-Statism is literally as far away from Fascism as it is possible to be. You’re not going to out-do me in condemning Nazis and White Supremacists. My issue with the Left is that they have a glaring blind-spot for the horrors of Marxism and undue sympathy for radical Leftists.
Communists killed 94 million people in the 20th century. Fascists killed 28 million. I’m anti-Fascist to the core of my being, but I’m not going to express that opposition, as Antifa does, by embracing an ideology that would cause immense human suffering if it was implemented.
One-sided coverage like this is akin to complaining about a single, predominantly Right-wing University (there are a few) opposing free speech by dis-inviting a Leftist speaker, while ignoring that Left-wing Universities have been doing the exact same thing to right-of-center speakers for years now.
Last point is that you’re living in the past regarding your views of College. The traditional college is dying, and four year degrees are becoming more and more worthless. The price of a traditional college education is astronomical. People can get education in a myriad of ways today, so it is incorrect to assume that not getting a four year degree dooms one to a life of menial service sector jobs.
Yeah all those happy prosperous leftist socialist Scandinavian countries are so busy executing “the horrors of Marxism”….Jesus, another Dunning Kruger poster boy.
” radical Marxist groups enjoy substantial institutional support from much of the media”
What the hell are you on about
Yes, hate and prejudice is a double edged sword, that cuts left and right. See Commit above “males of european descent are masters at is stalking and passive-aggressive harassment.” Such tactics have been used pre- and post- recorded history by evil empires and men of all races and politics. Conformity and authority based prejudice are not new or particular to any place or race.
All in America may speak their minds but physically acting or “conspiring” specifically identifying, targeting, intermediation others, yelling fire with intent and immanent danger of someone being trampled is illegal. A jury of 12 peers can call the line between free speech and threat, and a judge can act accordingly and this can be reviewed by higher courts. This does not imply our system Constitutional Republic, is not guilty of “stalking and passive-aggressive harassment.” Even office politics has elements of conformity and authority based prejudice.
Great point man. One of the best one here
You’ve got me worried. What kind of “wrong thing” might “any normal person” innocently tweet that would cause them to lose their career? Please provide typical examples so normal people will know what not to innocently tweet.
Anything you say or do can be held against you in a digital universe. Worse if a combination of things you have said or posted trip an algorithm, welcome to no man’s land. As to what might do this, I refer you to some lines from the movie Fail-Safe ” between the American President and Russia Premier trying to avoid nuclear war.
We have computers, like yours.
They computed that this time your alert might be real.
On what grounds?
Probability. The law of averages. They have their own logic. It is not human, but it is positive, so we listen.
Please do not worry the vast majority of us are too trivial to be concerned with or considered a threat and most employers do not do detailed internet searches too much trouble or too much danger of litigation. However, the mere threat is designed to suppress our expression and peripherally our thoughts. The message the system sends, if you want the good life STFU.
I was being a little hyperbolic, but the point stands. Before I elaborate, I want to make clear that I think a business has the right to fire any person for any reason, even a stupid reason.
One recent example of the phenomenon I’m describing was the James Damore firing at Google. Damore circulated a memo that was exhaustively sourced and footnoted, and many scientists confirmed his central claims about biological differences between men and women, yet his articulation of heretical views got him fired regardless. If Google wanted to take another tact, they could have held a public seminar hashing out the different views, adjudicated by real scientists who could inform us what the current literature states on the subject.
The point is that the actual facts made no difference. Demore uttered a politically incorrect thought that ran afoul of the image that Google is trying to project. Had Google not immediately fired him, I have no doubt that online SJW groups would begin petitioning Google to fire him.
In the wake of Charlottesville, I’ve seen it claimed that advocacy of free speech is now a dog whistle for white supremacy.
Imagine if someone tweeted any of the following:
1. I’m a men’s rights advocate
2. I think culture is important and not all cultures are equal
3. I’m a defender of Western Civilization
4. I don’t believe in Egalitarianism, in fact I think it is contrary to observable reality
There is absolutely no question in my mind that any of the above statements will cause a person to be labeled a “Nazi”. An employer who wants to tamp down any controversy might just fire the offending employee before they receive any bad publicity, no matter how specious and without merit the claims might be.
This is a society-wide problem that, if anything, is more prevalent on the Left than the Right.
Yes people have the right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution (First Amendment)
Yes, under U.S. law (1964 Civil Rights Act) there are protected classes of people that private businesses cannot discriminate against. Yup, “big socialist government”. How about that socialized European health care for all? Free public education! Sewage treatment and paved roads! Don’t you just hate it?
Yes, a private business can fire people for engaging in hate speech because people who spew neo-Nazi venom are not a protected class – quite unlike refusing to hire a person because of their race, gender, etc. The rationale for a business doing this? It protects their image, hence prevents them from losing customers, hence protects their profit margin. That’s called capitalism, kids.
Yes, people are free to boycott businesses who refuse to fire their neo-Nazi employers, or they can boycott businesses who do fire their neo-Nazi employers; but most people can’t stand the neo-Nazis anyway, so good luck with that.
However, the government cannot lock people up or ban hate speech as that would violate said First Amendment clause. So go shout yourself hoarse in the street, like some batshit crazy tweaker, it’s allowed. Huzzah.
Regardless, it’s best to point out that the neoNazi white supremacist racist xenophobic clan is just a pack of ignorant fearful clowns who regurgitate 19th century ‘scientific racism’ and howl about the Cultural Marxists taking over the universities and on and on. All they deserve is ridicule for being such fools – and, just like the Brownshirts in the early 1930s, once the useful fools (the SA) had served their purpose, they were rounded up and shot by the real fascists, the SS/Gestapo and their corporate/military partners, in the Night of the Long Knives. Probably with Steve Bannon playing the role of Rohm. Here’s how the world really works, silly people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
So try growing up, little children, because that ‘white Christian pride’ Kool-Aid you’ve been drinking will turn your brains to mush.
Very nice example of free speech and some mites and bounds of it and some too often forgotten history. Extremes give rise to revolutions but are often some of the first eaten by them.
The Intercept reaches a new low – not condemning Doxxing (which can lead to SWATing which can kill), but only when the right does it.
The left does worse and invented the technique during #GamerGate.
You want war. You lob bombs rightward. Then have extreme outrage when you are bombed.
Doxxing is cyber-bullying, even if it isn’t illegal. From either side.
All the antifa tried to ID anyone in Charlottesville they THOUGHT was on the right and found a lot of innocent people and destroyed their lives including the previous owner of the car in Macomb County Michigan that wasn’t there and had nothing to do with it.
But the Intercept doesn’t care. They are as bad as CNN now. Doxxing only matters if the left is doxxed. Destroy anyone who is SUSPECTED on the right, even if they are innocent. Is there any decency left here?
And here’s one asshole now.
No. You’re wrong. There is a huge difference between Antifascists doxing alt-right racists who have a very long history of premeditated murders and violence on blacks, Jews, Muslims: Antifascists are exposing neo-nazi scum and racists, clearly dangerous, and report them to police or their employers which is a very good thing. On the other hand when alt-right neo-nazis dox Antifascists, it is not with the intent of protecting the general public from a racist attack; rather it is with evil intent of planning to have that Antifascist attacked, killed, etc. Totally, totally different. Antifascists are great people with principles of justice and equality. They protected many blacks from being beaten and or killed at the Charlotsville demonstrations, as Cornel West pointed out on Democracy Now recently.
I doubt that neo-Nazis are much more physically dangerous to “antifa” or any other anti-racist simply because they have this “dox” crap. I mean, without “dox”, all they have to do is get in their car and they’ll have no difficulty running into some on the road! The main goal of any “doxxing” is to dupe neutral parties into joining the crusade. And if neutral parties refused to join the crusade, it would pretty much stop.
I’m not sure if you were attempting to prove tz’s point, but you certainly did so. Doxxing is wrong, regardless of who is doing it. Moreover, Antifa has proven time and again that they are more violent and more dangerous than the supposed neo-Nazis that they claim to oppose.
“more violent and more dangerous”
… aside from all the murders.
There’s no anti-fascist equivalent of Dylann Roof, or of the Phineas Priesthood.
“There’s no anti-fascist equivalent of Dylann Roof, or of the Phineas Priesthood.”
See: Stalin
Go to bed, Marja. You’re drunk.
You’re trolling. Stating the truth doesn’t mean I’m drunk.
Good point, but blind morons here are too busy sucking antifa off to see the BS. One day that scam will get what is coming for them and I for one will not shed a single tear.
“M****” was a classification in forced sterilization campaigns. It is an ableist and eugenicist slur.
Not everyone is an abled heterosexual man.
Doxxing is a form of ad hominem attack. It is a low kind of discourse. When combined (as it usually is) with calls for discrimination against the target based on their political opinions, it is the worst kind of political error. That said, I would call it “wrong” in the sense of saying something wrong, rather than “wrong” in the sense of justifying violent action or police enforcement against it.
That doesn’t mean I want to let bullies succeed, but if we do not recognize the freedom of speech even of the doxxers, as well as their victims, then we are prevented from thinking more deeply and seeing the fundamental economic rights we need to be demanding *instead* of censorship.
People need to get off and out of social media for their own safety and sanity — like do not you have an ffing life?? Gives fakeimportance!
Apparently my post was deleted where I brought up the fact that 4chan managed to dox the member of antifa who hit the man in the head with a bike lock, and is now facing criminal charges for assault. That and similar instances are why doxxing against antifa became so important.
Nice job on your lack of respect for dialogue, Micah.
>But there’s an important distinction between the doxing that neo-Nazis do and the doxing that antifa activists do. Neo-Nazis target nearly anyone who vocally disagrees with their political worldview — which essentially means anyone who isn’t a racist white person and is public about their views.
>Antifa activists only target members of hate groups, a small but growing subset of American society that President Trump refuses to condemn, responsible for mounting terrorist attacks against mosques, black churches, trans women, and people of color.
Go back to Slate or some shitty progressive site with your completely biased journalism. Antifa has a long history of physically attacking anyone they disagree with, which spurred places like 4chan, 8ch, and Reddit to begin doxxing them. Here is one of dozens of examples caught on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mOU6vNA4t8
Of course, the most famous example was the man hit in the head by a bike lock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qKCl9NL1Cg It was 4chan who identified him, and the alleged antifa attacker turned out to be a professor, Eric Clanton. Of course, you won’t discuss this.
At least some of the stuff that /pol/ and others does with doxing is deplorable, we can agree on that, but you are just another standard progressive who thinks it’s okay for antifa to target people who peacefully assemble because you label them “hate groups”. You have no credibility, and in fact are part of the reason why we can have no meaningful dialogue between left and right on this.
Great point, but please don’t call this author as “standard progressive”. Progressive people have integrity and they are just and caring and will call BS for what it is. This “journalist”. and I am using this term generously, is clown without integrity, who needs to be ridiculed for the garbage that he posted.
Another article using “right-wing extremists” and “neo-nazis” interchangeably, and explaining that antifa only prevents free speech from really bad groups. Speaking of that, thanks for the reminder that neo-nazis are bad.
Divide and conquer — has served those in power for millenia.
The Intercept is such a weird site, because it has some of the best journalism to be found anywhere, and at the same time a certain percentage of it is this biased SJW stuff that belongs on Huffington Post or some other mainstream garbage site.
Really true..I can’t tell if I didn’t notice the SJW stuff before or if it’s getting more prevalent. I still think The Intercept has integrity, so I’m wondering if they will get a well reasoned libertarian or even conservative person on the staff. Then again, my impression was that The Intercept wasn’t really about political issues in the beginning.
Please identify in what appreciable way right wing extremists and neo-Nazis differ.
“Extremists” is relative. “Extremist right wing” these days can mean being on the spectrum of Second Amendment advocacy, being against illegal immigration, encouraging civic participation in a militia, or being against abortion (and plenty of other issues). The neo-Nazi foundation is all about religion and race.
No, you listed a bunch of run-of-the-mill conservative positions, not extremist ones.
So, you can’t provide a meaningful distinction between right wing extremists and neo-Nazis, because the extremists are all about the same racist and nationalist obsessions that drive the Nazis.
I’ll be clearer: anyone on the “extreme” spectrum of those “right-wing” issues (guns, abortion, militia, illegal immigration, and every other issue that’s labeled “right-wing”) can be labeled right-wing extremists. Neo-Nazis hold extreme views about race and religion. Those are huge differences. Maybe sometimes some issues overlap, but that doesn’t mean “neo-Nazis” and “right-wing extremists” can be used interchangeably willy-nilly. I think it says something about the climate you’re in if you’re saying they are the same.
You’ve simply repeated the same weak semantic argument on which I called you out.
You’re either arguing for the sake of arguing, or you are refusing to look at this issue rationally.
You’re not saying there’s a difference between the people who bomb abortion clinics and those who attack synagogues? If you want to look at this issue constructively in any kind of depth you have to make distinctions among the different motivations for extremism.
If you want to write a surface-level article or argue that this is semantics you might as well lump the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army together with James von Brunn and Paul Jennings Hill; just call them all extremists.
Looks like the administration is getting in on the action:
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/
So…..you’re doxing doxers??? Micah, you have absolutely no journalistic integrity.
And your biting criticism will keep him up at night I’m sure.
As will yours, me…
At least you’re making useful observations.
What are you talking about? Do you even know what doxing is?
Do you really care??
Anyway, which part of that very simple comment is confusing you?
It is both unconstitutional and absolutely hopeless to go after the “doxxers” on either side. They are doing nothing but claiming a right to do research, no matter how obnoxious their goals.
There is ONE and ONLY ONE THING that you can do to fight these bastards. And that is, stand up and say that YOU WILL NOT FIRE PEOPLE FOR THEIR PERSONAL FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. Literally everything else is bullshit.
It’s like trying to wipe out cockroaches. You can crush, you can clean, you can spray chemicals until the humans are poisoned. But if you don’t stop them from getting into the food then you cannot stop them from breeding. You cannot stop doxxers unless you stop the mighty hunters from coming back with their carcass and yelling to their friends “look who we just got fired!”.
As it happens, The Intercept is a company. If you are looking for more than eyeballs, if you care to try to stop nonsense like this, then you can go out on a limb and make a policy. You can make a policy that no, you don’t care if your reporter or your janitor an exciting double life as a prostitute, you don’t care if she had revenge porn posted by an ex-boyfriend, you don’t care if she yelled the N-word in a video in 2006, whether as part of a skit or part of a stupid belief system. You say that as a responsible company management that cares about your investors you care only about what your employees have done for or against you on your dime. Post a policy like that, and I’ll believe you’re a part of the solution. Then you can go out and proselytize the world! But write “exposes” on chat forums like this and you’re only getting them more recruits. NOTHING but allowing an employee to have a personal life rather than being a full time piece of corporate property is going to work. NOTHING!
saved me lots of brainwork!
well said.
I am also in. Even a nonviolent criminal convicts should not be a total bar to employment, bring people back into society is as important as societal punishment.
Great points
I agree 1000%. This is what we need. No more moralism from left or right, people’s lives will not be destroyed because they have unorthodox views on anything from use of drugs to race to religion to American foreign policy to anything else that is remotely controversial.
Nah, find a Nazi and get them fired.
AMEN! Agree completely
I’m having a hard time believing the validity of this article, many people have tried to figure out who these extremists are because they have been assaulting mostly non Nazis. And due to the fact that you called the no Marxism in the United States rally a white supremacist rally, you lost all credibility in my opinion. The rally was not a white supremacist rally, most of the speakers were minorities, and the woman who started the event was a white trans woman. Last time I checked, minorities and trans women are not liked amongst hate groups like the KKK and the neo-nazis. And many of the key speakers have said that white supremacists, Nazis and KKK members are not allowed to the rally. In additionally they stated that anybody that comes to the event with weapons, Shields or anything they can use to fight or defend themselves with Shelby turned away from the event. After watching that event and seeing how none of them fought back unlike in Charlottesville, I really doubt these people were white supremacist. I come to the intercept for honest journalism due to the fact that I respect Glenn Greenwald. I do not like this dishonesty in this article. I suggest you research your facts further.
And in fact, the anti-fascists have only fought with Nazis during one of them, we have had countless times in Portland Oregon, and Berkley where the anti-fascists have shown up and beat people up just because they were right wing to the any fascist they were Nazi enough to beat.
And please don’t try to pass off this kind of thing as something that only the far-right does. We have plenty of evidence that the far-left does this in greater numbers. After Charlottesville there were many cases of mistaken identity where many people were harassed and doxxed online.
Majority of times I’ve seen people publish information on the anti fascist or when 4chan does it and they report it to the police. And so far 200 people have been arrested for assault, battery, assault with the intent to maim, arson, vandalism, and rioting. I get it that hate groups are extremely bad, but the majority of people who have been hurt by the anti-fascists have not been Nazis. Just look at most of the events that they have tried to crash, including all the events that have happened at Berkley, the event that happened in Dallas recently where they attacked a black lives matter member, and in Boston where they assaulted people at a US Constitution party rally due to the fact that they had the rally to bring support toward values that they thought to be legitimate as well as the right to free speech. And additionally after what we saw during the G20 conference in Hamburg Germany, 12 million euro worth of Damages was done to the city due to the anti-fascist showing up and burning every car they could as well as assaulting police officers. There were more police officers harmed than protesters. More police officers were hospitalized due to the event.
I really don’t like that you make it out to seem that everybody that the anti-fascist attacks are Nazis and that all of the anti-fascists enemies are white supremacist groups. Just because a small handful of people might identify with neo-nazis white supremacist and they don’t like the anti-fascist, that doesn’t mean that any rally that they want to attend or will attend is automatically a white supremacist rally. I would suggest you look over all the footage from the no Marxism in the United States rally and see that they came for a fight, nobody came to that event who wanted to speak at the rally or hear the people speaking came with weapons. People were trying to run away and we’re being pulled down dragged, and beaten while being held down like a helpless animal. And the police did nothing.
Just remember that during the past 19 months now, the majority of people who have been harmed by the anti-fascists have not been Nazis or hate groups.
Spot On!
You’re a goddamn liar. All anyone needs to do is look at video footage of these interactions to see your “innocent conservatives” are throwing punches, spraying mace, swinging batons and shoving with particle board shields, and more importantly, talking shit about every race and creed that isn’t straight and white.
The world is starting to turn on you people.
This is a great but very disturbing article, Micah. Thank you. Much as I have no faith in the FBI they need to get off their asses and get involved in this.
Don’t doubt many of these “white wing extremists” are LE/Police officers.
Same here, just about any internet troll random person can be accused of being somebody or say that they are part of some group or another. We live in an age where anybody can say anything and at least half of the internet will actually end up believing it.
How would mexico or mexicans in mexico like it if we invaded their country and started demanding all manner of privileges benefits and rights as persons illegally in mexico?
GRUPO BETA.
The wallstreet media will not report the plans for mexico to overtake the US.
You will not hear any legal mexicans protesting against illegal immigrants.
They just want what they can take, amigo.
Did you know that present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming all used to be part of Mexico, before the United States invaded them?
That’s absolutely true, but what’s your point? Every one in Mexico should be allowed in the U.S. then?
yes i did
and the desire to reposses stolen property that has been improved is the fashion of the day – certainly a lot easier to steal back or occupy back than to improve from scratch! Maybe it was all part of a 500 year plan? kidding.
Why bother replying to an idiot like them? Let them live in their own delusional world – you responding to them just gives them more credibility. Also Micah your piece is very troubling to read especially after listening to The Daily NYT podcast from Aug.18. It talked about the social platform Discord being used by the Neo-Nazis to organize Charlottesville and how the company fully KNEW that the Neo-Nazis were doing this but they never intervened and let it occur. It was only after Charlottesville, only after death and violence occured that they declared zero-tolerance and banned the Neo-Nazis from their platform. But clearly that is not the case right now as the party chat logs in use are Discord. How do we hold a company like this accountable???
Every person who is in Mexico, or any other country for that matter, expects some very basic guarantees, like due process, a reasonable degree of freedom, etc. Any delusions you have beyond that are just that.
not true.
allow me..
Every person who is
inMexico, or any other country for that matter,..Every person who is A CITIZEN OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY LIKE Mexico, or any other country for that matter,..
unless of course me and my friends can just bring our stuff and crash thru your front door and sit a spell, for as long as we like….
get the point?
in other words – my home is not limited to my house – it extends to the borders of my country.
No, that’s clearly stupid. People travel. I guess you never have. Of course everyone expects a basic level of respect for human rights anywhere you go. Do you think that if you visit Europe on vacation, a government there can put you in jail for no reason and then say “well, you’re not a citizen here, so you don’t have any rights”?
And here’s the reality, BTW: You can, at any time, walk into Mexico without having to apply for a visa beforehand. Indeed, a convicted criminal who is a US citizen could easily do that. You could stay in Mexico for years, without regularizing your status, and there’s little chance anyone will make an effort to locate you and deport you.
Do you think a Mexican national can cross the US border legally just like that? These are the real disparities people should be aware of before they whine about ridiculous nonsense.