THREAD. With protests building across the country and people demanding meaningful structural change in policing, the best the president can do is try to criminalize ANTIFA™.

This is an absurd, ridiculous, and potentially meaningless gesture, and here’s why.
1/Antifa is a contraction of anti-fascism, which means that it is a movement opposed to fascist ideology and movements. If you oppose a world structured on inherent social and biological hierarchy enforced through violence, you’re probably and antifascist.
2/Antifascism is, therefore, an orientation and movement, not an organization.
3/Antifa activists are primarily concerned with stopping the activity of fascist social movements through some form of social movement activity.
4/They are less concerned with changing the beliefs of individual fascists than making sure that they do not act on those beliefs either as individuals or collectively.
5/The practice of antifascism can be either informal or formal. Informal antifascism can be any action that opposes fascism as it manifests in ordinary activity, or what @Mark__Bray and @shane_burley1 call everyday antifascism.
6/Formal antifascism consists of affinity groups that organize to actively oppose fascist organizing and mobilization.
7/Antifa activism is a combination of these informal and formal forms, which means that there is no such thing as an ANTIA™ organization. Anyone who is opposed to fascist activity is essentially antifa.
8/The tactics that antifascists use consist of non-militant and militant practices. Non-militant tactics consist of “conventional” approaches such as intelligence gathering, education campaigns, public shaming campaigns, and cultural work.
9/Militant tactics generally involve confrontation and even the use of force. The militant activists often referred to as antifa engage primarily in non-militant activity; use of force is an extremely rare activity.
10/Given that antifa activism is a broad form of activity that is primarily non-confrontational and non-violent, why is there so much focus on antifa and these attempts at criminalization?
11/First, antifa make a convenient scapegoat when there is no easily identifiable individual or group that can be blamed.
12/Second, whether intentionally or not, mainstream media and politicians on the left and right conflate the black bloc tactic with antifa activism.
13/Finally, antifa activism fundamentally challenges the assertion that the state has a sole monopoly on the use of force because antifascists are willing to use force in order to demobilize fascist activity. This is most evident in protest settings.
14/This demonstrates that people can act in self-defense without reliance on the state. It also indicates the failure of the state to provide for the safety of the people being targeted for fascist violence.
End/From my book: “This radical challenge to the legitimacy of the state represents the true threat that militant antifascism poses…. It is this defiance of the legitimacy of the state that makes antifa activism truly anarchic.”
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