By Any Memes Necessary

Yesterday NPR's Morning Edition did a segment on antifa.  Noel King interviewed Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers and the author of a new book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.  Bray seemed to have his head on straight, and was even able to resist King's repeated efforts to ignore what he said and turn the discussion in a direction she preferred. 

Bray pointed out right away that antifa is not a "singular organization.   It's a kind of politics or activity of radical opposition to the far-right that doesn't have any qualms about physically disrupting far-right demonstrations." King wasn't having it, though: she kept referring to antifa as a "group."  Bray corrected her, but she wasn't listening.

To Bray's report that "the antifa argument is that we need to treat all far-right and fascist groups as if they could be the seeds of a new genocidal regime", King countered: "The rebuttal would be nonviolent protest has a history of working - right? - and no one gets killed."  If I'd been in Bray's place I have pointed out that it's false that "no one gets killed" as a result of nonviolent protest: there's a long list of nonviolent martyrs in the Civil Rights Movement.  She can hardly be unaware of them, so what she presumably meant was that the movement's opponents don't get killed.  This is an attitude typical of US news media, which report that things are "calm" in Israel-Palestine as long as no Israelis are killed, no matter how many Palestinians are killed.  There's a long history of white-supremacist, arguably fascist violence in this country, and right now police officers all over the country are defiantly killing unarmed people, despite the growing backlash against them.  Police are meeting nonviolent protest with batons, chemical weapons, and other violence -- rioting, in a word -- and apologists like Noel King never seem to fret that they're just hurting their own cause.

Does nonviolent protest work?  There is a good case to be made that it doesn't.  Violent white racists succeeded in terrorizing African-Americans and their white allies with impunity.  Only after decades were some of them tried and convicted.  Segregation receded in the South, but it's hard to find a direct connection between the protests of the 50s and 60s and the changes that finally took place.  A combination of factors, including legislation, court orders, and economic pressure played as much of a role as direct mass action, and as we're seeing now, white supremacy just went underground.  The success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the iconic action usually cited as proof of the efficacy of nonviolence, has been overstated.  Terrorist violence by whites continued, and hasn't ended to this day.  Rosa Parks -- you've heard of her, I'm sure -- had to leave Montgomery, moving north, to escape threats and retribution.

I recently read a classic work, Negroes with Guns, by Robert F. Williams, a North Carolinian who returned home in 1945 after serving in the Marine Corps, determined not to accept racism anymore.  He joined the local NAACP chapter and moved it in a more militant direction.  He also formed an NRA-chartered gun club to prepare for black self-defense. This led to some exchanges of gunfire with white racist vigilantes, and ultimately to trumped-up kidnapping charges that drove Williams and his wife into exile, first in Cuba, then in the People's Republic of China.  They returned to the US and the charges were dropped in 1975.  Along the way the Williamses became friends and allies with Rosa Parks.  His account of his activities is interesting and inspiring, but I ended up doubting just how successful his embrace of self-defense really was.  Does nonviolent protest work?  Sometimes, maybe; but often not. Does armed self-defense work?  I'm not sure it does, and it certainly doesn't if you don't have local police, state troopers, and the FBI on your side, as white racists did.  As we've seen this summer, they still have the police on their side.

There have been a few more recent, scholarly books on black anti-racist self-defense in the South during the Civil Rights era, and I'll be reading them soon.  As I've said before, I don't rule out violence as a form of protest or resistance, but I don't get the impression that most of those who talk about it have a clear idea how to do it and make it work.  It doesn't help that mainstream voices, like NPR, are so malignantly ignorant and dishonest.  But I'm increasingly convinced that babbling "by any means necessary," a popular slogan of the 60s and 70s, is just posturing.

But We've Got to Do Something!

I imagine you've heard that a couple of protesters against police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were shot to death, allegedly (but pretty certainly) by Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old armed with an AR-15.  He was arrested in his hometown, a half-hour drive from Kenosha in Illinois. There are numerous infuriating aspects to the case, such as that he was welcomed by police on the scene, and then allowed by them to walk away unhindered after the shooting.  But he's in custody now, charged with first-degree homicide.

In Bloomington, Indiana, where I lived and worked for many years, there was a "Defend the Police" rally last Saturday, which was countered by Black Lives Matter supporters.  According to an interview I heard with the mayor, some people on both sides were armed, but though there were some scuffles that produced minor injuries, no one was seriously hurt.  In the days before that rally, I saw some people I knew and others I didn't vowing that they would stop those Nazis from using Bloomington as a platform for their hate.  It appears that they failed.  I can't understand why - don't these middle fingers kill fascists?

I guess they were canceled out by these hippie-stomping middle fingers:

Ghod, I feel so inspired.  (The above photos were taken by Zachary Kaufman for The Bloomingtonian and appear in this gallery.  Credit where it's due.)

What I want to discuss is the reaction the killings in Kenosha have gotten from the antifa / BLM left.  Two days ago almost all such people I see online were talking up fighting in the streets, Enough Is Enough, burn it to the ground, etc., and scorning anyone who questioned their wisdom, and the wisdom of The People.  Oh, and guillotines.  And that hasn't gone away:

Oh no, someone did a bad optics. Time to stop criticizing police departments that are brutalizing protests so we can shame this powerless protesters and play into the hands for the far-right.

As I've said many times in many contexts, struggle is not a zero-sum game, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, and I can attack the police while criticizing the stupid tactics of those who oppose the police. Just as I can, say, attack Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

 Another one:

The Left is going to have to realize that there is no justice.

The Right is going to have to be shown that leftists have firearms too.

That's the course we're on and it's likely inevitable at this point given there is no leadership seeking any other course of action.

Exactly: there is no leadership, except perhaps for some white kids who fantasize that they are Che Guevara or Robespierre.  I've seen a lot of talk about how Kyle Rittenhouse was acting out various media soldier fantasies, but less about Antifa's media fantasies.  Can't one pure girl take down a brutal dictatorship with a hunting bow?  Or destroy Him Who Must Not Be Named with their, uh, wands?  Oh, and video war games are part of the common cultural heritage of testosterone-poisoned nitwits on all sides.

I'm not a pacifist, I think; I don't rule out violent response to state violence a priori.  But I don't think the left should resort to violence, especially armed violence, without a lot of thought and planning.  Which I'm not seeing now.

So, for example:

Please allow me a moment to break down this wicked conflation that folks are engaging in, Lisa Goodman ran this today. It is horrible and it is not helpful. These folks constantly and purposefully conflate the intent of rage, rioting and looting with the intent of protesting or advocating for systems change. They are both forms of action, direct action. but so are voting and rioting actions if you use that reductionist mind. Intent ( that is absent of any moral judgement argument) just factually don’t put them in the same sentence.

The thread continues, but doesn't get any more coherent or honest.  Many of the ACAB supporters of BLM have constantly and purposefully conflated the intent of rage, etc. with the intent of protesting or advocating for systems change.  Rioting, burning small businesses, property damage have been confused deliberately with direct action aimed at systemic change -- even after we have seen repeatedly that much of the violence has been the work of police agents provocateurs and/or white supremacists aiming to escalate the conflict and draw more police repression.  Someone (I've lost the tweet) jeered that when you're a poor black person rebelling against the cops, thinking coldly about strategy is a luxury and it's white privilege to criticize them.  That's pretty obviously racist, but it also overlooks that the protests and the riots have been going on for months, the heat of the moment has had time to pass, and serious thought about tactics and methods is not only possible but necessary.  Also, a lot of dubious action has been done by some privileged-looking white kids who always seem shocked when the police they purport to hate fail to protect them from the Nazis.

One exception: Benjamin Dixon, a black writer and activist I see on Twitter, declared a few weeks ago that he appreciated Antifa, because they put their bodies on the line between police and BLM protesters.  That certainly deserves appreciation, but it's not what I've been seeing lately.  I see people claiming to be antifa because they are opposed to fascism, which is kind of like pointing triumphantly to the "socialism" in "National Socialism", but these people's activism consists entirely of posting memes to Facebook.  As many have pointed out, "antifa" is not a centralized organization, so you have a lot people operating under that rubric: some doubtless courageous and principled, others who think that wearing a pink pussy hat or giving rednecks the finger is the kind of antifascism that won World War II.

This obfuscation has been with us for a long time, and it's getting worse.  I'd add that armed rebellion doesn't have a great record of success in this country.  From Daniel Shays' rebellion to the Civil War to the Bonus Marchers to the Black Panthers to the Branch Davidians, rebels have come up against the vastly greater firepower of the American state, and ended up dead or in prison, with a lot of collateral damage, but in the struggle against the Man you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.  Or, as one Black Panther purred to a student audience during my first year at Indiana University fifty years ago, "We must be cruel, so that others can be kind."  But the time for kindness, like the time for criticizing Democratic politicians, never seems to come.

There is leadership by black people in BLM, but the white leftists I see online aren't deferring much to them.  They are more aware of what's at stake.  The mother of Jacob Blake, the man shot in the back by Kenosha police, has condemned the violence there, but what does she know compared to the wise revolutionaries?

By the way, I noticed that for about a day after the shooting, numerous people on Twitter were reporting that Jacob Blake was dead.  It is, as they say, a mercy that he is not dead; but their eagerness to have more martyrs -- not themselves, of course, someone else - shows how much they really think Black Lives Matter.

It was a relief to encounter the writing of this woman:

1994, the women in my village created underground tunnel for every1 to live in. I was born in that same tunnel in 1995. The day I was born was the day Charles Taylor came to slaughter my people but instead he was met by an empty village not realizing we where all underground.

Im saying this to say that people who have never fought in wars need to actually start talking to the Black people here that know what a civil war looks like and the strategize we used back home.

My mom came here in 2018 and she went through an escape plan with me. My sister didn’t take it seriously bc she doesn’t remember seeing our older brother being hit by a rocket but I do. She doesn’t remember our mom getting shot five times but I do. I’m grateful for her

My mom really had me go through everything over and over again until I could remember how to get to each place without my phone or my car. You could see the sadness in her eyes. Can you imagine saving your child from war just for her to be planning for another one?

This is worlds away from the macho posturing, the giggly excitement at being bad and rebellious, that I've seen seeing online.  Things are getting bad in the US, probably worse than they have ever been before, but only refugees from US wars know what it's like to have search-and-destroy missions slaughtering whole families, bombs and other anti-personnel weapons dropping on your town for months and years.  Some have said that the right-wing militias are like the death squads the US has trained and supported in other countries for over a century.  Probably true, but not nearly as bad -- yet.  I don't see any reason to believe that these people have begun to think about what it would mean to live in a real war, or they wouldn't be so eager to start one.  I see them as being like the planners of Bush's invasion of Iraq; it'll be a cakewalk, over in a few weeks, maybe we don't have the people or equipment we should, but you work with the army you have.  Besides, the uprising will pay for itself, and antifa will be welcomed as liberators.

I was going to leave it there, but this tweet sums up for me how serious our young revolutionaries are: "I was outside by my house with my roommate for about 5 minutes and OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE 20 bike cops rolled up and yelled at us about curfew."  So, you're living in a fascist police state, but you're surprised that they mean it?  Good thing you weren't living in Liberia when Charles Taylor came calling.

Demagoguery for Me, But Not for Thee

This is the latest example of a syndrome I've observed before on the Left: alternately agitating about how "extremely dangerous white supremacists are, how they're the new Nazis and if we aren't ceaselessly vigilant there will be a replay of 1930s Germany here in the Homeland" and at the same time "seem[ing] to believe that white supremacists are not really dangerous at all, that because Antifa's heart is pure they need only to chant some slogans and the Fascists will collapse and surrender; the Fascists' bullets will either bounce off Antifa's Breastplate of Virtue, be repelled by Antifa's wristlets of power, or simply dissolve into the air."

In McInnes' case there's no doubt that he's dangerous, he's been cultivating a gang of thugs for street fighting, and they've been actively doing their job.  And I must admit, having grown up on recycled WWII propaganda cartoons on children's TV in the 1950s, that the syndrome I'm describing is neither new nor limited to the Left: it was common to treat Hitler and Tojo as silly-looking clowns who would be brought down by laughter, and as dangerous enemies of all that was holy.  It's probably a lot older than that.  But I don't get it, not least because I remember how effective such tactics have been against Donald Trump: he's fat, he has stupid hair, he has tiny hands (and therefore a tiny wee-wee), he's Putin's cockholster, etc. -- and you see, here we are.  It's of a piece with the popular Internet tropes that this or that celebrity or liberal icon has schooled / taken down / destroyed / EVISCERATED etc. this or that Republican.

I guess I can understand the impulse, it's a way of letting off steam, and not actually incompatible with taking real action against these evils.  But it suggests to me that many if not most people have trouble concentrating on issues for more than a few minutes at a time.  That's just as true of the right-wing base, but liberals and the left like to claim that they're Better Than That.  And please note: I'm not at all concerned about McInnes's feelings.  This has little or nothing to do with him personally.  (Would the person who posted the above tweet feel differently about him if he were a hot Aryan stud, with a prominent chin?  Does it hurt less if you're beaten up by goons answering to a large-sized cartoon earthworm?)  What I find, however, is that many, perhaps most of the people who let off steam in this manner turn out not to be very thoughtful or knowledgeable about the issues involved.  Does that matter?  Maybe not.  Maybe all that matters is that you cheer for your team, which by definition is the Good Team because it's yours.  It puts important, life-and-death issues on the level of spectator sports, which are not important at all.

But is this the only way to build and maintain solidarity?  If so, I think we're in trouble.  If not, I think it's counterproductive.  It's demagoguery.  It's a tactic beloved of the Right: remember the memes depicting Barack Obama as a witch doctor, his family as monkeys?  Those upset liberals and progs no end.  But only, I think, because it was their guy being mocked.  The slut-shaming Melania memes circulated by liberals and leftists in 2016 were just as despicable, but defended by liberals and leftists in the same terms the Right used to defend the racist Obama memes.  And don't forget, kids, what liberals and conservatives alike agree: Michael Moore is fat.

I'm not sure that this kind of mockery is necessary to build and maintain solidarity.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for one, seems to manage very well without it.  So does Bernie Sanders.  I put the tactic's popularity down to intellectual, moral and political laziness.