Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook Book by Mark Bray

I read the introduction, early 20th Century history and skimmed the rest of the subject book, the Antifa in the news, including involved in white supremacist protests.  It's a helpful book, including to obtained their p.o.v. (the author was involved in the Wall St. protests and is sympathetic with their cause, suggesting his rich first person sources), but it's a trudge to read. I took down a few notes, including regarding definitions that made me think of a certain person and political cause in particular.

Richard Paxton (definition of fascism):

a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. 

 (“rejects any universal value other than the success of chosen people in a Darwinian struggle of primacy”) [experience of faith, charismatic movement]  Nazism: mix of militarism, traditionalism, hyper-masculinity, antisemitism, and anti-Marxism set within a social Darwinist framework of national and racial struggle / far-right thought.

Historical lessons

• Fascist Revolutions Have Never Succeeded On Own / Fascists Gained Power Legally.
• To Varying degrees, many inter-war anti-fascists didn’t take fascists seriously enough; saw them as traditional counterrevolutionary politics; saw light too late.
• Socialist/Communist leaders for various reasons saw light slower than rank-and-file, often for ideological (divisions) / organizational (tactics) reasons.
• Fascism steals from left strategy, imagery and culture.
• It doesn’t take that many fascists to make fascism. 

Anti-Fascist As Anti-Free Speech 

1.  How Free Is Free Speech? – Sympathy to restrictions, private spaces, limits for undocumented/prisoners/others, unequal “market” power.
2.  Different in kind only – ends leads to more net speech, opposition to fascists as compelling interest, non-government actions/speech v. speech.
3.  Negative results exaggerated – slippery slope, those likely to benefit from libertarian approach favor one side, fascists threaten basic liberties (including in university).

I am wary of the last set of arguments, especially if some degree of violence (including something like throwing urine at white supremacists, as reported recently) is involved. Something like heckling and so forth to make white supremacists unable to give a speech is different, though the university is a special case, but am not convinced normal principles should be exempted here. I also don't think we in America are at the brown shirt period, where the actions is more understandable. This is not to say that the comparison is completely lacking in truth.

The basic sentiment is that some people, some speech and protest is beyond the pale and private groups at least have the moral authority to shut them down. I'm not as convinced that net this approach works that well, in part because there is some truth to the de facto (at least) restrictions of free speech that are cited in the book (see #2)  that would only be worsened if there is a general idea that if something is so bad that you can silence it beyond thinks like libel or the like. In certain places, left leaning speech will be in practice hard to come by, like now it is a tough call to be an open atheist and be a public servant in much of the country.  So, yes, fascists in practice threaten the liberty of people. Net will this approach help?

The "punch a Nazi" deal annoyed me -- you do not punch people, even those who promote horrible ideologies.  But. Charlottesville does show some libertarian free speech approach with no strings at all has its issues too.  This is more than time, place and manner regarding the location of a march.  It is more than showing up ready and willing to stop abuses by racists.  More than heckling and the like.  Though that is all part of it. That extra, and sometimes a bit less than it, is what I'm concerned about.

Some lessons, including knowing your enemy, not dividing your allies and so forth still can be learned about in the book.  The history and what it teaches also. And, the rest, well to the degree I'm wary, it is good to understand their point of view and mindset.  If Voltaire did not say his famous alleged comment on free speech, it still could have been a paraphrase of his sentiment.  One I still firmly believe.  This does not mean the sentiment of racists must be taken as legitimate, truly open to debate.  This does require a certain level of shunning of Antifa levels, huh?

How far do we go there?  I don't know.