Most people only watched the riots of 2020 on the news or their social media feed. I suspect that even most progressives over 30 or at least, most of them with kids, are secretly quite pleased to sit back and smugly back their warriors without any requisite need to personally befriend them. Afterall, they paid good money to upgrade that front door and would really like to keep their toaster, jewelry, and laptop; all of which might be endangered if antifa came by their house! Look at Mayor Wheeler in Portland; and he’s on their team! So who’s going to really rub elbows with these people? You, probably.
Antifa aspires to come to your neighborhood, yes, your sleepy boring middle of the road, tree lined enclave. They’ve grown quite full of themselves, love being feared, loved subjugating any that cower easily. In Portland, they moved from high value federal assets to the surrounding residences. They fanned out across the country and went to other cities. They ended up in little-ol Kenosha, Minnesota, population 99,944 and caused $50 million in damage. They stormed quiet senior citizens eating at restaurants in Pittsburgh.
More than likely though, you won’t see antifa in person just yet; in the meantime, they live in abundance in virtual space. They live on Facebook and they read, monitor and comment on media pages that you’d not associate with their interest. They’re on conservative pages hijacking discussion threads toward their viewpoint, working from the bottom up and inside out.
The easiest signs that you’re dealing with an antifa type are three things:
First, they have no interest in appealing to anyone’s sense of reason and discourse. They’ll hop onto a comment thread just to interject an inflammatory statement into the give and take of temperate individuals attempting persuasion. Antifa does not persuade, they attack and will attack repeatedly if challenged. They change the subject and in this exact moment, that will usually entail some biting remark about Trump and Republicans.
Their most common tactic is to call you a fascist and racist if they suspect you’re not unequivocally one of them and if they detect any bent toward conservatism and or Trump: “Why do you love fascists?”, in your face. They‘re taking advantage of the fact that the vast majority of the public has no idea how much they’ve bastardized the historical context of ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’, and are totally un-self-aware that they emulate Nazi brownshirts, pre-WWII, and that they demonstrate absolute intolerance to any outlook but their own, perfectly fascist behaviors.
The second trait is the seething bitterness in their comments. It’s their trademark, their identity. To any normal person, this is of course off-putting. Most people avoid all manner of political contention in the first place, but this level of bitterness would send some people to delete their pages.
Last, as an interesting exercise, bring up their FB page. Surprisingly, or not, they’re most often open public pages where you can view posts and other information, but that’s only because there’s nothing real to view anyway. Their pages consist of meaningless memes, slogans, and leftist iconography. If there are any personal images, they have no context, reveal no identity, and may be fully bogus. The ‘About’ and other sections will reveal little to no real-life information. Their pages are an empty shell.
There needs to be more individuals of fortitude ready to stand up to the terrorist. First of all, be ready to understand and articulate what is Antifa. Antifa is not a single cohesive organization, it is made up of many factions but do receive some centralized funding and coordination from various sources, the most well documented being George Soros. They are dedicated to anarchy, the nullification of all civil authority. The complete degradation of law enforcement is a central goal. They’re committed to the overthrow of capitalism, and any non-socialist economic system. They believe in a massive confiscation and transfer of wealth from productive interests in society, to non-productive and criminal groups and individuals. They’ve hijacked organizations that had any genuine interest in the day to day interest of minorities and injected those groups with their own hate agenda.
Just a few suggestions on how to manage antifa online:
- Do stand up to them. Their boldness is in their anonymity, especially in virtual spaces. It’s fairly well documented that they’re daring in a crowd and sobbing cowards when singled out face to face.
- Name them! Call them out. Call them antifa! You do not need ‘proof’. If their behavior profile fits antifa, if it quacks like a duck, call them what it is. I have yet to see any of them deny it! Most of your fellow readers are not aware they are observing antifa thugs. Naming them is like throwing salt on slugs; it’s the one remark they’ll avoid rather than counterattack.
- Be aggressive yourself – to defend your own remarks.
- Don’t get draw into personal innuendo, stay above it, let them be the public. ass. When, not if they start throwing personal insults at you, totally ignore it and ‘go for the juggler’.
- Don’t expect to convert them but do convert the gallery of bystanders observing. Normal people appreciate reason, facts.
- Use wit and humor. Antifa won’t engage with any form of humor. They’re desperately angry and bitter. Your enraged antifa conversationist is not your audience, all the other readers are your audience.
It’s incredibly important to not cede the online/virtual space to an invading gang. Your conservative and moderate sites, particularly via social media, are being taken over. Stand up for what you believe.