And so it begins: the counter-ops.
You knew this was coming. The fake protests, the trolls, the pretenders who would have you believe that “antifa is a terrorist organization” and do everything they can to prove it by strapping on our colors and engaging in the pretense of fighting fascism and authoritarianism while doing everything they can to give every possible excuse to fascists for being even more fascist.
So did we.
We knew it would only be a matter of time, and it looks like we hit the right button this morning; the counter-programming has begun.
Let us be clear: nobody’s raising money here. Nobody’s selling anything. Nobody’s trying to make a name for themselves. That’s why we’re not identifying our admins in public. We did have, for a couple of weeks, a tiny little sentence in the footer of the page linking back to the guy who paid for our domain name and gave us hosting space. As some Clouseau-like morons decided to “out” that link and the guy behind it, we decided to remove it for his protection.
We don’t make threats here, but make no mistake – we are in fact a threat. We’re not just a threat to the obvious fascists, either. We’re a threat to everything that supports fascist structure, including those trying to make their names and fame by pretending to be antifascists. Including those whose ego-driven faketivism relies on keeping people stupid, confused, and angry.
It’s a difficult line to walk sometimes. For instance, many people automatically associate “antifascism” with “anarchism.” There is certainly some overlap, and we welcome genuine voices of anarchy as we do all voices who wish to fight against anti-fascism, but here’s a key difference: you’re not going to find people instigating violence in the name of anti-fascism. They may make that claim, but that’s not how this works.
Offensive violence is the tool of fascists, regardless of whose name the individual committing it claims to operate. These people running through streets and just randomly breaking windows and trashing property for no reason than because it’s there aren’t “anti-fascists” or “anarchists,” they’re garden-variety assholes and most of them are likely state actors attempting to perpetuate the fascist status quo. They bring nothing of value to the table and with every act of aggression they do the work of the fascists for them by validating fascist propaganda. They’re not even anarchists; anarchists don’t go around giving authoritarians more excuses to abuse their power. These morons don’t deserve the dignity of being called “anarchists.” They worship their symbols and they beg like pathetic weenies for attention on social media with their little in-groups and appeals to ego and angst, but they’re not anarchists and they’re not antifascists. They’re the servile handmaidens of fascism; their entire purpose in the world is to make the accusations that Antifa is a “terrorist group” engaging in “violent attacks” seem valid. They want to scare little old ladies, make small business owners resent anti-fascist activity, and generate public support among that great mass of people who would really just not have to worry about any of this at all, who want to simply live their lives, and let others live theirs, in peace.
If people like these didn’t exist, anarchy might be a functional ideology rather than a normative ideal. We certainly hope a day comes when all this policing and military activity is genuinely unnecessary, but these people’s entire purpose is to make it necessary. They’ll pretend all day long not to understand that, but they do. It’s why they act the way they act. They don’t want to eliminate fascism; they want to be the fascists. They’re not angry at abuse of power; they’re angry because they want that power to abuse for themselves.
Same for the idiots who “outed” us on Twitter today. They clicked a link. It wasn’t exactly subtle, and the only reason we didn’t make it bigger and more noticeable for the benefit of our benefactor was trying to reduce headaches and risk for him.
Every time one of these feckless halfwits decides to jump in the middle of a peaceful protest and start breaking things and destroying property, they’re handing the authoritarians and fascists all the PR tools and BS excuses they need to not only exert further aggression against us, but also to turn public opinion against the whole idea of anti-fascism. They couldn’t be more helpful to the institutions and abuses they claim to oppose if they were on the payroll, and most of them probably are.
The other side of that line is that fascism, abuse of power, and authoritarians also represent offensive force, and self-defense is always a valid activity. Nobody should expect, and we certainly don’t advise, simple pacifism in the face of a direct threat to your life or safety.
Even as we write this article, these ridiculous twits are busy stalking the site, conducting the master detective work of clicking on the little tiny link we had at the bottom that led back to the website of the person who bought the domain and offered the free hosting. Even set up the WordPress instance and turned it over. We figured it would be a decent thing to do, but we’ve now removed it.
No personalities. No leaders. These people aren’t anarchists; they’re fascists. They see what we’re doing is working, and they want it destroyed.
Keep your eyes open and pay attention. The risk of big-tent, leaderless movements is always exactly this; that is why we – “we” as in “the human beings who run this page and the social media accounts” – claim no personal identity, nor will we. Expect that we will not confirm the personal identity of anyone involved in the administration of these anti-fascist tools.
It is not possible to cover, even in a long article, all the myriad strategies and tactics of counter-revolutionary propagandists and potentially government-sponsored COINTELPRO operations. We intend to cover that information and much more in future articles, blog posts, statements, etc. You need these tools, and we’re going to do our best to give them to you. In the mean time, please accept this hastily-created shareable graphic as a quick guide to sorting the real anti-fascists from the pretenders who are only involved to assist the causes and perpetrators of fascism.
In Solidarity,
@WeAntiFascists
