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posted by martyb on Thursday January 03 2019, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't dept.

Wired Magazine has an article that some might find interesting.

I was at what should have been a farmers’ market in Berkeley, California, last year when a throng of black-clad antifascists tried to scrap it out with far-right ralliers in the middle of a park named after Martin Luther King Jr. I watched scrawny college students get pummeled by hulking, be-swastika-ed ex-soldiers and ex-law enforcement officers in motorcycle gear. The antifascists’ one reprisal was setting off a homemade smoke bomb, which promptly blew back into their own faces, drawing raucous jeering from the white supremacists. It was as close to a war zone as I ever hope to be, and it was unequivocally a win for the racists.

But then,

It was easy to imagine the Bay Area becoming an extremist battleground—each weekend an opportunity for the next rally turned riot.

That vision has not come to pass. In the long arc of American racism, 2017 saw a sudden spike in visibility, but it was not the beginning of a new era in which people routinely walk the streets advertising their white supremacy. This year has brought the opposite trend: 2018 has been a year of pushing the alt-right and other white nationalist groups back underground, and punishing them for misdeeds committed during their brief moment in the sun. That’s a testament to the strength of the backlash against 2017’s naked racism, and evidence of how costly being openly racist has become—especially on the internet, where it has doomed entire social media platforms to obscurity. This must be counted as a good thing.

Goebbels said, allegedly, "Even if we lose we will win, because our enemies have adopted our methods." Looks like the alt-right is losing.

Regardless of what scaremonger reporters might espouse, the alt-right, as we have come to know it over the last two years, has failed—as extremism researchers always knew it would. But in its place has come something shadowier and far older: an underground white supremacist movement operating on society’s fringes, and a culture that disavows the racists while quietly mainstreaming their ideas.

So here's the point:

The issue, though, is that while there’s satisfaction and schadenfreude in watching these public flounderings, the alt-right doesn’t have to be visible to succeed. In fact, going underground is a return to the status quo for American white supremacy.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:19PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:19PM (#781559)

    The antifascists’ one reprisal was setting off a homemade smoke bomb, which promptly blew back into their own faces,

    You mean the violent commies [berkeleyside.com] who turned up to "counter-protest" a free speech event later to be dubbed the "Battle of Berkeley"? The event followed a planned Milo speaking engagement where violent commies [nbcbayarea.com] maced a libertarian girl, beat people unconscious with poles and set fire to their own university. The entire shitshows are watchable on youtube.

    a culture that disavows the racists while quietly mainstreaming their ideas.

    The "words are violence" bullshit is the language that started this in the first place. Few people like nazis or hordes of violent, black masked, communists.

    The alt-right is ideologically more dangerous the more invisible it gets

    Yes it is, which is why liberal democracies don't censor speech. It's why we now know the womens march is full of racists [wbur.org]

    who label jews as white supremacists. [jpost.com] When The Fine Author distances herself from left wing extremists, she may recognise that the majority of her "fascist" Berkeley attendees were in fact centrists. Until then, she should stop misleading people.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:57PM (#781583)

    Sure, I think we are all aware of the irony of the anti-fascists using fascism to fight fascists. It's hard to be anti anything without being a little bit of a fascist.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:58PM (#781585)

    Nice try, Ivan. Or should I call you Vlad, after your boss?

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Friday January 04 2019, @05:39AM

    by Magic Oddball (3847) on Friday January 04 2019, @05:39AM (#781921) Journal

    The violent fascists over at Berkeley weren't UC students or part of the original peaceful protests [sfgate.com], and many openly declare themselves to be anarchists, not communists. The assholes showed up at a bunch of peaceful protests in the Bay Area in 2017, and in at least one case, when they rioted in downtown Berkeley, the students are the ones who showed up the next day to help clean up the wreckage.