And I don't give a damn what anyone thinks about it, or thinks about me as a consequence.
You have probably read quite a bit by now about a loosely-organized group of anarchists called "antifa," who first came to national attention when they fought back against the violence fomented by neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members in Charlottesville earlier this month. Most of the coverage of antifa (short for "anti-fascists") has been negative, and that has especially been the case with the right-wing media echo chamber, which has led the charge to find some sort of moral equivalency between the violence on the right and the violence on the left, in the hope that the current status quo, in which violence on the right is tolerated and used as an excuse to tell Democrats to move to the right or they'll be shot, can be successfully maintained.
I'll have a little more to say about that status quo in a moment. First, a more personal perspective.
I despise violence, and I despise even more the ad hominem hatred of "the other" which drives so much of it and threatens to drive democratic discourse into oblivion. Hatred is deceptively easy. It requires no research, no debate, not even any thought. It's a seemingly cheap and convenient substitute for the kind of thoughtful analysis and consensus-building that our system of government is built upon and designed to encourage.
Except that, ultimately, it is neither cheap nor convenient. It eats away at the heart of the hater even as it pretends to fill it. It warps the mind even as it pretends to fill it with arguments. It ultimately destroys the soul, even as it fills the body with the illusion of energy and vitality. Ultimately, even without an actual nemesis, hatred destroys the hater. If it does not actually kill the hater, it isolates him or her from the rest of the human race. Hatred is not a philosophy, a policy, or even a program. It's just hatred. And it destroys everything it touches.
I believe all of this as surely as I know I'm typing these words. So, I should just join in the great moral equivalency hunt, and condemn antifa with the same passion that I condemn the neo-Nazis and the Klanspeople.
Except I can't. I just can't. And here's why.
For the past three decades, I have seen a relentless rise in organized violence by the political and social right-wing. I've seen it devolve from the militia movement to the drive for concealed-carry (and even open-carry) permits for handguns, to the utter carnage instigated during the Obama Administration by the NRA and its relentless push against any and all handgun restrictions (even ones designed to make weapons less accessible to terrorists), and its instigation of "stand-your-ground" state laws that allow a shooter to kill an unarmed person based on the shooter's subjective sense of fear (which, in turn, can even be based on an article of clothing). Dozens of young people (even an entire school) will never come of age, never live out their dreams because of this wanton, mercenary lust for violence. And the survivors? Their hopes and dreams live under a perpetual shadow of violence, and even death.
And worse? I have seen government at all levels so scared of looking "lefty" that they have abdicated the most basic obligation of government--public safety--for half of the population. From Waco to Charlottesville, there has been a straight line of abdication, egged on by the aforementioned right-wing media echo chamber, against denying "dear, good, Christian people" their Second Amendment rights. This is the result, along with every preventable death from Waco to Charlottesville. Ask yourself: what did the police do in Charlottesville to save the three lives lost there to right-wing violence? Answer: nothing.
Who has antifa killed so far, in contrast? Answer: no one.
I hold no brief for antifa as an organization. Not everyone involved with it is an easy villain, but it seems to be so loosely organized as to defy having any governing or limiting principles. As such, I can't be their advocate, or even their supporter. And it is easy to imagine, in a violent confrontation, how principled self-defense can be transformed into unwarranted aggression.
But self-defense, in the Age of Trump and with the rise of his white-nationalist support, is not simply a good idea. It's an essential one. Let there be no doubt, based on thirty-some years of evidence: there is a war going on, in their minds and hearts, there is an enemy, and that enemy is to be destroyed by any means necessary. The ballot-box is and never will be enough for them. Bullets and bombs do their most potent, and lethal talking.
As I said earlier, I despise violence. But, frankly speaking, I despise inaction for the sake of looking "classy" or "dignified." It's not just your right to live that's at stake; its the right to live of everyone you care about, present or future. Non-violent resistance only works against a sufficiently civilized aggressor. There is nothing civilized about the so-called "alt-right."
So resist the urge to find a moral equivalency. If you don't like antifa, work with others to come up with a better form of self-defense. We desperately need some form of it. Otherwise, the United States of America will become little more than a Fourth Reich, built on the graves of you and me.
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