Who are the proud boys

Good self-analysis except for the charming part.

 

Wow! It's like you didn't read what you replied to at all. 1st not my pals, but protesters who did not assemble or clash with protesters the day before, assembled to criticize the MAYOR, not the protesters who behaved badly. They're entitled to petition their elected officials. They're entitled to do so without interference. They extended that civil courtesy the day before by not instigating a confrontation.

 

Time to cut bait pal ... elsewhere.

 

You're too easy.

 

I've seen them in action.

 

I oppose fascists. That is why I oppose Republicans.

 

You can find videos of these guys admitting that they go out looking for fights and instigate violence. You can also find videos of some of them stomping people on the ground and threatening to kill them. Some of them are now being investigated for assault. And some, I assume, are good people.

 

The problem, arguing with conservatives is that they get their news from right-wing propaganda, not exactly the most accurate news.

But then, collectively, conservatives do act like bullies. That is, they tend to excuse their own bad behavior by accusing their victims of wrongdoing.

When I was in junior high school, there was a bully who used to do things like elbow me in the ribs, or knock things out of my hands. Usually accompanied with taunts. One day, at a school assembly, we ended up sitting next to each other. He started in with jabbing at me. But I had had enough. I swung around, with a clenched fist and popped him square in the nose. As we were in the top row of the bleachers, as I hit him, I drove his head against the wall, causing a rather forceful hit to his nose. Blood flew everywhere. And the bleeding wouldn't stop. Eventually an ambulance came and took the bully away.

The bully's defense was that he was doing nothing wrong, that I punched him for no reason. However, he never bothered me again after that.

 

It's pretty difficult to argue about facts, when the facts involve who did what to whom first, at night, on a street with hundreds of people, where emotions are running high.

I hate anti-Fa, but I'm willing to believe that there could be some situations in which their opponents, for instance the Proud Boys, hit first, or did something extremely provocative which they shouldn't have done. That's not only wrong, but stupid. But it's often difficult to sort out the actual facts.

But we can definitely argue about principles. So here are a couple of questions:

(1) Are there any people here who believe that if some group whose politics they hate -- rightwingers or leftwingers, doesn't matter -- holds a public meeting, or a rally, or a march -- that it's all right to attack them, or try to disrupt their meeting and shut it down, or prevent them from marching? [I'm excluding things like a meeting, rally or march which is explicitly for the purpose of instigating immediate violence: "Let's Kill All the Jews!" or "Let's march into that rich pigs' gated community and take back the things they've stolen from the workers!" ]

(2) Are there people here who believe that anti-Fa adhere to the idea that meetings, rallies, marches of people they hate -- people they deem 'white supremacists' or 'racists', 'fascists', the Republican Party, -- should be peacefully protested but not violently attacked?

I believe the first -- no violence against people with hateful political views -- but I don't believe the second. That is, I don't think anti-Fa share my views.

Does everyone here agree?

 

The attitutes expressed in this thread reminds me of an incident many years back. I, along with a group of friends of mine were at a public park, hanging out, eating lunch, and passing a joint or two in the process.

We were approached by three men. The one started to talk. He started going on about how we were what was wrong with America, and all the usual BS that comes out of conservative mouths. As he spoke his friends began to kick at our stuff, even knocking over drinks, telling us we had to go.

Don't let the long hair fool you. I've always been athletic and in good shape. My friend Dan, had a black belt when he was like 10, and aspired to become a Kungfu priest. (A Buddhist thing) At first both Dan and I took the tact of ignore them and maybe they'll go away. Yet, one of the three kicked something, that hit one of girls, set Dan off. He was on his feet, and in one smooth motion, spun around, kicking the guy doing the talking, square in the face, sending him to the ground with a thud. Just as Dan's feet hit the ground, in the same smooth motion, stepped into the guy who had been doing most of the kicking, and with a few quick motions with his arms and hands, the second guy was on the ground crying. With Dan standing over him in Kungfu stance. A couple of the girls had attacked the third man.

The guy that got kicked in the face, through his sobs, was trying to tell us that they were just playing around. Then they ran off, calling us fu****g hippies.

Having repeatedly seen the typical conservative spin, I'm sure they ran off to their friends with tales of being attacked by violent hippies, of course, while neglecting to tell of their own role in the attack.

 

Okay, so ... you agree with me that attacking people like that is wrong. And attacking people holding a meeting, or a march, or a rally is wrong, whoever does it. Do we agree?

 

project much?

 

No more than you

 

ANTI FASCIST! I am partial to anti fascists being a virulent one myself. It isn't at all surprising that when they crawl out from under their rocks there are any number of people willing to confront them.

I find it mildly amusing that if the fascists/nationalists were in power, there would be no protests, only rallies. The ultimate nationalism where the fatherland is supreme and all citizens put it before themselves.

 

And whom do you call a 'fascist'? How about rightwing Republicans who vote for Trump, want to stop illegal immigration, and want to end Affirmative Action? Are they 'fascists' in your eyes?

 

Of course not. Are you unaware of what the hell a fascist is? I have no problem with strict immigration rules and it goes without saying that the immigration situation in the US is a "disaster" of trumpian proportions.

As for voting for trump, I doubt there are more than a few million actual fascists in America. It just so happens that most of them have crawled out from under their rocks in support of trumpian nationalism. They are actively supporting trump.

Now the "conservatives" of the right don't like the radical racist right wing fascist fringe either, but it seems they are perfectly willing to hold their noses. IMHO, they should consider that when they lie down with scumbags, some of that scum rubs off on them.

 

Yes, I do know a bit about fascism. We could have an interesting discussion -- well, maybe we couldn't -- about how the word has been used over the last hundred years or so, what distinguishes those movements we call 'fascist' from traditional European authoritarian Throne-and-Altar right-wing regimes (for instance, how much did the Nationalists in Spain really have in common with the Nazis?), the foreshadowing of fascist methods in Louis Bonaparte's accession to power, the role of a 'left-wing' social program in fascist attempts to gain mass support ... In fact, some of these questions have been discussed in other threads, and I've made a contribution here and there.

I wonder about your own definition of 'fascism', given that you think there are "a few million fascists" in the US. I suppose you are equating 'fascism' with racial pride among not-very-well-educated whites coupled with a belief in Black inferiority? If so, a large part of the mass voting base of the Democratic Party in the South, and elsewhere, was 'fascist' for a century, and a large part of the US was under fascist rule for that time. Liberals didn't seem to have much trouble "holding their noses" then.

Another poster in this thread said, "I oppose fascists. That is why I oppose Republicans." Now you might argue that this individual is a particularly shallow thinker, if we can use 'thinking' in connection with him, not representative of the Left, and I would certainly agree about the first part of that characterization. But I believe that many on the left have his essential outlook. They use 'fascism' to mean "things I don't like". I began hearing this term applied to Nixon's regime, and it was equally wrong then.

I believe we need clarity when discussing/arguing politics. The word 'fascism' ought to be restricted, in my opinion, to people who believe in establishing a one-party state, which preserves the ownership of private capital, and which has, to one degree or another, a 'leftist' social program, combined with extreme nationalism. (The originators of this term, the Italian fascists, just barely fit within this definition.) This nationalism usually is tribally-exclusive, sometimes murderously so.

However, murderous tribalism -- violently targetting other racial/religious/ethnic groups -- is extremely common in the world, and not usually associated with the other characteristics of fascism.

In the Third World it's almost the norm, but it wouldn't bring any clarity to the analysis of, say, India -- now ruled by a Hindu chauvinist who presided over the mass murder of Muslims twenty years ago -- or the tribes of the former Yugoslavia, or Sri Lanka (which even saw a leftwing Guevarist Sinhalese chauvinist movement get wide support for a while). The anti-Semitic Nation of Islam in the US is repulsive, but it doesn't explain much to call it 'fascist'.

And the irony is, the real, iconic, super-fascists -- the Nazis -- and the Japanese ultra-nationalists -- owe their defeat in part to racist Southern white boys of the sort you despise, who actually -- unlike the posturing ninnies of anti-Fa -- actually fought and destroyed fascists ... the real ones. (How I would love to time-transport the anti-Fa mobs to Omaha Beach or Iwo Jima so they could experience what really fighting fascism is about!)

 

The Proud Boys have as much of a link to the racist Southern white boys you refer to as Antifa have to the people like my grandfather who joined up to fight in WWII specifically to fight Fascism. In his case he could have sat out the war, as a miner he was in a reserved occupation, but as a committed socialist he felt it was his duty to fight Fascism, in the same way as his comrades in the International Brigades did in the Spanish Civil War.

Indeed a case could be made that Antifa have more of a link back to people like my grandfather because Antifa have been active, in one way or another, for decades in opposition to groups like the Proud Boys. Indeed they seem to date back to early 1930's Germany.

Regarding your implied assertion that anti-Fascists are a bunch of cowards (highlighted), my own family Antifascist didn't take part in the Normandy landings, he was already in Norway having joined L detachment when he was in North Africa. By early 1945 he was in Germany and had the misfortune, along with the rest of his troop, to discover one of the smaller concentration camps. To his dying day he was anti-Fascist and was as opposed to the 1970s versions as he was the 1930's version. I have little doubt that he would have had a very dim view of the Proud Boys and their ilk.

 

All honor to your grandfather, and to everyone who fought the fascists -- Communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives, even some traditionalist German aristocrats. All honor to the Southern white boys who did the same, despite having, no doubt, very politically-incorrect views.

And special thanks to that British politician who kept the Conservative cabinet from making a deal with Hitler after Dunkirk -- that old reactionary, imperialist, breaker of the General Strike, Winston Churchill. (We'll overlook the Communists, who, during the Hitler-Stalin pact, agitated against preparing for war ... until the country to which they owed their loyalty, the Soviet Union, was suddenly invaded by Hitler. I'm sure they were quite uncomfortable during that Pact and were glad when Hitler ended it. )

And if you want to honor the rank and file volunteers of the Communist-controlled International Brigades, good -- but also honor the non-Stalinist enemies of Franco, Trotskyists and Anarchists, some of whom were murdered by the Communists. I'm sure you're already familiar with George Orwell, but others reading this post should read his Homage to Catalonia, especially his description of revolutionary Barcelona. [I defy anyone under 20 to read it and not want to become a Marxist.]

And while we're honoring the Communists and Socialists who fought fascism in Spain, and after the war with Nazi Germany, had begun, (or after the USSR was invaded), we must remember that the Left did everything in its power to prevent Britain and France from re-arming in the 1930s. Not because they were pro-fascist, but because their understanding of the world was deeply flawed. They marched with signs saying "Down with War and Fascism!" ... but preparations for war and finally war itself were the only way to bring down fascism. The Labour and Liberal Parties in the UK, and the Socialists and Communists in France, were, objectively, Hitler's best friends.

As for the people who call themselves "Anti-Fa" in the US today. They have a name in common with previous generations of anti-Fascists, but have their own distinct political views. And here is where the problem lies.

Anti-Fa do not only advocate and practice violence against neo-Nazis -- real fascists -- they do so against anyone on the Right.

I've repeatedly challenged some of their defenders here to simply affirm the right of any political group to hold a peaceful meeting, protest, rally or march, without being violently attacked. You'll notice the coy refusals to affirm this. We could have an argument about whether this right should be extended to explicit Nazis -- in my view, it's just a tactical question -- but Anti-Fa don't make any distinction between Nazis and, say, the Multinomah County Republican Party. They're actually a reflection of American spoiled-brat individualism, people who cannot tolerate views radically opposed to their own.

They have nothing in common with the anti-Fascists of previous generations, except the name.

 

You live in the right city. Portlandida is a good fit.

 

I am not confusing simple racism for fascism. At all. there are one helluva lot more than a few million racists in America.

Fascists are those that espouse extreme nationalism to the exclusion of all those not considered "citizens". Fascists believe in autocratic rule. Fascists believe in racial/ethnic superiority of themselves. Fascists are jingoists. Fascists believe that the state is uber alles. Fascists believe that both war and economic imperialism are natural rights. Fascists believe that any and all international treatise can be abrogated for whatever reason. Fascists believe only "citizens" can hold public office. Fascist believe in religious freedom for christians only (in the first world at least). Fascists hate jews. Fascists believe in expelling non citizens to ensure full employment for citizens. Fascist believe that national criminals, userers, and black marketeers should be put to death. Fascists support changing the foundation of the law of the land. Fascists don't believe in a free press. Fascists believe in unlimited federal authority. Fascists believe in universal healthcare. Fascists believe in old age security. Fascists believe they are oppressed and abused and unfairly treated - always.

and included in my personal definition of Fascists - they whine like the true paranoid snowflakes they are. Fascists inhabit the slime at the bottom of the ideological cesspool, sharing it with commies and the other fringe dwellers on both sides of the spectrum - go figger.

 

Of course anyone can use any word in any way they like. I have put up dozens and dozens of posts over the years trying to refute people who call 'liberals' 'communists', and even more against the argument, also common on the Right (where I live), that the Nazis were a 'left-wing' movement. I don't do this because I want to defend liberals or the Left, but because these two characterizations muddy thought. They're just emotional cat-calls instead of sober analysis.

Ever since we began to have 'mass movement politics' three hundred years ago, we have had nationalistic political trends. We have had anti-democratic authoritarian trends. We have had anti-Semitism (and anti-Catholicism and anti- other minority groups). We have had political movements which glorify militarism and foreign conquest. For virulent nationalism the Nazis had nothing on the Balkan nationalities, and Blacks in the American South were arguably in more day-to-day physical danger than Jews in the first five years of Hitler's rule.

You can find strong precursors to a lot of things we now associate with fascism as early as Louis Bonaparte, who built a kind of mass movement for the seizure of power out of the lumpen proletariat of Paris, 80 years before Hitler. Marx wrote a brilliant analysis of Bonaparte's coup against the Republic that had emerged from the overthrow of the monarchy, in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, worth reading by anyone seriously interested in the subject of fascism.

Why then did the word 'fascism', an obscure term first used by Mussolini, take hold of the popular imagination after WWI?

Two reasons: most of the repulsive features of the Italian fascists and German Nazis had been around before them. But they were generally associated with 'far-Right', Family-Throne-Altar-Army movements, movements which were clearly defenders of the existing social and political order: monarchy, the church, the Army, private property. [Louis Bonaparte, initially, was a (very) partial exception.] But two things happened in the 20th Century that brought something new on to the scene:

(1) The rise and rapid growth of socialist movements in Europe. The German socialists in particular went from being outlawed, in the late 19th Century, to gaining nearly 40% of the vote in 1919. The European working class was clearly beginning to think of itself as a class with its own economic and social agenda. Although all of the major socialist parties rejected their earlier anti-war positions and supported their own governments in WWI, it was still the case that the old appeals to tradition were not having much success any more.

(2) The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 -- the traditional socialist parties were electoral parties, with supporting mass organizations, but they implicitly looked to transforming society by winning majorities in parliament. The War and the Russian Revolution caused a deep split in the socialist movement, with the left wing of the socialists forming themselves into parties of a new type, modelled on the Russian Bolsheviks: 'combat parties' aimed at the violent seizure of power.

Forces on the Right responded to this. A new far-Right phenomenon emerged: anti-socialist parties, parties aimed at preserving the basic elements of traditional society, above all private property, but parties which also appropriated a lot of the rhetoric and even some of the political program of the Left: they railed against ;'corporate capitalism', advocated social welfare measures associated with the Left, and formed their own mass organizations. Whereas the 'Old Right' viewed the entrance of the unwashed masses into politics with distaste, the fascists embraced this trend, and tried to capture it for themselves. [Note that Mussolini was a former Socialist, in fact an editor of the Socialist Party newspaper.]

In addition to aping the anti-capitalist rhetoric and programmatic measures of the Left, they imitated the Bolsheviks in their Party organizations. They were not an electoral machine, but a machine for taking power.

This really was something new on the political scene, which is why a new word -- 'fascism' -- become popular to describe this new phenomenon.

The 'old Right' -- the previous defenders of religion and nationalism and tribal chauvinism -- had, from then on, a complex relationship with the fascists. Sometimes they were the bitter rivals of the fascists, sometimes their uneasy allies. Especially where 'genuine' fascists didn't compete with them domestically, they allied with it.

For example, when Francisco Franco raised a military revolt against the Spanish Republic (dominated by Leftists) in 1936, his movement had a number of things in common with fascism -- mainly, the aim of establishing a one-party state, crushing the unions, exterminating the Left -- but it was not fully fascist. It defended the traditional order, the Church, the Army. The Spanish 'fascists' were not aggressively nationalist in terms of imperial expansion, for example.

Franco even remained effectively neutral in WWII, although he sent his 'Blue Division' volunteers to fight the Soviets alongside the Germans and certainly tilted towards the Axis powers, who had helped him in the Civil War. He didn't exterminate his own Jews, so long as they were not on the Left, and actually helped Jews who were fleeing the Nazis. So although people conventionally spoke of 'fascist Spain', and although his domestic one-party rule and repression of working class organizations was highly congruent to that practiced in Germany and Italy, it's really a stretch to use the term 'fascism' for his regime, repulsive as it was. (And the same goes for many other traditionalist Rightwing governments in Central Europe, and later, such as Pinochet's Chile.)

There may be cases besides Italy/Germany where the term 'fascism' is useful in describing their politics. I don't know enough about Argentina to say how much the Peronist movement would be accurately described as 'fascist', but it might be applicable. There were similarities, certainly.

So, I believe, to help political clarity, movements on the far Right should be deemed 'fascist' when they meet the following criteria:

(1) a 'Leftist' social program and anti-capitalist rhetoric, and

(2) the attempt to achieve a one-party state via a 'combat party' organization (which may, of course, also contest elections or have a front group which does so). In practice, such a movement would almost certainly instinctively incline towards being white-chauvinist and anti-Semitic and highly American-nationalist.

However, every country and historical period is different and has to be analyzed concretely. New things -- like fascism a century ago, or Islamism more recently -- may arise in response to deep changes in society.

The age of imperialism is over, and anyone proposing an aggressive program of foreign wars is likely to get a cool reception among the American lower and middle classes today. So I can see an 'isolationist' fascist movement as a possibility.

Similarly, racial minorities in the US are numerically significant now. (1/3 of the American military is non white, as is 1/5 of the officer corps.) Plus, the natural base of American fascism -- white Christians -- are heavily influenced by pro-Zionism. Thus, we might see an intelligently-led fascist movement which was not overtly anti-Semitic or overtly white supremacist -- one which, for example, might advocate some form of separation or 'self-determination' for non-whites, rather than their extermination.

I don't think any form of genuine fascism is very likely in the US, but, as the US slides into second place in the world and its previous position is taken by China, we may well see radical upheavals in American politics, of which the Trump phenomenon is only a faint precursor. This would be made even more likely if there is a serious and prolonged economic depression, and/or a serious and humiliating American military defeat.

The pursuit by the Left of 'identity politics' and its demonization of non-college-educated white workers would help the development of fascism among them as well, as does the normalization of street violence by the Left.

In any case, clear thinking about the right way to use the concept of 'fascism' will help in combatting its rise, in which both liberals and conservatives have a stake.

 

With Black, Asian, and Hipanic members.

LOL!!!!

 

I saw them march through Portland. Didn't see any non-whites. The Patriot Prayer has a large Somoan, who seems to keep getting arrested.

 

There ARE white nationalist and white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups in the US. They don't hide their politics.

But are the Proud Boys one of this sorry collection? I know they look scary -- like a gang of bikers. They're unlikely to be attending a seminar at Yale on Intersectionality and Lesbian/Transgender Tensions.

But I would like to see some proof -- not just someone's subjective impressions -- that they think of themselves as a white supremacist group.

They are not ashamed of being white, or rather, being European. What normal person is? No one should be ashamed of their race -- you can't help what your race is.

But other than the fact that they quite openly say they are not ashamed of their race, where is the evidence -- from them, not from someone else who says he thinks they are this or that -- that they are white racists/nationalists/supremacists? I am sure they are, to a liberal, unpleasant people, people who don't share various liberal beliefs, people liberals wouldn't invite to their dinner parties. So is your typical Republican Women's Club.

But wher is the evidence that they are white racists/nationalists/supremacists?

I grew up in the McCarthy-ite era, when some rightwingers were flinging around the charge of 'Communist!' at liberals who were anything but Communists. People lost their jobs because of this crap, because it was widely believed, and a lot of people kept their heads down and didn't say anything when they knew better ... so I want to see evidence.

Over to ... whoever has said the Proud Boys are white supremacists/fascists, etc.