Antifa Angst Is Authoritarian Brainwashing

From Dr. Phil to UCSD, a Big Lie to Distract Dissent

I’m back from my personal spring break. I went to Washington DC to visit our daughter, and to New Haven, Connecticut to watch a niece graduate from Yale. Hence above the photo of yours truly with some guy named Ben hanging out at the Ivy League University. I’ll have more to say about the University in future posts.

A part of the right’s Make America Afraid Again propaganda are reports characterizing individuals who take it upon themselves to get into street fights with deplorables as belonging to an underground organization called “Antifa.”

To be clear, there is no such organization. Never has been and never will be. 

First of all, if you had to characterize people identified by law enforcement or right wing trolls as belonging to this mythical organization, you’d quickly reach the conclusion that they have three things in common:

• They are anarchists. Who take orders from themselves, motivated by social media bravado.

• They like to dress for success, the theory being that dressing in black will instill fear in their enemies and adoration from the masses.

• They have watched too much TV drama or otherwise subscribe to the notion that a Great (usually white) Hero will save the day or die trying to stem the increasingly authoritarian system we live in.

San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan has successfully prosecuted individuals who engaged in a street fight with a group celebrating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capital. 

She claims they belonged to Antifa.  No evidence proving this claim was involved in these cases, but her assertion garnered headlines guaranteed to echo in MAGA silos forever.

Dr Phil –not an actual physician– had a right wing provocateur on his program recently who claimed to be an expert on Antifa. They guy’s ‘career’ got its start when somebody threw a milkshake at him during a confrontational demonstration. His credentials are his social media feeds, contributions to a misinformation-loaded Canadian organization, and regular appearances on Fox news.

Recently, UCSD’s internal narrative of the pro-Palestinian encampment and its subsequent removal included assertions that Antifa, the Black Panthers, and the Communist Revolutionary Group infiltrated the site and were training protesters in “physical techniques to  resist arrest.”

Although arrests were made during the dismantling of the Gaza encampment, there was not reporting or eyewitness accounting of physical violence. There WAS non-violent resistance, meaning individuals refused to follow orders given by authorities. 

This “non-violence is violence” framing has been a key element in official suppressions of First Amendment activities throughout US history. Officialdom’s embrace of the existence of an Antifa organization is simply a big lie.

It’s important to remember that these mischaracterizations are used to discredit and distract from the causes motivating protesters. And they work. For a while.

Polling from the early 1960s about desegregation efforts shows a super majority of Americans believing that mass demonstrations “hurt” the civil rights movement and the Freedom Riders voter registration campaign was a bad thing.

By the end of the 1960s, there was a remarkable shift in public attitudes, with up to 74% of Americans agreeing that marches, sit-ins and the like were helping the cause.

Are the encampments of today substantially different that those of the past? The answer is no. Encampments as a technique were used by veterans after the Civil War and WWI to publicize their needs. The Gaza-style encampments of today are a representation of what life is like for Palestinians in the face of Israeli military actions. 

(*And yes, there were assholes/extremists/disreputable persons involved in just about every cause that sought public support.)

Today’s overreaction by Universities, excuses aside, is a reflection of the influence of authoritarian advocates who represent the interests of the 1% of Americans who have benefited from the last 50 years of economic malfeasance posing as neoliberal policy.

Always, I mean always, look for the presence of these vultures (and their minions) in conflicts. It’s an important part of the “what is to be done?” puzzle.

Finally, a quote worth repeating:

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’” - Martin Luther King Jr, ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ April 16, 1963

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Monday News You Should Read

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San Diego Unified Superintendent Named in District Police Officer Lawsuit via Voice of San Diego

• The report came a day after Voice’s education reporter Jakob McWhinney broke the news that San Diego Unified officials had hired a Los Angeles based law firm to perform an internal investigation into Jackson. District officials have not shared what prompted the investigation.

• The bulk of the lawsuit, filed by 11 district police officers, alleges that San Diego Unified’s Police Chief engaged in sexual assault and discrimination. But it also claims that following the lawsuit’s filing, Jackson retaliated against Roberto Lozano, one of the officers who brought the suit.

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Exactly how stupid was what OpenAI did to Scarlett Johansson? Via the Washington Post

• In September, OpenAI said a new talking version of its ChatGPT assistant that sounded like Scarlett Johansson wasn’t meant to resemble the actress.

• The company said so again last week when it unveiled a chattier ChatGPT that featured the Johansson sound-alike. The same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X a one-word reference to the 2013 movie “Her,” in which Johansson was the voice of an emotional companion AI.

• On Monday, Johansson said OpenAI was full of it.

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Trump's deportation army by Bradley Balko at The Watch

• Last year, a coalition of MAGA factions put together “Project 2025,” their blueprint for a second Trump term. It’s basically a roadmap to autocracy. And they make no secret of the fact that they want to do away with legal immigration — and nonwhite legal immigration in particular.

• The Project 2025 plan would end the only legal way for seasonal and agricultural workers to come to the U.S. to work. It would also effectively end the H1-B visas that allow immigrants to work in fields like tech, engineering, and medicine — most of whom come from India or China. They want to end humanitarian programs that grant sanctuary for refugees fleeing war or natural disasters, and suspend all visas to any country that the administration deems uncooperative in accepting deportations. They want to screen visa applicants for ideology, barring entry and terminating the visas of people Miller considers political impure. Miller told the New York Times that the administration would also invoke a 1798 law that allows federal officials to deport immigrants without due process during wartime, taking the broad view that drug cartels are waging a war against the United States.