Say, for the sake of argument, that there's irrefutable proof of some card-carrying antifa supersoldier beating up an innocent old lady. That would be terrible, and random violence against an innocent person should be condemned, but what would it really change?
It wouldn't make confronting fascists on the streets any less of a good idea. It wouldn't make violence against fascists any less justifiable. It wouldn't make antifa some horrible movement, because given a large enough group you'll always have incidents of random crime. It wouldn't change the fact that any even semi-serious look at the threat of domestic terrorism shows that the threat comes overwhelmingly from the right. It wouldn't change anything about how society should be structured, and it wouldn't change anything about how society is structured now.
Don't even entertain right wingers or concern trolling libs when they want to spend the day litigating the facts of some shaky phone video. Set the bar at "is antifa pursuing some justifiable political goal, or is pretty much all of this just mindless violence?" They never set the bar there, where it should be, because the answer is obvious and it's not what they want.
I think the best answer is "it doesn't matter."
Say, for the sake of argument, that there's irrefutable proof of some card-carrying antifa supersoldier beating up an innocent old lady. That would be terrible, and random violence against an innocent person should be condemned, but what would it really change?
It wouldn't make confronting fascists on the streets any less of a good idea. It wouldn't make violence against fascists any less justifiable. It wouldn't make antifa some horrible movement, because given a large enough group you'll always have incidents of random crime. It wouldn't change the fact that any even semi-serious look at the threat of domestic terrorism shows that the threat comes overwhelmingly from the right. It wouldn't change anything about how society should be structured, and it wouldn't change anything about how society is structured now.
Don't even entertain right wingers or concern trolling libs when they want to spend the day litigating the facts of some shaky phone video. Set the bar at "is antifa pursuing some justifiable political goal, or is pretty much all of this just mindless violence?" They never set the bar there, where it should be, because the answer is obvious and it's not what they want.