Author's note: ok so I've just spent the better part of twenty hours editing an eighty minute podcast through what felt like infinite Vegas Pro crashes and a double clicking mouse; I am to put it politely, exhausted and all out of f*cks to give – so today's homework assignment is going to be fairly short and to the point; fans of the No Fugazi Podcast should expect a new episode later this (Saturday) morning.
I must confess that I'm rapidly losing interest in a rigged 2020 US Presidential Election that I have gone on record as saying I think Donald Trump is likely to win, if only because he's going to cheat and threaten violence to get what he wants in the end. Unfortunately and even despite my attempts to avoid insipid and sensationalized culture war content disguised as American politics, the fact that Downmarket Mussolini is explicitly staking his re-election (and the function of his state) on the argument that antifascists and protesters are terrorists, I have been thus far unable to tune out U.S. election coverage completely.
Now before we go any further, I would like to make one thing abundantly clear to readers who may not be familiar with my work and our previous discussions. I think at this point you'd have to be willfully blind to not recognize that Trump, the Republican Party and the larger American right are attempting to demonize public protest, antifascism and even left-leaning political thought as terrorism against the state; even while simultaneously dog-whistling their support for violent fascist terrorism from the loyal Volk. I have written extensively about this subject and you can click on the links in this paragraph if you're interested in exploring the dangerous and authoritarian intent behind this reactionary propaganda campaign further.
Which of course brings us to perhaps the most willfully blind group of people in America; Joe Biden, his in-the-tank media minions and the dead-eyed sociopaths running his 2020 Presidential campaign. I don't think it's any sort of big secret that Biden was not my preferred Democratic Party nominee in the broader fight against Trump's fascist creep and frankly there's a lot I could say here about why Biden's skillful blending of Hillary Clinton's doomed 2016 campaign, and John Kerry's doomed 2004 campaign is utter dogsh*t. The problem is that as I mentioned I honestly don't care. In fact, I am so out of f*cks to give about the Democratic Party and the elite liberal establishment as a whole that I can't even really summon up the energy to put Biden on blast for his quixotic Republican-lite campaign - in an election he has to win, because the other guy is an overt fascist.
Unfortunately however when Joe Biden goes on live television, after a 17 year old fascist militia goon murders two people, and once again starts babbling about looters, arsonists and rioting, I am suddenly forced to pay more attention. Frankly, this isn't just a question of bad politics, or even the coded racist dog-whistling involved in constantly agreeing with right wing messaging about antifascists, the Black Lives Matter movement and folks protesting against racialized police violence in general. In his desperate efforts to both embrace a fascist American law enforcement institution (that is currently clubbing soccer moms and veterans in the street,) while running from the right's unhinged fever dream that Biden is controlling or controlled by Antifa and Black Lives Matter to do terrorism, Palooka Joe's needle threading has undoubtedly put countless innocent lives in danger.
As you may well be aware (especially if you're clicking on the links as you go,) I have written extensively on the subject of why it is dangerous, disingenuous and even outright cowardly to conflate antifascist defensive actions with the premeditated, violent terrorism conducted by the reactionary American right; indeed this is clearly one of the subjects I visit most often precisely because I recognize its grave relevance to our present political situation. What I haven't really talked much about however, is why conflating "Antifa" or anti-fascist action with violent reactionary terrorism is simply and factually wrong - which is where today's homework assignment comes in.
Writing in 2017 after the deadly fascist riot that was the "Unite the Right Rally" in Charlottesville, North Carolina, Dr. Stanislav Vysotsky details the fallacy of "bothsidesism" and precisely why defensive anti-fascist action cannot be credibly compared to fascist violence - check out this short but extremely relevant article at In These Times:
Drawing Equivalencies Between Fascists and Anti-Fascists Is Not Just Wrong—It’s Dangerous
Let's Put An End To "Horseshoe Theory" Once And For All
How to Talk About Antifa With People Who Are Freaked Out About It
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