Dear List-members John King wrote: > 1. There is not *one* "Antifa", but a whole series of organisations > across Germany. > 2. Although many of their members are associated with the Anarchist > and Autonome Szene and are prone to use violence against the police > and their political opponents this does not amount to terrorism. Not > that I condone left-wing hooliganism. That said, the Rote Armee > Fraktion did emerge out of similar groupings - and recently disbanded > itself. > My main problem with people who label themselves "Antifa" is that they > exploit the majority revulsion at the crimes of the Third Reich as a > moral cover for their own often extremely dubious politics. I always > find that their implied (and sometimes explicit) position is that > anyone not with them is a dangerous Nazi sympathiser. > And, if I'm not much mistaken, Antifascischmus was worn rather proudly > by the GDR state apparatus. Very useful explanations, John. I absolutely agree to your views about the simple argumentative structure of most of the 'Antifa' groups. By the way 'going to Karl and Rosa' on 15 January was a very popular annual tradition in former GDR (where I am NOT from) and sometimes has been a place for resistance against the dumb and repressive GDR socialism by citing the Rosa Luxemburg word "Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" (i.e. True freedom must always include the freedom of the (political) opponent - not a very 'terroristic' point of view, I think). > Nevertheless the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg can be seen as > prefiguring the excessive extra-judicial use of lethal force first by > the Freikorps and then by the SS, etc. But that again is a long way > from making saints of them. Couldn't have said that better (especially not in English ;-)). > PS - Whilst in HH, I was HSV and not St. Pauli ;-) Not a patch on > Oxford Utd, of course. Nevertheless - being at Millerntor is much more fun than being at boring Volksparkstadion ... Best regards - Thomas Mosch
Replies to this Message
Markup © John King, 2008. Web archive generated Tue, 21st August 2007.