Whatever happened to Antifa?
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Antifa is not an organization. It is a belief that fascism is wrong for the development of a fair and just society.
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They're still there.
But irrelevant.
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You got things backwards.
The hackers known as anonymous all went their separate ways long ago, leaving 4chans anonymous to be little more than a series of social media accounts releasing videos periodically. You say "they released a statement yesterday".... Er... That's all they do. They haven't had any power and members with skill sets since 2008 or so.
...and antifa do exist. Most anarchist are, or are willing to call themselves antifa. A huge number of people used black block (blocking out), and mutual aid to manage, organize, and run the Black Lives Matters riots, and the Portland Corrections protests.
Behind the Bastards had a whole series detailing it, including all the local chapters and groups that cropped up or started in that period.
So pretty much the opposite of what you said: Anonymous doesn't really exist beyond constantly releasing statements, and antifa does exist and will most likely take up organizational roles if any long term street protests erupt.
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Lemmy ML got slow and gummy right after I posted this, should I delete, or am I just being paranoid?
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They rebranded, but I'm not at liberty to release any further details
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That last bit
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Spoken like someone who's never gotten an A in a "critical thinking" assignment
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This. Antifa was never a thing except in the minds of the fascists trying to rebrand antifascism as something bad. Like the migrant caravans of 2018, once it was no longer convenient they moved on to the next boogie man.
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There’s no organization called “Antifa,” though. It’s just a concept. There’s organizations calling themselves “Black Lives Matter” but most of them are (or were) just trying to (a) organize or (b) get donations and do nothing. Both are just ideas meant to unite disparate groups.
It’s like saying there was an official organization called La Résistance in France during WWII. It’s distributed, small, independent groups with similar ideologies that got a name in retrospect. There’s no central organization.
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The best time to be antifascist is 90 years ago, the second best time to be antifascist is today.
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Speaking of which, here is a helpful manual.
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Dude, OP didn't ask what anonymous has done that's significant in the last decade, they just asked what happened to anonymous, and this person gave an answer.
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Interesting, you picked two brands which aren't really single groups.
'Antifa' is a social movement which developed from a red united front organization in 1930s Germany[1] and turned into a general brand we see today. Any group of antifascists can identify as antifa using symbols and tactics. You can find a friend and go be antifa.
Similarly, 'Anonymous' grew out of social justice activism on 4chan and, as the name suggests, is a fluid kind of identity. Anyone can use the name, the original chatroom/group is less and less relevant as time goes on.
Both collectives are still present and doing things, but antifa groups are far more relevant. They're just not in the news as often as they were during BLM. Anarchist blogs and media outlets (e.g. Unicorn Riot and It's Going Down) often have updates on recent antifascist actions, including disrupting neo-Nazi protests and infiltrating+sabotaging their organizations.
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Antifa is a movement, not some centralised formally defined organisation. It's just short for anti-fascist. Plenty of antifascist groups still exist. Any group that labels itself as anti-fascist is antifa.
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So for people trying to get attention, identifying as Antifa [...] probably doesn’t help them these days.
People doing actions for clout are likely to be shunned as opportunistic. A well-known antifascist guide to doxxing Nazis straight up says [paraphrasing] "seeking clout will make people skeptical of your actions, just don't do it".
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Exactly, and you saw a lot more antifa folks showing up during the BLM protests because they were countering the Proud Boys and other chuds. Since a lot of top ranking Proud Boys went away for J6, and BLM protests have stopped we haven't seen antifa in the streets is all.
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Are you against fascism? Are you willing to speak out and/or act out against it? Congratulations, comrade, you are antifa.
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No, the joke you're making is about Anonymous, and the authorities trying to find the leader of them.
Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion, Anti Fascism) on the other has will periodically form into local chapters (usually from members of other more permanent anarchist, communist, and protest groups), to participate in protests, produce things like stickers or book drives, run pop-up or community libraries, events and form other organizational structures or projects.
From Wikipedia:
The contemporary antifa movement has its roots in the West German Außerparlamentarische Opposition left-wing student movement and largely adopted the aesthetics of the first movement while being ideologically somewhat dissimilar. The first antifa groups in this tradition were founded by the Maoist Communist League in the early 1970s. From the late 1980s, West Germany's squatter scene and left-wing autonomism movement were the main contributors to the new antifa movement and in contrast to the earlier movement had a more anarcho-communist leaning. The contemporary movement has splintered into different groups and factions, including one anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist faction and one anti-German faction who strongly oppose each other, mainly over their views on Israel.
So yeah, antifa is a movement which does periodically have people participate in it.
Likewise with the French Resistance, or Marquis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_(World_War_II) - yes there various groups, and they had different structures, some of which were independent detached cells, at various points some were aided with more official supply, intel, organization, and assistance from allied forces, and required more communication and become more official due to this. So it was mixed, some completely independent, others less so.
This is part of what made them effective, and difficult to stop.
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So what happened to him?
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He went antifa
