“In this case, that means anti-fascist protestors increasingly look like fascist thugs who are violently intolerant of political differences.”
The violence in Charlottesville, ferocious anti-Trump protests, riots on college campuses, and erasing of historical monuments has created an atmosphere of tension, mistrust, and even violence. This seems unprecedented in American history and even somewhat scary and Orwellian. But historical context can help a person appreciate and understand contemporary events.
The famous historian Richard Hofstadter described what he called the paranoid style of American politics. His arguments are a bit overstated and focused on right-wing zealots, but he made an important point that clearly illustrates the violence between white supremacists and antifa. The heated reactions from anti-Trump protestors end up showing all of the qualities that they hate about Trump.
In 1964, Hofstadter wrote the paranoid participant has a “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy…. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point.”
The excessive need to fight against the supposed evil produces a person who becomes the enemy they oppose.
Anybody who reads a liberal’s hyperventilating social media post can relate to that description, as anti-Trump forces have tried to normalize their hysteria as a brave “resistance.”
The excessive need to fight against the supposed evil produces a person who becomes the enemy they oppose. According to Hofstadter,
“The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through ‘front’ groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy.”
In a recent piece from Slate that tried to humanize and condone them, antifa members are described as “confront[ing] its enemies, whether that means getting in their faces at protests, doxing them, or contacting their employer.” This behavior is rather ironic because Trump’s brash and confrontational style where he suggested that his supporters “rough up” protestors sounds very familiar to antifa’s expressed tactics. Trump even received a great deal of blame for doxing several of his Republican rivals during the primary.
Slate even noticed the similarities in describing how the groups armed themselves and aggressively confronted protestors. “Jenkins makes no apologies for antifa’s aggressive stance, which he describes in conservative-sounding terms of community self-reliance. ‘It is apparent that Donald Trump is not going to do anything to keep these groups from flourishing, so we have to.’”
In summary, antifa groups admit to confronting their opponents, doxing them, and carrying weapons into heated confrontations to shut down their opponents.
This is not the first time in American history where violence has erupted in the streets. Trump was entirely correct to find blame on both sides, as there is historical precedent for opponents becoming the things they hate. In this case, that means anti-fascist protestors increasingly look like fascist thugs who are violently intolerant of political differences.
The answer to all of this is not shriller Facebook posts and riots in the street. Many Americans are frustrated, and many don’t like Trump and his policies, but the answer is to channel that frustration into productive and meaningful activities such as using logic and reason to convince more people that your side is correct. Without those meaningful outlets, counter-protestors will end up being similar to groups they oppose.
