You would probably benefit from reading about the link between prominent activists in these circles, and for example, the sandanistas and other violent socialist/communist groups. Or the link to the USSR via the DDR where antifa as we know it came to be. The black bloc is a clear and present danger to the citizenry in the same respect as the paramilitary you refer to.
The USSR, which ceased to exist in 1991, somehow created the antifa movement of the 2000s? Wow, they sure were powerful!
Not sure how it is in the US, but antifascist groups in Europe, including the term "Antifa" are far older. The origins go back into the 1920s to Marxist and Communist groups that were fighting the then-fledging fascist movements in Italy and Weimar Germany. (Also heavily influenced by the Spanish Civil War)
Later in the 70s, left-wing groups who saw themselves as part of the civil-rights movement adopted the name to fight against neo-nazis and old nazis that were still in power after the war (often with plenty of help by conservative circles in Europe and the US). Many of those groups saw themselves as Marxists and some where sympathizing with the Soviet Union, or might even have received support from there. But the "idea" was their own - or, if anything - came from the US, through the civil rights movement.
I don't know much about the modern Antifa groups in the US, but I imagine they, in turn, got "inspired" by the groups from the 70s.
The left meanwhile is busy attempting to cover up massive fraud under their watch (Minnesota,) voting in self-proclaimed socialists or those who vow allegiance to other countries entirely and shutting down any conversation that does not maintain their simulacrum. If you go deep left you find communities are gleefully celebrating the murder of their opponents and are also actively buying arms (often for the first time in their lives.)
Meanwhile the middle is getting slammed by layoffs.
And other than Mamdani -- a middle of the road democratic socialist who would find himself at home in any Scandinavian country -- I’m not sure what "self-proclaimed socialists" you’re even talking about.
Politics is the attempt to resolve public conflict, ideally with violence as a last resort (but always as a possibility).
Yes, in the sense that "the government has a monopoly on violence", and the application (or at least threat) of "violence" is needed to for a government to work (eg. tax collection, enforcement of property rights, law enforcement), but that's clearly different than "political violence" mentioned in the OP (ie. extrajudicial politically motivated killings), and pretending they're the same because they both "violence" borders on bad faith argumentation.
I stopped short of calling it bad faith, only saying that it "borders" on it. More to the point I don't see how your comments refutes this. The "borders on bad faith" isn't just from bring up other forms of deaths which are as a result of politics, it's to pretend that they're equivalent because they're both "deaths", ignoring the circumstances entirely. It borders on bad faith in the same way that "the golden state killer is a killer, but so was Obama" (because he was the commander in chief of the US military) is bad faith.
What good are courts, if a perpetrator is never brought to justice?
It leaves no choice, but to resort to a very primal form of justice: kill them.
Your cause-and-effect logic escapes me.
It’s all about to burn down, but they want us talking about new AI features, and ignoring the fires.
That’s not true. Other platforms don’t have this exact audience and vibe. Flagging this effectively kills HNs collective perspective. It is what it is, hopefully mods can reflect on it.
I'm interested in hearing why those are justifible acts of political violence (or not political violence) whereas today's political violence is not. Surely there were folks during those times who described them as not justifible. What makes today's arguments against political violence materially different than dissenters in prior eras?
Contemporary events can't be judged that way: Consequentialists (typically on the left) end up judging actions by perceived probability of success weighted outcomes, which, naturally, discount modern events since the only things with certain outcomes are those in the distant past. Deontological thinkers (more typical on the right) have to condemn contempory actions as "wrong" until they can be incorporated into a larger narrative that justifies them, which again takes time.
Or, maybe it's time to invite some French speakers over to discuss the whys and hows of general strikes? Gotta watch out when people feel they have little or nothing to lose.
I agree with what another poster said about bringing in some French people to teach us the importance of general strikes and shutting everything down to make our point.
Failing that, I think blue states should offer a federal tax escrow service to pay for what they've been promised but denied.
postflopclarity•5h ago
we already have it.
In order of approximately most significant to least significant acts of political violence just in the last 6 months:
* The assassination of Melissa Hortman (D - MN House) and attempted assassinations of John Hoffman (D - MN Senate) and each of their spouses.
* The assassination attempt (arson) on Josh Shapiro (D - PA Governor)
* The assassination of Charlie Kirk (R - not a public official)
and there were several other acts of political violence in 2024 (including the attempted assassinations of Trump and of Nancy Pelosi and her husband)
BolexNOLA•5h ago
And yet I still have people insist it’s all “left wing Marxists” or whatever their favorite term is these days. Like we can’t even agree political violence is ratcheting up broadly and it’s a problem we ALL have to deal with.
Partisanship is a hell of a drug.
Edit: several recent attempts/successful perpetrators, including Kirk’s killer, were not clearly right or left. There have been some leftwing incidents but they are certainly fewer than others. I am not saying left wing violence is as bad as right wing violence. But it’s not all right wing anymore. That’s all I’m saying.
alephnerd•5h ago
BolexNOLA•5h ago
mcphage•5h ago
Has it been? How so?
BolexNOLA•5h ago
postflopclarity•5h ago
nitwit005•5h ago
If you constantly try to make people angry, eventually you succeed.
BolexNOLA•4h ago
pstuart•5h ago
"both sides" is only valid in the context of the party leadership being in service of their owners, oops, benefactors. Otherwise there's a vast gulf between what each side represents and promotes.
gruez•4h ago
Are you talking about in the immediate aftermath or currently? For the latter it seems pretty safe to conclude he was probably left-leaning politically, even if he wasn't a card carrying DSA member or whatever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Charlie_Kirk#...
atmavatar•3h ago
However, there are plenty of conservative viewpoints that do not hinge on prejudice, so I'll wait for more evidence before believing he went full vegan hippie liberal. A picture of the guy in a drum circle or animal cruelty protest while wearing a Che Guevara or tie dye and peace sign shirt would do ;)
gruez•3h ago
"left of his MAGA parents when it comes to gay/trans rights" is an understatement. From the wikipedia article:
>When the roommate asked why Robinson had done it, he answered, "I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out."
Maybe he was some sort of libertarian that thinks "hatred" from right wing influencers needed to be stoped via exercise of the second amendment, but you really have to bend backwards for that theory. The far more plausible explanation is that he was a run-of-the-mill illiberal-left that thinks speech from the right need to be curtailed. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
BolexNOLA•2h ago
Simply put: He’s complicated. Any attempt to slot him neatly as “left” or “right” is pointless. You are at least showing a little more nuance with this but my experience has been people are basically trying to boil this down to “your team did it, not my team.”
The politicians who pushed that he was [insert whatever] are not remotely equipped to understand a person like him.
gruez•2h ago
Because... why?
>“illiberal-left” (never heard that before so I think I know what you mean…?)
"Left wing" but rejects classical liberal values like free speech (eg. favoring speech restrictions) or meritocracy (eg. favoring affirmative action or quotas).
>with this but my experience has been people are basically trying to boil this down to “your team did it, not my team.”
All of which makes the attempt by the left to insist that he wasn't left wing all the more the stranger. 45 and 43 percent of americans identify as "republican/lean republican" and "democrat/lean democrat" respectively. From those statistics you'd expect 88% of shooters to belong to one side or the other. Of course, just because a shooter belongs to one side, doesn't automatically delegitimize that side's political position, but the correct response to that would be something like "yes, he was left leaning, but his beliefs are not reflective of the left/democrats as a whole", not trying to insist "Any attempt to slot him neatly as “left” or “right” is pointless".
https://news.gallup.com/poll/548459/independent-party-tied-h...
BolexNOLA•2h ago
I don’t understand why this is so one sided in your opinion…? Both major parties and their base are saying “he wasn’t one of ours.” I feel like I’m missing something here.
gruez•2h ago
Because even though there's no slam dunk evidence that he's left/right wing (eg. some manifesto saying "yep, I'm left wing!", it's far more likely that he was left wing rather than right wing, and therefore the left's attempt to distance themselves from the shooter is weaker and worth calling out more. If the circumstances were reversed (eg. this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Paul_Pelosi#Social_m...), and both the left and the right tried to distance themselves from the attacker, I'd call out the right more, even if there's vague tidbits implying he was left.
twojacobtwo•5h ago
America has been pulled so far to the right in the last 70+ years that the average voter now seems to think 'the left' starts at authoritarian communism.
xg15•5h ago
gojomo•5h ago
postflopclarity•5h ago
I'm looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinated_American_... and I stand by my "subjective perspective" as remaining pretty reasonable. let me know what specifically you wanted me to plot
gojomo•3h ago
I was born in 1970; per your reference, there've been a bunch of state & federal legislators (or recently-former legislators) killed for political (or pseudo-political deranged) motives "in my lifetime" – and far more in the 1970s than in the last 10 years.
In my lifetime, one sitting President was shot at & missed (Ford in 1976), and one was shot at & hit by a ricochet (Reagan in 1981) – again, more in the past than the shots that grazed candidate Trump in 2024.
The Wikipedia-listed murders of other officeholders, like mayors or judges, are also more frequent in the past than recently – especially going before either of our lifetimes.
So trend impressions are very subject to frames of reference & familiarity with history.
I suspect if people in general had a deeper & broader sense of how common political violence has been, both in US history & worldwide, they'd be, on the one hand, less prone to panic over recent events & rhetoric (even though it is concerning), but also on the other hand more appreciative of the relative peace of recent decades (even with the last few years' events).
postflopclarity•3h ago
fair enough. not sure how I skipped over that one.
> So trend impressions are very subject to frames of reference & familiarity with history.
I don't disagree with this. but nonetheless in my lifetime (< 30 years) I have mostly lived through only the "relative peace of recent decades" so the increase in political violence over the last few years is very scary.
charlescearl•5h ago
These are all instances of political violence. The political class in the united states deemed particular populations disposable, and enacted policies that lead to excess deaths and extreme violence upon those populations. Millions in the united states live under the threat of state violence and politcally accepted exposure to premature death.
The article and comments refer to the resulting counter-violence that perpetrators of the un-remarked systemic violence may become exposed to.
postflopclarity•5h ago
IAmBroom•4h ago
I_Am_Nous•5h ago
Charlie Kirk was not an elected public official, but he was definitely still political in a way that a lot of regular Americans are political. So even if it's less significant with regard to elected officials being targeted, it was political violence that regular people felt and could conceive of being targeted with, for similar reasons as Charlie. I believe that was what made his assassination resonate with people, much more than an elected official being assassinated does.
ggreer•5h ago
IAmBroom•4h ago
postflopclarity•4h ago
phantasmish•3h ago
That was a huge "oh shit" moment. The rest of this isn't exactly a consequence of specifically what he said, but is something that one could predict from that and other things he said and did in the first election and his first term. The fact that he said what he said and that was no longer regarded as abhorrent by enough people to keep him from even getting close to the Presidency, was the sign.
rickydroll•3h ago
The attempt in itself is not just political violence, but also provides grounds for justifying violence against "enemies."
EPWN3D•20m ago
miamibre•1h ago
I think the issue is that mainstream media like movies showcases political violence as very well organized and full of manifestos when the majority of these attempts are very poorly planned and the people carrying it out clearly have mental disorders so it's very hard to pinpoint what ideology they are promoting.
I also believe that these recent attempts have showcased that the current political establishment has been doing an awful job at reconciliation and instead pouring gasoline by refusing to make a joint statements condemning the violence or making any sort of gesture that isn't blatantly bipartisan.
If you look at the political violence of the 60's and 70's in the US, there's a lot of overlap but at least the government took steps to not only keep it under control but congress actually took steps in dealing with the hot button issues. Nowadays it seems like we're just kicking the can down the road and blaming the other side for it. I mean just look at the current shutdown and tell me if this state of affairs won't result in further anger and people taking action with their own hands rather than rely on political institutions.