I hate to be the get off my lawn old white guy but I could expect nothing less than an article written by someone named Tae Phoenix who is an activist singer/songwriter. This sounds like someone
@Kneeblock would date. 
Society Cruz Calls on FBI Director to Open RICO Investigation Into Antifa
- Thread starter Wild
- Start date
@Kneeblock would date. 
damn near
"They" who? Again, Antifa is basically flash mobs. People (not the same people, but people in various cities around the country and world) post calls for action that usually invite people to come out and act as counter-protestors when there is a far right demonstration.
Several of you have said "well, there must be someone sending out the calls or coordinating it," but there is no evidence of any centralized coordination, much like the group Anonymous, which most of us are familiar with. So if there is no organized effort then there is no centralized agenda to commit violence for political purposes. Instead there are undisciplined try hards out there in the streets thinking they're members of the Justice League because they subscribed to a Meetup group.
If you say those people or groups who create or transmit media that incites people to protests where unintended violence occurs are culpable, then we establish a dangerous precedent. That means Fox News or Presidential tweets, for example, could be accessories in this Sayoc case, for example, which I think we can agree would be ludicrous and a breach of the 1st amendment.
Lawyers say pipe bomb mailing suspect radicalized by Trump tweets, Fox News
All I ask of everyone is you consider the implications of what you're asking for whenever you say the "state should crack down on XX."
@jason73 tried to make an analogy between the KKK and Antifa, for example, which obviously betrays a lack of knowledge both of who the KKK was and what it did, which was murder people, destroy property, and threaten death if it stopped at assault. From the post-reconstruction era onward, the Klan was lynching black Americans and burning their homes to the ground, which meant any subsequent threat had to be seen as credible. Also, members of law enforcement and prominent citizens with power in communities, like business owners, judges and Mayors, were Klan members. They were simultaneously the establishment and acting in a vigilante capacity where they often knew they would face no consequences. There was also no period of escalation where the Klan started out as a protest or counter-protest group then escalated through small confrontations. The Klan was always commiting murder. They were typically locally rooted, so decentralized nationally, but still consisted of tightly clustered regional groups of people that could sustain a campaign of terror if necessary. The only similarity between them and Antifa is they both wear masks. This same narrative built around Black Lives Matter after protests in Ferguson and Baltimore had some violent elements and after the aforementioned incident with the guy who killed the two NYC cops claiming he was doing it for BLM. Then there were similar calls even on this board for them to be designated a terror group and be "looked into," which the Trump administration showed enthusiasm for. Resources were dedicated to verifying whether this organization the President decided was to blame actually had any fault. BLM is a similarly decentralized group, albeit with a core leadership team that guides messaging and had by then scaled back a lot of their direct actions. Eventually, the feds were forced to admit that there was no threat and concede that the most significant groups that have been rallying for domestic terror were white nationalist groups.
Similarly, you can be certain Trump or Barr has directed Justice to look at Antifa already based on the President's public comments. And local law enforcement has largely dealt with the few incidents of violence that have actually come up. But when the discourse shifts to Antifa being treated as terrorists, it means we're willing to allow extraordinary things to be done to them (and on the same board where people defend Tommy Robinson and his band of brown shirt crusaders who have a documented history of violence or who are apologists for Gavin McInnes and his Proud Boy group, which has already been branded an extremist group by the FBI). Again, under the Patriot Act, that can mean indefinite detention, some suspension of normal rights and legal protections, and now that Attorney General Barr has reinstated the federal death penalty, it can also mean execution.
I'm willing to bet that none of you has seen an Antifa action except on television. I've seen a few up close while at protests and honestly I can't stand those dorks, which is why I can't believe I'm forced to even write these posts. One thing to recognize is that not everyone clad in black is Antifa. The media says Antifa whenever there are black clad or masked people at a rally, but sometimes they're random anarchist groups who are actually organized versus the randomness of Antifa. I met one of these clowns at the anti-inaugural protest back in 2001 when Bush was being sworn in. The kid was up to no good from the start and was dissuaded from entering the main area by bag checks. He and his fellow douches were later caught setting off smoke bombs and tagging up DC which was the only news mention of the protest even though there were literally thousands of people there. Other events I've seen in NY have usually seen anarchists in black marching through the streets during demonstrations, but doing little because NYC has a very developed and organized activist community that isn't putting up with college kid BS. In Philadelphia, I've seen so called antifa in action protesting MAGA rallies over by the Constitution center and it was clear they were largely suburban children who were quickly encircled by police and quarantined to a particular area (which they had no plan for, demonstrating their lack of organization). These are not the droids you're looking for.
Also, hilariously, it's Ted Cruz calling for this, who is one of the most universally reviled Senators of all time for his distortions, fabrications, and opportunism. Even Trump savaged him for that. One week the guy is working with AOC and the next he's calling for Antifa being designated terrorists. He'll jump on any bandwagon and stoke any tension to get some press and now you've given it to him. Similar thing with useful idiot Shaun King who tried to make some revolutionary statement in solidarity with the wannabe ICE facility bomber. Both of these guys are chickenhawks.
A couple years ago now, I watched the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, where groups of white nationalists came with their tiki torches and marched through the streets saying they heard the President's call and were there to forge a white supremacists future. I later watched them get the crap kicked out of them by various counter protesters who were largely unmasked and certainly weren't Antifa. It seemed like a sane response, albeit the wrong one as I don't believe violence is ever justified except in unavoidable self-defense. But then the President said there were good people "on both sides," this despite only one side causing fatalities when a car plowed into a group of counter-protestors. Then afterwards, I saw the contortions people went through to defend the driver of that vehicle and claim they had no choice or were just responding in kind. It was proof that people didn't care about the violence or death, just defending their side's right to it if/when provoked. And when your side happens to have or be state power, that gets dangerous. I remember a similar feeling during the Obama administration when a Democratic friend suggested to me that the president should just simply send in his forces to give the people in the Bundy standoff in Nevada the death they obviously craved since supporters had shown up armed. I reminded this person that it was a property dispute, that guns were Constitutionally protected and that the executive should never just be dealing death indiscriminately. Allowing the state to take away freedom and life is a slippery slope, which is why all the Communist regimes of the 20th century were such abysmal disgusting failures.
Think about what we've done already. Trump came into office saying he wanted to limit executive power, but thus far the only way he's done so is through strategic deregulation that's allowed corporations to do more of what they want. Meanwhile we assembled a control society over the last 40 years that he has gladly enhanced. From Reagan's drug war to Clinton's Crime Bill to Bush 2's Patriot Act to Obama's PRISM, the apparatus has been put in place. Trump has made it harder to bring federal suits against law enforcement, expanded indefinite detention for migrants, deployed troops on US soil, reinstated the federal death penalty, marginalized and punished the media, increased digital surveillance of groups opposed to his regime, and of course benefited from the assistance of one of the world's most notorious authoritarians in Putin. It's critical that we look at the implications of who gets designated an enemy of the state in these times. I worry about it from left and right. If this current period of hostility endures, and especially if we face some external crisis, either from climate or a foreign power, I can see the control society tightening its grip, regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats control the White House and/or Congress. Our project at all times should be its disassembly.
Do you think that the "counter protests" consistently ending in violence is just a weird coincidence?
LOL comparing the lose collective of rejects called ANTIFA to the biggest street gang in the western world.
Y'all really do get shook easy dont you.
I think that they haven't consistently ended in violence. I think they have on only a handful of extremely incendiary occasions. Like I said, I've been to a number of protests where Antifa, black clad anarchists and other groups are there with no violence. I dislike the premise of the group because they straddle a line of being protestors and self-proclaimed "security" for protests, which should never be the same thing. It's not unlike how the Hell's Angels used to do security for concerts and festivals (which famously led to disaster) or the Panthers, who provided security for late 60s marches and demonstrations. An example of a more problematic organization doing security in more recent years is the Fruit of Islam, but they're at least professional and stay out of the direct action completely. Right now both the Proud boys and Antifa are flashmobber partisans, much like football fans who sometimes engage in hooliganism. The FBI walked back the idea of identifying either as extremist groups because that designation elevates investigation and prosecution of them to a federal level, which can be more cumbersome, costly, and requires some rearranging of the goal posts to make them fit into the definition, since neither are organized groups. Local law enforcement, on the other hand, is under no such constraints and can focus on the local crime a violator committed, eg assault, vandalism, harassment, etc. There's more breadth for dealing with the loosely affiliated demonstrators on a case by case basis. Typically applying the term "acts of terror" or terrorism to a person or group is an after the fact designation, and requires certain standards of proof. The idea of using RICO in this case is a clever end run around all of that by Cruz as it aims to suggest Antifa engages in criminal conspiracy. In the US, RICO is typically used to prosecute the mafia and other organized crime. RICO has lower hurdles to clear in some cases, but it's not a great idea to ask someone as dirty as Barr to use the Justice Dept to apply RICO to enemies of the administration. I'd have trusted Jeff Sessions more than Barr, who's been covering up federal crimes and abuses since Iran/Contra.
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i don't think anyone who has read the political stuff I write here would classify me as any kind of 'antifa supporter'...
but I have real problems with the FBI being called on to use organized-crime statutes to attack a political movement. Literally anyone can start a group on their block and say "we're Antifa". There's no central leadership or organization, and Cruz wants to define this political movement as a criminal enterprise.
this is a horrible idea. People who are supportive of this strategy are going to do an about face just about the time a Democrat lands in the White House and tasks the FBI with investigating the Tea Party as a RICO case.
how many false flags would Antifa or the State have to perpetrate to justify targeting their political opponents?
You didn't answer my question.
Amazing how most of the Trump supporters are good looking clean cut people vs the alternative.
Have you ever seen an Antifa protestor?