Antifa: hard core communists with a whiff of nihilism

Yesterday I published a post in Dutch about Antifa in the Netherlands. However, Antifa is active in many western countries and share the same agenda everywhere. So an English translation could be useful for decent people in many other Western countries.

It is mostly a translation but also slightly adapted for the international perspective and a little bit updated.

Circumventing riot police

Last Sunday a publicly announced meeting was held in Utrecht discussing how to break through police lines as trained demonstrators.

That was not in the announcement: it talked about ‘demonstrating safely‘.
By ‘safe’ they turned out to mean: without police interference.
It was partly a retrospective of earlier attempts to silence organised women.

Yes, there are people who organise themselves specifically to disrupt meetings of LetWomenSpeak; Especially with noise. The second of these meetings the police kept them at a somewhat greater distance from the LWS manifestation and that was now looked back on with regret.

I paid a visit. As a civilian detective, so to speak. I had disguised myself: I looked as shabby as possible and had left my tieand sun hat at home.
I thought that sufficed not to be recognized, but later it turned out I was photographed and my name and face were published. The latter not only a crime in the Netherlands, but also against there own rules: a bill hung in the back of the room indicating that photography was prohibited there!

Those police dogs aren’t really used against us anyway

It was a very educational visit. And yes, there was even physical exercise…

I’ll just highlight the two most remarkable things.

After that physical exercise with breaking through police lines, the leader announced the next exercise. I asked out loud: is it with horses?
That was not necessary, explained the gentleman who had introduced himself as ‘Opossum’: You could scare horses by jumping up and down and waving your hands.
An apparently experienced activist from Extinction Rebellion joined in: what about police dogs?

“Run” was the young man’s first reaction. But he quickly added: if there are any police dogs, they will only be there to intimidate us: they will not actually be used against us.
That would give too much negative publicity for the police.

Stalin

My attempt to get the introducer to say something about the “FA” part in the name Antifa backfired. (Antifa is suggested to stand for anti-fascist) He skirted around it. Denied that he belonged to Antifa: It reminds of the US BLM-inspired killings and destruction after the death of St. George Floyd.
What kind of ‘analysis’ did I want from him? He was simply against all oppression.

He was saved by a young lady, who suggested that this was a topic for another meeting.

But what about the freedom of speech of those they considered enemies? That question was considered easy to answer. Those people did have the right to express their opinions, but they did not have the right to be heard by others. This explanation received the most support from the approximately 25-strong audience. ‘No platform’ I heard one shout.

I didn’t utter it out loud, but I thought of that quote by Stalin about elections: everyone can vote, but the Party is in charge of counting the votes.

No, we are definitely not dealing with flower child socialists or decent social democrats here. We are dealing with the most explicitly communist warriors with a whiff of nihilism to hide the organised leninism aspect.

I recently made a TikTok clip on the subject: Which part of radicalism among feminists are those activists actually targeting?
I also posted a version of it with English subtitles here on the Old Dutch Painter site.