Short Take: How To Antifa Right

He’s a visiting prof scholar* at Dartmouth at the moment, but he’s no kid.** That explains the remarkable similarity in appearance between Mark Bray’s “The Antifa Handbook” and Wobbly pamphlets of yore. The guy knows history.

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook Paperback – August 14, 2017

Only $13.95 on Amazon (in paperback, natch). Customers who bought this book also bought black pants, shirts and masks. The reviews aren’t entirely flattering, however.

All this explains is how to tie a towel around your head and to be offended by everything. It did have a great chapter in how to fight a trump supporter with bong water and food stamps.

Then again, there’s a good chance this isn’t a legit review, which explains the comments to it:

I was on the fence about buying this book, but the racist idiot’s review (whose comment should be removed) motivated me to buy this book and use EVERY tool to fight people like him.

Whether this person was really on the fence about buying the book is dubious, but the use of all-caps in the word “EVERY” reflects commitment. A more informative reaction can be found at the 1A,

With a name inspired by the First Amendment*, 1A explores important issues such as policy, politics, technology, and what connects us across the fissures that divide the country. The program also delves into pop culture, sports and humor. 1A’s goal is to act as a national mirror — taking time to help America look at itself and to ask what it wants to be.

The First Amendment is good, particularly since it’s the very right at risk. So what does the 1A have to say about The Antifa Handbook?

Antifa is short for anti-fascist, a non-centralized ideology whose followers, as the Washington Post says, have a “willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly” which “distinguishes them from liberal anti-racists.”

That sounds sweet, but there’s a discordant note in there. The claim is defense, but the word “preemptively” is in there. How does one preemptively defend oneself? An excerpt from the book explains.

Antifascists argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective. We should not, they argue, abstractly assess the ethical status of violence in the absence of the values and context behind it. Instead, they put forth an ethically consistent, historically informed argument for fighting Nazis before it’s too late.

So values and context, not to mention rather wild liberties with reality, don’t merely justify the use of violence (which is otherwise awful except when “ethically justifiable”) morph preemptive violence and aggression against people with an horrible ideology into defense because you’re right and they’re awful?

The Antifa didn’t magically materialize in Charlottesville, but made its violent presence felt at Berkeley and other college campuses, where there were no Nazis (or Naxos, because these aren’t Nazis no matter how many people use the word). But what does Bray have to say?

I wish there were no need for this book.

That makes a nation of us, but this is America, and you not only have a First Amendment right to write a book that promotes preemptive violence against people whose ideas you hate, but to sell it on Amazon for $13.95. Isn’t it now time for the Antifa line of black clothing and masks?

*Because one of you is a blind pedant.

**The original wikipedia link and “no kid” assertion relate to a different Mark Bray. Indeed, he is very much a kid, not that young entrepreneurs in the name of justice don’t deserve to make money too.

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32 thoughts on “Short Take: How To Antifa Right”

  1. JAV

    As far as I understand, Antifa are mostly socialist/communist/anarcho-syndicalist. Where does this ally get off selling a book on it for $13.95? It’s like extremism is a game for suckers and con-artists.

      1. PseudonymousKid

        Dear Papa,

        Nothing is free from commodification. Look at all the Che shirts.

        Can I get an SHG face shirt? No more funding problems if you start peddling merch, I bet.

        Best,
        PK

        1. SHG Post author

          I’m starting the Antifa Chic™ like, soon to be available at Forever 21. It includes an SHG face shirt, but since it’s all black, it’s hard to tell.

          1. Patrick Maupin

            I know you’re not particularly woke, but I still imagined you weren’t tone-deaf enough to let them photograph you in blackface for a T-shirt.

        2. Patrick Maupin

          Pseudo:

          The power of political merchandising is not to be overestimated. I have never been particularly moved by any Che T-shirt, but Stalin! That man was a force to be reckoned with. Even though my closet is completely full of T-shirts, it took all the willpower I could muster to keep from hitting the “buy” button for this one:

          null
          [Ed. Note: You’re welcome.]

            1. SHG Post author

              I deleted the link and added in the pic because I’m a capitalist and I didn’t get a piece of the profits. I trust you understand.

          2. PseudonymousKid

            It’s beautiful. Not even Uncle Joe is safe. If it said “IRONY” in block letters on the back, it’d be perfect.

            Quit oppressing me with the lack of SJ merch to waste my money on, SHG, please.

          3. el purrp

            What an awful t-shirt. That text is indefensible.

            Obviously “IS LIKE FOOD” should be above the head.

    2. Jim Tyre

      The correctly linked page shows Bray with a yahoo dot com address. Nothing says capitalism like a yahoo dot com address.

  2. Robert Wiberg

    The Wikipedia link points to a different Mark Bray. The author of the book completed his Ph.D. (in History) last year at Rutgers.

      1. B. McLeod

        And from our friends at Merriam-Webster:

        “bray” : intransitive verb – to utter the characteristic loud harsh cry of a donkey . a braying donkey; also : to utter a sound like a donkey’s . bray with laughter

        : transitive verb – to utter or play loudly or harshly . “I’m the best̄!” he brayed.

  3. Andy

    It is true of course, that in Germany before 1933, and in Italy before 1922, communists and Nazis or Fascists clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties. They competed for the support of the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. But their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince, is the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist, and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits who are made of the right timber, although they have listened to false prophets, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom. ― Salma Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

    1. SHG Post author

      That was the last quote you get. If you have an actual, comprehensible thought, that’s fine. If you want to post quotes, go elsewhere. You’re on double not-so-secret probation.

          1. Patrick Maupin

            Save ’em for 2024. Eclipse will be total in Austin. I might have the guest bedroom cleared out by then.

  4. B. McLeod

    Preemptive defense used to be called “the Bush Doctrine.” Do the fascists have (or MIGHT they have) weapons of mass destruction?

      1. B. McLeod

        Well, sure, if the antecedent of that pronoun has or MIGHT HAVE weapons of mass destruction, it’s the same doctrine.

  6. Erik H

    Black masks!
    They never get dirty,
    The longer you wear them
    the blacker they get!

    Sometimes
    I dream of a laundry,
    But something inside me says
    Don’t wash them yet!

  7. DaveL

    Meh. I prefer the original version of The Anti-Fascist Handbook, by Lavrentiy Beria. I see the principles involved haven’t changed much.

Comments are closed.