John and Nisha Whitehead: “In declaring “Antifa”—a loose ideology based on opposition to fascism—as a domestic terrorist organization, the government has given itself a green light to treat speech, belief, and association as criminal acts. With this one executive order, political dissent has been rebranded as terrorism and free thought recast as a crime. Critics will argue that ‘Antifa’ means rioting and property destruction. But violent acts are already crimes, handled under ordinary law. What’s new—and dangerous—is punishing people not for violence, but for what they believe, say, or with whom they associate. Peaceful protest, political speech, and nonviolent dissent are now being lumped together with terrorism. Violence should be prosecuted. But when peaceful protest and dissent are treated as terrorism, the line between crime and thought crime disappears.”
[edit to fix typos; please allow this version, if you deem fit. Thx, M]
Warm regards Mark,
Following the logic of this article, I feel like I could create a fully funded military assault organization rhetorically and conspicuously dedicated to the destruction of Disney, and I could clad all of my operatives in Mickey-Mouse costumes, and I could clandestinely direct my organization to exclusively attack all media outlets except for Disney, but for the occasional false-flag on (well insured) Disney properties, to prove how anti-Disney they are, and all the well-intentioned people who never learned to think critically or identify deception would not be able to see the ruse staring them in the face. “But they say they are Anti-Disney!” And then the do-gooders would find themselves divided: Those who now have sympathy for Disney, as a victim of violence, and those who keep trying to remind the do-gooders that Disney was always an evil plot to divide the institution of family from within… But guess what: Disney ends up as the sole heir to all of media.
Antifa is, and always has been, an insurgent style, centrally planned/yet cellular, controlled opposition terrorist organization with a fully Orwellian-Double-Speak moniker. It seduces its gullible volunteer membership (and sympathizers) so that it appears grass-roots, organic, loosely ideological, etc., but its members are thick in the head and can’t see the irony of how they’re being used, nor the cognitive dissonance they suffer from. And the higher up the ladder a member climbs, the easier it is to make a living, by which financial instruments, we can’t see.
Antifa closely resembles the espionage and stigma techniques of Operation Gladio “stay-behind” missions in Europe following WWII. Their job was to infiltrate all opposition groups and turn their campaigns into vehicles for violent action in order to create social terror and discredit said groups, so as to ensure the corporate interests of titanic western imperialism could consolidate power unmolested across the continent, and call it “Democracy.”
If we start with a simple taxonomy of Fascism (which nobody bothers to do) we might get somewhere closer to sensible.
The paranoid left and some of the right locates all fascism under an umbrella of violent, collectivist, populist imagery, mimicking Hitler’s brown-shirts or Mussolini’s black-shirt youth brigades, which functioned as recruitment grooming for statist military conscription or rear-guard action. (I call this Aesthetic Fascism.) From this viewpoint, the unifying characteristics of aesthetic fascism are bigotry and xenophobia, with continuity with policing/military as an attribute. The thinking goes: if it is not bigoted (toward minorities) and not xenophobic (aka racially exclusive and nationalist), and it doesn’t align uniformly with state militarism, then it cannot be fascism, and must be something else. If they say we have a common enemy ‘it may even be one of the good-guys like me.’ But if ‘I see anything resembling white men and national pride I know exactly what it is: FASCISM.’ Or Crypto-Fascism, because ‘they’ve gotten smart and hide behind principled rhetoric, so I don’t need to listen to them or I might fall for their ruse.’
But, conversely, there is Structural Fascism and this is the definition of fascism agreed upon by both FDR and Mussolini: the Fusion of Syndicalist Corporate Power (or other Private) Power and State Power. This version, by implication, has no predictable aesthetic. Hence it can be embraced by pro-military-adventurist transgendered utopian progressives and (as far as the left is concerned) this will remain definitionally “not-fascism,” and not worthy of the name. See FDR’s discussion of it here:
https://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/academics/research/faculty-research/new-deal/roosevelt-speeches/fr042938.htm
Incidentally, both the Normie Left and the Boomer cohort of the Right are incapable of recognizing Structural Fascism. The idea to them – that the Clinton’s and Reagan could be fascist, let alone aligned behind the same exact fascism – remains intellectually incongruous and emotionally repulsive. These hero-figures have successfully entrained the mainstream mind for decades, perhaps not unlike how Mickey Mouse captured the devotion of children for generations.
Meanwhile, the centralization of central banking, military, intelligence, and private equity power can usurp all political machines and all governance structures and this trend may proceed apace toward a single technocratic, SUPREMELY FASCIST global end-state, along structural fascism lines. And as long as mere superficial images of rag-tag, peaceful, bigot-resembling nationalists (on one hand) and/or actually violent wokester wokistan utopians (on the other) are continuously presented to hapless mainstreamers in the middle, then populations remain entirely ignorant of the true consolidation of globalist fascism self-assembling under the surface of these divisive spectacles. Structural fascism is all that matters; aesthetic fascism is a put-on in all quarters.
That’s not to say that the Trump Administration’s assault on Antifa is clear-headed or sufficiently sophisticated to deal with the reality of it, but it would be a terrible mistake to let the Soros’s and Gates’s off the hook in the name of the 1st Amendment, by mischaracterizing Antifa as an “organization opposed to fascism.” That simply isn’t true; that is Orwellian misdirection. Antifa is an inversion of aesthetic fascism, clearly using aesthetic fascist imagery rebranded with good-guy rhetoric, and it is a cover for keeping structural fascism invisible, whether you side with them on free-speech grounds, or oppose them, wishing for Statist crackdowns on their rights. Antifa is ‘good business,’ as far as the true, structural fascists are concerned, and very very bad for actually Anti-Fascist, Anti-Technocratic sentiment.
Perhaps John Whitehead should be asking: By what method does a population defeat Operation Gladio style insurgent espionage campaigns and yet preserve their free speech rights? It remains an unsolved puzzle. Defending Antifa is not a part of the solution.
M
Thanks for your thoughtful note, Maddie. A lot of layers here…I say one thing: I don’t think Whitehead is defending Antifa. Rather, he is saying that any illegal activity and violence they may engage is subject to current laws. Such illegal activity should be prosecuted under existing laws. Whitehead believes existing laws are sufficient.