America should be fighting fascists!
Does it? Or does it call for the Trump administration to be overthrown?
It's not even frightening - just comical.
1. The concept of "domestic terrorist organization" not a thing under any US law. Further, there exists no such organization in observable reality.
2. "All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations" is … nothing, because that's what federal law enforcement is already charged with.
That was apparently fine, but antifa calling for it (if that even happened) is terrorism?
Politicians call for governments to resign/quit etc on a regular basis. Happened here in New Zealand last week.
From an outsider’s perspective they ARE asking for a democratically elected government to be overthrown.
True, there are groups that have claimed to be anti-fascist and have protested the administration's actions. But much of this activity has been spontaneous rather than organized. The word "Antifa" is more of a derogatory term from the right than a term used by an organized group with countable members.
Because of the fuzziness of what Antifa actually is and who counts as a member, this EO gives the federal government the ability to label people as domestic terrorists using a very broad definition. Given this administration's habit of pushing the bounds of its interpretive authority, I worry that this will have a chilling effect on protected political speech and protest.
Can you notify them that they don't exist?
But nowadays... It seems to be used by anyone who does not like a group. Like when people overuse the word narcissist to the point it just means "asshole as perceived by the observer".
If they think it is an actual organization, then they’re confused and acting based on memes. It would be incompetence backed by the full force of the US government.
If they know it’s not an actual organization, then this is a ruse to slap federal prison time on protesters, if they’ve ever liked a blog post calling for the dismantling of fascism, etc.
The “terrorist” designation of drug cartels is the excuse they’re using (and currently getting away with) for the 4 boats they’ve bombed into oblivion in the Caribbean.
It’s kind of funny in its stupidity. But it’s also frightening how impactful that stupidity has been.
2. Not incoherent. Seems pretty specific: All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.
January 6th damage was estimated at $2.7 billion dollars by the GAO. That riot (more of an attempted coup) actually was coordinated by actual, tangible right wing extremist groups rather than the shadowy "Antifa" fiction that hides underneath all of your beds.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106625.pdf
>It is riots like those mentioned that I presume this executive order is targeting.
You presume? This administration has lost the benefit of any doubt. This is a cabal of shameless liars and they should be denounced at every turn.
This is yet another transparent attempt to circumvent basic American rights and you're defending it like I said something mean about your local sports team.
It is the sitting president of the United States stating that a political ideology that stands against fascism is illegal and directing the executive - the most powerful and only functional branch of the government under the GOP "unitary executive policy" - to take punitive actions against this thought crime.
I'm not behaving like a kid, I just prefer if people don't whitewash what fascism means, like you did in your previous comment (but not in this one). Muddying the term only helps fascists, whether on purpose or inadvertently.
> If you going to punch people on the street don't complain when you and your friends are under a boot.
Please don't make such assumptions about me, and please don't wish me under a boot. That's rude.
Have a good day.
But the blame is not 100% on the authoritarians. The „we’ll refuse to do anything about your living conditions so you’ll radicalise and vote in somebody radical” is part of the cycle too.
A lot of people don't have any problem saying that this is wrong. They just don't want the discussion to be here. They aren't fascists, or working on behalf of fascists. They just want HN to not be the all-politics-all-the-time channel that it seems to threaten to become.
But instead of ignoring it, there is very much a contingent of people on this website that would rather that no one discuss these controversial topics. Because you don't simply want to ignore it, you want others from seeing it. As afterall, there is the hide command, which you could also use.
But I (and I believe others) think that these sorts of discussions are important, and people around here want to discuss them. Not all "political" stories are the same. This isn't "politics," where we're talking about taxes, or which minor laws are being passed, who's winning in what political race. This is about the future of American Democracy being gutted before our very eyes.
But it's okay, you just go ahead and keep your eyes closed. I'm sure it'll all just go away because you want to ignore it.
That is vastly different from burning cities, etc...
Now, I've seen what antifa militants do almost every time they protest, and to be honest, they should have been declared domestic terrorists sooner rather than later. You can protest without having to vandalize/burning buildings, etc.
Can literally mean figuratively?
One of the definitions of literally that we provide is "in effect; virtually—used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible." Some find this objectionable on the grounds that it is not the primary meaning of the word, which we define as "in a way that uses the ordinary or primary meaning of a term or expression." However, this extended definition of literally is commonly used, and its meaning is not quite identical to that of figuratively ("with a meaning that is metaphorical rather than literal").
Is the extended use of literally new?
The "in effect; virtually" meaning of literally is not new. It has been in regular use since the 18th century and may be found in the writings of some of the most highly regarded writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Charlotte Brontë, and James Joyce.
Indeed it is. And any other whataboutisms you bring up doesn't change that.
The topic was about if there was any leftwing violence. Which there has been. 1-2 billion dollars worth in just that time period. Anything else you bring up doesn't erase that.
> I said something mean about your local sports team.
Actually, you seem to be the one who brought up other teams or sides when I stated a true fact. A fact that you haven't disagree with. You tried to downplay this in your original post and you were wrong to do so.
"You brought up this bad thing, oh yeah, well what about this other completely unrelated bad thing that the other team did!" is precisely the team sports thinking that you have engaged in, not me.
Don't read it and then move along. Why participate (and comment on?!?!) a discussion you feel unworthy of this space?
For a refresher: https://extremism.gwu.edu/patriot-front
Despite the rest of your post being quite good, this right here is against the HN guidelines. It doesn't spark the curious discussion that the moderators here try to encourage and foster.
Certain countries people will not talk bad about their leaders for fear for their lives. Others are happy to talk to you and are paid $1 per hour or $1 per day.
Maybe it can put some perspective on things.
That's great and I totally believe you. Thumbs up emoji and all that.
>I've seen what antifa militants do almost every time they protest,
Oh my gosh, you were serious. Can you point out the "Antifa militants" to me? How would someone go about training to join the Antifa Elite Guard?
I see there's a whole process to get into the Proud Boys and all sorts of other right wing extremist groups on Facebook, but I'm not quite seeing the path to membership for Antifa. Is it because they're so well organized and funded by billionaires?
Over the course of about 7 hours, more than 2,000 protesters entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, disrupting the peaceful transfer of power and threatening the safety of the Vice President and The attack resulted in assaults on at least 174 police officers, including 114 Capitol Police and 60 D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers.
These events led to at least seven deaths and caused about $2.7 billion in estimated costs.
This amount reflects, among other things, damage to the Capitol building and grounds, estimated costs borne by the Capitol Police, the District of Columbia, and federal agencies, and estimated costs to address security needs and investigations as described in budget and funding requests, appropriations, agency estimates, and other publicly available information.
>Russia outlaws ‘international LGBT public movement’ as extremist
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/russia-supreme...
>Russia’s top court bans nonexistent ‘Satanist movement’
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-supreme-court-bans-sa...
http://www.myfloridalegal.com/newsrelease/action-against-ant...
Also others have linked to other orgs later in this comments
The real struggle is i have true believers and apologists in my own family, and its just so... unreal how unreachable they are. For all the talk of what to do about it, i feel for people who havent really explored the depths to which many reasonably intelligent and reasonably kind people have fallen. And just wandering what if anything will shake them out of it.
Context is everything:
$2.7 billion, where a big part went to:
U.S. Capitol Police (USCP)
Costs: Over $620 million (as reported by GAO).
- Overtime pay for officers during and after the attack. - Mental health services and trauma support for affected personnel. - Recruitment and training of new officers to address staffing shortages. - Enhanced security infrastructure (e.g., fencing, surveillance, communication systems).
Judicial and Prosecution Costs
- Total DOJ Expenditures: Estimated at $100–150 million. - Salaries and overtime for prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff. - Court operations, including hearings, trials, and detention. - Legal representation for defendants unable to afford counsel.
And if you keep digging, the amount of money spent was basically on human labor and overtime pay.
Now, tell me again how this compares to $2 billion in actual damages to businesses (arson, looting, and vandalism, etc.), with this event being considered the costliest insured civil disorder event in U.S. history?
This classification, just like every other action taken by this administration, is a means to inflict damage on their ever-expanding list of enemies. The great thing about vague nonsense like this Antifa EO is that they can control who is and isn’t defined as Antifa.
With regard to your political affiliation, I honestly do not care. If you want to gabble on about Antifa as if it's a real threat, you might as well just fly the Trump 2028 flag and drop the silly pretense.
I do note that the damages number you cite has risen from between 1 & 2 to definitely 2 and these damages are associated with a multitude of legitimate peaceful protests that became a magnet for others to stir trouble, loot and riot on a pretext, start gunfights, etc.
It's a clear false equivalence to compare the single Jan 6th event of faction aligned protesters who invaded and damaged a building disrupting a democratic transition to a multitude of other events and locations across a lengthier time frame that involved many factions across the political spectrum including apolitical criminals of opportunity.
Also, it's not an organisation, but a mindset that all people who oppose fascism share. And most of those oppose fascism in peaceful ways that don't hurt anyone.
Yes you did mention this. And it is wrong. As proven by the evidence that I showed you.
> review financials about black people rioting
That actually super racist of you. There was not some overwhelming majority of black people engaging in violence during those riots and I am not sure why you insinuated at such. The demographics of the people rioting were generally about the same as the demographics of relevant location of where the events. As should be expected.
Additionally, the demographics of the more serious revolutionary/anarchist (and sometimes called antifa) type groups tend to be overwhelmingly white.
The more peaceful protest groups that are focused on police reformed tend toward being full of people of color and aren't focused on overthrowing the government and implementing socialism/anarchism/whatever like the revolutionary groups are.
> I've been whatabouticized
I am not sure why you think a stupid fallacy is justified just because there is some other person in the world engaging in the same stupid fallacy.
You have ironically just engaged in the same whataboutism again. In order to justify you engaging in whataboutism, you have once again appealed to "well some other person did it to me!". Team sports once again.
If I were writing a joke about politics and fallacies in which I made fun of this behavior of justifying whataboutisms with a literal whataboutism, it wouldn't even be funny because it would be too over the top and on the nose.
Then again it is so funny that there is a country that just literally banned anti-fascism and that country is not Russia or North Korea… but USA.
Now they're best buddies exchanging tips on how to oppress minorities. Wtf?
If you automatically label anyone who flags such a post (or worse, labeling all of HN) as fascists, you need to cool your jets.
Can't wait to be told to also stop reading Twitter (never have anyway) but like genuinely, once you see a legal resident deported illegally without due process, how could you feel safe as an immigrant? I really don't think i could
The seriously violent groups are those that usually call themselves anarchist associated, and those groups are much more white than other groups.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Hackers have a natural curiosity for the world, and that includes politics too.
From phrack and cult of the dead cow, to chaos computer club and even pg's own writings, none can be described as completely a-political.
The ability for an increasingly authoritarian leader to wave a hand and ban a mostly exaggerated threat is exactly the type of dystopia hackers have been writing about for years. I may not see it that way but surely that is interesting and worth discussing!
The flagging and flame war suppression mechanisms do us a disservice by silencing these topics and relegating them to an unseen graveyard.
these rights. Not sure what in the world you're talking about
In good faith - are you confused about the difference here, or trying to find the specific dividing line?
My point is that calling out “fascists” in particular is intended as an ad hominem - you’re attacking the person, not the ideas.
Frankly, the specific opinion someone holds is irrelevant here. It’s both wrong and unproductive to label someone and then ignore their concerns because of the label you applied.
I was more referring to the regular folks who saw communism and soviets as the big bogeymen everywhere.
Now they're admiring Putin and saying how everything is amazing in Russia because there are no LGBT people in there.
I legitimately think that Donald Trump is behaving like a fascist and the only things that are keeping him in check are the few laws he hasn’t been brazen enough - or perhaps hasn’t cared enough - to openly challenge. Their are objectively fewer laws and precedents checking his power than there were in his first term, and he has certain ideas and policies that if you support them I will describe you as supporting fascism.
I don’t know why you’re trying to enforce some made up rule that we are not allowed to call people fascist without it immediately being an ad hominem.
If I call someone a racist for saying racist things, I’d say they earned the label. This is no different.
I don't think that's necessary, but it might give you some perspective. Perhaps you'll appreciate America more after spending some time away from her, and if not, "self-deportation" might ultimately prove to be of mutual benefit to the country and those most contemptuous of it.