there is an ominously longstanding tradition in american politics whereby the name of any given act of action is the precise inversion of its effect and intent.
the patriot act serves only to undermine the constitution.
the affordable care act jammed up health care costs.
the community re-investment act triggered the bubble that devastated minority home ownership when it burst.
i mean, let’s face it, if these people passed the “head protection for america” act, they would then run around bonking you on the head like their name was little bunny foo foo.
and people fall for it, hook line, and cynicism.
this has spread into an endless number of organizations and ethoses.
antifa is no different and worse than most. they are flat out fascists. there is simply no other way to put it.
it’s their whole doctrine. “we must use the power of the state and corporate alliance to make you do what we say. anyone who disagrees of fails to obey is a fascist!” is their entire lexicon and its etiology lies in the weaponization of post modern parlor games into intolerant, totalitarian structures to justify violence and coercion.
it’s performative “anti-fascism/racism” that is nothing but tyranny of the other side masquerading as pluralism and the sublimation of a burning desire to bully and wield the whip hand into a self-deluding set of precepts so that adherents may mistake themselves for the good guys.
it has self-selected for those who lack introspection.
those who launched this were 100% cynical and aware of the outlandish dishonesty of their professed ideals. but those they swept up in their wake as disciples and shock troops were not. they were gulled in and stand sure that the words they were told represent reality.
weave this into the warp and weft of your identity and render it the axle on which your world and self views turn and you’ll strive very hard not to see the true colors of the flag you’re following.
that’s human nature for you. (y’all could learn a lot from cats)
this has led to some very strange and very public manifestations of self-delusion, not least of which is the persistent misunderstanding that fascism is a right wing and not a leftist philosophy.
all the fascists america fought in the 40’s were far leftists.
“National Socialist German Workers' Party”
the antifa gang think they are the liberating soldiers of D-day. they are not. if they ever met one of the dogfaces who took back paris, they would hate and despise them.
this little twitter vignette provide a near perfect encapsulation:
and this leads us into some murky water.
because people say things like this.
and it’s a weird shaped object to handle.
you have to unpack it because it contains a severe embedded fallacy:
because we named a thing X, it is, in fact, X.
therefore, because i am named “antifa” i am the same as the people who fought fascism in the 40’s.
this is, of course, nonsense. naming a cat a bird does not render a tabby a toucan.
i have found that simple illustrations of bad naming help here and so does a little irony (and perhaps a soupçon of sarcasm):
ah, OK, so, for example, if you're against the government of "the democratic people's republic of korea,"
you're “anti-democracy,”
and “anti-rights based republics”…?
wow, won't kim jung un be surprised!
the “german democratic republic” was a repressive soviet puppet state devoid of rights and meaningful democracy.
and they too had a knack for nominative misrepresentation.
the name does not confer the attributes.
this is a form of cargo cult thinking (or a lack of thinking altogether).
it’s instructive how high the venn overlap of “antifa” and “words are violence but burning a best buy is not” gang.
this sort of semantic supremacism where “the word is the reality” sounds oddly biblical when you boil it down.
but it’s really just the tangled word games of demanding monopsony on meaning because my meaning means what my meaning means to me and don’t you tell me different, meanie!
it’s just a hierarchy of humpty dumpty.
it is really nothing to do with reality or with justice.
it all boils down to one, simple issue:
which is to be master?
that’s all.
it is further instructive that in the time of lewis carroll, this notion was well understood and the idea that people hijacking language and thereby reality would lead to lunacy was in common currency.
we seem to have lost this sensibility.
and perhaps we’ve all been overlong at this tea party.
surrendering delimitational power to the inhabitants of a self-aggrandizing hallucination riddled with definitional inversions and poisonous pretextual gambits is not the path to reason nor community.
and it certainly does not enhance understanding.
it’s how we all go mad.
the malleability of language twisted to serve bespoke agenda by rearranging reality is a pool in which everyone eventually drowns.
words have meaning.
names are not proof of position, virtue, or even honest attempts as description.
said the bad cat.
who disappeared, little by little.
until only his haunting smile remained…
My grandfathers fought the Nazis so that I could be called a Nazi for believing the things my grandfathers believed.
The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. And to speak of them using their true names, that neither our speech nor our thoughts be clouded by those who spill the ink from their pens with the same intent with which a squid squirts ink into the water.