If I were to award annual prizes, then I think I had a clear winner for at least one of them, every year. The political left is just at the top of the game when it comes to being unself-aware.

Yet this tweet shows perfectly well, how good they’re at it. It even has 200 retweets and 500 likes by the time I write this.

It always feels like they never heard of the streisand effect, although this is a bit different. Usually it says to better keep your mouth shut about something that you don’t want to see published, since making deal out of it will only shift more attention towards it. In this case, it’s rather how they can’t fathom different opinions and the fact, that their action will bring a reaction. Historically, many movements gave birth to a counter-movement. Or an action was followed by a reaction. In the the second half of the 18th century the Age of “Sturm und Drang” in Germany came only to existence because literature at that time was dominated by the Age of Enlightenment. During Hitler’s rise many counter-movements, such as the anti-fascist action itself, sprung up to oppose him. This goes on and on, because we don’t have the same mentality, opinion or priorities. Just because you think your actions are legitimate doesn’t mean someone else does. Not even if they agree with your views.

One of the main problems here is, that antifas attack what they deem fascist. So if they think Trump supporters help a fascist, they could rally against them. However, the people themselves are likely not fascists. Trump may even be one, but if you rally against them, you attack them not Trump. You attack their right to gather march for their political believe. Since these supporters think they’re right, they will dismiss these antifascists as violent. From their perspective, it’s an attack on them. Of course this is also shown in the media repeatedly, so those who don’t align with the antifa’s views, will be against them. An anti-antifa so to speak.

What’s even more amazing about this, is the fact that antifa is very much authorian themselves. They want to dictate what which opinion is right and which one is wrong. They want to decide what can be said and discussed and what can’t. This is inheritly authorian, even if they want to shut down nazis exclusively. That’s because you have to identify nazis first. That’s already bad enough, since there’s no way to draw a clear line anyway. On top of that, you can’t know what a person will say before they say it. So even if you manage to determine what is racist and what who is racist, you can’t just forbid them to voice their opinion. That would simultaneously mean a nazi can’t talk about climate change or economy anymore, because he’s racist.

Another trait that fits to the authorian picture is their view on violence. There’s a good reason why the government has a monopoly on violence in democracies. Any other form of violence that does not follow a set, transparent law will foster fear. It is by definition arbitary, since no one knows what others think or how they react. Antifascists now argue, that violence is neccessary against certain views. Anyone else can’t follow their line of thought though, so it’s unclear who is a target to them and who isn’t. Earlier this year, antifas argued that it’s okay to punch nazis, because it’s self-defense. Because nazis are gonna cause harm to others, it’s perfectly fine to harm them first. Now, if we follow this logic, it can be reversed too. The tweet above implies, that the author of the article is a fascist in the eyes of certain people. Since I agree with the article, I could’ve technically written it similarly, so I’d be a fascist in their eyes too. And well, since antifas are against fascists obviously and don’t have any qualms to resort to violence, following their logic, it’d be perfectly fine for me to get the first hit in. To make it worse, I don’t even know who wants me harm and who doesn’t unless they come at me with their raised. But in that case, I don’t even need such a logic to come to that conclusion, so this logic fails in itself. It fails even more at resolving the issue.

And so the award for the least self-aware group in the United States of America goes to… the Antifascist Action! Congratulations

In case the tweet doesn’t exist anymore for whatever reason, here a link to the article