Is Antifa a Terrorist Group? LaFree, Gary
Society (New Brunswick),
06/2018, Letnik:
55, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Starting in 2016, a number of protests and physical confrontations aimed at individuals and groups associated with right wing politics in the United States have been attributed to an ill-defined ...entity called “antifa”: short for anti-fascist. A high profile example took place in Charlottseville, Virginia on August 11-12, 2017. During two days of conflict and violence, anti right wing protesters clashed with right wing supporters. During the second day of the confrontation, a right-wing supporter drove a car into a crowd of protesters, killing one person and injuring 35 others. While many antifa supporters see it as a defense against right wing extremism, some on the right view supporters instead as terrorists. I tackle these issues in this essay by applying the guidelines of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to determine whether the actions by antifa supporters during the Charlottesville incident consitute terrrorism. I conclude that while the events share many characteristics of terrorist attacks, they do not include all of the elements of terrorism required by the GTD. I also question whether antifa can be considered to constitute a “group” at this point in time. My essay highlights how complicated it is to distinghish terrorism from other forms of illegal violence.
This article focuses on the immediate years after the fall of the Fascist regime from 1943 through the end of World War II. It asks: What did the Italians make of Fascism and its role in the ...country's history as they witnessed the demise of the regime? How should we assess the nature of their anti-Fascist reactions at the time? Does the post-war conflation of Resistance and Liberation with anti-Fascism adequately represent their experience? Drawing on personal diaries written during 1943-1945, the article specifically examines three key temporal moments: the downfall of Mussolini on 25 July 1943, the armistice of 8 September 1943 and Italy's proclamation of war against Germany on 13 October 1943. The article's ultimate goal is to bring out the meanings that emerge out of the lifeworld of ordinary citizens in interaction with official narratives.
Government-organized yet scandal-stricken, Nashi inspires everything from broad support to a reluctance to accept all implications of Putin's political system. This volume shows how Nashi ...conceptualizes an ideal youth" within the framework of an official national identity politics and as an attempt to mobilize apolitical youth.
This article offers an alternative historical reading of militant antifascism and argues that application of the “gang” designation is overly reductionist. Whilst there is a historical connection ...between “gangs” and militant antifascism, and militant antifascists do engage in “gang” behaviors, a “gang” designation pays no attention to the multiplicities of militant antifascism; its transnational evolution and character; and above all, the ideological motivations of the antifascists themselves.
In this essay I argue that Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli’s Tango e gli altri. Romanzo di una raffica anzi tre (2008) calls into question a popular narrative that converts the Resistenza, ...a heterogeneous revolutionary and anti-fascist movement, into a symbol of nationalist propaganda. Because he is at once a carabiniere, a partigiano, and a meridionale, the novel’s hero, Santovito, who is charged with reopening a case adjudicated by a partisan tribunal, poses an ontological challenge to the mythology of the Resistance. Nevertheless, it is precisely this hybridity that enables Santovito to understand that confronting the tarnished legacy of the Resistance preserves the integrity of the movement by restoring to collective memory the tangle of personal conflicts and interests that intersected with Italy’s unprecedented civil strife.
Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers who experienced the war in boot camps, cockpits, ...and foxholes, but never lost sight of the great global issues at stake.When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). They fought on the losing side.After Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Brigade veterans enthusiastically joined the U.S. Army, welcoming this second chance to fight against fascism. However, the Lincoln recruits soon encountered suspicious military leaders who questioned their patriotism and denied them promotions and overseas assignments, foreshadowing the political persecution of the postwar Red Scare. African American veterans who fought in fully integrated units in Spain, faced second-class treatment in America's Jim Crow army. Nevertheless, the Lincolns served with distinction in every theater of the war and won a disproportionate number of medals for courage, dedication, and sacrifice.The 154 letters in this volume, selected from thousands held in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at NYU's Tamiment Library, provide a new and unique perspective on aspects of World War II.
Born to Slovenian peasants, Louis Adamic commanded crowds, met with FDR and Truman, and built a prolific career as an author and journalist. Behind the scenes, he played a leading role in a coalition ...of black intellectuals and writers, working class militants, ethnic activists, and others that worked for a multiethnic America and against fascism. John Enyeart restores Adamic's life to the narrative of American history. Dogged and energetic, Adamic championed causes that ranged from ethnic and racial equality to worker's rights to anticolonialism. Adamic defied the consensus that equated being American with Anglo-Protestant culture. Instead, he insisted newcomers and their ideas kept the American identity in a state of dynamism that pushed it from strength to strength. In time, Adamic's views put him at odds with an establishment dedicated to cold war aggression and white supremacy. He increasingly fought smear campaigns and the distortion of his views--both of which continued after his probable murder in 1951.
In the 1930s, anarchists and socialists among Spanish immigrants living in the United States created España Libre ( Free Spain ) as a response to the Nationalist takeover in their homeland. ...Worker-oriented and avowedly antifascist, the grassroots periodical raised money for refugees and political prisoners while advancing left-wing culture and politics. España Libre proved both visionary and durable, charting an alternate path toward a modern Spain and enduring until democracy's return to the country in 1977. Montse Feu merges España Libre 's story with the drama of the Spanish immigrant community's fight against fascism. The periodical emerged as part of a transnational effort to link migrants and new exiles living in the United States to antifascist networks abroad. In addition to showing how workers' culture and politics shaped their antifascism, Feu brings to light creative works that ranged from literature to satire to cartoons to theater. As España Libre opened up radical practices, it encouraged allies to reject violence in favor of social revolution's potential for joy and inclusion.
On Liberal Revolution Gobetti, Piero; Urbinati, Nadia; McCuaig, William
08/2000
eBook
This book is the first English-language edition of a collection of writings by one of Italy's most important radical liberals, Piero Gobetti (1901-1926). In thirty-five thought-provoking essays, ...Gobetti proposes an original and challenging notion of liberalism as a revolutionary theory of both the individual and social and political movements. His theory is of particular relevance in the wake of the collapse of Marxist socialism, as non-Western countries with nonliberal or antiliberal cultural and moral traditions confront the problems of transition toward democracy and liberalism. Gobetti's ideas continue to influence in important ways today's heated debates over the nature of liberalism.Gobetti was the first Italian scholar to identify "two Italys": one enlightened and modern though small and weak, the other premodern, traditional, and dominant. A witness to the seizure of power by the Fascists, Gobetti became convinced that Italy's hostility to liberalism could be overcome only with a cultural revolution. Endorsing a radical liberalism, he nevertheless believed that the Communists, led by Antonio Gramsci, could play a crucial role in democratizing Italy by helping to develop a secular culture. For a liberal state to subsist and grow, Gobetti argued, there must first be a transformation of both the economic structure and the legal and moral culture of the society.
PDF
