Vince Salandria's views on JFK case applied to the world today

[Cliff Varnell]

Trump Insists Portland Is ‘Ablaze All The Time’; Fire Department Says No, It Really Isn’t
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f4ec03cc5b6fea87461b535

[Richard Booth]

6 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Former DHS official Elizabeth Neumann was on MSNBC today saying that during the 3 years she worked in the Trump Administration she never received any intelligence identifying Antifa as a domestic terror threat.

The fake revolutionaries are the QAnon Trumpers.

Antifa is a convenient bogeyman reactionaries employ to distract from right-wing violence, which is far more prevalent.

That is an absurd view, to claim that left wing violence doesn't exist.

Both are equally divisive threats. You appear to be a partisan ideologue. 

[Cliff Varnell]

Here are 5 key facts about antifa that Trump and right-wing media are painfully unaware of

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/here-are-5-key-facts-about-antifa-that-trump-and-right-wing-media-are-painfully-unaware-of/

During the George Floyd protests, President Donald Trump and his allies in the right-wing media — including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson at Fox News — have been obsessed with the Antifa movement, claiming that its activists were a major source of violence at the protests.

But when it comes to Antifa, hysteria often takes a back seat to facts in Trump’s administration and the right-wing media. Here are four key facts about the Antifa movement.
  

1. Hannity claimed that “armed volunteers of Antifa” have established a “cop-free zone and taken over precincts” in Seattle. 

CNN’s Oliver Darcy has debunked Hannity’s claims, noting that “according to the Seattle mayor’s office, city officials haven’t seen any evidence to indicate armed members of Antifa are even on the ground.” Lori Patrick, a spokesperson for the Seattle mayor’s office, told CNN that while police heard some reports of “armed individuals at demonstrations,” it was unclear what their affiliation was. In other words, there was no evidence to suggest the Antifa takeover of Seattle that Hannity claimed was taking place.

Darcy’s piece explained that the events in Seattle have been wildly mischaracterized by the right:

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee described the scene on Thursday as “unpermitted,” but “largely peaceful.”

Local news channel KOMO-TV, a CNN affiliate, reported that demonstrations remained peaceful on Wednesday, and featured music, dancing, and a movie screening.

The New York Times, which had a reporter on the ground, described the occupied area as “part street festival, part commune.”

“Hundreds have gathered to hear speeches, poetry and music,” Mike Baker, a Pacific Northwest correspondent for The Times, reported. “On Tuesday night, dozens of people sat in the middle of an intersection to watch ’13th,’ the Ava DuVernay film about the criminal justice system’s impact on African-Americans. On Wednesday, children made chalk drawings in the middle of the street.”

2. Antifa is controversial on the left

While the right-wing media resort to hysterical fear-mongering about Antifa, liberal and progressive media outlets have made an effort to have a reasonable discussion about the movement. Antifa, even on the left, are controversial: author Noam Chomsky and journalist Chris Hedges have been highly critical of Antifa’s more militant rhetoric and tactics — which, Chomsky has warned, can be used by the far right to demonize the left. Hedges, meanwhile, debated California-based activist Michael McBride on Antifa’s tactics in 2017. Hedges and McBride are both left-of-center politically, but they have expressed different views on Antifa.

Activist Cornel West has defended Antifa, asserting that Antifa activists saved him from being physically harmed at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. So, the left is hardly monolithic when it comes to views on Antifa.

3. Antifa is not an organization as Trump has claimed

Trump recently tweeted that “the United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” but in fact, Antifa is not an organization, but rather, a movement and an ideology. An actual political organization such as the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union or the National Organization for Women has a structure and a hierarchy, whereas Antifa is not organized in that way. In other words, someone who identifies as part of Antifa in Boston might have different views from someone who identifies as Antifa (which stands for anti-fascist) in Milan, Italy or Oslo, Norway.

Chomsky explained, “Antifa is very far from a structured organization. It is largely a collection of people disturbed about the ugly and ominous forces that have broken into the public arena with particular venom since Trump removed the cork from the bottle.”

4. Antifa, for all their militant rhetoric, do not resort to terrorist tactics

Terrorists, which could be anyone from al-Qaeda and ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) to the Ku Klux Klan, make a point of killing or harming people in order to further their goals — for example, the KKK bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 or al-Qaeda flying hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Terrorists, in fact, resort to murder and acts of extreme violence because their goal is to terrorize. By that standard, it’s ludicrous to claim that Antifa fit the definition of terrorists.

Antifa activists have been criticized on the left and the right for taking part in the “punch a Nazi” campaign, but full-fledged terrorist tactics like blowing up churches or setting off bombs on public transportation is not how Antifa operates.

5. Antifa is not the same as the Black Bloc anarchists

The far-right often lumps Antifa and Black Bloc anarchists together, but in fact, they are two separate movements. A video by the Los Angeles Times outlines the differences between the two, noting that Antifa “opposes white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism” — while Black Bloc “says it battles police brutality, corporate greed, immigration bans and the erosion of civil liberties.”

Black Bloc’s rhetoric tends to be anti-corporate but not necessarily anti-capitalist; Antifa’s rhetoric is often disdainful of capitalism. Some Antifa activists have identified as anarchists, but many consider themselves socialists.

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Edited September 2, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[Richard Booth]

4 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Anything about the Agent-Provocateur-in-Chief?

Or the Boogaloo Boy who gunned down the security guard in Oakland, which Pence blamed on Antifa?

Or the 60 vehicles right-wingers have driven into crowds of peaceful protesters?

Or all the mass shootings by right wingers from New Zealand to Norway to South Carolina?

Or maybe this?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report

Nothing about this, I’m sure...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/trumps-campaign-government-corruption-justice-homeland-security-department-vaccine-fda-hhs-slush-fund.html

You appear to not be able to see certain types of violent radicals and point to only one type.

You have a blind spot.

I see as equally disturbing the kind of violence and nonsensical views that are advocated by people who are on both the left and the right. I am not politically biased, you clearly are.

You're also unhinged, the first encounter I had with you, you told me to suck your dick and were paranoid I was talking about you. So your credibility is zero.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 minute ago, Richard Booth said:

That is an absurd view, to claim that left wing violence doesn't exist.

Both are equally divisive threats. You appear to be a partisan ideologue. 

What an absurd interpretation.  If you think violence from leftists has been anywhere near the violence of rightists you haven’t been paying attention.
 
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/former-dhs-official-speaks-to-the-growing-threat-of-white-supremacy-and-how-warnings-from-her-department-were-rebuffed-90982981892

 

[Cliff Varnell]

5 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

You appear to not be able to see certain types of violent radicals and point to only one type.

You have a blind spot.

I see as equally disturbing the kind of violence and nonsensical views that are advocated by people who are on both the left and the right. I am not politically biased, you clearly are.

You're also unhinged, the first encounter I had with you, you told me to suck your dick and were paranoid I was talking about you. So your credibility is zero.

I apologized for that.  You accepted the apology.  Now you’re rescinding that acceptance?  Oh well.  I leave it to the gentle reader to figure out who is making an actual argument.

[Cliff Varnell]

Imported from another thread.

The protest against Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley In February 2017 was peaceful until the Black Bloc showed up.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/us/milo-yiannopoulos-berkeley/index.html

Saying all of Antifa is Black Bloc is like saying all Southern Baptists are in the KKK.

I haven’t liked the Black Bloc tactics since the Iraq War protests in 2003.  I think they ruined the Occupy General Strike in the fall of 2011.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

The GOP's claim that antifa is infiltrating George Floyd protests is a right-wing 'bogeyman' that bears all the hallmarks of a domestic disinformation campaign

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-republican-allegations-antifa-protest-violence-disinformation-campaign-2020-6?op=1

 

Rep. Jerry Nadler calls violence from Antifa in Portland a ‘myth’

https://nypost.com/2020/07/27/jerry-nadler-calls-violence-from-antifa-in-portland-a-myth/

 

51 Protesters Facing Federal Charges—Yet No Sign Of Antifa Involvement
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/10/51-protesters-facing-federal-charges-yet-no-sign-of-antifa-involvement/#3e95700d4138

[Cliff Varnell]

The murder of a Trump supporter in Portland — apparently at the hand of an Antifa activist — was an aberration. 
 

Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years

As Trump rails against ‘far-left’ fascism, new database shows leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/us-rightwing-extremists-attacks-deaths-database-leftwing-antifa

Edited September 2, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Anti-Fascists Will Fight Trump’s Fascism in the Streets

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/anti-fascist-activists-are-fighting-the-alt-right-in-the-streets/

To call Trumpism fascist is to suggest that it demands from us a unique response. We can deploy the “fascism” moniker to Trump’s ascendance by recognizing features like selective populism, nationalism, racism, traditionalism, the deployment of Newspeak and disregard for reasoned debate. The reason we should use the term is because, taken together, these aspects of Trumpism are not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason. It is constitutive of its fascism that it demands a different sort of opposition.

Liberals cling to institutions: They begged to no avail for faithless electors, they see “evisceration” in a friendly late-night talk-show debate, they put faith in investigations and justice with regards to Russian interference and business conflicts of interest. They grasp at hypotheticals about who could have won, were things not as they in fact are. For political subjects so tied to the mythos of Reason, it is liberals who now seem deranged. Meanwhile, it is the radical left—so often tarred as irrational—who are calling upon both US and European histories of anti-fascist action to offer practical and serious responses in this political moment. For all the ink spilled about rising fascism, too little has been said about anti-fascism.

Anti-fascist, or antifa, doesn’t only delineate that which opposes fascism. It is a set of tactics and practices that have developed since the early 20th century (and the rise of fascism in Italy) as a confrontational response to fascist groups, rooted in militant left-wing and anarchist politics. As organizers from anti-fascist research and news site Antifa NYC told The Nation: “Antifa combines radical left-wing and anarchist politics, revulsion at racists, sexists, homophobes, anti-Semites, and Islamophobes, with the international anti-fascist culture of taking the streets and physically confronting the brownshirts of white supremacy, whoever they may be.” As with fascisms, not all anti-fascisms are the same, but the essential feature is that anti-fascism does not tolerate fascism; it would give it no platform for debate.

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Emphasis added.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/PromotionOfDomesticDiscord.html
 
In 1972 Vincent Salandria wrote:

In the article “The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: A Model for Explanation” which was published in the December, 1971, issue of Computers and Automation, I said:

We must be alert to the CIA agents who would promote the polarization of our society. We must examine the evidence which indicates that fake revolutionaries, who are inciting insurrection in our cities, have had their pockets and minds stuffed by the CIA.

Is there any evidentiary support for such a design of social engineering having been foisted on us by the CIA and its conduits through the foundations?...

McGeorge Bundy’s Ford Foundation’s experiment caused New York City to shut down its educational system. That city became polarized: new-black militant radicals against old-left radicals, black trade unionists against anti-union black-power advocates, black against Jew, black against white, striker against non-striker, and ACLU civil libertarians against seekers of due process. 

</q>
 

Unless the anti-Antifa crowd can identify the “Deep State sponsors” of Antifa this essay has no bearing on current events.

Salandria was specific — he named names.  So who are these “sponsors” of decentralized anti-fascism in 2020?