The Blackhoods of Antifa.

The Blackhoods of Antifa
by El Ingléshttp://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/10/blackhoods-of-antifa.html

Introduction

As readers of this blog will all know by now, the recent anti-Islamization demonstration planned to take place in Cologne was disrupted by groups of blackhooded thugs. These thugs, whom I will refer to collectively as Antifa for the purposes of this brief preliminary discussion, are a force the size and strength of which it is extremely difficult to discern through casually scanning the news reports concerning the event. With the help of a great deal of valuable research done by VH, already a regular contributor at Gates of Vienna, I propose to start thinking slightly more rigorously about these far-left hoodlums in the hope that we might come up with some ideas as to what, if anything, should be done about them. This essay will not and cannot propose anything definite course of action or present any definite conclusions. It is no more than a speculative piece designed to foster and stimulate discussion amongst those who may be interested.

I will confess to a certain lack of interest in the taxonomy of the hard left. Communists, anarchists, revolutionary socialists, autonomer, ‘anti-fascists’: I neither know nor care what the exact differences may be between these various groups. Parsing this swarming bunch of criminals is an activity I will leave to those who both have the stomach for the task and consider it important to understand the ideological structure of, and fissures within, our self-elected street-level human rights enforcers.

Given that Antifa are clearly capable of putting aside their differences for long enough to engage in the occasional bout of civil unrest, for the duration of this piece I will treat them as the single group that they are sometimes able to form. However, for the purposes of this essay, I will ignore the occasional small-scale targeted action carried out by Antifa types, such as arson attacks on the homes of anti-immigration politicians or brutal assaults on anti-Islamization activists such as Anders Gravers, the head of SIAD. Though perpetrated by the same stripe of person, I think these criminal activities are sufficiently different from the mass action witnessed recently in Cologne to deserve an analysis of their own. Accordingly, I will concentrate on Antifa as a mass-action entity in this essay.

This discussion will be loosely structured around a series of key questions about Antifa that I will try provide some preliminary and speculative answers to below. They are as follows:

1)		How many of them are there across Western Europe and where are they located? I define an Antifa member here as being a core member of Antifa activity, concealing their identity with masks and hoods, and prepared to engage in violence against ideological opponents and/or the police and whatever other criminal activity they deem appropriate to their interests. Normal demonstrators do not count, however closely allied they may be with Antifa.
2)		What are their financial resources?
3)		What is their recruitment process?
4)		What are their strengths?
5)		What are their weaknesses?

1) How Many and Where

Despite initially reading that 40,000 people were expected to attend the counter-demonstration in Cologne in total, it seems, on the basis of what VH was so good as to unearth, that no more than five or six thousand people attended in total. VH has also estimated (I am entirely reliant on his work here) that there would not have been more than about 2,000 Antifa there. The significance of this number depends on certain factors. If the attempts to disrupt the Pro-Cologne demonstration were a major event on the Antifa calendar for 2008 and only 2,000 of them made it, we must either assume that the figure of 2,000 is roughly representative of their strength in Western Europe, or that there are is a significant number of additional cadres, but the financial and organizational resources required to get them there were lacking, or some combination of both possibilities.

VH informs me that there were probably not more than a few hundred non-German Antifa members at the demonstration, and that those came mainly from Belgium, the Netherlands, and perhaps parts of France. It seems reasonable to suggest that there are at most a few thousand serious Antifa members throughout the bulk of Western Europe. They may be complimented in any given situation by a significant number of normal protestors who they may instruct and direct to a certain extent, but these people are probably not much of an issue one way or another in their own right.
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2) Financial Resources

As one might expect of a group of people who, despite their ideological differences, all reject the fundamental organizing principles of Western societies, Antifa members do not seem to be high earners. It is also hard to see how a group of this nature could generate any reliable flow of funding of any sort, or who it would be prepared to accept it from.

We would benefit by knowing more on this subject, but VH has sent me some fascinating information on the attempts by Antifa in the Netherlands to have “squatters’ rights” recognized by the government. As far as I can make out, the Netherlands has recognized a ‘right to squat’ since a court ruling in 1971, which Antifa have made great use of. The vexing question of how people who are presumably not engaged in productive labour of the sort rewarded in a modern economy can continue to lead their chosen lifestyles is thus partly answered, certainly for the Netherlands and perhaps for other countries as well to some extent. Availing themselves of the opportunities presented by the occasional building left vacant for more than a year, the single largest component in their, or anybody else’s, living expenses is reduced virtually to zero.

In September of this year, in response to a proposed bill to change the law and ban squatting, several hundred ‘activists’ from across the country held a demonstration in Utrecht to protest. With Antifa as with anyone else, threaten to withdraw the subsidization of their lifestyles with the wealth of others, and they squeal. The reliance of these people on living off other people without providing something of value in return is evident, and provides a great insight into how feeble their ability to fund themselves presumably is. I will discuss this important issue in more detail below.

3) Recruitment Process

I would imagine that many, if not most Antifa groups have some sort of web presence or are at least active enough on Indymedia and other similar sites to be able to provide a point of contact for those who are interested in getting involved. Face-to-face contacts and recruitment will be viable in areas with visible Antifa groups. However, the most interesting questions with respect to Antifa recruitment are those that pertain to screening and depth of access.

Anyone turning up to an action dressed in black with a hood and a mask will doubtless be allowed to participate to some degree, as Antifa requires large numbers of people if it is to achieve what it wants to achieve. It gets away with this because of the lack of any obvious operational security requirements, which is another point I will touch on below in a discussion of Antifa’s possible weaknesses.

4) Strengths

Though the organizational prowess of Antifa seems to be considerable in some regards, we would do well not to overstate it. Given that hardcore Antifa members presumably spend their lives waiting for the next bit of ‘action,’ their ability to buy a bus ticket to Cologne given two months’ advance warning is hardly overwhelming. The key strengths of the Antifa, for which we must give them their due, are their tactical and ideological coherence at street level. This conclusion is based on sketchy evidence and a few leaps of faith, but I believe it is likely to be valid, as I shall explain below.