G.F. Brandenburg reposts an essay by Talia Levin about how she infiltrated various far-right extremist groups by join8ngbthem under an alias and joined their website.
She describes how she created Facebook pages with false identities to insinuate herself into far-right networks.
She writes:
I use a fake Facebook account, which I’ve used dozens of times for this and similar purposes. The name is false, and the profile is built out with an array of far-right groups, “patriotic” interests, and dog-whistle posts designed to maintain plausibility. I’ve made so many accounts on so many apps over the past few years that I have to take care not to lose track of my pseudonyms. Although it kicked into high gear during research for my book on the online far right, infiltrating hate groups isn’t just a strange hobby or a journalistic endeavor; it’s antifascism.
She reminds me that we should all be “anti-fascist.” We fought a war in the early 1940s to rid the world of fascism.
Shouldn’t we all be anti-fascist?”
Why is Trump so terrified of a group called Antifa?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Has anything good come from Facebook? Really.
Antifa exists primarily in the imaginations of members of the alt-right. Just as they have imagined Hillary Clinton and George Soros to be behind everything nefarious in the world and everything they oppose (as when they accused Soros of busing refugees to the U.S. border and Clinton of running a child abuse operation out of a pizza parlor), so they have created an “Antifa of the Imagination” to be “the enemy.” The actual Antifa consists of a small handful of people on the left who engage in violent direct action. Just as the Weathermen were not the peace movement, Antifa is neither the anti-Trump movement nor the Black Lives Matter movement.
And as Diane has said many times, what, exactly, is wrong with being anti-fascist? Didn’t we fight a war in the middle of the last century to counter the spread of fascism?
D-Day: Major anti-fascist demonstration in 1944.
Antifa is a convenient target of distraction for the Trump administration. When he blames a particular person or group, it is another tactic to get the heat off of himself. He needs a convenient “boogeyman” like Obama, Hillary or Antifa. Then, lap dog, Matt Gaetz, chimes in to reinforce Trump’s distraction. It is red meat to his ignorant base.
Trump fears (whatever he means by) antifa only if he doesn’t realize his own use of the term–to build a strawman to open the door through which he can call the military to march “against the enemy” . . . the American people on home soil.
So the only questions are whether he believes his own lies or not, and is he just a run-of-the-mill tin-pot dictator, or a textbook sociopath. CBK
Exactly. It’s cynical. He’s laying the groundwork that will justify a violent crackdown when he steals the election and people take to the streets.
Ponderosa I have bouts of hope, and then see his numbers which seem to remain around 40 percent–very frightening. CBK
I’m an eternal optimist who strongly believes in the goodness of people and that good will prevail eventually, so I’m always looking for the good news.
In these troubled times, here are the kinds of things which make me think that Americans are waking up to what has been going on in our country and that more and more people are becoming committed to saving our democracy from fascists who believe in eugenics: “Poll: Two-Thirds Think Trump Made Racial Tensions Worse After Floyd Was Killed” https://www.npr.org/2020/06/05/870019283/poll-two-thirds-think-trump-made-racial-tensions-worse-after-george-floyds-death and “Biden Trump Electoral Map Based on Polls” https://www.270towin.com/maps/biden-trump-polling-map
And here’s something that I’ve found to be a touching pick-me-up during dark times, from Wicked, “For Good:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzrGFQysfYU
Black Lives Matter held a large rally in the rain in Pensacola yesterday. Over five hundred black and white, mostly young people, attended. This is ground breaking for this part of the country. Unfortunately, someone encouraged the protesters to block the bridge traffic next to the protest. A car pushed through the protesters, and one man jumped on top of the car. The driver rode across the three mile bridge with a protester on his hood. Luckily, there were no injuries. Blocking traffic was not just dangerous, it brings negative attention to what has been over a week of peaceful protests.
“Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant.” –Attorney General William Barr, 6/7/20, Face the Nation
Capsaicin: C18H27NO3, a chemical substance isolated from peppers and other plants that causes burning in mucous membranes
Somebody should spray Barr with capsaicin in the eyes before he can make this statement. The police were pulling masks off the faces of protesters and many members of the press as well. Then, they were spraying them in the face with pepper spray. This treatment was caught on camera. There are currently over three hundred complaints from members of the press that received these attacks from police during the protests.
Another interesting part of this is the appearance of “policelike” phalanxes of unidentified, armed middle-aged, often large and physically unfit, men at peaceful protests around the country. Who are these people? Private “police” forces? Under whose direction?
Bob Does Barr think vegetables are not chemicals? Just one more facet of his ignorance on display. CBK
Trump and Barr are chemical irritants on the body politic.
The question as to why Trump is so terrified of AntiFa is that he is a known racists, he was convicted in the New York Courts of violation of the state equal rights laws for refusing to rent to blacks, and he is clearly fascist believing that he should be President for Life and the only way to effectively rule is via overwhelming force and having repeatedly supported anti-civil rights pro white supremacist organizations.
Exactly
The Idiot is not terrified of Antifa. It’s another attempt to distract.