Quote Originally Posted by Strike For The South View Post
Looking back on that thread I was too forgiving. When your biggest supporters are neo nazis and carpet baggers you lose The cultural memory of the war argument. the majority of the monuments have always been about race and were meant to consolidate white power. I still think about the slippery slope argument sometimes. There is a hardcore group of committed leftists who would see the whole antebellum portion of American history stricken. This is a battle over the National Myth not history. I suppose I should have been more clear in that thread. It should also be noted that most of the counter protesters were locals who hated nazis (big suprise lol)

Edit: Also entertaining the slippery slope argument does not mean you can't outright condemn Neo-Nazis and does not mean you can engage in false equivocation, Mr.President.
The thing is, what slope is it exactly? Of course there could be any number of items that need to be revised, these aren't the only statues in the country. It usually isn't even like the politics of neo-Confederatism, but a desire to replace or update items that are no longer meaningful to the community. For a banal example, imagine a small town replacing a statue of some native sports star with a statue of another, more recent, native sports star.

If the slope is that there are other statues to look at, then that isn't a slope - we're already there, and always have been since it is latent and not something arrived at to assess and reassess public iconography. Once you realize that, you return to acknowledging the content of public debate and not merely its existence.

I have seen a lot of people saying they refuse to wait for the local legislatures to take care of this problem. I will point out that direct action is strongest when backed by legislation. Merely tearing things down does no good because the other side will simply follow that mob mentality. Roving mobs tearing things down they don't like will simply entrench the majority of people who simply want order. Call your councilman, picket the sign, and you will enjoy much longer lasting and concrete effects.
Abstractly speaking since that statue you had taken down a few days ago seems to have involved general activists rather than Antifa, my biggest problem with Antifa is indeed that they are anarchists, so they want to with state government as much as they do with fascists. In practical terms, this article comment by Curtis Carpenter also reflects some of my misgivings:

With genuine respect, I think antifa is tragically unsophisticated in its approach and its actions are conducted absent any carefully thought-out strategic objectives that could give their tactical operations meaning. In the absence of such objectives, "bombarding and besieging far right events" is at best pointless at anything but an emotional level, and is at worst counter-productive at a long-term political level.

Where, for example, is the psychological understanding of the neo-fascist elements antifa seeks to "make afraid?" Does the antifa movement not understand that many on the fringe right actually draw strength from being vilified and attacked? That they WANT confrontation as an affirmation that they matter?

Don't get me wrong, I believe that there are situations that demand confrontation. But for those confrontations to be meaningful, they need to be conducted in the context of a overarching purpose. Being against is not sufficient, and that is an aspect omitted from the brief observations here about historical anti-fascist struggles. The International Brigades in the Spanish civil war were about more than smashing fascist heads.
The thought of confronting a professional anti-fascist one on one gives the fascist a hard-on; it's what they live for. Confronting a dozen mobilized citizens giving forth denunciations scares the shit out of the fascist. Bodies are more important than specific training.