The Antifa movement is on the rise since riots in Charlottesville, but the progressive scientist believes the anti-fascists add oil to the fire they want to extinguish.
“As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were,” Noam Chomsky told the Washington Examiner. “It's a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant.”
Many Antifa-related activists consider themselves anarchists or socialists. They often wear black clothes and try to hide their identity.
“What they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive,” Chomsky said.
“When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is. That's quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism.”
At the same time, Trump continues making controversial statements. On Tuesday, he laid the blame for the Charlottesville tragedy not only on white supremacists, but also on left-wing activists and anti-fascists who oppose them.
He said at a press conference: “There was a group on this side, you can call them the Left, you've just called them the Left, that came violently attacking the other group. So, you can say what you want, but that's the way it is.”
However, the progressive part of society doesn’t find the rise of anti-fascists worrying as it is the group that opposes the alt-right. They don’t participate in violent confrontation if it has no relation to anti-fascism and pose themselves as a defensive rather than attacking organisation.
Chomsky also compared the Antifa movement to anti-fascists during the Nazi rule in Germany and added that “left violence was hardly the problem.”
Noam Chomsky is one of the most cited scientists in the world. His areas of interest include linguistics, philosophy, politics and ethics. He is a professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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