
White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter - aspenmayer
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest-disinformation-bot-behavior-n1221456
======
bruceb
Blaming the boogy man of White Nationalists, Russia, or outside outside
agitators is a way to shift blame by politicians and an easy scapegoat.
Amusingly the governor of Minnesota, and a big city MN mayor blamed vandalism
& lootingrioters as being the work of people who were all from out of state,
thereby parroting Trump's same line (or he theirs).

They (not Trump of course) had to walk it back when it turned out not to be
true.

Is there some outside groups posing as others, possibly, but to blame a
majority of problems on them is just BS.

~~~
epakai
The problem is antifa has become the new boogy man for the GOP, and they've
been pushing this narrative extremely hard. It's apparent they've identified
their enemy, but this approach has me worried that "First they came for the
antifa..." might not be far off.

I see a lot of mischaracterization of what is a category, not a group. From
what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism, and somewhat characterized by people
willing to take direct action.

~~~
croon
They've already tried to paint BLM as a violent organization, so no new low
surprises me.

~~~
humanrebar
Who do you attribute the assassinations of police officers to? I guess you
could argue that they weren't "organized", but it seems about as organized as
right-wing terrorism like the shooting in Charleston (a.k.a. the fascism the
anti-fascism is counteracting).

~~~
croon
I don't consider Christianity a violent organization despite the crusades and
the inquisition, nor do I consider Islam a violent organization, or most other
religions.

I consider an organization on their tenets, under which Black Lives Matter is
completely fine.

KKK for example isn't.

Right-wing terrorism has no redeeming kernel of decency, nor does it have a
productive movement behind the (few?) bad actors.

~~~
a1369209993
> I consider an organization on their tenets

No, you don't, or you would consider a religion that endorses literally
infinite amounts of torture for anyone who disagrees with them to be violent.
There's also its attitudes toward homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22), slavery
(Exodus 21:7), murdering people for working on saturdays (or maybe sundays?)
(Exodus 35:2), and touching pig remains (Leviticus 11:7), among others.

~~~
colejohnson66
You’re quoting the Old Testament. The “lesser laws” of which were superseded
by the “higher law” instituted by Jesus.

~~~
a1369209993
"Slaves, obey your earthly masters" (Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22) (the
easiest one to grep for, since I remember the exact phrasing). Doesn't sound
very superseded to me, and Christians continued supporting _that_ right up
until the South lost the Civil War (and a fair bit past that in other places)
and slavery became politically impractical to defend. So it wasn't a case of a
misquotation (by two different sources? really?) being corrected; it was a
case of explicitly heretical values being forced on the church at (rather
close to literal) gunpoint.

As someone more eloquent than me put it: Christianity had it's chance to rule
the world; we call it the Dark Ages for good reason.

~~~
humanrebar
Read up on what the Quakers did that whole time.

------
PHGamer
looking at the videos over the past few days its pretty safe to safe it was
for the most part not white supremists. the last day was questionable like
those bricks in dallas but other than that. there were a lot of young black
people doing stuff on their own.

~~~
Balgair
In Denver it seems that the day time protestors are older and more diverse
(latino-american, african-american, etc) and the night time protestors are
younger and more white-american looking to start trouble, though things are
changing rapidly. [0]

There are confirmed reports of agitators that have been stopped before
violence occurred, thank God. [0]

Last evening, Denver's PD chief marched with protestors and mostly allowed
them to walk and shout well past curfew. I've not yet seen looting reports
(though that may change), and the injuries to protestors and PD seem to have
been much less as of now. Compared to other nights, it was successful.

Each city is different. Lumping people together nationally is not helping
anyone discover what is happening locally.

[0] [https://twitter.com/KyleClark](https://twitter.com/KyleClark) I suck at
twitter, so I can't figure out how to link specific tweets here. But Kyle
Clark is the head anchor for Denver's 9pm news broadcast. The tweets in his
feed specify the facts much better than I can.

------
peter_d_sherman
Dehumanization (of any group, by any other) preceeds crimes against humanity:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization)

------
xster
Also, if NBC calls something misinformation with "little evidence", then it
would be unsatirical to reference some primary sources itself.

"according to a Twitter spokesperson". Which spokesperson and where was this
said? I don't see anything on
[https://blog.twitter.com](https://blog.twitter.com). Nor could I find any
primary recent references to Twitter and white nationalists or Identity Evropa
except the editorials themselves.

------
0xy
Note that while this particular account was fake, real Antifa groups were
organizing to attack those areas, according to multiple police sources. [1]

Disinformation campaigns don't mean all such activity is by political shills.

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/law-
enfo...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/law-enforcement-
plays-catch-stop-violence-radical-groups-protests-n1220486)

~~~
craigmcnamara
Antifa is not a single organized group, it's anyone who is anti-fascist. So
there is no 'real' antifa groups. The police don't have a very good track
record releasing truthful information regarding these events, so why not chill
out before drawing your own outrageous conclusions.

~~~
iguy
> So there is no 'real' antifa groups.

How do we actually know this?

Or to put it differently, how much do we know about the interconnections of
such groups? I'm sure that some are just kids who like the look & dress up
with their buddies (no connections). Some seem pretty organised. How do we
tell the extent from outside?

I would hope there is effort put into infiltrating and studying such things.
But presumably any serious FBI or whatever effort isn't going to be keen to
spell out how they know what they know. (IIRC this was part of what broke up
the KKK, that and anti-mask laws. Which at its height was also a mix of fairly
organised & not at all, although I don't claim the same mix.)

~~~
weare138
> _How do we actually know this?_

We don't which is why it's weird the current administration is trying to
declare 'antifa' a terrorist group without presenting any real evidence. If
they know something we don't this would probably be a good time to tell us.

------
loki49152
Well, AntiFa exists to engage in violence, by their own statements, so anyone
"posing as" them to "call for violence" is just playing catch-up.

------
nil-sec
It is utterly ridiculous to try to blame either, far right or far left wing
organizations for what is happening in the US right now. None of these groups
have the power to cause that much damage. I’d be surprised if the number of
antifa/black bloc people in these protest is more than a tiny fraction of
people, like in any protest. Yet the discussion is shifted to these groups as
an explanation for violence and this entire thread is full of people arguing
about whether the Antifa is an organization. The antifa doesn’t even matter.
What is happening to this discourse?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If there are 1000 people at a protest and 50 start brawling with the police,
that changes the entire character of the day, no matter whether 50/1000 is a
small number or not.

~~~
nil-sec
This is the point. There are many people at these protests. This is a heated,
complex situation and at any large protest the people there are not
homogeneous. The majority wants to peacefully protest, some loot, some want
violence, the police is aggressive. Given that it is understood that every
protest is a complicated social phenomenon, the narrative pushed by major news
outlets in the US, and echoed in parts here, that somehow this is led and
organised by Antifa, or the far right, is delusional. There are protests all
over the US. In suburbs. How do you imagine this is working? The Antifa/Right
has some chapters in every suburb of the US, just waiting to be unleashed upon
the masses and this is the reason why protests turn violent? It's a gross
oversimplification of the actual dynamics, it's a child's story that is easy
to tell and easy to digest.

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nmeofthestate
Inevitable I guess, given how this violence is likely to boost support for
Trump and the right. It raises the possibility that some of the people
supporting, defending or excusing looting and violence on HN are secretly
right-wingers. Nah, probably not, but still...

------
masnao
antifa is a term that only serves fascists.

fascists do not call themselves that since the 40s.

calling the normal of not being fascists antifa is only enabling easier critic
amd blaming of something that could not be criticized or blamed.

the term antifa only benefit fascists. who can now easily direct blame and
critic to their critics, as shown in the article (which is not the first and
hardly the last)

