> I know you seemingly don't want it to appear that simple, but it really is. Original question was regarding organized and armed anti-fascist/far-left movements and if there was any investigation into those.
And my reply was that the issue is not as simple as you are making it out to be. For example, since you have referred to these groups as "we," I could infer that you endorse the acts of terrorism linked to these groups. You would then probably say: "Wait, my it's not that simple, my position is more nuanced than that, despite agreeing with these people in principle I don't support all of their methods." If I replied: "I know you seemingly don't want it to appear to be that simple, but it really is. You support terrorism," you would rightly judge that I was being disingenuous.
> If you have some concrete evidence for those investigations existing and being published on the open internet, feel free to link those.
It's unlikely that there have been any such investigations since (like I said in my original post) these groups do not generally operate as militias. This does not indicate that these groups are not dangerous. You are trying to evade that issue by restricting the discussion to your original claim that "from the outside it seems like mostly people on the right are the ones running the militias over there" - which I never contested. When I said "It's not that simple," I was arguing that the idea that militias are an exclusively right-wing phenomenon (which is nearly true) would lead one to the erroneous conclusion that politically-motivated violence is also an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. This isn't the case; to which end:
1) On May 28, 2020, Oscar Lee Stewart Jr. is trapped and burns to death in a pawn shop set on fire in Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots. This was one of approximately two hundred such fires set during the course of these riots.
2) On May 29, 2020, Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis (both lawyers) used a molotov cocktail to set fire to a police car in New York. [0]
3) On June 29, 2020, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. was shot to death by a member of Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) security. 14-year-old Robert West was left in critical condition. The boys had allegedly carjacked an SUV somewhere outside of the zone and had driven it into the area in an attempt to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement. [1] Some have speculated that Mays was shot by a member of the John Brown Gun Club (an antifascist armed leftist group) [2], but so far as I know, his killer has never been arrested, nor identified.
4) On July 28, 2020, Gabriel Agard-Berryhill set fire to the Mark O. Hatfield courthouse in Portland, Oregon using "an incendiary device." [3]
5) On December 17, 2021, Ellen Brennan Reiche was convicted of placing shunts on railroad tracks in Washington state "in protest of a natural gas pipeline through Indigenous land in British Columbia." [4]
As I was reading about Antonio Mays again, I also came across a Kansas-area group with ties to the John Brown Gun Club, which I had not been aware of: "Redneck Revolt" [5]. Of particular interest from its core principles: "We believe in the right of militant resistance. We believe in the need for revolution."
> Your language is also starting to become emotional and colorful enough for me (and others) to recognize that we're spilling into sharing anecdotal and personal experiences/beliefs, rather than talking hard concrete data and events.
If you don't want people to respond this way to you, you shouldn't ask disingenuous questions and respond to good faith comments with adolescent tripe like: Quite a long answer overall that boils down to "No, it doesn't exist" :). This kind of low-effort quipping isn't acceptable here.
And my reply was that the issue is not as simple as you are making it out to be. For example, since you have referred to these groups as "we," I could infer that you endorse the acts of terrorism linked to these groups. You would then probably say: "Wait, my it's not that simple, my position is more nuanced than that, despite agreeing with these people in principle I don't support all of their methods." If I replied: "I know you seemingly don't want it to appear to be that simple, but it really is. You support terrorism," you would rightly judge that I was being disingenuous.
> If you have some concrete evidence for those investigations existing and being published on the open internet, feel free to link those.
It's unlikely that there have been any such investigations since (like I said in my original post) these groups do not generally operate as militias. This does not indicate that these groups are not dangerous. You are trying to evade that issue by restricting the discussion to your original claim that "from the outside it seems like mostly people on the right are the ones running the militias over there" - which I never contested. When I said "It's not that simple," I was arguing that the idea that militias are an exclusively right-wing phenomenon (which is nearly true) would lead one to the erroneous conclusion that politically-motivated violence is also an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. This isn't the case; to which end:
1) On May 28, 2020, Oscar Lee Stewart Jr. is trapped and burns to death in a pawn shop set on fire in Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots. This was one of approximately two hundred such fires set during the course of these riots.
2) On May 29, 2020, Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis (both lawyers) used a molotov cocktail to set fire to a police car in New York. [0]
3) On June 29, 2020, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. was shot to death by a member of Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) security. 14-year-old Robert West was left in critical condition. The boys had allegedly carjacked an SUV somewhere outside of the zone and had driven it into the area in an attempt to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement. [1] Some have speculated that Mays was shot by a member of the John Brown Gun Club (an antifascist armed leftist group) [2], but so far as I know, his killer has never been arrested, nor identified.
4) On July 28, 2020, Gabriel Agard-Berryhill set fire to the Mark O. Hatfield courthouse in Portland, Oregon using "an incendiary device." [3]
5) On December 17, 2021, Ellen Brennan Reiche was convicted of placing shunts on railroad tracks in Washington state "in protest of a natural gas pipeline through Indigenous land in British Columbia." [4]
As I was reading about Antonio Mays again, I also came across a Kansas-area group with ties to the John Brown Gun Club, which I had not been aware of: "Redneck Revolt" [5]. Of particular interest from its core principles: "We believe in the right of militant resistance. We believe in the need for revolution."
> Your language is also starting to become emotional and colorful enough for me (and others) to recognize that we're spilling into sharing anecdotal and personal experiences/beliefs, rather than talking hard concrete data and events.
If you don't want people to respond this way to you, you shouldn't ask disingenuous questions and respond to good faith comments with adolescent tripe like: Quite a long answer overall that boils down to "No, it doesn't exist" :). This kind of low-effort quipping isn't acceptable here.
[0] - https://nypost.com/2022/11/18/molotov-cocktail-tossing-urooj...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest#...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_Clu...
[3] - https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/portland-man-charged-july...
[4] - https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-b...
[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck_Revolt