April 3, 2020 - Slightly Offensive - Elijah Schaffer
24:20
ANTIFA Unmasked | Ep 50
While people across the world are starting to wear masks, Antifa is starting to take theirs off. I sat down with a veteran Antifa organizer for a rare and exclusive interview. This is raw, real, and extremely engaging ⇩ Follow Jason Charter on Twitter ⇩ @JasonRCharter _____________________________________________________________________________________ ⇩ Become a Slightly Offens*ve Backer (S.O.B.) & Get FULL Episodes by Joining Blaze TV ⇩ LINK: https://get.blazetv.com and use promo code "ELIJAH" to get $10 off a year membership ⇩ Download the FULL Audio Podcast FREE & Leave Us a 5 Star Review (if you can) ⇩ iTUNES: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/slightly-offens-ve-uncut/id1450057169 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/7jbVobnHs7q8pSRCtPmC41?si=iwqsjNOhQGGYgQE8_1bfjg GOOGLE: Search "Slightly Offens*ve” _________________________________________________________ ⇩ BOOKINGS & INQUIRIES ⇩ ➤ EMAIL: ELIJAH@SLIGHTLYOFFENSIVE.COM _________________________________________________________________ ⇩ SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS FOR ELIJAH ⇩ ➤ INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/elijahschaffer/ https://www.instagram.com/officialslightlyoffensive/ ➤ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer ➤ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/officialslightlyoffensive ______________________________________________________________________________________ ⇩ OTHER WAYS TO SUPPORT SLIGHTLY OFFENS*VE ⇩ ➤ MERCHANDISE: http://slightlyoffensive.com #protest #media #antifa
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxRuEW5kE8M
Uploader: Slightly Offens*ve
I don't think, I think most people who identify as an anti-fascist would tell you that we don't have leaders.
We're against leadership.
We're against hierarchy, that we believe in horizontal organizing, which means that everyone is treated equally, that everyone's voice is heard equally.
So anarcho-communism is the idea of taking anarchism, this idea of no government, and bringing it to as and bringing communism into a small level and bringing it down to the local level in your own communities, seizing the means of production, creating collectives in your own neighborhood and not really relying on a centralized government like you would see, like you've seen in the USSR, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
So obviously my understanding and my personal experience with Antifa, or I know you like to call them anti-fascists.
I'll just keep the Antifa for shorter for myself is that there is a lot of movement towards using violence and vandalism to get their points across.
How do you, when you say like at a smaller level to push the anarcho-communism, how do they hope to accomplish that or what are their means of getting to that end?
So I don't think that anti-fascism is just going out in the street and fighting fascists.
There's a lot more to it.
There are folks who most of the work's actually done behind a screen.
It's finding where a fascist works.
It's finding who they are, finding out, especially groups like you've seen Patriot Front, who goes out en masse, fully masked up.
And these guys are pushing racist white supremacist ideologies.
So they feel folks in the anti-fascist community feel that these folks need to be outed.
So most of the work that anti-fascists do are actually just finding out who these people are and making sure their employers know, making sure if they're at a school, making sure their schools know and just making sure the general public knows who these people are.
Like doctors.
Sure, if you want to call it that.
Now, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
I've seen sometimes people do not do it correctly, and that's been an issue.
But overall, that is the best way to stop a fascist is to make them outed as a fascist because for most of them, they don't want their family and friends to know who they are and what they believe.
So when people like Richard Spencer, when people like Alex Jones, when people like Gavin McGinnis, when people like Joe V. Vall and all these other crazy people out there, Jack Pesobic for one, going out there and putting out these racist, misogynists, using gaslighting to do it, it's creating a form where people can hear these ideologies.
And what people are doing is taking action from listening to these public speakers, to these people who represent themselves, who represent an ideology, who represent a group, who represent a type of way of feeling in America.
And I think that's something that we need to stop.
I think de-platforming is a great tool and deplatforming Richard Spencer.
Laura Loomer, for instance, is another one.
These people should not be on Twitter.
I know Richard's got his Twitter back, but he lost his verified status.
There's at least a dozen Proud Boys that have run for Congress since Donald Trump has won the election.
So when I see that, when I see a violent group like the Proud Boys, one who have people in jail for assaulting people in New York when Gavin was walking around with a katana, Gavin, take the fucking sword off and use your fists like a man.
I apologize for language.
I know we're on television here.
But like, you know, these people are a violent group and there's no way to say that they aren't.
And their words have created actions that have resulted in people getting hurt and continued to result in people getting hurt.
Because my goal here is not to shock the crowd and prove you wrong or something.
My goal is to get into your mind here.
And this is true.
For people listening that are wondering, why don't you say this and that?
This is not a gotcha interview to get Antifa and get him in their words.
This is a genuine podcast, which I'm hoping could set precedent for the future if the sides could just actually speak to each other instead of trying to be assholes 100% of the time.
You know, when you talk about someone like Richard Spencer, it's clear to point out to me this guy is not a good guy because of A, B, C, or D.
And if you would stop this guy for A, B, C, and D or this A, B, C, D, he said has led to this, that, and that, I can listen and I can get on board and try to understand.
And if you say, like you said, if Hitler's on Twitter, you go, Hitler's calling for anti-Semitism.
He's deeming this.
He's trying to gain power of the military, right?
And he's not bound, he's an authoritarian.
He's trying to introduce fascism, which would then limit the Constitution and give him authority.
He's actually, he's moving in this direction.
You go, whatever.
Well, real fast, real fast.
I'm saying, I could understand that.
But when you start throwing at all these names, what I think even confuses people is where do we draw the line and actually have some sort of standard of truth to actually understand this?
Because I myself would not consider, I don't think I'm as out there or, I mean, I don't agree with you, but in your terms, I don't think I'm as extreme in certain things I've said or would say as a lot of the people that you're mentioning.
And I don't think I share a lot of their beliefs, especially Richard Spencer.
I really don't like him.
I think he actually holds a lot of weird left-wing ideas.
How can I prove to them, like, if there's these ideas like, well, when Trump says this, he means this.
But where's the facts, Jason?
That's why I want to say, like, how do we know that?
Because I understand that we need to have intuition.
And I get that because if you don't use intuition, I mean, if, like, for instance, if we didn't use intuition with the Chinese government, with Xi Jinping, and we took him at his word on the coronavirus, 100% China's lying.
Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying, but when it comes to these ideas of looking into things and assuming, right, doesn't this lead to a lot of confusion with the average person?
Because when we say this is fascism, but it's not clear.
It's like, well, fascism now is an overarching thing and it can be like this and it's this lifestyle.
And then there's Laura Loomer.
Like Laura Loomer and Richard Spencer are very different.
I've been insulted me at a Friends of Abe event that James O'Keefe was speaking at, stole my idea and put it on Twitter.
She has literally said awful things about Muslim people in this nation, has been banned from Uber, has been banned from Lyft, and has been banned from various other social media sites, including Twitter.
Now she's using, I know she has a organization, Loom Media.
But, you know, like, her words are really bad.
And she doesn't even use dog whistles.
Like, I don't even have to sit here and be like, oh, no, she used this word, then it means this.
No, she's directly used bad words that have like that that have actual Connotation to them.
When I'm talking about dog whistles, though, these are words being used by the government that they say one thing they're doing, and then they, you know, separating families as a way to quote-unquote stop illegal immigration.
You know, that's not really a dog whistle for we're going to, you know, we're going to make it so difficult for these people.
We're going to harm them.
We're going to put them into separate cages, cause severe trauma to these children.
I mean, I don't know a seven-year-old who wouldn't get traumatized by getting their parents taken away from them and locked in a cage for months on end and then have to go into a trial where they have to speak in English when they don't even know English.
You know, these things have these dog whistle words, these phrases that Donald Trump uses, that Jack Bosovic uses, that Mike Cernovich uses, that most of the alt-light and the alt-right use are terms that mean something else.
And there is some great dictionaries out there.
I know you're not a huge fan of Jared Holt, but I'm sure he has a dictionary out there of, you know, right-wing terms that mean something else that are dog whistles.
And I think that if Americans understood the meaning behind these words, and I don't think the American people are foolish, I think that they're just misled.
And I think that we as a public need to do a better job of, you know, letting folks know that when someone's saying one thing, they really mean something else.
Like, most people don't know the okay symbol for a lot of folks means white power.
Because, to be honest, most right-wing people, they like, if they know the left thinks something's a dog whistle, they purposely think, like, and I would say this myself, it's like, it's so outrageous that we're thought of as fascist and all this stuff that we go, it's so funny how we can like say like a frog and an okay summon, all this stuff are racist, and it makes us laugh.
And so then when it's kind of like triggering, like, you have a little sister, and you know, like, you know, when you pull on her pigtail, she like freaks out.
And it's kind of mean.
And it's like, well, you should, if you're a little brother, you shouldn't pull on your sister's pigtail.
But you see, like, your little, you know, you see, like, your sibling out there, you're politically, you know, because we're politically charged, you're politically charged, and we know that all we have to do is make the, you know, whatever, the okay symbol.
And then everyone thinks you're a white supremacist and they get all freaked out and write articles.
There's an atrophy that turned the frogs gay, though.
Never forget that.
Let me ask you something because we were talking about this with the community defense.
Obviously, talking about, I didn't even, a lot of people didn't know the whole LGBT.
There's a huge amount in the community.
But were you familiar with the protests against the Trump, the violent protests that ended up breaking out against the Trump rally in Ilhana Mars district in Minnesota later last year?
On my left, we have over here the actual police officers who are trying to allow cars to exit safely, but Antifa and other groups have joined together to try to block the police officers.
So these hats, people were stealing these Trump hats, including Antifa.
There was quite a bit of Antifa there.
I would say the Antifa there were a little bit more peaceful than the actual, like the Black Lives Matter and the DSA and stuff were a little bit more violent at that one.
But they were stealing the Trump hats off people.
We saved a bunch and they were lighting them in fire.
At one point, creating an entire bonfire of these hats.
I don't necessarily define crime as the law defines it, as American law defines it.
You know, there is natural crime and there is, you know, natural law.
And I think that, you know, we can, we as humans, you know, sometimes something something that may be considered illegal under the law isn't necessarily legal.
So, like, you know, it's a way for the community to express their frustration.
Rioting is the language of the unheard is a phrase used that was said by Martin Luther King Jr. when he was still alive.
When people are so oppressed, attacked so much and brought down so much that sometimes the only way they can get their voices heard is to do something extraordinary, is to do something out of the realm of reasonable to most people.
And that's totally fine.
We don't know, like, I can't, I can't tell a black person how to react to something.
So, you know, if they choose to react to something, you know, that they see as hateful, I'm going to say, okay, that must be hateful because black people are telling me it's hateful to them, you know.
The same way if I'm not going to use the word, but if someone, you know, used the derogatory term against Jews, I would consider that hateful.
And, you know, those words, these derogatory phrases sometimes lead to action and sometimes lead to people taking action in community defense against the people who are spouting these hateful ideologies, as I've said before.
With all this being said, right, you believe these things about the administration, about commentators like Gavin, and then you have these ideas, these hashtags, these ideas about billionaires, all this coming together.
So many things we could talk about.
We could spend hours in the future breaking apart other things.
But then overall then, this has to go from just a philosophy to action, and there has to be an end point.
What does an ideal America look like to you then?
If your ideas were implemented or anti-fascist, and I'm not using you as a spokesperson for everyone, but if in general, if you can use your mind and intuition to kind of take this, what's an ideal Jason anti-fascist America look like?
So I personally work for a political party, obviously not the one, not the Republicans.
And I have done a lot of work to elect people because I do still believe that there is some form, that we can elect people who will create better laws, who will create a better America.
And a better America for me.
And I said I would drop out of politics if three things happened.
If universal basic income came in and a real universal basic income, not the $1,000 whatever thing that the Yang gang was producing.
Universal health care and free education for all.
I would quit politics tomorrow.
There's a lot more work to be done.
We need to dismantle the current policing system in America and the criminal justice system in America that's created a prison pipeline and rebuild it into something that's more restorative justice than punitive justice, like that we see in other countries like Norway, Switzerland, and a lot of Western European countries.
We need to change the way we vote, allowing for more access to people who can't necessarily get to the voting polls on a weekday.
There's so many things that we need to do to make this America great.
But I think overall, what we need to do is really just make a more fair playing field for every single American.
And I think that's what anti-fascists want to do in general.
You know, I can't speak for every single anti-fascist out there.
There are going to be a ton of them who are like, bring back Stalinism.
There are going to be people out there who are going to say, bring back Maloism.
It's a wide umbrella the same way the far right is a wide umbrella, or the right in general is a wide umbrella.
People have all these types of ideologies.
But for me, it's really just about creating a more equal America, creating an America where every single person has a fair opportunity, where every single person is on an equal playing field.
And I don't feel like I am on an equal playing field as Jeff Bezos.
I don't feel like I'm in an equal playing field as the Mercers.
I don't feel like I'm on an equal playing field as the Waldoffs.
I don't feel like I'm in an equal playing field as the Trumps.
I don't feel like I'm on an equal playing field as the Bloombergs or the Clintons or any other one of these filthy, filthy, filthy, rich people who have such a leg up in society and their children will not want for anything in their entire lives while Americans are starving.
If you want to see more of this conversation, there is a lot more that's available on blazetv.com/slash slightly offensive, where we give you a lot more content that, of course, is also not censored by YouTube and the other platforms that don't allow us to express our full ideas or thoughts without fear of censorship.
Anyway, use the code Elijah at blazetv.com/slash slightlyoffensive to get all of our content and much, much more.
Thank you so much again for watching.
Have a great rest of the week.
Stay clean, wash your hands, and may God bless the United States of America.
signing out.
unidentified
I've been waiting for a glance at the sun.
And I've been waiting for the world to spin my way.
