The present-day nihilists of Antifa and the nihilists of a half-century ago
Commenter “huxley” draws our attention to an interview with a former Antifa member. Please see this comment and the following two: this and this. The link to the interview is here.
I haven’t watched it, but huxley’s comments give a summary of what is said. I’m not surprised by the content; it conforms with my previous statements that nihilism explains a lot of the impulse behind Antifa. In fact, I wrote a post about that just about a month ago, here.
I’ll add a few thoughts. I believe that there’s always a certain percentage of the population that trends toward sociopathy, but a society can nudge them along in that path or discourage them. Our current society seems to breed a lot of aimlessness and anger, and young men are especially prone to that although women are hardly exempt.
There’s a lot of mockery going around right now about the “No Kings” demonstrations. The crowds seem to be skewed to the elderly, otherwise known as “smelly old hippies/Boomers” But I know a lot of you are, like me, Boomers, and as such you remember the 60s and early 70s. It was a frightening time as far as I was concerned. Riots, assassinations (including of police), enormous societal changes, wars, and even terrorism.
Some of that terrorism was international in nature, as well, and some of it had Israel as its target. To refresh your memory, the 1972 Olympics massacre happened in Munich. And the 1972 Lod Airport massacre (now Ben Gurion Airport) featured an international cast of terrorist characters [my emphasis]:
The Lod Airport massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on 30 May 1972. Three members of the Japanese Red Army recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attacked Lod Airport … near Tel Aviv, killing 26 people and injuring 80 others. Two of the attackers were killed, while a third, K?z? Okamoto, was captured after being wounded.
The dead comprised 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, a Canadian citizen, and eight Israelis …
Because airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, the use of Japanese attackers took the guards by surprise. The attack has often been described as a suicide mission, but it has also been asserted that it was the outcome of an unpublicized larger operation that went awry. The three perpetrators — Kozo Okamoto, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, and Yasuyuki Yasuda — had been trained in Baalbek, Lebanon; the actual planning was handled by Wadie Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Hani), head of PFLP External Operations, with some input from Okamoto. In the immediate aftermath, Der Spiegel speculated that funding had been provided by some of the $5 million ransom paid by the West German government in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 649 in February 1972.
There was no internet back then, of course. But although that didn’t stop them from coordinating things, it helped make it more difficult. Nowadays it’s much easier to organize and to use propaganda and social media to stir up the requisite anger and stoke both the nihilistic impulses and the sympathy for supposed “causes” that the perps know little to nothing about. It’s not as though those Japanese terrorists had any special beef with the Israelis. Their actual motives? I bet you can guess [emphasis mine]:
The Japanese public initially reacted with disbelief to initial reports that the perpetrators of the massacre were Japanese until a Japanese embassy official sent to the hospital confirmed that Okamoto was a Japanese national. Okamoto told the diplomat that he had nothing personal against the Israeli people, but that he had to do what he did because “It was my duty as a soldier of the revolution.”
The other two were dead, so they weren’t talking. But I strongly suspect their motives were the same.
Oh, and speaking of “the same”:
Okamoto was tried by an Israeli military tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1972. Okamoto served only 13 years of his prison sentence. He was released in 1985 with more than 1,000 other prisoners in an exchange for captured Israeli soldiers. He settled in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. He was arrested in 1997 for passport forgery and visa violations, but in 2000 was granted political refugee status in Lebanon. He is still wanted by the Japanese government as of 2021. Four other JRA members arrested at the same time were extradited to Japan.
It is thought that Okamoto is still alive and living in Lebanon; if so, he’d be 77 years old, which makes him the quintessential Boomer. His older brother was a terrorist, too. A few more details about Okamoto:
The name in Okamoto’s forged passport was Daisuke Namba, Crown Prince Hirohito’s would be assassin. …
In his final statement [at his trial] Okamoto told the court: “When I was a child, I was told that when people died they became stars…We three Red Army soldiers wanted to become Orion when we died”.
During the incarceration, he requested to convert to Judaism and tried to circumcise himself with nail clippers. He stated that he was tortured during his imprisonment, being “forced to eat like a dog” and emerged from imprisonment emaciated.
And what of the Japanese Red Army? According to this Wiki entry, it disbanded in 2001, but its stated goal was as follows: “to overthrow the Japanese government and the monarchy, as well as to start a world revolution.”
This particular group was hardly the only instance of international terrorism. I’m just mentioning them because they are good examples of how long ago this international nihilist impulse was wreaking havoc.
The Trump administration has recently designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization:
Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists. Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members. Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech. This organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation is domestic terrorism.
What is meant by “organization” has been disputed, but although Antifa doesn’t have a webpage with a president, VP, secretary, and treasurer, there is some emerging evidence to support Antifa’s organizational nature, particular in its funding; you can find some details at the link.
Mark Twain is said to have uttered the phrase “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Whether or not Twain actually said it, it seem quite true, and there’s a lot of rhyming going on these days. We Boomers are well-positioned to notice that.
NOTE: The Manson family were another good example of nihilism from that era. You may recall that, through the horrific murders they committed in 1969, they wanted to ignite a race war they called “Helter Skelter.” Basically, extremely violent nihilists, helped along by drugs.
Boomers like myself ought to be able to remember the violence of the 1960s and early 1970s. I don’t want to see that again.
Very good links to read, much as I thought it would be without really knowing. Not surprised about none knowing what Fascism is yet working to become Socialism without the Nationalism
Lately Iam starting to think Anarchists out to destroy Western civilization as Marx wanted to.
Advocates of nihilistic accelerationism advocate for it because they believe that the chaos of collapse naturally results in the ascendency of the ideas they posit the present world is too corrupted to enshrine.
Those poor sweet summer children…
Being seventy-five years of age, I certainly remember the ’60’s and ’70’s, but to me the news was pretty irrelevant because I was either in school, studying or working (starting age sixteen when I could get my “working papers” from the government). Reading about or listening/watching TV or radio news about all the political and social tumult was as close as I got to it. Basically, it took place in some foreign country in which I certainly did not live, even though they told me it was happening everywhere, all the time in my America. It’s the same today, because I live in a blissfully peaceful part of rural America, where people are friendly, helpful and not at all interested in donning a rubber chicken suit and “demonstrating” against some mythical king that we do not have. Unfortunately, the corporate media arm of the democrat party sees its role as being the promoter of such things, playing its designated part in the color revolution some people so sincerely wish to occur.
neo said: Our current society seems to breed a lot of aimlessness and anger, and young men are especially prone to that although women are hardly exempt.
It seems to me that women — especially AWFLs — are fast approaching predominance in progressive-woke activist ranks. Women of all ages, and not just white women either, plenty of black and latino women too. Women certainly seem to make the most noise, and are not shy about calling for violence and death to their ideological opponents.
Of course even women who aren’t attending No King’s rallies and suchlike are excessively prone to advocating woke ideology and attendant agendas and, relatedly, voting for Democrats.
Their are a lot of angry, violence-espousing woke women in America today, and their numbers are steadily increasing. Talk about your dangers to the continued existence of the America and Western Civilization….
Prove me wrong.
By the way: where is miguel cervantes, my favorite commenter?
miguel, are you out there? Everything okay?
Fascinating video Huxley, thanks. I found Ty to be very believable. I was particularly interested in what he had to say about the Chinese cartel syndicates and Antifa sources of financing.
“The National Guard is great, but if you really want to get these motherfuckers, sic the IRS on them. AUDIT EVERYBODY.”
Don’t forget the Bader-Menhoff boys!
But Huxley earlier said…
Oh NOW are we waking up a bit? Starting to get some concern?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRiVMb_uD5g
Those Founder feedback systems do a lot to keep Charlie Kirk alive or Andy Ngo from getting beaten?
At some point you start wondering how many Tesla dealers have to be on fire, how many times ICE agents have to be shot at before you go, “this might be concerning.”
Steven Sailer has pointed out recently how much various institutes of higher education have honored Angela Davis over the last 50-odd years. There be quite a mess of deeply disgusting people in higher education. The term ‘nihilist’ does not quite describe it. It would be agreeable is such people were removed from their positions, stripped of their citizenship, and deported.
Another incident reported on today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15199105/north-carolina-trump-supporter-shooting-arrest.html
This is something Tim Pool has ranted about nightly how much they have to pay for private security.
Quote he just said on tonight’s episode: “Whether you realize it or not, your favorite, high profile conservative personalities have 24 hour private security because of leftist threats.”
IrishOtter:
He commented here on Saturday. So he seems fine.
IrishOtter:
I wrote about the women thing in this recent post.
In the present thread, what I was trying to focus on was violent acts. The women are into the the violent rhetoric and shunning; the men more into the violent actions.
What is meant by “organization” has been disputed, but although Antifa doesn’t have a webpage with a president, VP, secretary, and treasurer, there is some emerging evidence to support Antifa’s organizational nature, particular in its funding; you can find some details at the link.
My cursory look at Antifa, or at least its symbolism, is that it is an amalgam of formal communism and anarchism. These two factions of Marxism actually got into a brief shooting war against each other during the Spanish civil war. So it’s not exactly a comfortable collaboration. My suspicion is that Antifa is primarily anarchist.
About 20+ years ago I spent a large amount of time looking at the history of organized anarchism. Which is both large and roughly 1.5 centuries old. The usual triumvirate of leaders discussed is Bakunin, Blanqui, and Proudhon. Blanqui was a saboteur who was arrested and jailed, and who then advocated that the movement go underground. Which it more or less has accomplished ever since. It uses organizations like labor movements to hide its real power structure and goals.
Proudhon was vocal and prominent in the French revolution. When I first read some of the works of Frenchman Bastiat, I was wondering who and what crazy people and ideas he was arguing against. Well, it was Proudhon’s ideas.
I believe people routinely and grossly underestimate the history, scope, and reach of anarchism. On the one hand, I believe it is really and truly a bullsh_t philosophy, but on the other, it is very much more powerful and organized than people realize.
https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-anarchist-incidents
It was a brief treatment of the Pres. McKinley assassination that got me interested in anarchism. The assassin was claimed to be insane, but was actually a disciple of Emma Goldman.
Here’s a vid of Tim and Crowder discussing their security issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7M5KFpG17g
Re Nate W., NC shooting. That’s disgusting! I hope that punk gets some serious prison time.
As an airline pilot from 1968-93, I was a witness to some of the 1968-1975 violence. Flew over several cities that were on fire – LA and Baltimore to name two. Saw riot police and National Guard on the way to layovers and laid over in a few hotels where they had a cop with a German Shepherd and machine gun patrolling the lobby. Then there were the Zebra Murders that took place in the San Francisco area 1973-74. No one was exactly safe until those perps were caught. The violence was very real to me.
The violence was the result of anti-Vietnam terrorists like the Weather Underground (Marxists), and the black liberation movements represented by the Black Panthers and others. (Kill whitey.) Fortunately, it was not well coordinated and law enforcement efforts finally put enough of them in jail, that the violence died down.
The ideas have not died down. Racism and Marxism have continued to be issues used to attack American society. This last weekends “No Kings” demonstrations were carried out mostly by anti-Vietnam hippies from the 1960s-70s. The myth of socialism as a viable system is alive and well. 🙁
I believe that Antifa is basically Marxist but attracts nihilists who see anarchy as the quickest way to tear down the existing order.
I’m very happy that Trump and his cabinet are talking law and order and domestic terrorism seriously. When enough of these anarchists find themselves in jail with serious charges, it will cool things down. In the meantime, ICE needs to get some water cannons for crowd control around their detention facilities. Nothing takes the fight out of rioters like water cannons.
We KNOW that Antifa is an organization because the Democrats deny that it is.
“Just an idea”…as Jerry Nadler piously—notoriously—intoned several years back, just after they started taking Portland apart and clobbered Andy Ngo, almost kibboshing him for good…
(And if there is still any doubt about the Democratic Party’s shock troops…
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/10/who-funds-antifa.php )
There’s nihilists.
And then there’s annihilists….
(There IS a common denominator.)
“‘The Long Game’: Hamas Co-Founder’s Son Exposes Hamas’s Global Goals”
https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/10/20/the-long-game-hamas-co-founders-son-exposes-hamass-global-goals-n4945048
I’m a few years younger than Steve, and I remember the unrest and the violence, also – it was something one read about in the LA times, happening mostly somewhere else.
I think the only incidents which came anywhere close to rattling our family personally were the Manson murders … when it became clear that the Manson freaks had murdered the LaBiancas at random, and again when it was reported that the remnants of the Symbionese terrorist group were going to ground somewhere in LA. A black friend of my mothers jokingly advised my mom not to give hospitality to a creepy-looking group of fugitives.
The Patty Hearst kidnapping did rattle me, a bit – as we are exactly the same age. Same birthdate. She always struck me as kind of a bland person, though – after the kidnapping none of her so-called friends could say much about her in interviews with them. She had no really outstanding personal traits, quirks, enthusiasms – no forceful personality traits, no innate stubborn or defiant qualities. An easily brainwashed kind of personality.
Neo, in the list of terrorist acts in the ‘70s you forgot the bombings. I was 10 in 1970 and I don’t think I would have payed attention except my mother was terrified of the bombings.
I think we are in trouble. It’s one thing for people in their twenties behave badly and pick a protest du jour, but I’m seeing people older than 50 act like rabid animals. This scares me.
It’s been too long since I actually looked at this stuff, but to be clear about the threat, the following is what I meant above when I sited organized anarchism. We’re not talking about a Timothy McVeigh style anarchist, or generic nihilists. Specifically, they usually call themselves anarcho-syndicalists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
Their typical symbols are the circle A:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_symbolism#Circle-A
An interpretation held by anarchists such as Cindy Milstein is that the A represents the Greek anarkhia (‘without ruler/authority’), and the circle can be read as the letter O, standing for order or organization, a reference to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s definition of anarchism from his 1840 book What Is Property?
I remember the Japanese Red Army massacre of the passengers at Lydda (Lod) Airport in May 30, 1972. My best friends parents flew into Tel Aviv earlier that morning from Rome! Slightly over four months later (September 5-6, 1972) was the Black September massacre of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich. If Kozo Okamoto is still alive then I am surprised that the Israeli Air Force did not pay him a visit last year or this year when they took out Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah.
neo, thanks for this topic.
Back in the 80s I was an activist with a church-based affinity group. We would clipboard on weekends, march with an American flag in most Bay Area demos, and occasionally do civil disobedience.
Which in those days was almost a religious ritual. Step over a line, get handcuffed by the law, driven off in a paddy wagon, then released in a matter of hours. I was the outside guy ready for emergency phone calls.
So Antifa looks weird to me. They are organized, wear uniforms, and are intentionally provocative and destructive. But how do they keep going? Where does their money come from? Why does it look like they are being protected by Powers on High?
Clearly Antifa is the tip of an iceberg, an ecosystem if you will. I appreciated the Ty King interview as an ex-Antifa member for filling in some of the blanks.
* Antifa is an organization with several layers.
* Antifa is a cult beyond cultish.
* Antifa members are unhappy, damaged individuals.
* Antifa is dedicated to civil war.
* Antifa considers itself linked to the Intifada.
* Antifa is backed by many local businesses and at the city and state levels.
* There is much criminal/cartel involvement.
* Chinese communists may have substantial control of Portland.
Re: Future of Antifa
I don’t see one.
* Antifa is now an official domestic terrorism group and is targeted by the DOJ.
* Antifa members are now being tried in federal court and some will go to federal prison.
* Antifa’s money sources are drying up.
* Antifa members aren’t like the Weather Underground. They lack the skills and the connections to become university professors, hedge fund managers, politicians or political masterminds (Bill Ayers). Most Antifa will fade into seamy street lives.
Perhaps Ty King can help them heal as he heals himself.
Best wishes, Ty.
This is why I stopped going to my class reunions.