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.
