policy-wise, i don't think it's safe to create precedent that allows for anyone to be silenced, because the government can and will abuse that precedent down the line. battling dangerous ideas in cultural/social spaces is good enough, the government can get involved when they start running cars into people and setting buildings on fire (that is to say, dish out appropriate punishment for already criminal acts and establish preventative measures against specific acts if possible, not banish or punish people by regulating ideology)
Normally I would agree, but looking at the historical precedent of radical youth movement with violent tendencies, it's easy to see why Antifa is incredibly dangerous and should not be allowed to exist.
The particular recent fascination of Antifa with "sanitizing" history is particularly troubling. At the current moment it manifests with the desecration of CSA monuments, statues, and cemeteries. This draws a startling parallel with the Chinese
Red Guards of the 60s. They are both radical left-wing movements, have strong roots on university campuses, and are willing to use violence, intimidation, and vandalism to eradicate ideas and things they see as offensive for the sake of "progress." In the case of the Red Guards, this took the form of the "
Four Olds", being Old Culture, Customs, Habits, and Ideas.
Antifa have a similar concept. They are fascinated with the destruction or censorship of things which represent history to which they are morally opposed (the
chose du jour being Confederate history, but it will change once they are done with that.) and like the Red Guards, they use violence and intimidation to silence their opposition. They paint their opposition broadly as "tribal, loveist, homophobic, and bigoted" as the Red Guards would slander their opposition as part of the elite bourgeoisie. Both groups used this typecasting language as justification for further violent, coercive behavior, resorting to tribalism as a means to justify assault, battery, and murder. The brutality didn't cease after death either.
These animals were literally dragging bodies out of tombs and nailing them to treesIf you read into the history of the Red Guards (Fractured Rebellion by Andrew G. Walder is a great read) you'll find that it's not very difficult to draw parallels between them and Antifa. The Red Guard went from wanting streets to be renamed to violent demonstrations to destruction of objects of historical and cultural significance to outright torture, rape, and murder to intimidate their opposition (usually intellectuals) into silence. They are like a pack of rabid animals and they were so destructive and violent that the government shipped them off en-masse to the countryside just to be rid of them (where many of them later starved to death because none of them knew how to farm)
In summation the problem with Antifa isn't their views, but rather how they express them. A radical movement built on violence and intimidation set on re-writing history is a slippery slope. If they would hold signs and chant like normal people, that's one thing. But covering faces in an attempt to remain anonymous while assaulting people, throwing small explosives, dirty needles, broken glass, bottles of urine, etc, destroying property, that isn't protected by the constitution and there is no place for that kind of violent intolerance in a civilized society.
Antifa's existence is a violation of the social contract of a western democracy, plain and simple. Violence against political opposition is unacceptable regardless of what you believe. Antifa are a bunch of LARPing scum assaulting people in the streets advocating for communism and censorship. It's not hard to see why so many people dislike them.
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