Politics Unassessed

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles ??? This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

I have moved the section that was labelled "History" to the end of the article under the subsection "Twenty-first century". This section only covered activities in the 21st century and did cover the history of anti-fascist activities post-WW2. Individual subsections describe the history for Germany, the UK, and Sweden so the entire content should be under the "History" section. --NoGhost (talk) 17:33, 16 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Antifa movements → ? – Antifa is a jargon word developed decades after WWII. It is normally used to refer to specific movements or groups which often use violence, and not to all anti-fascist movements. I guess it could be retitled Post-WWII Anti-fascist movements (which is now a redirect) although that would be a subset of Post-WWII Anti-fascism and I'd prefer to start with the larger topic. Doug Weller talk 12:07, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support rename/revert to "Post-WWII Anti-fascism". I strongly agree that the current name is bad. "Antifa" is jargon that is not widely known outside of the USA, which is bad given that the we need to serve all English speaking readers well and this article doesn't even have much about the USA in it. The term "Antifa" has political baggage, i.e. is is mostly used as a term of abuse and to suggest a rival mob as opposed to a variety of different movements opposing fascism so I feel that it is not NPOV to use it except where following the name used in mainstream RS sources, which this clearly is not. It does not have mainstream acceptance. It is often used misleadingly to imply a single movement, although this is mitigated by the plural in the title here. I am 100% happy that a revert to the original name of "Post-WWII Anti-fascism" would be a significant improvement over the current situation. I'm not seeing "Post-WWII Anti-fascist movements" as the preferred option but I'd still support that as an improvement over what we have now. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:03, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is incorrect and rather baffling to say that "Antifa" is English or US jargon or that it is a term of abuse. "Antifa" is if anything distinctively German. It was coined in the 1930s and became the predominant self-chosen identifier of the street-fighting anti-Rightist groups that originated from the German Autonomists in the 1980s.

I think it would be wise to retitle this article with a descriptive term, since groups that actually called themselves "Antifa" or something similar (AFA) should be discussed together with groups like Anti-Racist Action that are recognizably part of the same genearl topic. But this business about "Antifa" being hostile American jargon is, I'm sorry, just ignorant. That's mistaking your Twitter feed for a dictionary. TiC ^(talk) 15:18, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. I should have been more clear that I was talking in terms of the English language where it has recently been adopted exactly in the manner I suggested. The German usage is not really relevant to whether English speakers will understand the title correctly. At this point I was going to check the name of the German version of this article to see what is used there but there doesn't seem to be one linked. Anyway, I'll say that I think that the German usage and the English usage, while clearly linked in the past, are now so divergent as to be almost entirely different in everything but spelling. --DanielRigal (talk) 15:33, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Any additional comments:

I'm puzzled by the frequent use of the word "kennwort", which normally means "password", in association with the term antifa. For instance:

"Die Belastungen, die der Begriff “Antifaschismus” heute mit sich schleppt, sind leicht zu identifizieren: In den zwanziger und dreiBiger Jah-ren stand das Kennwort “Antifa” fiir den - im groBen und ganzen erfolglo-sen - Versuch der offiziellen kommunistischen Politik, in den europaischen Gesellschaften, soweit sich in diesen faschistische Massenbewegungen her-ausbildetcn, den Zustrom zum Faschismus zum Halt zu bringen und den Ubergang zum Faschismus an der Macht zu verhindern oder bereits etablier-te faschistische Systeme von innen heraus wieder umzustiirzen. Zugleich diente die “Antifa-Strategie” der kommunistischen Parteien damals zumin-dest zeitweise auch dem Unterfangen, die Krafteverhaltnisse innerhalb der Arbeiterbewegung auf Kosten der Sozialdemokratie oder linkssozialisti-scher Gruppierungen zu Gunsten der eigenen, “revolutionaren” Position zu korrigieren; die “Sozialfaschismus” Kampagne ist ein Indiz dafiir. Im historischen Scheitern dieser kommunistischen “Antifa”-Politik wurden katastrophale Fehleinschatzungen, die ihr innewohnten, offensichtlich, so etwa die illusionare Annahme, eine breite, zunachst groBteils faschistische “Radikalisierung” der Bevolkerung werde nach einer kurzcn Phase eine Wende hin zur revolutionaren Linken (das hieB: zu den Kommunisten) zeitigen, oder auch die MiBachtung des Wertes “biirgerlicher” politischer Freiheiten und rechtsstaatlicher Absicherungen.[ Https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3rDrNgrm99kC&pg=PA58&dq=antifa&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUgeOm1ePVAhVnLMAKHTR_AQ8Q6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q=antifa&f=false]

Is translated by Google as: "The pressures that the term "anti-fascism" drags today are easily identified: in the twenties and thirties the password "Antifa" stood for the - largely unsuccessful - attempt of official communist politics, in European societies As far as these fascist mass movements are concerned, to halt the influx of fascism and to prevent the transition to fascism in power, or to re-collapse already established fascist systems from the inside out. At the same time, the "Antifa strategy" of the communist parties at the same time served at least temporarily to correct the power relations within the workers' movement at the expense of the social democrat or leftist socialist groups in favor of their own "revolutionary" position; The "Social Fascism" campaign is an indication of this. In the historical failure of this Communist "Antifa" policy, catastrophic misjudgments, which were inherent in it, such as the illusionary assumption that a broad, largely fascist "radicalization" of the population would, after a brief period, turn to the revolutionary left (the To the Communists), or to ignore the value of "bourgeois" political liberties and protection of the state. The policy of the KPD, the SED and the DKP in the German occupation zones and the German sub-states after 1945 also appealed to "anti-fascism", but this clearly reflected the Communist "Antifa" concept of the twenties and thirties. In the course of German history, there was the experience that the Nazi movement had been able to drive the workers' movement, including its communist direction, into a sustained defeat, and that its power had to be broken only externally, by military means, Tactically or strategically - to the idea that the discussion of possible new fascist dangers would require the alliance of communists and other "bourgeois" opponents of fascism"

Kein Spuk von gestern oder: Rechtsextremismus und "konservative Revolution" By Arno Klönne By Arno Klönnenm, published by Lit Verlag , an academic publisher. Doug Weller </ span> Talk 16:20, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise. I am copying text which is in German and pasting it here, but Chrome seems to think it should translate it. I'm going to try Firefox. Doug Weller talk 16:36, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Kennwort" does ordinarily mean "password". This author seems to use it in a non-standard (perhaps academic?) way to mean "catchphrase", "term", "descriptor", etc.  Sandstein  22:02, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]