Talk:Antifa (United States)

RfC: Capitalization

No consensus. Although the numerical count tilts towards antifa I find the strength of the arguments relatively close. Regardless, there is certainly no affirmative consensus to change it to Antifa, so it will remain antifa. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:46, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should the subject of this article be capitalized (Antifa) or not (antifa)? feminist (talk) 07:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

• Previous discussions on the issue: 1 2 3. feminist (talk) 07:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
• Antifa, per Google Books usage that shows the capitalized form being much more common. That more sources currently cited in our article use "antifa" than not is of little relevance, considering that Wikipedia is WP:NOTFINISHED and this article can be improved with additional sources. feminist (talk) 07:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
• Comment: Note that Google Books ngram search is significantly polluted in these cases and is not conclusive. Looking at the specific results of the search, one can see how "Antifa" has many hits where 1) it is used in English titles per titling conventions, 2) includes extensive citations of German material, with all nouns capitalized, 3) cites specific entities such as Antifa-Net. See, for example, how many times the title "Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook" is cited in many publications but the book itself uses "antifa" in lowercase. --MarioGom (talk) 09:40, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree, and if you look at the actual results thrown up by the n-gram, you'll quickly see that only one of the post-2005 texts refers to the US, which is the topic of this article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:37, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa In my experience it is usually not capitalized. On the first page of a google search I found it uncapitalized in articles from the ADL,[1] Webster's,[2] the Urban Dictionary,[3] the Atlantic[4] USA Today[5] and the New York Times[6] and capitalized in CNN[7] and BBC.[8] Those are all the reliable sources on the first page of searches and it goes 6-2. I think grammatically that is correct because antifa is not an organization, hence not a proper noun requiring capitalization. TFD (talk) 16:40, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
• Antifa. Black Lives Matter, Occupy, Me Too. These are all names of non-organizations that are movements, and all are standardly capitalized. The question is whether the term is a proper name. The answer is that of course it is a proper name--it's the proper name of a movement, just like these other examples. Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:13, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
  • There's also the progressive movement, the feminist movement, the socialist movement, the conservative movement, the environmentalist movement. TFD (talk) 17:40, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Would you say that those are proper names? I wouldn't. That's the distinction it seems to me. Shinealittlelight (talk) 19:09, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Not usually, but neither is antifa. They become proper names when they are adopted by organized groups, hence we talk about Socialists in France and Conservatives in England. If you set up a group and call yourselves the "Alabama Antifa" or something similar then it would be capitalized. However, the key guideline is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters: "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." We're not supposed to arbitrate how the language is used, but to reflect current usage. TFD (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Maybe we can agree that 'Me Too' and 'Black Lives Matter' are proper names of movements, while 'the feminist movement', 'the socialist movement', or 'the civil rights movement' are not proper names, but rather descriptions of famous movements. The former are capitalized because they are proper names. The latter are not capitalized because they are not proper names. If we agree about that, then the only question is which group 'Antifa' belongs to. I think it more or less obviously belongs to the former. Shinealittlelight (talk) 19:55, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure if BLM, #MeToo and #Occupy are proper names or not, but the reason for capitalising them wouldn't just be that they are proper names. All three terms originated as hashtags or slogans made up of ordinary words that have a different meaning if you don't capitalise them. It would be confusing not to capitalise them. That's simply not the case with antifa, which has no other meaning. In fact, the opposite is true with antifa, where capitalising it creates confusion with actual formal groups. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:48, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa - MOS:DOCTCAPS O3000 (talk) 17:59, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

That policy says that capitalization can be appropriate where the term "derives from a proper name," as in the present case. Shinealittlelight (talk) 19:10, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

What proper name? Antifaschistisch is a common word. The fact that a German party that lasted two years in the 30s used that word in its proper name doesn't make the common word a proper name. You would need to show that the current usage was derived from that short-lived, Communist affiliated party from 90 years ago. O3000 (talk) 19:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Read the policy; that isn't what it means. Shinealittlelight (talk) 20:00, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I read it. I have seen no evidence that antfi derived from a proper name. It derived from a common word. The fact that Jiffy Peanut Butter is a proper name does not mean we capitalize butter. O3000 (talk) 20:04, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not saying that we should capitalize 'antifascist'. We plainly should not. I'm suggesting we should capitalize 'Antifa', which is obviously a proper name for a movement, just like 'Me Too' and 'BLM'. Shinealittlelight (talk) 20:24, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

MOS:DOCTCAPS disagrees. Also, BLM has a formal network and MeToo is a hash tag that is very confusing when not capitalized. O3000 (talk) 20:33, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa per TFD and O3000. Also see my comment above when considering search results. --MarioGom (talk) 20:02, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
• antifa: I've previously expressed the view that it's a trivial matter not worth arguing over, but the corollary to that is that there's no sense in changing the status quo in the absence of a very good reason. Neither of the arguments for capitalising given above is sufficient: Feminist's argument is quite clearly debunked by MarioGom, and Shinealittlelight's argument is only marginally more coherent than their amusingly baffling prior argument that "antifa" is sometimes used as an adjective and should be lower-case in such instances, which failed to convince when no one was able to find a single example of such usage. As such, there's really no need for a positive argument in favour of the lower-case: the status quo persists in the absence of a good reason why it shouldn't. But if one did want such an argument, one could do much worse than Bobfrombrockley's well-evidenced argument that "sources ... that know more about what they are talking about (as opposed to learnt about the existence of antifa in August 2017), tend to use the lower case more". – Arms & Hearts (talk) 00:04, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

What I said then is that there is probably no uncontroversial example of 'antifa' being used as an adjective, but that it seemed to me that it was being used as such in the ADL source, which explicitly says that they use 'antifa' as short for the adjective 'antifascist'. You responded that you thought ADL was using a noun as short for an adjective. I doubt that is coherent. (So there!) But, reading through our previous discussion, I am reminded of Vexations's example of 'alt-right', which he says is typically not capitalized. He thought 'antifa' is sort of like that. I think I agree with him. 'Alt-right' is an abbreviation of an adjective, and so is 'antifa' when it is not capitalized. That's my view, anyway. But it looks like the consensus is to keep 'antifa' as a proper name that isn't capitalized, flouting the ordinary conventions of English. (I realize that you may hold the view that it is a common noun--apparently one that refers to exactly one thing, which is pretty unusual.) Shinealittlelight (talk) 00:29, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa - Mainly based on what's already been said, but also because the purpose of Wikipedia should be to prevent confusion, and this is a common source of confusion. There are specific antifa groups (Rose City Antifa, is one WP:N example), and there are historical groups which have been commonly called "antifa" by modern sources (Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, etc). There is no umbrella organization here, and using capitalization to imply some degree of formality would subtly contribute to this common misconception. Grayfell (talk) 06:09, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

  I don't really see why capitalizing it would necessarily imply some degree of formality, any more than having Anonymous (group) capitalized implies formality of a decentralized movement. feminist (talk) 06:37, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the clue is in the word "group" in the title of Anonymous (group). That article says "Anonymous is a decentralized international hacktivist group". Whereas antifa is not a group, but a movement. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:41, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa definitely. For the reasons given above. In particular we need to avoid confusion, specifically people thinking that it is an organisation. This is the problem with coming late to a discussion, it's hard to think of something new and clever to say. :-) Doug Weller talk 13:47, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I really don't understand this idea that non-organizations can't have capitalized proper names. That just isn't true. Anything can have a proper name. And proper names are standardly capitalized in English. Shinealittlelight (talk) 16:38, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

So go argue this at MOS:DOCTCAPS. And tell the editors at civil rights movement, animal rights movement, anti-nuclear movement, anti-war movement, environmental movement, they're wrong.

I don't think those are wrong; they're adjectives in each case. 'The antifascist movement' would be grammatically correct. But 'Antifa' is ordinarily a proper name, so it is capitalized. Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:19, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Pretty sure civil rights movement is a compound noun. O3000 (talk) 18:13, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Fine, but my point is that they aren't proper names, while 'Antifa' is a proper name. Shinealittlelight (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

My point above was that antifa is generally not capitalized in reliable sources and therefore per guidelines we should not capitalize it. altright and kd lang are also not capitalized, although in the later case standard it is clearly a proper name. TFD (talk) 19:20, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

We have several RS for both. Alt-right isn't a proper name. And 'kd lang' is a stylized stage name. If 'antifa' is a stylized proper name, then we normally seem to note when names are stylized, and we don't use the stylized version throughout the article (e.g. in our Lang article, or our Kesha article--we don't call her 'Ke$ha'). Shinealittlelight (talk) 19:26, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

You're just going in circles. MOS:DOCTCAPS O3000 (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes we have both. That's what "is generally not capitalized" means. Some do, most don't. And the guideline says that we follow what most rs do, rather than what some editors think is grammatically correct. And the reason for the guideline, which is consistent with weight, is that Wikipedia articles should not strive to influence public opinion but to reflect what the public would find in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 23:59, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the Washington Post ([9]), the BBC ([10]) or The New York Times ([11]) are thinking about it being a "stylized proper name" when they write antifa movement. --MarioGom (talk) 00:46, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, but I hear Jeff Bezos is the reincarnation of e.e. cummings. O3000 (talk) 01:19, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Webster's says that capitalization is less common.[12] TFD (talk) 02:57, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa definitely, as per arguments made above. It's not a proper name. It creates confusion as it contributes to the misconception that it is a formal organisation. And the overwhelming majority of informed RSs don't capitalise. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:51, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
• Antifa - From what I can tell reading through the arguments above, the only person who has tried to Wikipedia:Search engine test this is User:Feminist. The only real question to ask here is which usage is most common. The only real way to figure that out is search engine testing. Can anyone point to a search engine test that suggests the lower case is more common? NickCT (talk) 19:54, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Everyone does such tests. But, they have no meaning by themselves as they pick up absurd sites and highly replicated material. O3000 (talk) 19:58, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

In order to rely on the Ngram viewer results we would need to know what percentage of the results were from reliable sources and which were from book and article titles, where nouns are typically capitalized. Furthermore, the search ends in 2012, although the term probably has become much more commonly used since then. I think my search was better: 6 reliable sources on the first page of a google search were uncapitalized, while 2 capitalized. but the best approach is to see what reliable sources say about usage. Webster's says the term is usually uncapitalized. Presumably, dictionary editors have access to the same sources that Wikipedia editors do and have greater expertise in determining how words are used. TFD (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@Objective3000 and The Four Deuces: - It's easy to poke holes in User:Feminist's methodology, and some of your criticism is fair. But the thing is, what are YOU doing to figure out the most common usage? Nothing? I'll take a flawed method over no method.

Saying "I think my search was better: 6 reliable sources on the first page of a google search were uncapitalized" - A random grab like that might be a fair way to do things. I'll give it a go and see what I get.

Don't want to sound like a hater, but Websters is to dictionaries what USA Today is to newspapers. NickCT (talk) 12:40, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources says, "There is consensus that USA Today is generally reliable. Editors note the publication's robust editorial process and its centrist alignment." I agree though that Webster's is full of misspellings: color, willful, etc., but that's actually how Americans spell things. TFD (talk) 13:08, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: - Ok..... So I did it your way. Random Google News grab. Used the first dozen articles from sources I recognized. Want to make it clear I'm not endorsing the reliability or quality of sources like the Washington Examiner. I used a low bar for the sources I accepted for this.

Lower Case

Fox

WaPo

Newsweek

NTY

Washington Examiner

Cap

KTSA

Fox

Quartz

KRCRTV

The Hill

Fox

Snopes

So score is 7 to 5 in favor of capitalization. Interesting that sources like Fox News are little confused (sometimes using capitalization, sometimes not). NickCT (talk) 17:22, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Interesting that three out of four hits were for Fox. I wonder if google skews the search based on your preference for news sources.

I think it is correct to capitalize Antifa when referring to the organization, just as we capitalize the Democratic Party. (Of course the Antifa organization only exists in some people's minds.) That seems to be the sense in which conservative talk show host Lars Larson of KTSA, and articles in KRCRTV and Snopes do. The Snopes article for example refers to the supposed leader of Portland Antifa. Of course if antifa were an actual organization with leaders and membership cards and a secret agenda to overthrow Western civilization, then it should be capitalized.

How did you choose the first dozen? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the first page? Anyway, I don't think you should count Fox multiple times- just say they use both.

So here's my count: lower case (4), upper case (3), mixed (1), capitalized when referring to Antifa as an actual organization (3). I also note the lower case sources are more highly regarded in general. But that's the problem with using OR- different editors come to different conclusions based on different data and interpretation. Fortunately, we don't have to reinvent the wheel and can leave that to writers in reliable sources.

TFD (talk) 20:24, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Google skews results according to your preferences. That's why some people use DuckDuckGo. I use a separate browser always set to incognito. O3000 (talk) 20:34, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

To clarify, "Portland Antifa" is Rose City Antifa, which is a specific organization with a proper name. A member of that group could be called "a member of Antifa" as shorthand, but this is not really helpful, is it? This is an example of why google hit counts need to be evaluated carefully. As another example, the Quartz article does clearly capitalize antifa, but it barely discuss antifa at all. It is mainly about how antifa was falsely implicated for a bombing, likely take advantage of those who view "Antifa" as a boogieman. The source Quartz links for more background is this article at Time.com which doesn't capitalize and goes into significantly more depth about antifa as a concept. Grayfell (talk) 21:12, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Objective3000 and The Four Deuces: - re "your preference" - For the record, I very rarely read Fox news. I imagine the abundance of articles probably reflects Fox's obsession with left-wing "extremists". re "How did you choose the first dozen? " - From the first hits, I picked the first 12 that were from sources I recognized (i.e. I ommitted really obscure sources, that probably weren't RS). re "different editors come to different conclusion" - Right. Which is why it's best to do a blind review of all sources (e.g. ngrams). Look, it seems like your method produces an ambiguous answer and ngram points to capatilizing. Why not go with capatilizing? NickCT (talk) 19:29, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Because context matters. Even here, for issues like this, we need to summarize what sources are actually saying in proportion to due weight, not merely count them. Grayfell (talk) 20:44, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

@Grayfell: - What's your argument though? Why do 5 sources beat 7? Why do the 5 deserve more weight? If you don't have some rationale for why certain sources are better than others, then why not just count? NickCT (talk) 21:13, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Seriously? I already gave my argument above. Te restate it, references to a specific group should not be conflated with the concept of "antifa". Additionally, sources which discuss antifa in depth are, at a glance, less likely to capitalize than those which mention the term briefly, or as context for a separate issue. This article, obviously, should be substantially about antifa, so we should follow substantial sources. Grayfell (talk) 21:40, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Well sorry if I missed the point. But honestly I don't buy the point. There are a whole bunch of groups that rally under a flag in the way you're describing. A lot of terrorist groups will rally under one name but have very little affiliation with each. Can you point to a single other example where your "Caps for a group. Lower case for the ideology" rationale? Seems like arbitrary rationale. Why would we use it here? I'm not going to go from RS to RS to figure out if they are talking about a group or the ideology. NickCT (talk) 02:53, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

NickCT, for my search, I typed "Antifa" into a google.com seach[13] as I explained above. The page returned 10 hits, and I excluded Wikipedia and twitter, and was left with 8 reliable sources. But as I said, this is original research and Wikipedia:No original research says it is helpful to consult tertiary sources. Fortunately one tertiary source listed as reliable in Wikipedia's perennial sources page popped out in the google search, Webster's. TFD (talk) 02:07, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: - I get that tertiary sources usually trump secondary ones. But that doesn't mean that one tertiary source trumps dozens of secondary ones. Plus, you've gotta consider source quality. Again, this is Webster's. The McDonald's of dictionaries. NickCT (talk) 14:07, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

None of the secondary sources say that the term is usually capitalized. What you are doing is conducting your own investigation because you disagree with the conclusions reached in reliable sources. That's no different from reading about 911 and concluding that the history books are wrong. Of course they might be wrong, but policy requires us to rely on them rather than the conclusions of research by individual editors. What we normally do if we question what reliable sources say is find reliable sources that say something different. TFD (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I think I'd agree with you if we were talking about matters of fact. But talking about a lingual/semantic issue here. WP:COMMONNAME sorta directs us to do our own research on the issue. And again, Websters isn't really a great source. They commonly define things outside the norm or at odds with what other dictionaries say. NickCT (talk) 13:23, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• Antifa It is a name of a collection of groups, so a proper noun, and looking though the sources for this article most capitalize it as well. Other similar decentralized organizations also do the same as noted above. The argument that there is not central committee or the like really has no bearing on this argument from what I can see, again similar groups do not have that issue. PackMecEng (talk) 22:00, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Then why aren't civil rights movement, animal rights movement, anti-nuclear movement, anti-war movement, environmental movement, proper nouns? Antifa is a movement. O3000 (talk) 22:04, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Then why are Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Me Too capitalized? I am mostly going by what most RS use, which is capitalization. Think of it like this, when they are on the news, they are referred to Antifa part of the civil rights movement. When say a group from the x movement is on the news they state the organization and that they are part of the x movement. So for your example it would be Black Lives Matter which is part of the civil rights movement. See what I mean? The broader groups like the civil rights movement are less specific than groups like Antifa. PackMecEng (talk) 22:11, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Black Lives Matter, for example, is a movement, but it is also a group with specific founders, a website, a mission statement, etc. The lines may be a bit blurry, but they exist. Antifa isn't a group, and it isn't even a collection of groups. Specific antifa groups have proper names, but the article isn't solely about those groups. Further, claiming that the civil rights movement is "less specific" than anti-fascism is a distraction at best, and introduces more questions than it answers. Grayfell (talk) 22:36, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Antifa most certainly is a collection of groups under an ideal. It is closer to Occupy which which like Antifa has no central structure but regional groups or chapters. Also claiming it is less specific? That is what it is. It was in response to O3000's question and examples. It would go something like civil rights movement at a broad level, then Antifa, and then Rose City Antifa. It is an explanation why civil rights movement is not capitalized and why Antifa is capitalized by most sources. PackMecEng (talk) 22:43, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

It is not "a collection of groups", but, to the extent that it is a collection of anything, like the feminist movement or the conservative movement, it is a collection of individuals, who might organise as groups, often as short-lived ad hoc affinity groups, occasionally as more formalised local associations. However, it is usually used as an adjective rather than a noun, making the capitalisation even weirder. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Some people believe that Antifa is a highly organized group of professional revolutionaries acting under the direction of the New World Order. Here's a link to a purportedly leaked membership card posted on reddit. I think that using capitalization buys into that theory. TFD (talk) 14:33, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Hey, you just outed by photo. O3000 (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, a collection of individuals that joined local groups under the Antifa banner? No? Seems they only form groups when they try to do anything worthwhile. So maybe we just ignore the collection of individuals part, since that describes every group and is not well supposed. PackMecEng (talk) 14:47, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, do you have any books on grammar that say that? I always thought that a word that referred to various groups and individuals, all of whom would be described using proper nouns, was a common noun. Hence we talk about navies, cities, political parties, married women, people, places, etc. TFD (talk) 02:12, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I think your ping did not work. I was mostly going off the examples I gave which are different than the situation you have there. I will take a look for something more concrete in a bit though. PackMecEng (talk) 02:55, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

My apologies - now corrected. Isn't it correct to say that BLM, Occupy, etc. are capitalized not because of grammatical rules, but because that is what users of the language have decided? Our role as editors is not to decide what should or should not be capitalized, but to follow the practice in reliable sources. I don't want to see that the Daily Rag of Pig's Knuckle, Iowa, has decided to capitalize Antifa because Wikipedia editors have decided to do that. TFD (talk) 04:21, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

How about KIVI Boise!?[14] Though I was mostly going by the sources we use in this article for capitalization. I do like the Idaho Statesman article, it even references wikipedia![15] Though they use all caps for some reason. PackMecEng (talk) 04:38, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

re "users of the language have decided" - Absolutely right. We go with the WP:COMMONNAME! NickCT (talk) 10:55, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

When you provide references you should be accurate. The article is credited to CNN. It was written by Jessica Suerth [16], who was an intern at CNN and is now a digital journalist at KPNX in Mesa, Arizona, "specializing in social media, our website and app." If you were writing an academic paper and expected to be taken seriously, you would not cite that article as a reason to use upper case spelling. I suggest that instead of starting with an opinion about whether to capitalize antifa and searching for sources that support your view, that you objectively review the sources and come to an informed decision. A serious scholar would never argue that while experts do not capitalize it, a social media reporter in Mesa, Arizona does and what do they know compared with her? TFD (talk) 04:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: Some time ago, an editor (Doug?) linked on this talk page to Wikipedia:Anarchism referencing guidelines as helpful in thinking about how we use reliable sources for this article, and hence how we should view things like Google searches or nGrams as indicators of correct usage. The guidelines refer to anarchism, but are equally true of antifa (not least as many antifa activists are anarchists). Extracts from the guidance: Because anarchism has traditionally been a marginalised movement, it can be challenging to find well-informed mainstream sources of information. Editors are encouraged to provide multiple sources wherever possible, and should consider scholarly, well-researched material the best source of information... A comprehensive familiarity with anarchism, as with many subjects, is rare among journalists. Their concept of anarchism is often associated with terrorism, chaos or anomie in the popular consciousness, whether rightly or wrongly so.... Major mainstream newspapers are generally considered reliable sources on Wikipedia. However, a journalist doing a story on a group of anarchists will often have no prior experience with the anarchist movement. As such, articles that do not cite multiple sources should be considered accurate only in representing the point of view expressed by the particular groups covered in the article and should not be generalized further to the anarchist movement as a whole. The guideline goes on to recommend reliable anarchist sources, as preferable to mainstream sources. Many of the mainstream sources on antifa, particularly those rushed out in 2017 when the topic entered public consciousness (such as the CNN explainer reproduced by kivitv and linked above, which is laughably incorrect to anyone familiar with the movement), are based on very little knowledge or research. If, instead of doing a random search on Google, we look at how knowledgeable sources use the term, we get a different picture. For example, there are a tiny number of serious books published on antifa. Mark Bray (quoted in our article and in several mainstream sources as an expert), uses a small a in his[17][18] (Serious mainstream source about him do so too.[19][20][21]) There is a newer academic book, American Antifa[22] by a sociologist Stanislav Vysotsky published by the scholarly publishing house Routledge. He uses a small a.[23][24] Here is a much more serious and authoritative discussion of the term which quotes the two authors; it uses a small a. If you look at online sources which antifa activists write for and read, you will see a similar pattern. Here are the most recent articles with the search term in It's Going Down, the main pro-antifa website in the US, excluding those that only specifically refer to particular proper name groups like NYC Antifa or Rose City Antifa or that only quote upper case right-wing attacks: [25] [26] [27] Another serious publication which antifa activists sometimes write for is In These Times, which also usually uses lower case[28][29][30] - although not consistently[31]. Ditto the Baffler, but more consistently.[32] On the websites of the main US antifa groups, when they use the term generically they use lower case - see NYC Antifa[33] or Rose City Antifa.[34] My view is that these kinds of sources are more important in helping us decide than a local radio station, Fox News, or an op ed in The Hill. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa lower-case, as this is not a formal organization, but a loose appellation that some individuals apply to themselves. Specific organizations, such as Rose City Antifa would have the capital as it's part of a formal organization name. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:12, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa: per sources, this is not a formal org, nor a collection of regional groups. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:11, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

  Here are a few sources that use Antifa and mention how they are regional groups.[35][36][37][38] PackMecEng (talk) 04:39, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

  • When we are referring to groups called Antifa then I agree we should capitalize it. Ironically, I lost an argument to capitalize Communist when it referred to actual Communist Parties. (See Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 41#Requested move 14 August 2019). Where were you? TFD (talk) 05:43, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@PackMecEng: can you quote from those sources where they say these "regional groups" are formal organisations with members, and, crucially, that all US antifa are members of these "regional groups"? There are several parties called Conservative around the world, and we call use a capital C when referring to those parties - but that doesn't mean we capitalise the word "conservative" at all times, as many conservatives are not in those parties. Also, check my comment just above which sets out why those ill-informed articles are not as useful as the informed and the experts, such as Bray who is quoted in a couple of them as an expert. @The Four Deuces: I wish I'd seen that argument as I would have strongly argued for capitalisation there, for the same reason I oppose it here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:51, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)No I did read the sources you provided and they do use lowercase. More what I and others have tried to illustrate is the majority of sources user uppercase. While the sources you list are good sources, they are in the minority and I see no reason to discard the majority of sources because you like what your sources say more. PackMecEng (talk) 16:57, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

There's no head "Antifa" organisation that controls or oversees regional groups. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:52, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Correct, just like Occupy for instance. Nor does there need to be. PackMecEng (talk) 19:58, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

As I demonstrated above, the majority of reliable sources use lower case. However, results are affected by Google Personalized Search, which returns results based on what sites the searcher normally visits. That's why NickCT got 3 hits for Fox News and a right wing columnist, while I got the ADL, Webster's, the Urban Dictionary, the Atlantic, USA Today, the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, Wikipedia and twitter. Because the search engine assumes that I am looking for the most respected sources, while it assumes that NickCT is looking for sources that reflect a specific political viewpoint. TFD (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

For a second time; I don't read Fox News. Also, you've presented no reproducible evidence that the majority of sources use lower case. NickCT (talk) 16:16, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

If you think that Google searches are not reproducible, that invalidates your entire argument. Fortunately, policy allows us to consult reliable sources whose authors have examined the issue and have formed an educated agreement on usage and their opinion was accepted by America's most respected dictionary. Also, you originally said you very rarely read Fox News. That's entirely possible because Google returns hits for the types of publications you normally consult for news stories. I wouldn't get that impression based on your user page, although your stated views appear rather heterodox. TFD (talk) 04:47, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Are you sure you know how Google works? I do not think you know how Google works. The majority of RS support capital so lets just go by that. Also no one cares about Fox or who watches Fox. PackMecEng (talk) 05:03, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, there is no need to insult other editors. You have not evidenced your case that "the majority of RS support capital"; the evidence presented above at best suggests that some RSs capitalise but not a majority. Nor have pro-capitalisation editors addressed the arguments about why some RSs are more useful here than others. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:37, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Both have been addressed ad nauseam above. More sources have been shown above to use uppercase and you do not get to discount the majority for sources you personally prefer. PackMecEng (talk) 17:40, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

The Google search I provided to you and have already mentioned 5 times shows that five out of ten reliable sources on the first pages of searches use lower case, while only three use upper case.[39] The fact I can link to a Google search should be evidence that I know how searches work. You have not yet explained what you find wrong with this search. TFD (talk) 17:45, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

At least two other users have shown how Google searching doesn't say what you says it does PackMecEng. Can you show me where you've addressed my points about why some sources are more useful than others (it's at the end of this version? BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:56, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm trying the Google experiment. Of the first 12 RS hits for antifa, I find 9 use lower case and only 3 upper case. Upper case: BBC,[40] CNN,[41] New Yorker[42]. Lower case: ADL,[43] Independent[44] NYT,[45] the only published book on our topic,[46] Atlantic,[47] Evening Standard,[48] Pacific Standard,[49] Fox,[50] Vox[51]. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:04, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

And here is the Atlantic upper case[52], the Independent[53], New York Times[54], Fox[55], Washington Post[56], AOL[57], NPR[58], The Economist[59], The Guardian[60], Politico[61], Business Insider[62], Vice[63], PBS[64], ABC[65], The Associated Press[66], and Daily Beast[67]. Heck a lot of those are sources from this article. PackMecEng (talk) 18:49, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

As the only reliable source for usage presented in this discussion says, some sources capitalize the word, most do not. Therefore you should have no problem finding 16 examples of upper case among the millions of hits for "Antifa" on google. By comparison I could probably find the names of over 16 antifa in the U.S. That would not prove that most Americans are antifa. TFD (talk) 20:09, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Well no, you got it backwards there. Most use capital as shown here and above. PackMecEng (talk) 20:34, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

So you've moved the goal posts pretty dramatically. The exercise you proposed wasn't to look for upper case examples but to look at a random selection of reliable sources, i.e. the first reliable google hits, and look at the proportions. Also, seems relevant to me that these sources that we have shown use both upper and lower seem more likely to have moved from upper to lower. This appears (by looking at the most recent instance) to be the case with the Atlantic,[68] Independent,[69] Fox,[70]. Of those that use both over time, a number use lower case more often, e.g. Guardian, NPR.[71] BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:57, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes a number use lower case and most use upper case. We can keep going round and round if you like though. PackMecEng (talk) 20:49, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources say that most use lower case and Google search returns more examples of lower case. Lower case also follows grammatical rules of the English language. TFD (talk) 21:03, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

That is not true though. The majority of RS favor upper case. PackMecEng (talk) 21:18, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but I prefer to rely on what reliable sources say and tests that can be replicated rather than your personal conclusions, based on whatever you get your news from. TFD (talk) 23:04, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Great! Then you should update your vote to upper case. PackMecEng (talk) 23:29, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I guess you must have missed my postings above. I pointed out to you numerous times, the only reliable source presented says that lower case is more common, while the only replicable test presented shows lower case preferred in reliable sources by 5 to 3. TFD (talk) 00:22, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

• antifa so as to avoid confusions just like the above discussions suggested. Idealigic (talk) 21:32, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
• Antifa simply because it helps (my) readability. Also, man I love that we can still waste this much text on something so small (or capitalized!). Arkon (talk) 20:18, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• antifa I'd like to point out one thing: a google search) especially on by a logged-in user, is anything but random, but in fact highly biased. And the use of Antifa vs antifa is also clearly biased. Right-wing sources favour capitalizing the term. I can only hypothesize, but I suspect that they want to suggest to their readers that there is an organization by that name. There isn't. Vexations (talk) 21:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

So, they should ask the leader of this organization what they prefer. If there is no leader -- well, there is the answer. O3000 (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I think they tried that with Occupy and it came back with caps. PackMecEng (talk) 23:29, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: This has been running for more than one month. I think it is clear that there is no consensus to change from lowercase to uppercase. Should we formally close it? --MarioGom (talk) 23:09, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"anti-facists" in opening line?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Using anti-facism here is like using "socialism" to describe this group is like using "socialist" to describe nazism. The ideologies this group promotes are inarguably facists. I'm proposing the wording in the opening sentence be changed to remove "anti-facists" and the origin of the groups name be referenced separately. 73.227.195.63 (talk) 22:54, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Not really. "Antifa" is literally an abbreviation of "antifascist", while "nazi" is an abbreviation for "National Socialist". You may want to actually read the article, as well as articles about predecessors (Antifaschistische Aktion, Post-World War II anti-fascism). Also, note that Wikipedia is not a forum and any changes you propose should be based on reliable sources. Best, --MarioGom (talk) 23:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

73.227.195.63 says "The ideologies this group promotes are inarguably facists". WP:RS required as well as showing that it is not reflective of the article per WP:LEAD. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:09, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

EvergreenFir, my comment might be misleading. When I said not really it was not an answer to the question in the title, but to the body of the comment ;-) --MarioGom (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, my comment was to the IP, not you! My bad. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:18, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

See my comment below in response to Acroterion 73.227.195.63 (talk) 06:00, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

The OP's comment appears to be an attempt at false symmetry: if National Socialists aren't actually socialists, then Antifa must be equally incorrect. This kind of forum-style false equivalence is a perennial feature of talkpages associated with fascism, where new accounts and IPs argue points not supported by any serious political science scholarship of the past eighty years. This idea also features in demands that, if fascism is characterized as "far right, then Antifa and similar opposition to fascism must inevitably be "far-left," regardless of actual ideology (if any coherent ideology really exists for Antifa). This also presupposes that broad opposition to fascism is an idea unique to extremists. Acroterion (talk) 00:00, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm not attempting to make a false equivalency here. Simply trying to demonstrate that the burden of proof is not met for calling the group anti-facists. The point I was trying to make is that anti-facism, like socialism needs to be cited. The burden of proof is no different because of the name. There are no citations here to support this group as being an anti-facists group nor is there consensus that antifa is anti-facists 73.227.195.63 (talk) 06:00, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Also, the citations for "militant anti-facists" don't approach a consensus on this. The first one [3] questions wether or not the group is facists. 73.227.195.63 (talk) 06:03, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

If you mean the Washington Post source, no, it doesn't. The only paragraph resembling that is the following that talks about how antifa actions might inadvertently further fascism, which is something else completely. The rest of the article calls antifa "left". Rather than prevent fascism, antifa violence could further it, argued Laurie Marhoefer, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who has studied Hitler's rise. "Violent confrontations with antifascists gave the Nazis a chance to paint themselves as the victims of a pugnacious, lawless left," she wrote for the Conversation. "They seized it." Sjö (talk) 13:58, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

This is well covered and cited in the body. O3000 (talk) 10:34, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Summary of lead sentence sources on antifa political affiliation

I think it may be useful at this stage to take stock of what our lede sources state regarding the political affiliaton of antifa.

This should set the WP basis for further edits to the section in case discrepancies arise.

1. Mic: "militant elements of the left"
2. WaPo: "far-left activists"
3. NBC: No statement on political leaning
4. Kiro 7: No statement on political leaning
5. Kansas City Star: "militant leftist activists"
6. CNN: "lean toward the left -- often the far left"
7. NYT: No statement on political leaning, but describes black bloc as anarchist subset among "broader left-wing protests".
8. Wired: "Far-left extremists"
9. NYT [NB-B]: "militancy on the left"
10. Atlantic: "leftist activists"
11. Time: [Interview] "antifascist resistance is based in the left" but can involve "response from a lot of different communities"
12. BBC: "far-left protesters"

Of note: The Time article is an interview of a comic book author who has no specialty background in politics or history, is not notable, and is not explicitly affiliated with antifa. It's questionable what value this source has in an encyclopedic text.

As of yet we have no statistical or quantitative sources to warrant claims such as 'predominantly' or 'majority' left. All WP:RS that do make a claim commit to a general description of the group as either "leftist" or "far-left". If a quantitative claim is to be made, then a WP:RS should be found to support it.

Watchman21 (talk) 11:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

WaPo "Although often referenced as a monolith, “antifa” is not one organization, but a loosely linked collection of groups, networks and individual people who support aggressive opposition to activists on the far right."July 2019 or "loose collection of hard-line anti-fascist protesters," August 2019.

NYT "on the left" July 2019 in an article called "What Is Antifa? Explaining the Movement to Confront the Far Right"[72]

But I agree, there is no way ever to get stats on this. But it clearly has supporters who are not far-left, so that's out, and we say it has liberal supporters. Black bloc doesn't = Antifa. The Time author is Lily Rothman[73] Doug Weller talk 17:15, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

On the quantitative aspect, if we can find a source that shows a substantive minority (beyond individual case studies or first party anecdotal accounts) are not left-wing, we should be able to justify 'predominantly left-wing' in the lead description. Otherwise we should probably refer to the existing consensus. I'll see if I can find a suitable one over the next few days. Watchman21 (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Having supporters that are not far-left does not mean they cannot be far-left. PackMecEng (talk) 15:16, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@PackMecEng: there is no "they" except the supporters, it's not an organisation. If they aren't far left they can't be far-left. Doug Weller talk 18:17, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Agree. And many appear to be anarchists. I never thought of anarchists as leftists. No state versus big state, in simplistic terms. O3000 (talk) 18:21, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

When the majority of the supporters are far-left we call them far-left even if a small minority are only left. O3000 anarchism is often considered a far-left ideology. PackMecEng (talk) 18:44, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

But, who says the majority of supporters are far-left? These people don't seem to be great philosophers or pol-sci students. Horseshoe theory comes to mind. O3000 (talk) 00:50, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Is militant anarchism just standard left wing now? PackMecEng (talk) 01:16, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

It's circular reasoning: they are militant because they belong to antifa. TFD (talk) 03:37, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

No, they are militant because that is how RS describes them as well as the tactics they employ. PackMecEng (talk) 03:38, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng, you are saying that antifa contains far left elements because by definition anyone who is on the left and belongs to antifa is far left. TFD (talk) 15:36, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Not at all. What I am saying is RS describe them as far-left and things like being militant and supporting anarchism are traits of the far-left. PackMecEng (talk) 15:44, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't object to "predominantly left-wing" but do object to "far left". My suspicion is that various editors inserted refs into the lede to justify "left" or "far left" rather than found a good selection of RSs and summarised their descriptions. Otherwise would NBC Bay Area, the Kansas City Star and KIRO7 local news really be your go-to sources on how to describe an emerging social movement? It is also striking that most of the sources cited there (I think CNN is the only exception) come from August-September 2017 when antifa emerged into mainstream attention, and reflect ill-informed news sources struggling to summarise what was to them a new phenomenon. That is why the person interviewed by Time, who has been an antifa activist since the 1990s, is actually a more reliable source for this particular use than a local radio station. (See my very long comment from 13 March 2020 in the Capitalisation RfC further up this talk page on why using sources that actually know about antifa are more appropriate than sources that would be generally seen as reliable but in this instance might not be well-informed. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:03, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I would avoid the term far left because unlike far right it does not have a clear meaning. Basically it means more left than I am. So to the average Fox News viewer, it means the New York Times. TFD (talk) 00:39, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

A quick update re. use of the term 'predominantly left-wing'. I've been unable to find:

1. A quantitative RS to demonstrate that there are a substantive minority of Antifa members who are not left-leaning or left-wing.
2. A case-study-type RS to demonstrate that there is even a single member of Antifa who identifies this way.
3. Even anecdotal examples in popular blogs, commentaries or grass-roots social media posts that don't qualify as WP:RS.

For further policy context, there are no exclusion criteria for left-wing ideology among the other axiological descriptions of Antifa in the article. Anarchism is not an exclusion criterion, as someone has already pointed out, given that ideologies such as anarcho-collectivism do exist.

Every RS that commits to a political description of the movement refers to them uniformly as left-wing.

I think we have conclusive criteria to refer to the prior consensus and describe them as just 'left-wing'. Any quantitative elaboration would fall foul of WP:NOR. I'll implement these changes shortly unless anyone can find a good source. Watchman21 (talk) 05:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with this line of argument completely. Antifa is ideologically diverse and not attached to any one movement. If any ideology predominates, it is anarchism. Although some anarchists consider themselves left-wing and some sources consider anarchism in general to be left-wing, most anarchists reject the association with the left and see themselves as neither left nor right. Therefore any source which notes anarchists among antifa by definition shows that calling it left-wing without qualification is problematic. "predominantly left-wing" is a consensual description that encompasses these different points of view, whereas "left-wing" is far more contested. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Those sources you reject as problematic are WP:RS. To disqualify them you'll need a RS with higher epistemic standing, like a quantitative source from a peer-reviewed journal. I couldn't find one, but perhaps you might have better success.

If you want to use anarchism as an exclusion criterion, you'll need epistemology rather than sociology. You need to show that the two are incompatible, and disprove the legitimacy of ideologies like anarcho-communism. Watchman21 (talk) 11:45, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

• Question - Looking over the ref's above, it looks like most folks are talking about this guys as "far left" or "leftist". Why are we calling them "left wing"? Can someone point to previous discussions on this topic? NickCT (talk) 03:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I would have thought 'leftist' and 'left-wing' are synonymous. 'Leftist' may be more of a casual term. Watchman21 (talk) 06:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

See Talk:Antifa (United States)/Archive 15#Antifa far-left?, where I provided links to the five prior discussions to the last person who asked this question (as it pertains specifically to "far left"). – Arms & Hearts (talk) 10:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I have to say none of those are particularly impressive or came to any kind of resolution. What I did notice is many uninvolved editors all saying the same thing and the same small group of dedicated individuals stonewalling. Does an RFC have to be held to solidify what the sources and majority of people say? PackMecEng (talk) 13:38, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

If a discussion doesn't result in a consensus then the status quo remains—that's common sense. Though for what it's worth I think the August 2018 discussion was quite productive (surprisingly, considering it began with a load of nonsense posted by an editor who got themselves indef'd for legal threats the following day) and fairly clear-cut in its support for "left" and rejection of "far-left". Which isn't, of course, to say that we should be bound by it today, only that a new consensus would have to be arrived at to change that. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 14:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

The issue with that is there was never consensus for just about anything. So yeah defaults to status quo but status quo here is basically meaningless. I was more making the comment so people do not get mislead into thinking there was an actual consensus for excluding far-left. PackMecEng (talk) 14:51, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I've reviewed the scholarly literature on (U.S.) antifa and found very little support for describing antifa as "far-left". Neither Mark Bray's Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook nor the introduction to Bill V. Mullen and Christopher Vials' US Antifascism Reader use "far-left" or "far left" at any point, with the exception of a reference to an interview with Swedish antifascists in Bray (p244). Likewise, none of the five articles in Society's symposium "What Is Antifa?" (Volume 5 Issue 3) use either phrase. Stanislav Vysotsky's American Antifa, as the first monograph on U.S. antifa narrowly construed, ought to be an invaluable source for this article, but unfortunately isn't published until July. Vysotsky's 2015 article "The Anarchy Police" also never uses "far(-)left"; the article is clearly in some sense about the subject of this article, but never names its subject "antifa", so probably can't be used in this article. The only scholarly source I was able to find that describes antifa as "Far Left" is Adam Klein's "From Twitter to Charlottesville" in the International Journal of Communication. One can make of these findings what one wishes: I'm of the view that articles and books by academics published by major publishers or in established journals are better sources than news articles and opinion pieces, but all of these sources have their drawbacks (neither Bray's book nor Mullen and Vials' is exclusively about the subject of this article; the Society articles are brief interventions; Klein is apparently out on a limb in the matter at hand). This is also not intended as a commentary whether "left" or "predominantly left" is preferable, though I might weigh in on that at a later date. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 17:14, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

PackMecEng raised concerns about the existing consensus, which I think does have some merit. The page did have something of a consensus but one that wasn't definitive. I'm open to reviewing it (perhaps with an RFC, if that's what's needed) given that it's predicated on a questionable premise.

One overlooked issue is that 'left' and 'far-left' are not mutually exclusive, the latter being a subset of the former. This means that sources describing antifa as 'leftist' cannot be used as evidence against the proposition that antifa are 'far-left'. Several quality sources describing the movement as 'far-left' may be all that's needed to justify a lede description to that effect. Watchman21 (talk) 18:53, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@Watchman21 and PackMecEng: - Support RfC

Arms - re "I would have thought 'leftist' and 'left-wing' are synonymous." - I'm not sure about that. I think "leftist" is a more general term. If you told me someone was a "left-wing" politician, I'd assume they were center left or left. If you told me someone was "leftist", I'd assume they were anywhere from the center-left to the radical left. If you look for definitions of leftist sources will say anything from simply "left-wing" to "radical left". NickCT (talk) 00:22, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Wandering off-topic

That's just your personal ideolect. The terms are broadly synonymous; if you review a bunch of good dictionaries' definitions, you'll see that. When a degree needs to be indicated, that has the be done more explicitly: far-left, left-leaning, a bit left-of-center, etc., or one can't be certain the reader will walk away with the same interpretation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:40, 24 May 2020 (UTC) @SMcCandlish: - So, from the first 6 Google hits for "define leftist", there's Collins which says "Socialists and Communists are sometimes referred to as leftists" and Urban Dictionary (not necessarily a "good" dictionary) which says "A person belonging to the political left and usually identifying with the radical, anti capitalist, or revolutionary sectors of left politics". I don't think those definition a necessarily encapsulated in just the term "left wing". But more importantly, I think the main point is that in this case a degree does need to be indicated. So why not use "far-left"? NickCT (talk) 05:04, 24 May 2020 (UTC) Collins is a leading dictionary, but doesn't appear to contradict the idea that "left-wing" and "leftist" are synonymous. UrbanDictionary, though, is primarily a joke website written by teenagers. Anyway, I wasn't arguing against being specific about degree, just arguing against the idea that either "left-wing" or "leftist" reliably implies degree. We possibly should be degree-specific, but following the sources on that. I'm not sure I see a clear source agreement on this. It seems fair to me to say that various sources consider antifa a far-left faction, while others don't. We could quote some of the better sources directly. I just hope in the long run we are not conflating antifa as a specific movement or sub-movement (which seems to differ a lot from country to country), with anti-fascism generally. Libertarians, for example, are by definition anti-fascist but also by definition right-of-center on economic policy, even if also classic-liberal in some ways on socio-cultural matters. These things can also change over time; I learned a few years ago that the straight edge movement has a bunch to do with environmentalism and even vegetarianism these days, when those agendas were not connected with it at all in the 1980s when it originated (at that time, it was only about smoking, drugs, drinking, and casual sex). Social movements are a moving target, so source age may be a factor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:31, 24 May 2020 (UTC) @SMcCandlish: - "doesn't appear to contradict the idea that "left-wing" and "leftist" are synonymous" - So you think calling Communists simply "left-wing" is OK? Is it OK to call fascists simply "right-wing"? I don't think we're necessary disagree on definitions as much as the degree of specificity that's appropriate. I wouldn't call a fascist just "right-wing", in the same sense that I wouldn't call a serial killer just a "criminal". Sure fascist may be a subset of right-wing as serial killer is a subset of criminal, but it definitely seems a little misleading when you use terms which are so ambiguous and broad. "Libertarians, for example, are by definition anti-fascist but also by definition right-of-center on economic policy" - Well.... I guess it depends on the brand of libertarianism. For instance, civil libertarians might not hold right-of-center economic view points. Agree groups change with time, but that doesn't really impact what sources are calling this group today. NickCT (talk) 12:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC) It didn't say "communists", it said "socialists and communists", and "socialist" and "left-wing" and "leftist" are used interchangeably by many people, especially those right of center. You seemingly didn't bother to look at the same dictionary's entry for "left-wing" [74], which includes: "Synonyms: socialist, communist ....". See also the corresponding "More synonyms of left wing" list at the same site [75], giving "left-wing" and "leftist" as synonyms. So, I stand by what I said about Collins and their definitions. And it's just one dictionary; looking at other major ones shows comparable results. I don't know why we're arguing about this. It is not difficult to understand that "left-wing" and "leftist" both fail to automatically imply "far-left" to many readers. If you mean "far-left", then write "far-left". Next, civil libertarians are not, as a class, libertarians; this is a fallacy of equivocation, in which the compound "civil libertarian" has a different origin from the isolate "libertarian", and in which the fragment "libertarian" of the first has a different meaning that the stand-alone label "libertarian". (In the first, "civil liberties" is a specific and innately plural term of art with a unique and synergistic meaning; "civil libertarian" is simply the adjectival form of this, which in turn can be re-nouned as a person descriptor, and that is a backformation from the adjective, in turn from the original noun phrase. In the second, "libertarian[ism] is directly derived from a philosophical and singular concept of Liberty in a broader and rather Platonic or archetypal sense.) Most civil libertarians are not libertarians, though libertarians must be civil libertarians, since civil liberties are a subset of the general politico-philosophical approach to liberty espoused by libertarians. (On the other hand, Libertarian Party members might individually be neither libertarians nor civil libertarians, though most would be both. Some here and there are probably just confused kooks who have latched onto a third party just because it's a third party. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:41, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

To extract my on-topic points from the long digression above: We possibly should be degree-specific as to "leftiness", but must follow the sources on that, without engaging in WP:SYNTH to get at a "desired" answer that the sources don't actually agree on. I'm not sure I see a clear source agreement on the matter (only on the American antifa being left of center), and I don't agree that sources saying "leftist" or "left-wing" can be counted as supporting of "far-left", "left extremist", and other degree-qualifying descriptions. It seems fair to me to say that various sources consider the US antifa a far-left faction, while others don't. We could quote some of the better sources directly. I just hope in the long run we are not conflating American antifa, as a specific movement or sub-movement, with anti-fascism generally nor with other groups (characterized by rather different politics) who also go by "antifa". It is better encyclopedia writing for us to have a short paragraph on RS interpretations of how far left US antifa is, rather than just pick an interpretation that suits a present-majority editorial viewpoint and run with it as if it were the only RS view.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:41, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Well this article is on American Antifa so I would suspect that we would use the left-right definitions from America. Though I will note the source list above shows a clear majority going with far-left or a varient of that. Are there any sources that specifically say they are not far-left? I note some use left wing by itself but I do not think I have seen any that dispute far-left specifically. PackMecEng (talk) 23:48, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Why would there be any sources that specifically say they are not far-left? Would there be any sources that specifically state they aren't warlocks? O3000 (talk) 00:21, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

WaPo, CNN, and BBC do not call Antifa warlocks, so that's obviously beside the point. But WaPo, CNN, and BBC do all call Antifa "far-left". So we should certainly ask whether any sources say that they aren't "far left", since, if there aren't such sources, then we have a strong argument here that we should at the very least mention that they are sometimes described as "far left" in mainstream media. Shinealittlelight (talk) 00:35, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

User:Watchman21's bold initial post is misleading and even worse, unsourced. For instance, last year a Portland reporter for the BBC (in other words, someone close to the action) wrote "There is no one antifa organisation or political philosophy. They're a mixed bag of anarchists, socialists and communists."[76] I agree that it's unreasonable to insist on finding sources that say they "aren't far-left but are..." WaPo calls them leftists here.[77] Here CNN, in an article explaining Antifa, calls them "The term is used to define a broad group of people whose political beliefs lean toward the left -- often the far left -- but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform."[78] Doug Weller talk 13:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Mark Bray, a credentialed academic expert on the subject—one of those rare birds which, reading the bulk of this discussion, one would think didn't exist—defines antifa thus: "It’s basically a politics or an activity of social revolutionary self defense. It’s a pan-left radical politics uniting communists, socialists, anarchists and various different radical leftists together for the shared purpose of combating the far right." One could take "pan-left" as a refutation of "far-left", i.e. as indicating that antifa includes people across the left (though of course I don't accept the premise that we have to find concrete refutation of "far-left" to not include it). – Arms & Hearts (talk) 14:21, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi @User:Doug Weller. Thanks for your feedback. Do you not agree that 'far-left' is a subset of 'left'? If so, then the idea that the two are not mutually contradictory follows necessarily. 'Antifa are left-wing' cannot be a counterposition to 'antifa are far-left' for that reason. If you dispute that, then your issue is with logical truisms like entailment for which we don't usually cite sources. Watchman21 (talk) 14:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@User:Arms & Hearts. I think that's thinking roughly along the right lines.

I've just looked at your Bray source. 'Pan-left' here seems to be referring qualitatively to the political subgroups of the left (communism, socialism and anarchism) rather than a quantitative allusion to degrees of leftness, such as 'moderate-left' or 'far-left'. If 'pan-left' was referring to degrees of leftness, then the author would be contradicting himself by his use of the term 'radical' to describe the same group. ie. One can't be moderate-left and radical-left at the same time, unless one has a different understanding of radical to the textbook definition.

I think you've (inadvertently) found a further source supporting the idea that antifa are far-left. But I'm sure there are opposing views out there. I'll do a literature review if I have time and see if I have better luck. Watchman21 (talk) 15:07, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

1. You can certainly be on the left and not a socialist, communist, or anarchist.
2. Pan-left would seem to suggest varying degrees of leftist ideology cooperating; not a specific degree of the left.
3. I don’t think we should be labeling a movement with a greater degree of specificity. Indeed, pigeonholing folks should be avoided even with actual political parties..
4. The anarchists in the woods with AK-47’s waiting for a race war are rightists.
5. BTW, editing pings into a previous edit often doesn’t work. O3000 (talk) 15:33, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't dispute point 1. Your point 3 has some merit. I originally wanted 'far-left' in the lead sentence, but I think the lede now looks better overall with 'left-wing' (any reader can infer how 'far-left' antifa are from the rest of the opening paragraph) but this is just a personal preference. Like your own remarks here, all of this is ultimately subject to policy.

I'm not convinced by point 2, unless you can think of better arguments. Radicalism typically refers to the extremes, or even the fringes, of partisanship. If 'pan-left' refers to the degrees of leftist ideology (including moderates and nominal followers) then it would be a contradiction for the author to describe the movement as radical in the same phrase.

I think point 4 is true, but not very relevant here. Showing that some anarchists are right-wing doesn't disprove the proposition that anarchists can be left-wing as well. I think Bray himself implies this in the source we're talking about.

Thanks for point 5. I'll bear that in mind in future. Watchman21 (talk) 15:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

That Bray source isn't very clear, but I think the most reasonable interpretation is that by "pan-left radical" he means "across all radical left groups". In any case, I for one don't see why we need to pick one label. Why not just say that they've been variously described and list the most common descriptions (left, lefist, far-left, radical left, etc.). Shinealittlelight (talk) 16:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

That seems sound to me. However elaborations like that probably belong elsewhere than the WP:LEADSENTENCE. Watchman21 (talk) 16:19, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Yep, and it would grow starting with anarchist. O3000 (talk) 16:26, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 May 2020

Remove the formulation "On the other hand" from the section "Response", so that the paragraph now starts with. "Historical and political... ".

Why: The formulation invokes a discussion. I understand that there are editors "on both sides", but creating dichotomy in the article based on conflicts between editors is not a neutral policy at all.

Why do I bother: I sometimes make small changes like this to wikipedia articles upon reading them, but this time the article was locked. 84.210.210.232 (talk) 00:45, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: the presentation of multiple viewpoints on Wikipedia does not indicate a lack of neutrality. We seek to have information on multiple viewpoints. This is an appropriate way to introduce a paragraph with an opinion differing from that described in the previous one. Furthermore, I see no evidence that this was based on an editor’s personal beliefs or a dispute between editors. We want to avoid giving undue weight to minor opinions, yes, but this appears to be an appropriate balance. — Tartan357  ^(Talk) 03:37, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

Antifa now paying vandals & theives to cause destruction, commit acts of violence & terrorism. Videos of Columbus rioters being paid are currently on Twitter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1307:44EB:6873:EBDD:4BBE:C713 (talk) 11:11, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you provided sources for your claims. Such claims are common, but are usually if not always made up conspiracy theories. TFD (talk) 11:35, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

First of all, there is no such thing as official membership in "antifa" — it's a leaderless movement. And second of all, how could anyone possibly know how to determine who is in antifa and who is not? (And third of all, the word "thieves" is not spelled "theives".)50.203.182.230 (talk) 17:22, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

Please update Antifa as a Terrorist organization as per the designation by the United States government 2001:569:7E72:A600:6878:52F0:A70A:7D4 (talk) 17:03, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: The United States government has not designated Antifa as a Terrorist organization. The article space already includes Trump's tweet that "The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization," but that has not yet happened. NedFausa (talk) 17:08, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Is "antifaschistisch" the correct spelling ... and is antifa really a "contraction" of that word?

The Terminology section states that the word "antifa" is a "contraction" of the word "antifaschistisch". First of all, it's not a contraction. It's a shortening. Secondly, the logo of the 1930s German movement "Antifaschistische Aktion" — shown in the article — spells the word "antifascistische" with an E at the end.50.203.182.230 (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

The German word "antifaschistische" is an inflected form of "antifaschistisch". I think you're right on the first point since, per our article, a contraction is "created by omission of internal letters and sounds." – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:00, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Designated Terrorist Organization

If the president of the United States tweets out that a movement is a terrorist organization, I don't understand how the United States hasn't "officially" recognized it as a terrorist organization. I do not believe this is a NPOV issue, since the Gülen movement is in the category, Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Turkey, even though there is no evidence of it conducting terrorist attacks. At what point would it be acceptable to add the category, Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States, if not when the the head of state and head of government of the United States of America says so? —SpanishSnake (talk | contribs) 17:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

In the United States of America, a tweet has no formal legal authority—no matter who tweets it. In March 2018, the Trump White House answered an August 2017 online petition: "Thank you for your petition requesting that AntiFa be formally recognized as a terrorist organization. Although Federal law provides a mechanism to designate and sanction foreign terrorist organizations and foreign state sponsors of terrorism, there is currently no analogous mechanism for formally designating domestic terrorist organizations." Since then, the law has not changed. Trump's latest tweets are bluster, not binding executive action. NedFausa (talk) 17:30, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Trump's tweets have been considered official statements by the president of the United States[[79]]. Since there is no mechanism for formally designating domestic terrorist organizations, what action would sufficient to say that the United States designates Antifa as a terrorist organization?—SpanishSnake (talk | contribs) 17:43, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

An official statement is not a law. What would be needed is new legislation by Congress, or at minimum an Executive Order by the president. NedFausa (talk) 17:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

At risk of sounding tautological, if there's no mechanism by which something can be designated a domestic terrorist organisation, there are no circumstances in which it would be appropriate to say that something has been designated a domestic terrorist organisation. The tweet is mentioned in the article; doubtless informed commentaries on its significance or lack thereof will be published in reliable sources in due course and we'll be able to cite those too. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:04, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Would just like to make a comment. If President Trump describes Antifa as a terrorist organization, it only becomes 'terrorist', according to an established right-wing ideology, that President Trump represents. To many people, having different ideologies, it is not 'terrorist'. If Hitler had described the anti-Nazis between 1933 and 1939 as 'terrorist', would that be 'correct'? Che (Talkin' Bout A Revolution) 18:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

This is the exact same thing I was trying to get across with removing "anti-facists" from the opening line. It's illogical to accept the groups claim to be "anti-fascists" (despite the group advocating fascists policies) and simultanenously ignore the president's claim that this group is a terrorist organization. That they are claimed to be "terrorist" and "anti-fascists" should go in the description or we should take out anti-fascists. This is logically inconsistent and exemplary of political bias on wikipedia. 73.227.195.63 (talk) 19:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

NBC article saying There is no domestic terrorism statute and legal authority for the U.S. to designate any domestic organization as a terrorist group, as the Justice Department's domestic terrorism coordinator has said publicly on multiple occasions in recent years. FDW777 (talk) 19:34, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

This is probably just a misunderstanding on my part, but this times article seems to refute that (at least in their terminology) [80] 73.227.195.63 (talk) 19:42, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

Antifa is now recognized as a terrorist organization. 69.146.101.16 (talk) 17:28, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: The United States government has not designated Antifa as a Terrorist organization. The article space already includes Trump's tweet that "The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization," but that has not yet happened. NedFausa (talk) 17:31, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

Antifa will be classified as a terroirist organizations according a tweet sent by the President of the United States @realDonaldTrump 12:23 PM · May 31, 2020 "The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization." Jlafor (talk) 17:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: That was added to the article space nearly an hour before you made this request. NedFausa (talk) 17:43, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

Now labeled a terrorist group. 2600:1700:77A0:B1A0:D451:7363:7135:7D38 (talk) 17:45, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: The United States government has not designated Antifa as a Terrorist organization. The article space already includes Trump's tweet that "The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization," but that has not yet happened. NedFausa (talk) 17:48, 31 May 2020

(edit conflict) Trump regularly “Tweetstorms”, and thus it’s difficult to tell if this is just bluster. Unless he’s talking about designation by a particular agency, so far as I know, this is not something Trump can do unilaterally. It requires an Act of Congress. It’s also difficult to label Antifa a “terrorist organization” as they’ve not technically committed any acts of terrorism, and they aren’t an actual organization. It would be like declaring the Tea Party movement, libertarianism, or participants of a Reddit conversation a terrorist group. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 17:55, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

AntiFa has just been officially declared to be a terrorist organization by U.S President Donald J. Trump

SteamedHamsMan (talk) 18:55, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

See the four previous sections above. Acroterion (talk) 18:56, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

2601:741:2:D040:2C73:78C:7A84:D9FE (talk) 19:00, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization

 Not done See the above sections. FDW777 (talk) 19:02, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2020

Requesting the re-evaluation of “mostly-peaceful.” More research should probably be done before making that claim (I believe it is inaccurate) 2600:380:A838:530C:6421:3604:D1F0:3255 (talk) 19:16, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:18, 31 May 2020 (UTC)