Tuesday, August 29, 2017

A word about Antifa

I would like to say a quick word about the growing "anti-fascist" movement that calls itself Antifa. But first, a story.

My freshman year of college, I lived in a dorm on campus. One of the dorm rules was that you were not allowed to build certain things in your room, including lofts. A loft provides precious storage space to a cramped dorm room, so everyone would want one, if only they could get around the problem of lofts being specifically forbidden.

Some friends of mine decided to take a creative stab at getting around the "no lofts" rule. They went ahead and built a loft in their room, then carved the words "NOT A LOFT" into the side. One day when an RA happened to see the not-a-loft and pointed out that lofts were not allowed, someone responded, "True, lofts are not allowed. But (pointing to the words), as you can clearly see, this is NOT A LOFT."

Maybe the RA appreciated the sense of humor and decided to reward them. Maybe he was stunned at the sheer audacity of calling the loft "not-a-loft" and expecting it to matter. Whatever the case, it was allowed to remain, and went unchallenged the rest of the year.

Now I share that story with you because it's completely ridiculous (but true!). They built something that looked like a loft, functioned like a loft, was actually a loft, but slapped the word "not" on it. Does anyone actually think using the word "not" in the name negated what it clearly was? Call it not-a-loft, call it the anti-loft, call it whatever you want, by design, appearance, and function, it was most definitely a loft.

And that's all I have to say about Antifa.