Hey yall, new to the forums, pleased to meetche.
I'm here from Canada, working in this cool upscale bistro in Bern, and recently heard (and saw spraypainted around town) that theres going to be a huge Antifa (Anti-Fascism) rally here in the Bern center next Saturday on the 24th... Any thoughts? Anyone going? I hope I can, but you know how these things usually turn out as people simply going for an excuse to get politically drunk and break sh!t...

I've never been and no desire to go. But I heard from someone who is active that some of the Antifa girls are quite cute.



Surely this group strengthens the right-wingers in office.

Showtime at 18:30, according to their website: http://www.antifa.ch/

There's hardly a fascism problem in Berne and the Antifas regularly manage to destroy property of others in their protests, or to engage the police at least. Watch and learn before you join them.

Yes the protesters are bad, mostly people from Zurich who dont care about the property here, but you'd have to agree that big gatherings like this really bring out the worst in police... I accidently walked into the Anti-WEF rally earlier in the year, and just followed on the outskirts of the process with my bike to figure out what was going on, I was chased by Securitas, saw a chick get pep-sprayed, almost wiped out while i was driving after getting hit by a firehouse...
The police here are no better, I'm sure.

No, I think that generally the police acts with appropriate tolerance and force at demonstrations and riots. Mistakes happen, last time was probably the mass arrest in Lucerne a couple months ago. But usually it are strategical errors that result in fewer arrests and more riots than necessary.

There was an unauthorised anti SVP demonstration in Berne that got out of control and has led to much soul-searching in the local authorities. They consider to only authorise stationary events and no more processions.

The authorities have not yet decided if the Antifa rally of next Saturday gets authorised or not. The case gets complicated by the fact that at the same time and place the dedication of the Bahnhof square will be celebrated. Also Antifa has made no formal application for approval, all contacts to the authorities are only informal. I don't know how good your German is but you can read about it here and here.

So please be aware that this could become an unauthorised rally, which always increases the risk that something can go wrong.


Also, I think you were gaping if you were in water cannon range at the WEF demonstration which, I suspect, wasn't authorised either? And please do not confuse private security agencies and police, their training and competences are different!

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Bottles and fireworks fly at unauthorised Antifa rally
Up to 500 partially masked protestors marched through the Bernese old part of town. The train station and square celebration remained undisturbed. Nobody was arrested or hurt.

So, did you join them? (It was the 31.5, mentioned on the Antifa website was only an old event that took place on 24.1.)

Ya i saw one of them earlier today, took a pic for you..

The Swiss ANTIFAs are not much better than those on most other countries.

There may be a handful of people in with them who have genuine concerns and are seeking to resolve genuine issues. But these people are either blind to the folks they have teamed up with or have lost all sense of proportion.

Most ANTIFAs are uninformed brainless troublemakers who are only in it for the destruction and violence and only take pleasure in the misfortune of others. I have tried to debate with some of these people on their internet forums to try to find out why they do the things they do and say the things they say and the basic tenet seems to be, if you don't agree with us 100% you are a fascist like the rest of them and we're going to get you.

Logics and fair debates are way too complicated for their simple brains so they don't bother. Many of them are school-age kids who haven't got a real grasp on politics or history but blindly believe the drivel they are being fed by a small core of older members. It is their basic belief that anybody who has achieved anything in life, such as a nice car, has basically got there through theft and deceipt and that their property is therefore fair game for vandalism and destruction. The idea that somebody may actually have worked hard to get where they are is alien to them. They also have this schizophrenia about fascism. There are probably about three and a half fascists in all of Switzerland, at least half of who are in prison, with the other half organising a march once in a blue moon which normally gets cancelled a couple of hours beforehand to keep up the pretence that "some people would have turned up". Nevertheless, these anifascists see fascists everywhere all the time. The police are fascists. The neighbours who object to the noise are fascists. The rich and succesful are fascists. In fact everybody is a fascist. And of course against fasicsts, violence is totally justified.