Sebastabear said:
Totally fair, but not really the point I was going for here. I'm not really talking about the wacky ideas in the heads of some Berkeley denizens. We all have some wacky ideas - just ask my wife how she feels about my general antipathy toward vegetables. I'm talking about the fear that some of our friends from Ole Miss seem to have they will be assaulted because of their football affiliations. Even in your example, I'm not really sure too many of the folks you're referring to make distinctions between Ole Miss fans and Cal fans. They all believe violent ground acquisition games, such as football, are just a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.
But I've honestly never seen any OOC fans get hassled by anyone at a football game. Berkeley is just very chill - at least in that regard.
Spot on about them not being able to differentiate. To the folks I'm talking about, being a football fan at all is suspect - it's *all* essentially the south/ fascists/ the kkk "invading" Berkeley - never mind that Berkeley was "doing" football long before the city became synonymous with radical politics. (And had an 80,000 seat stadium when most of what's now the SEC was just starting to build 40,000 seat jobs.)
And yes, there is a kind of "chill." The reality of Berkeley on game day is, get 3-4 blocks off campus, and other than some increased traffic and high numbers of people wandering about in colorful gear, you wouldn't know there was a major sporting event taking place at all. And anyone who resents that it is wouldn't likely go trolling for folks in Ole Miss gear to harass about it. They'd just as likely be mouthing off to the people in Cal gear!!
I guess my larger point though, was that "antifa" are folks that anybody might encounter in many places around Berkeley - and have no idea they did.