There is a post at the /r/matialarts subreddit that exposes the historical european martial arts / hema community as being a recruitment grounds for the antifa movement, in particular one of its largest organizations called the hema alliance
https://www.reddit.com/r/martialarts/comments/ijakix/controversy_within_hema_related_to_antifa/
The thread was crossposted to r/WMA (the hema subreddit) and some of its members have started pouring in to downvote the /r/martialarts thread, likely because the mods of this subreddit were demonstrated to be censoring information in the subreddit to assist antifa types with harassing others.
Here is a repost of the original post,
More people should be aware of what I am about to share.
Within the niche HEMA (historical european martial arts) community there has arisen an element seeking to politicize the schools, especially in the USA and Canada, toward far left leaning politics. This has been encouraged mainly by the HEMA Alliance (HEMAA), one of the larger federations based in the US, but also through groups they are affiliated with such as "FAR" (Fighters Against Racism) whose name is misleading, as it is actually a recruitment ground for antifa which a great deal of focus on spreading propaganda and even encouraging HEMA gyms to participate in riots forming shield walls, and other such behavior. But even before the rioting, there has been a concerted effort of this faction to harass and bully anyone who doesn't expressly subscribe to their political beliefs and questions their motivations, with various false accusations of racism and sexism labeled against people who do so. This kind of "canceling" has become very routine within the US HEMA community as a means of control over it and has worked to a large degree due to how small it is compared to the wider martial arts community. Many HEMa clubs are too small to gain insurance on their own, and rely on HEMAA for these benefits so being denied membership or even kicked out excludes people from being able to participate.
Things reached a boiling over point about a month ago, as a Canadian club named Valkyrie Western Martial Arts publicly accused another club in their city, Academie Duello, of a variety of things. although these are Canadian clubs, Valkyrie is deeply entrenched into the HEMAA online community and leveraged their relations to key officers and other members of the US HEMA community to unleash a tremendous amount of harassment against students at Academie Duello and its instructors, while simultaneously silencing any dissent using moderator privileges at FB and other groups (such as the HEMA subreddit) in order to control the narrative. They have demanded that AD and its student body, and defenders, be shunned from participation in tournaments, seminars, and other involvement in the rest of the HEMA community. This is despite that most of the allegations Valkyrie made against Academie Duello were investigated years ago by an independent law firm and concluded to have been untrue. What many people also did not know and was intentionally censored, is that Valkyrie is actually a kind of cult that does not actually teach HEMA but rather a new invented martial art developed by its head instructor that has a lot of strange ideas intended to make sword fighting relevant for modern day combat, among a lot of other bullshido practices. And Valkyrie made these accusations because Academie Duello was in the process of joining with other schools in Canada to create a new federation and Valkyrie wanted AD (who is a much larger school than themselves and their main business competitor, operating in the same city) excluded from it completely.
As a response to the censorship, a blog has been created that provides a substantial amount of evidence for the claims that Valkyrie is a cult, teaches bad self defense bullshido and has actually committed a lot of the same abuses they claimed Academie Duello made. As an example they accused AD of taking advantage of female students and claimed it was not a safe space for them, but meanwhile Valkyrie's instructors asked its students (male and female) to pose nude for over 2,000 photos so they could make a calendar to sell to the general public as a school fundraiser.
The link to the blog providing a breakdown of the different controversies is https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/627589661355835392/fighters-against-narcissistic-abusers-in-hema
Most people here probably are not very interested in this particular drama between two schools. What may be of interest however is the documentation the blog has of the HEMA Alliance officers involvement in groups like FAR that advocate and encourage looting, violent protests and how its members are turning HEMA gyms into centers for training antifa protesters to engage in violence with police officers.
Direct links to the evidence for these things are at the follow pages,
Edit: There are now some individuals rushing in from the HEMA subreddit to downvote this post and spread misinformation. One of these people is the VP of the HEMAA making the inaccurate claim that the HEMAA has no influence and that its officers are not representative of the organization as a whole (lol!) , and another is Tea Kew who has authored articles on the HEMA antifa blog.
They're recruiting at gun ranges too. A lot of them are coming back as "veterans" having completed basic training and use that to recruit for "John Brown Gun Club" and Antifa.
Those types are always the ones that end up sweeping the floor.
I remember years ago a kung fu group whose I had friends within kept being harassed by this one taekwondo guy who said he was better and such to the point they agreed on a fight with him.
Despite kung fu being just flashy moves for the looks he somehow still had his ass kicked. After that they never heard of him again.
Having practiced TKD for 10 years, I have to say I'm not surprised.
Taekwondo is the entry level martial art that gets kids into combat sports, but is otherwise completely inadequate for real life or cross-discipline fights. Lack of grapple techniques and punches = dead meat in a real fight.
I wouldn't be surprised if the dude tried one of the spin kicks only to get his leg caught up in a grapple and punched in the balls several times
In my experience people who practice combat sports are usually bad at actual fighting because they've got a bunch of rules and thoughts about scoring points in their head.
All the smart HEMA practitioners know its a sport at the end of the day. However, the goal of HEMA is to figure out how to use a sword. There are many pretentious arguments about what kinds of cuts would end a fight, and what cuts wouldn't. There is also a ton of experimentation with rulesets in tournaments (mainly in how points are awarded) with the goal of finding a system that encourages fencers to fight realistically. It's actually considered best practice to have a new ruleset for each event, so that the sport is about fencing well, not gaming the ruleset.
Sport Fencing and Kendo are no different, except that the rules are always the same. Where the rules were originally written to encourage good habbits, I know in sport fencing the rules have been gamed for decades, leading to some suicidal techniques being favorable.
I came to HEMA from sport fencing (saber and epee), and while there were several habits I needed to break, my sport fencing experience ultimately gave me a leg up. From what I've watched of Kendo, I think the same could be said about Kendo practicioners coming to HEMA.
The guys who actually fence on a regular basis know the value of sportified sword martial arts like sport fencing and Kendo, and won't dismiss it. The ones who do are pretentious cunts, and I bet you I can beat any one of them.
Sounds like some HEMA people don't understand warfare. If these guys could fight 100 v 100 for 3-4 hours, then we I could understand the claim... but it's still a sport.
I went to exactly one bjj lesson and the instructor, who was Brazilian, talked about how in brazil if you call a black guy negro it was cool and if you called him 'black' he would fight you
Sounds like non-whites in non-white countries not wanting to be associated with "blacks" from America in any sort of fashion.
Brazilian here. It can be considered a crime if you call a black person "black" here in Brazil.
Isn't "negro" black in Portuguese like it is in Spanish?
So is it a crime to use the word negro? Or is a crime to use the english word (or loan word?) "black"?
Negro means dark in Portuguese.
Its not a crime to use the word negro, but the word preto ( black in English) is.
... "negro" or slight variations thereof mean black (the color) in a whole lot of latin languages, including portuguese and spanish.
So you're telling me white knight larpers are into HEMA? No way!
That makes a lot of sense, but the leftists are missing the mark.
Most of the HEMA stuff is individuals fighting with armor and blades, what they are looking for is formation drill. If your "shield wall" is broken by cops playing an overly enthusiastic game of Red Rover, you're fucking it up. Honestly, one good drill instructor and they'd actually be really hard to get rid of... but they're so fucking weak that they couldn't possibly get through the training.
Oh man... I just thought of something. Activate the insurrection act, deploy the Marines, but only give them pugil sticks. Probably go something like this. Deploy an entire Marine Battalion with pugil sticks and you'll have Portand sorted out within the night. Best part is you can have all the support staff fighting to, so you get full mobilization.
This is always the case with the Social Justice Racket. It's all about enriching the racket and improving it's position.
The left always projects.
The left are always weirdly degenerate with sex stuff.
The Social Justice Racket is built off of emotional and psychological abuse.
Same old tactics since GamerGate, really.
I think it would be really fun if it all turned into a giant boffer war. Heck, have them rent out the rose stadium, and charge for tickets to watch.
I've been practicing HEMA in CA, Portland, and Nevada. You meet all kinds of colorful types in the sport, but 99% of everyone there are just there to fence. A lot of them share trash opinions on facebook, but it's always kept out of in-person practice.
There was one time my instructor brought up "when did punching nazis become not okay?" (Direct quote), and nearly the entire group looked at him like he was crazy.
I've met a few whom I was positive dressed up in black bloc on a regular basis. These people were primarily longsword fencers, and I've yet to see a longsword pulled in black bloc, so I don't think they see HEMA as training to fight "nazis". At fencing practice, they are there to fence. We all know how niche the hobby is, and alienating fencers doesn't do us any favors.
Also, the HEMAA is only mentioned online. Nobody talks about it until a tournament is coming up. Many of us don't like them, as they seem to be trying to take control of the hobby. Most of the bigshots on the HEMAA pages are literally whos when it comes to tournaments.
The relevance within HEMA is not about using historical martial arts to fight police but rather using the training centers to recruit and provide training for such activities as participation in mob shield walls and grappling.
I don't think they are teaching people to use swords to fight police, although Valkyrie in particular (mentioned by the blog) does have training about trying to make swordfighting relevant in military and police situations, so who knows
https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624593303312171008/scrutinizing-valkyries-bullshido
Not sure about other places, but where I've fenced (including Portland), sword and shield is not very popular. Not for a lack of interest, but just because there aren't many good, historically accurate, sparring-safe shields on the market. Also, there aren't many historical manuals detailing sword and shield. Most modern interpretations are derived from the I.33 manual, which is all about sword and buckler (a civilian defensive-carry shield which was very small for convenience, would be useless in a riot shield-wall situation).
On top of that, nearly every club focuses on single combat, since it is much safer and easier to judge in tournaments. I've personally wanted to do shield wall simulations for a long time, but could never get one organized.
Again I don't think it is about using actual historical fencing techniques but more that they are tapping into the community of people within HEMA, using the infrastructure of the community such as using the club location and resources meant for historical fencing under their nonprofit and insurance company, for also doing antifa training.
It is something happening in the community per the evidence shown in these posts
https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/626484943349022720/far-historical-fencing-blog-that-promotes-antifa
https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624699657862381568/additional-narcissistic-abusers-who-assist