The difference is that North Korea is a place, with an organization that claims to be its government. You can point to it on a map.
Antifa is an adjective that people with no connection to one another self-apply. I'm antifa, and I imagine you are too, but it doesn't mean that we've ever met or coordinated with one another in any meaningful way.
The word "antifa" is basically meaningless altogether, since virtually every person since the end of WW2 claims to oppose fascism.
Wikipedia doesn't use the phrase "group of people", and cites a symposium as a source for the assessment that "it is a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups in the United States," so, I'm not sure this advances the discussion.
It's obvious that the vast, overwhelming majority of people consider themselves anti-fascist. So I really don't think it possible for this term to ever actually describe a particular group of people, excluding other groups of people.
These attempts to shoehorn the word "antifa" into some kind of distinct organization seem like they are just a lingual change to make it more difficult to use this phrase, or more difficult to advance critiques of fascist tendencies wherever they may appear.
This would be a great point if antifa was some official org with fascist views.
It's not. Antifa is just a shortened form of the word anti-fascist. Anyone can call themselves antifa. And typically, only people who view themselves as fighting fascism call themselves antifa.
In short, saying "antifa are the real fascists" is like saying "vegetarians are the real meat eaters". It doesn't make sense.
I didn't say anything of that sort. North Korea calls itself "democratic people republic" and people who call themselves antifa claim they fight "fascists". In both cases, the claim is either completely made up or occasionally somewhat technically correct as they fight anything from corporations to corner store glass windows to journalists who happen to disagree with them and happen to find some fascist
Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:
> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
Again, the DPRK is a singular entity. We can look at the behavior of the DPRK and analyze what its stance towards democracy is. We can see that it doesn't seem remotely committed to democracy, so being against the DPRK says nothing about one's views of democracy. Or even if the DPRK was truly committed to democracy, one could be against the DPRK for reasons completely unrelated to its democracy, and it would still not say anything about one's view of democracy.
Antifascism is just a political stance. It's shared by a wide range of disparate people who have nothing to do with each other. Just like vegetarianism is just the practice of not eating meat.
What does being anti-vegetarianism say about one's stance towards meat eating? Sure, you can look at any one guy or specific group of people who call themselves vegetarian, be against them for reasons unrelated to vegetarianism, and that doesn't say anything about your stance towards meat-eating. But being broadly anti-vegetarian?
...What does being broadly anti-antifascism say about one's stance towards fascism?
> Being anti-antifascist just make you a fascist, or a fascist-adjacent supporter.
If a loose-knit ideology/movement called "Anti-Rapists" emerged that evolved into a cohort of various disconnected thugs who targeted homosexuals for violence, would being Anti-"Anti-Rapist" make you a supporter of rapists or rapist-adjacent supporter?
Obviously, in the scenario you describe, people will continue describe themselves as "anti-rapist" and everybody will understand that they mean that they are opposed to rape.
There is no "loose-knit ideology/movement" called "antifa" - there are groups like SDS and Don't Shoot PDX and a zillion others who describe themselves as "antifa", using it as an adjective. I'm aware of no person or organization who has attempted to proclaim that they are the one true antifa org.
What has people who claimed to be antifacists done besides oppose facists? Because I have yet to see anybody except the the government and MAGA supporters claiming antifa has done anything else.
Well, some people who call themselves antifa also use slogans like "liberals get the bullet, too".
The right's play wasn't to invent antifa from the whole close, but to imply that those kinds of views are universal or nearly so among people who call themselves that.
(To be fair, it doesn't help that the historical antifa, i.e. KPD's Antifaschistische Aktion, considered social democrats to be its enemies, calling them "social fascists". It boggles my mind that anyone on the left who isn't a hardline Marxist-Leninist would adopt the name for themselves given its history.)
But that's really the height of silliness. I can say that all people who describe themselves as 'anticapitalist' are actually capitalists, but that doesn't change anything about those people, the ideology in question, or the world.
Are some people who call themselves antifa secretly fascists? I'm sure they are. So?
Some geniuses proudly, openly self describe as anti antifa. Guess what that double negation makes you?