Where did this obsession with antifa come from?  Well, at least in part from Donald Trump, naturally.  Among many other comments on the topic, in May 2020 Donald Trump tweeted: “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”

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Four months later, he followed-up with this: “And I look at (antifa) as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”. LAW & ORDER!”  < Note: we know this grammar is way off, but we wrote it exactly the way he did — which is not easy to do for people with OCD and… well … pride. >

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Donald didn’t stop there.  In fact, his antifa spin went next level.  He even publicly accused an elderly peaceful protester — who was shoved down to the ground by police in Buffalo, New York, fracturing his skull — of being part of antifa, which was a ludicrous claim. 

Not to be outdone, in the spring and summer of 2020, then Attorney General Bill Barr was trying everything he could possibly think of to blame antifa for the looting and riots that were periodically breaking out across America.  During one news conference, Barr said that “we have evidence that antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.”

 

At one point, Barr even said, “I’ve talked to every police chief in every city where there has been major violence and they all have identified antifa as the ramrod for the violence. They are flying around the country.  We know people who are flying around the country.”  He also said, “There is clearly some high degree of organization involved at some of these events and coordinated tactics that we are seeing.  Some of it relates to antifa, some of it relates to groups that act very much like antifa.”

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But as hard as Barr tried, the facts — including those from his own Justice Department — just couldn’t back him up.

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By early June 2020, 51 people faced federal charges related to the riots/protests. Of those already charged, 20 alleged crimes involved arson; 16 involved the illegal possession of a firearm, and 8 involved inciting a riot, civil disorder and/or looting.  At that time, federal court records from the U.S. Justice Department showed zero links between any serious federal crimes that had occurred and anti-fascist groups.  Hear this again:  Zero.

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According to the U.S. Department of Justice, by the end of September 2020, after Barr had established a “task force” to counter “anti-government extremists,” over “300 individuals in 29 states and Washington, D.C., had been charged for crimes committed adjacent to or under the guise of peaceful demonstrations since the end of May.” 

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Even though a few of the defendants self-identified as having far left and/or anti-government views, there is zero evidence that any of them had ties specifically to antifa.  In fact, the only reference to any extremist group in federal court documents during that time involved three men associated with a far-right extremist group called Boogaloo, who were charged with plotting violence in connection to a Las Vegas protest. The Boogaloo Boys are a Hawaiian-shirt wearing anti-government, anti-law enforcement extremist movement.  They are convinced that the government is determined to take their guns away and believe a second “civil war” is coming soon.

 

An intelligence bulletin distributed to police departments across the nation in early June 2020, issued jointly by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center, warned: 

 

 

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< Note: In this bulletin, “antifa” is mentioned only in a footnote: “Some anarchist extremists self-identify as ‘antifa,’ a moniker for anti-fascist that is also used by non-violent adherents. Identifying with ‘antifa’ or using the term without engaging in violent extremism may also be constitutionally protected.” >

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You may have noticed that the Trump administration never got around to designating antifa a terrorist organization — mainly because antifa is not an actual organization at all.

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Although there are organized, localized groups, antifa is not some sort of colossal, looming presence that has designated leadership and a hierarchical structure.  In fact, the lack of structure is something they take pride in.  Antifa is more what some people call an “affinity group.”

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FBI Director Christopher Wray underscored this distinction when he told members of the U.S. Congress, under oath, that while antifa is certainly the “real thing” and that the FBI had led “any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists,” what people refer to as antifa “is not a group or an organization.  It’s a movement or an ideology.”  Wray continued, “Trying to put a lot of these things into nice, neat, clean buckets is a bit of a challenge, because one of the things that we see more and more in the counterterrorism spaces is people who assemble together in some kind of mishmash…a bunch of different ideologies.  Almost like a salad bar of ideologies, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and what they’re really about is the violence.”

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Indeed, the main thing that antifascism activists generally have in common is their distaste for anything racist, alt-right or, of course, fascist, and they generally show up when there are big gatherings of White nationalists.  Antifascism activists send out “calls for action” and then like-minded people just show up.

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To refresh your memory, the term fascism was created by Benito Mussolini, the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 until 1943 and the man who established the first one-party fascist state in the world. Fascism is a form of authoritarian ultranationalism, with the hallmarks of dictatorial leadership and the aggressive silencing of any and all kinds of opposition.

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At its core, antifascism is literally an opposition to fascism, which is a “political ideology and mass movement that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East.” 

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So, just by reading a little more about what antifascism is, you can probably guess that the last thing anti-government, anti-capitalists want to be is tied to an organized political party. But that’s exactly what Donald Trump, Bill Barr and cronies like Rudy Giuliani and conservative media outlets tried desperately to get people to believe.  They worked hard to conflate antifa with the Democratic party, which — although many people associated with antifa can be described as “far-left” — is 100% untrue.  At one point the ex-president even said, “In my book, it’s virtually part of (the Democratic) campaign, antifa.”

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These guys also worked hard to conflate antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement in an obvious attempt to position antifa as a “Black” organization…the perfect racist dog whistle for their tribe…and also 100% untrue.

 

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Portland, Oregon offers a good example of these distinctions. Out of every American city that experienced protests/riots for racial justice and police reform in 2020, Portland endured perhaps the most vandalism, violence, and destruction.

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True to form, Trump & Co. tried hard to blame antifa — and antifa alone — for the mayhem in Portland (and they all, of course, kept driving home the subtle and false theme that antifa is a “Black” organization led by Democrats).

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Donald constantly tweeted things like: “The FBI and Law Enforcement must focus their energy on ANTIFA and the Radical Left, those who have spent the summer trying to burn down poorly run Democrat Cities throughout the USA!” and “These are Biden fools.  ANTIFA RADICALS. Get them FBI, and get them now!” Rudy remarked that “antifa sprang into action and in a flash hijacked the protests into vicious, brutal riots.”  Never mind that, after the 2020 protests had settled down, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Portland told Reuters that his office had “not alleged defendant affiliation with any specific groups or ideologies in cases stemming from recent Portland protests… our cases focus purely on the criminal conduct alleged.” 

 

In truth, a lot of the violence in Portland was perpetrated by White anarchists. Even though many antifascists share certain principles with anarchists, the ideologies are not the same. For one, anarchists essentially believe there should be no central government. Although many antifascists are highly suspicious of government institutions, most don’t go nearly that far.

 

The Washington Post reports that “from the assessments of the White mayor, Ted Wheeler, and the Black police chief, Chuck Lovell, this smaller faction (of self-described anarchists) comprises mostly White, middle-class students and others, who have made places such as churches, public libraries, small Black-owned businesses and a Boys & Girls Club the confounding targets of their vandalism.”

 

For example, on May 25, 2021, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, a peaceful crowd gathered in Portland to walk from Revolution Hall to the Burnside Bridge. Meanwhile, a crowd that included anarchists gathered downtown. According to the Portland Police Department, the downtown crowd — which included people wearing helmets and carrying gas masks — “pushed a dumpster against the Justice Center” and “lit a fire in the dumpster…while people chanted to burn the building down.” 

 

Five people were arrested.  All five were White.