From what I understand, Antifa means anti-fascist. American soldiers in World War II were anti-fascist. Today, everyone with any sense is anti-fascist, because obviously fascism sucks. At the same time, the reds have made Antifa into the boogeyman. Fox News has an entire Antifa section. And now, House Republicans have introduced legislation that treats Antifa as a domestic terror threat. Here's a quote from an article about it:
Four House Republicans introduced legislation this week that would set up a National Commission on Domestic Terrorist Attacks on the United States to investigate the Antifa riots that continue to take place in cities across the nation. The bill from Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., would set up a commission along the lines of prior bodies set up by Congress to examine the 9/11 attacks and the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Bacon said a commission is needed to examine the Antifa riots that exploded in more than 100 cities across the country in the wake of the 2020 death of George Floyd – attacks many Republicans say have been pushed to the back burner by Democrat leaders in states and in the federal government.
The way that the reds talk about Antifa makes no sense. Antifa barely qualifies as a movement, and it's not an organization. Groups of self-professed anti-fascists can spring up anywhere, but it's not like they all know each other. Nor is there any kind of Antifa command structure. To the extent that Antifa is organized at all, it is organized around principles of mutual aid.
As someone who saw the civil unrest erupt in Minneapolis in 2020 firsthand, I'm certain that Antifa wasn't to blame for the destruction that I witnessed. No one group was behind the mayhem. There were big roving gangs of rebellious teenagers, smashing things and lighting fires everywhere they went. There were vandals suspected of being agents provocateur. And all of the city's regular criminals were out in force, breaking and stealing stuff.
If the reds are calling that civil unrest an Antifa riot, they're peddling fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction is widespread. When I come across it being repeated by something I'm reading, whatever I'm reading loses credibility. But the reds show no signs of giving up on their Antifa fiction.
The effort to treat the Antifa-involved as terrorists has precedent. The Green Scare of twenty years ago had the Department of Justice treating the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front as terrorist organizations, largely in response to industry pressure. Here's a quote from an Intercept piece about it:
Activists burned down a Forest Service ranger station, set SUVs on fire, and toppled an 80-foot high-voltage transmission tower. The attacks and demonstrations were costly. In response, the fur and biomedical industries “dramatically increased their efforts to convince the FBI and the DOJ to treat animal rights and environmental protesters as terrorists,” said Shapiro of Property of the People. “This was the true genesis of the Green Scare.”
These activists were spied on, infiltrated, manipulated by informants working for both industry and the FBI, and many were criminally prosecuted as terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Their actions were never designed to injure people. Instead, they targeted property, and went to great lengths to avoid collateral damage.
From my perspective, Green Scare 1.0 signaled the end of the radical left in the US. The beginning of the end was the government response to the 1999 World Trade Organization protests, which included unlawful mass arrests and the deployment of military nerve gas which caused "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and the abrupt or immediate onset of menstruation in women, muscular discoordination, confusion, and in some cases hallucinations." From this point on, working hand in hand with industry, the government ultimately succeeded in destroying the radical left in this country.
Black Bloc is a protest tactic that became visible in the US during the 1999 WTO protests. Activists employing this tactic disguise themselves to avoid law enforcement identification, sometimes vandalize corporate or government property, and take extraordinary measures to avoid arrest. Since Black Block is a tactic and not an organization with a discernible structure, Black Bloc anarchists can only be considered a group insofar as individuals who use this tactic are thereby differentiated from those who don't use this tactic.
From what I gather, when the reds refer to Antifa, what they really mean is activists employing Black Bloc tactics and damaging property. In practical terms, Antifa is no more an organization than Black Bloc is. As a movement, Antifa includes anyone actively opposing fascism, but this movement has no structure. For all intents and purposes, Antifa as presented to us by the reds simply doesn't exist.
At first glance, the fact that the reds are so worked up about a group that doesn't really exist is puzzling. I think the reds just needed an enemy to rally against, and our society long ago systematically dismantled the radical wing of the blues, so the reds had to invent a new enemy to add to their mythology. This is troubling on a number of levels.
It's not great that Antifa fictions have wormed themselves into red media and mythology. Nor is it a positive development that elected officials are now wasting government resources on the Antifa boogeyman. But what I find the most troubling is that the reds have, by accident or design, positioned themselves against everyone who is against fascism. This is morally untenable at best. Is supporting fascism now okay in our society? I hope not.
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