Antifa

Short for Antifascist.

Antifa has a history going back a century to street brawls against Hitler's Brown Shirts and Mussolini's black shirted fascisti. They also fought in the Spanish Civil War and when the Spanish Republicans lost, many went into exile in Cuba, where they formed an important part of the Revolution. Quiescent after WWII, they had a resurgence after the Caribbean immigration into the UK and the resulting expressions of English racism in the 70's.

Antifa played an essential role in Charlottesville, 2017, when they prevented young nazis enraged over their privileges from attacking older men, mostly clergy, and women. The police refused to intervene in what is being called a new tactic but might just go back to the civil rights era and before, when the police were an extension of the lynch mob.

Dr. @CornelWest says anti-fascist and anarchist protesters protected clergy from white nationalists Friday night: "They saved our lives" 8/14/2017 Democracy Now

Antifa has a history of promoting brave and agressive responses to nazi and confederate provocations. In Charlottesville and elsewhere, authorities have backed off arresting them on the spot, but they could readily be reined in for those instances where they cannot claim self defense, which leave them vulnerable to the police and the state. They would do well to study the history of Robert Williams and other champions of armed protest and vigorous self defense, which even included mounting ambushes of armed Klan convoys on search and destroy missions.

Articles/Artículos

The Importance of Antifa in Confronting Fascism  2/8/2018 Truth Out: "Finally, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that anti-fascism has always been just one facet of a larger struggle against white supremacy and authoritarianism. In his legendary 1950 essay "Discourse on Colonialism," the Martiniquan writer and theorist Aimé Césaire argued convincingly that "Hitlerism" was abhorrent to Europeans because of its "humiliation of the white man, and the fact that [Hitler] applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the 'coolies' of India, and the 'niggers' of Africa." Without in any way diminishing the horror of the Holocaust, to a certain extent we can understand Nazism as European colonialism and imperialism brought home."

"Wherever they go, we go."  11/5/2017 Fusion: "Meet Daryle L. Jenkins, a man who's spent the last 30 years following and fighting white supremacists"

Why the Greatest Advocates of Nonviolence Didn't Condemn Anti-Racist, Anti-Fascist Acts of Violence  9/12/2017 Truth Out: "If Garrison seems to be stuck in a paradox, he is not alone. Henry David Thoreau, who helped popularize the idea of nonviolent resistance, was led to ask about Brown: "What sort of violence is that, which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by peaceable citizens ... not so much by the ?ghting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women?" And W.E.B. Du Bois would similarly state some years later, "We do not believe in violence ... but we do believe in John Brown.""

Taking Out the Trash: Fact Checking Politico’s “Antifa Attacks”  9/3/2017 IGD: "A recent article by the normally respected blog Politico, “FBI, Homeland Security warn of more ‘antifa’ attacks,” claims that unnamed sources at the FBI and DHS reveal that antifa activism is being investigated as terrorism. While on one hand the article seems to be a based on an intentional leak to whip up public opinion against antifa, on the other the author’s biased treatment of the material appears to intentionally fuel this frenzy. Meanwhile, pro-Russian bots are attacking antifa online in order to shift public opinion and the Centrist press is busy conflating antifascists to everything from the Alt-Right to ISIS."

How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley  9/1/2017 ARC Digital: "The narrative surrounding last weekend’s protests in Berkeley took shape on social media and was picked up, at least in part, by mainstream news outlets. The result was a skewed presentation of events that was almost entirely devoid of the context in which they took place. Even more troubling: that narrative was influenced by pro-Russian social media networks, including state-sponsored propaganda outlets, botnets, cyborgs, and individual users."

6 Examples of Fake News About Antifa  8/31/2017 Alternet

Noam Chomsky: Antifa Is a 'Major Gift' to the Right  8/31/2017 Alternet: ""Eleanor Penny, who has written extensively on fascism and the far-right, told The Independent: "Chomsky treats the battle against fascism as a battle for moral purity than can be won when the left remain respectful, polite, and deferent." She added: "But fascists have no interest in winning that battle. They don't care about respecting free speech or the right to a fair trial; they've openly declared their murderous intent towards people of colour (and other undesirables) and they'll pursue that goal by any means necessary. In this context, physical resistance is a duty, an act of self-defence, not an unsightly outpost of leftist moral decline.""

Anti-Fascism Has Arrived: Here’s Where It Needs to Go  8/29/2017 IGD: "Scaremongering from the corporate media - The image at the top of the Washington Post article shows a right-wing demonstrator apparently being shoved by an anti-fascist with a shield. Yet several videos show the same far-right demonstrator pepper-spraying anti-fascist demonstrators without provocation and then pepper-spraying people at randomimmediately before the photo was taken. If you look closely, the attacker is wearing a shirt that celebrates Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet for murdering dissidents by dropping them out of helicopters. If you look closer, you can see that the anti-fascist in the picture has a stick, but is choosing not to use it, instead simply using a shield to block the fascist with the pepper-spray from carrying out further attacks. In fact, the Washington Post chose to use a photo in which the assailant’s right hand is not visible, so readers would not see the pepper spray he holds in it."

After Boston’s huge protest, neo-Nazis cancel rallies in 36 states  8/22/2017 Revere Press: "After thousands of counter-protesters showed up to oppose the Boston Free Speech Rally — the first major right-wing event since the deadly Charlottesville, VA “Unite the Right” rally — the pro-Trump and anti-Muslim group ACT For America has called off 67 rallies in 36 states. The neo-Nazis and white nationalists in Boston numbered only around 100, while some estimate as many as 40,000 turned out against bigotry."

Who are the antifa?  8/16/2017 WaPo: "President Trump equated them with white supremacists. Here's why he’s wrong."

Antifa: A Look at the Antifascist Movement Confronting White Supremacists in the Streets  8/16/2017 Truth Out: "Can you -- can you talk about -- I mean, very interesting, during the South Carolina protests against the white supremacists, there were flags of Republicans in Spain fighting Franco."

What Trump Gets Wrong About Antifa  8/16/2017 The Atlantic: "For starters, while antifa perpetrates violence, it doesn’t perpetrate it on anything like the scale that white nationalists do. It’s no coincidence that it was a Nazi sympathizer—and not an antifa activist—who committed murder in Charlottesville. According to the Anti-Defamation League, right-wing extremists committed 74 percent of the 372 politically motivated murders recorded in the United States between 2007 and 2016. Left-wing extremists committed less than 2 percent."

Drawing Equivalencies Between Fascists and Anti-Fascists Is Not Just Wrong—It’s Dangerous  8/15/2017 In These Times: "As a researcher who has attended numerous political and social events with antifascist involvement, and interviewed many antifascists, it is clear to me that politicians and pundits are drawing a false equivalence between white supremacist and antifa actions—and ignoring the direct threat posed by supremacists that motivates antifascist responses. Antifascists often serve as the first line of defense when police and civil society fail to protect marginalized groups from fascist threat."

The complete story of what happened in Charlottesville, according to the alt-right  8/15/2017 Quartz: "According to alt-right commentators, the white nationalist protesters were thrust defenseless into crowds of armed thugs, beaten, and forced to defend themselves to the extent that one of their ranks killed in self-defense."

What is Antifa?  8/15/2017 CNN: "White nationalists and other members of the so-called alt-right have denounced members of Antifa, sometimes calling them the "alt-left." Many white nationalists from the Charlottesville rallies claimed it was the Antifa groups that led the protests to turn violent."

Charlottesville Police Inaction: Part of a Nationwide Development  8/14/2017 Who What Why: by Peter Dale Scott - "The reluctance of police to intervene since then has been a matter of revised police department policy. After the Yiannopoulos incident, Berkeley Campus Police Chief Margo Bennett told the Los Angeles Times that moving officers into the melee would have created “a lethal, horror situation…. We have to do exactly what we did last night: to show tremendous restraint.” "

What Does Antifa Want? Charlottesville Put The Extremist Movement In The Spotlight  8/14/2017 Bustle: "Because racists and fascists ultimately want to inflict violence on innocent people, it's justified to use violence to stop them from doing so. To support this reasoning, antifa will sometimes point to a quote attributed to none other than Adolf Hitler, who said in 1933 that his then-nascent Nazi movement could have been stopped if its opponents "had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.""

Dr. @CornelWest says anti-fascist and anarchist protesters protected clergy from white nationalists Friday night: "They saved our lives"  8/14/2017 Democracy Now

Antifa Member Photographed Beating Police Officer?  8/14/2017 Snopes: "The real image was taken in Athens, Greece in December 2009 during a demonstration on the one-year anniversary of the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old who was killed by a police officer."

Police Stood by as Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville  8/14/2017 Alternet: "Standing nearby, an assortment of Virginia State Police troopers and Charlottesville police wearing protective gear watched silently from behind an array of metal barricades — and did nothing. It was a scene that played out over and over in Charlottesville as law enforcement confronted the largest public gathering of white supremacists in decades. We walked the streets beginning in the early morning hours and repeatedly witnessed instances in which authorities took a largely laissez faire approach, allowing white supremacists and counter-protesters to physically battle."

Charlottesville Rally: Rabbis, Jewish Students Face Down White Nationalists  8/13/2017 Haaretz: "“Almost all the militia, antifa [anti-fascists] and police were men, and very large men who were literally gunning for a fight,” said Salem Pearce, a congregational organizer for T’ruah and a rabbinical student at Hebrew College. She stood at the end of the clergy line with a couple of other female clergy members. Militia members were carrying the same type of machine guns that Israeli soldiers carry, she said, but “this was more crazy than anything I’ve ever seen. ... I saw plenty of sticks, batons, other implements that could really hurt people. I felt very vulnerable.”"

Confronting White Supremacy: Lessons From a Counter-Rally at the Birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan  7/11/2017 Truth Out: "But many are wondering what it is they can do. In this ongoing "Interviews for Resistance" series, experienced organizers, troublemakers and thinkers share their insights on what works, what doesn't, what has changed and what is still the same."

A New Wave of Left-Wing Militants Is Ready to Rumble in Portland—and Beyond  6/4/2017 Mother Jones: "Yet joining up with the well-established networks of antifascists and anarchists is a new generation of militant organizers. In Portland, Rose City Antifa’s coalition at this weekend’s pro-Trump rally will include the local chapter of Redneck Revolt, a national network whose outreach has targeted right-wing militia members."

Inside the Underground Anti-Racist Movement That Brings the Fight to White Supremacists  6/1/2017 Mother Jones: ”This is a war and we intend to win.”

Koch Network’s Student Protest Ban disguised as “Campus Free Speech”  3/19/2017 UnKock mu Campus: "According to 990's, between 2002 and 2014, the Goldwater Institute received $2,357,112 from the Koch network’s DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, while the Ethics and Public Policy Center has received $873,000. The Freedom Center who sponsored Milo’s UC Berkeley talk received $628,000."

Right-Wing Billionaires Are Funding a Cynical Plot to Destroy Dissent and Protest in Colleges Across the U.S.  3/18/2017 Alternet: "The intent of these bills isn’t to protect student speech; it’s actually to suppress it in favor of guest speakers who, at times, support white nationalism, LGBTQ discrimination and other hateful worldviews. By funding the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, wealthy conservatives are enabling the promotion of hate speech while stifling student dissent. Whether or not Koch, for example, agrees with the hate speech he indirectly sponsors, he certainly benefits from a more friendly academic environment for far-right ideologues who often deny climate change and praise his extreme brand of tax- and regulation-free capitalism."

Radicals Claim That American Liberals Cling to the Past, and to Privilege, to Avoid Facing the Reality of Creeping Fascism  3/10/2017 Alternet: "Instead of merely talking among themselves about opposing racism, say the antifa activists, leftists need to take direct action to make being a white nationalist as difficult as possible. That’s why many antifas have concentrated their efforts on such tactics as doing targeting the financial means of support of websites they see as enabling or promoting fascist views, and even engaging in physical acts of assault against members of the far right."

Fighting Cops and the Klan: The History and Future of Black Antifascism  2/21/2017 Truth Out

Meet Antifa, the Most Reasonable People in America  2/7/2017 Pacific Standard: "The clip went viral, and the Internet memed it to death—now you can even punch Spencer in a mobile game! As the video spread, interest in anti-fascism spiked, and I can say, based on personal experience, that the attitude at demonstrations has changed. Where masked and black-clad antifa used to get wary glares, now it’s thumbs-up and “right on!” from kid-toting parents. Former congressman and Michigan institution John Dingell tweeted “When I was a pup, punching Nazis was encouraged. Hell, some of my Army buddies won medals for it.”

The Long History of "Nazi Punching"  1/26/2017 Mother Jones: "Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted, "I don't care how many songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I'll laugh at every one.""

Anti-Fascists Will Fight Trump’s Fascism in the Streets  1/19/2017 The Nation: "A more recent history of antifa in both Europe and the United States illustrates the success these tactics can have, particularly when it comes to expunging violent racist forces from our neighborhoods and defending vulnerable communities, while also creating networks of support that do not rely on structurally racist law enforcement for protection against racists. Anti-fascist tactics focused primarily around physical force proved effective in forcing neo-Nazi groups out of entire neighborhoods in Europe and the United States in the 1980s."

White Hate Group Come Face-to-Face with Armed Black Muslims and Backs off  4/4/2016 Black Star: "Three Black Power organizations joined forces in anticipation of the group’s arrival at the South Dallas area Nation of Islam mosque. The Huey P. Newton Gun Club, New Black Panther Party and The Nation of Islam were armed and ready to defend worshipers."