“They have no allegiance to liberal democracy”: an expert on antifa explains the group

Vox ^ | August 25, 2017 | Sean Illing

[2ndDivisionVet]

When Donald Trump used the phrase “alt-left” to describe the anti-neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last week, most people had no idea what he meant. I’m actually not sure he knew what he meant.

“What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Do they have any assemblage of guilt?” Trump said during a rambling press conference.

If the alt-left exists, it’s probably best represented by “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) — a loose network of left-wing activists who physically resist people they consider fascists. These are often the scruffy, bandana-clad people who show up at alt-right rallies or speaking events in order to shut them down before they happen, and they openly embrace violence as a justifiable means to that end.

Antifa is not a monolithic organization, nor does it have anything like a hierarchical leadership structure. It’s an umbrella group that shares a number of causes, the most important of which is resisting white nationalist movements. Adherents are mostly socialists, anarchists, and communists who, according to Mark Bray, a historian at Dartmouth College and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, “reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular opposition to fascism as we witnessed in Charlottesville.”

I reached out to Bray to discuss the group and its burgeoning impact on American politics. He’s sympathetic to antifa’s cause and makes no effort to hide that. He describes the book as “an unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of anti-fascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the resurgent far right.”(continued)

[jeffc]

So why isn’t antiFA (anti 1st A) being investigated and put through the ringer by the myriad of government agencies like 0bama had done to the TEA Party?

[Mustangman]

There is no white nationalist movement going on. So, I guess Anitifa can go home now. Seriously, where when and who claimed a white nationalist movement was on the rise? It’s made up crap.

[Leep]

Remember early obozo’s first term they claimed attacks by right wing groups were up.
You would think there would be video evidence all over YouTube if it were true.

[Wuli]

This is, like it was on the Washington Post, more white washing of Antifa.

They may have adopted what they think are tactics of early European “anti-fascists”, but in the current American context, they are not attacking just anyone that may rightly be considered Neo Nazi, or racist, or “white supremacists”

They are attacking any and every “Conservative” view as “fascist” and attempting to smear anything to the left of Left as “fascist”.

Articles like that in Vox are helping them get away with the pretense that Antifa is “anti fascist”. They are merely “pro militant Left” period.

It is the old trick the Marxists played in Europe, branding anyone to their Left as “fascist” after the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. On the scale of authoritarians who is worse? They’re the same.