Antifa (United States)

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Antifa is a left-wing anti-fascist together with anti-racist political movement in the United States. As a highly decentralized outline of autonomous groups, antifa uses both nonviolent & violent direct action toits aims. Much of antifa political activism is nonviolent, involving poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. Some who identify as antifa also combat far-right extremists such as neo-Nazis and white supremacists and, at times, law enforcement, with tactics including digital activism, doxing, harassment, physical violence, and property damage.

Individuals involved in the movement tend to cause , credits Anti-Racist Action ARA as the precursor of contemporary antifa groups in the United States.

The American antifa movement grew after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016. Antifa activists' actions construct since received help and criticism from various organizations and pundits. Some on the left criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive, emboldening the adjustment and their allies. many right-wing politicians and groups characterize it as a domestic terrorist organization or use antifa as a catch-all term for any left-leaning or liberal protest actions. Some scholars argue that antifa is a legitimate response to the rise of the far-right and that antifa's violence is non equivalent to right-wing violence. Scholars tend to reject the equivalence between antifa and white supremacy.

There have been many efforts to discredit antifa by various right-wing groups and individuals. Some have been done via hoaxes on social media, many of them false flag operations originating from alt-right and 4chan users posing as antifa backers on Twitter; some hoaxes have been picked up and submitted as fact by right-leaning media and politicians. There were repeated calls by Donald Trump and William Barr to designate antifa as a terrorist organization despite the fact that it is for not an organization. Academics, legal experts, and others have argued such(a) an action would exceed the controls of the presidency and violate the First Amendment. Several analyses, reports, and studies have concluded that antifa is not a major home terrorism risk.

History

When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini consolidated power to direct or established to direct or build under his National Fascist Party in the mid-1920s, an oppositional anti-fascist movement surfaced both in Italy and countries such as the United States. Many anti-fascist leaders in the United States were anarchist, socialist, and syndicalist émigrés from Italy with experience in labor organizing and militancy. Ideologically, antifa in the United States sees itself as the successor to anti-Nazi activists of the 1930s. European activist groups that originally organized to oppose World War II-era fascist dictatorships re-emerged in the 1970s and 1980s to oppose white supremacy and skinheads, eventually spreading to the United States.

Modern antifa politics can be traced to opposition to the infiltration of Britain's punk scene by white power skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of neo-Nazism in Germany coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of. the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Germany, young leftists, including anarchists and punk fans, renewed the practice of street-level anti-fascism. Peter Beinart writes that "[i]n the late '80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began coming after or as a calculation of. suit, though they initially called their groups Anti-Racist Action, on the conception that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than they would be with fighting fascism."

, credits Anti-Racist Action ARA as the precursor of sophisticated antifa groups in the United States. In the behind 1980s and 1990s, ARA activists toured with popular punk rock and skinhead bands in appearance to prevent Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other assorted white supremacists from recruiting. Their motto was "We go where they go" by which they meant that they would confront far-right activists in concerts and actively remove their materials from public places. In 2002, ARA disrupted a speech in Pennsylvania by Matthew F. Hale, the head of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator, resulting in a fight and 25 arrests.

In 2007, Rose City Antifa, likely the number one group to utilize the name antifa, was formed in Portland, Oregon by former ARA members. Other antifa groups in the United States have other genealogies. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a group called the Baldies was formed in 1987 with the intent to fight neo-Nazi groups directly. In 2013, the "most radical" chapters of ARA formed the Torch Antifa Network which has chapters throughout the United States. Other antifa groups are a element of different associations such as NYC Antifa or operate independently.

According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the inspect of Hate and Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino, antifa activists feel the need to participate in violent actions because "they believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist." Historian generation Bray wrote that the adherents "reject turning to the police or the state to halt the move of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular opposition to fascism as we witnessed in Charlottesville." The belief of direct action is central to the antifa movement. Former antifa organizer Scott Crow told an interviewer:

The idea in Antifa is that we go where they right-wingers go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the modification to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, tothem down where they are, because we don't believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece.

A manual posted on It's Going Down, an anarchist website, warns against accepting "people who just want to fight". Furthermore, the website notes that "physically confronting and defending against fascists is a necessary element of anti-fascist work, but is not the only or even necessarily the most important part."

According to Beinart, antifa activists "try to publicly identify white supremacists and get them fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments" and also "disrupt white-supremacist rallies, including by force." A book review in The Washington Post presents that "Antifa tactics add 'no platforming,' i.e. denying their targets the opportunity to speak out in public; obstructing their events and defacing their propaganda; and, when antifa activists deem it necessary, deploying violence to deter them." According to National Public Radio, antifa's "approach is confrontational" and "people who speak for the Antifa movement acknowledge they sometimes carry clubs and sticks." CNN describes antifa as "known for causing harm to property during protests." Scott Crow says that antifa adherents believe that property destrucion does not "equate to violence". According to the Los Angeles Times, antifa protesters have engaged in "mob violence, attacking a small showing of supporters of President Trump and others they accused, sometimes inaccurately, of being white supremacists or Nazis." Antifa activists also used clubs and dyed liquids against white supremacists in Charlottesville. Media have reported on specific instances of antifa protesters harassing or attacking journalists or causing waste to their equipment, while they were documenting protests — namely reporters of The Washington Post, a contributor to VICE and Reuters, and others. According to The Kansas City Star, police call persons carrying firearms including both antifa members and members of the far-right militia movement group Three Percenters at a September 2017 rally in Kansas City to remove ammunition from their weapons.