Since President Donald Trump’s victory in November, the US exploded into demonstrations and protests as angry leftists refused to accept Trump as a legitimate president.
No group is more representative of the hatred, hostility and hypocrisy that the far-left represents than Antifa, a loosely organized group of thugs who attend conservative rallies and events to “counter-protest.” In reality, their goal is to suppress their ideological adversaries by any means necessary – including force.
And today in the Hill, the leader of the Antifa chapter in Washington DC, not only acknowledged the group’s violent tendencies, he described employing violence as a central tenant of the group’s beliefs.
“Anti-fascist activists, or “antifa,” increasingly mobilized in the wake of President Trump’s election, are unapologetic about what they describe as the necessary use of violence to combat authoritarianism.
While both experts on the movement and activists within it emphasize that not everyone who participates in anti-fascist activism engages in violence, they say the use of force is intrinsic to their political philosophy.”
The group’s purported hatred for Nazis is understandable, and would be a point of sympathy, if it were true. Instead the group has a history of repressing scientists, conservative commentators, and peaceful demonstrators, revealing that their definition of a “nazi” is anyone with conservative political views, or even some on the left whose views aren’t compatible with their extremist ideology.
‘The justification [of the use of violence] is that Nazi ideology at its very core is founded on violence and on wielding power by any means,’ said Mike Isaacson, who is one of the founders of Smash Racism D.C., an antifa organization in Washington.
‘I don’t think anyone should think that someone who is intent on politically organizing for the sake of creating a state-sponsored genocide — I don’t think is something that we should protect.’
‘There is the question of whether these people should feel safe organizing as Nazis in public, and I don’t think they should,’ said Isaacson.
‘I don’t think anyone should think that someone who is intent on politically organizing for the sake of creating a state-sponsored genocide — I don’t think is something that we should protect.’
After conservative activists spent months criticizing the group’s violent tactics, particularly its propensity for assaulting peaceful conservative demonstrators, the mainstream price finally took notice late last month following two Bay Area rallies organized by conservative groups.
And in what’s perhaps the interview’s most extreme revelation, Isaacson says Antifa’s mistrust of the police stems from the belief that both the US military and police departments have been infiltrated by Nazis, and that both groups are conspiring to crush Antifa. Setting aside the obvious ridiculousness of this statement for a second, if that were true, why hasn’t the movement been crushed already?
At both events, Antifa punched, kicked, shoved and harassed peaceful demonstrators. After attending the event largely out of curiosity, a local news anchor published a Facebook post where he attested that “I experienced hatred first-hand today.” In the post, he recounted how demonstrators threatened him with robbery and violence, all for trying to document a rally in a public park.
Then the LA Times, Washington Post and even the Atlantic piled on, publishing a series of negative stories recounting the group’s history of violence at rallies and events across the country.
Some Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have condemned the group. But members of the alt-left have embraced it. Liberal activist Cornel West said that antifa activists saved him and others in Charlottesville from “being crushed like cockroaches.”
Just last weekend, Antifa protesters hurled glass bottles and bricks at police officers monitoring a far-right march in Portland, Ore. And, as the Hill notes, the University of California, Berkeley, is bracing for the possibility of more violent clashes on Thursday, when conservative political commentator and former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak.
It was reported recently that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned state and local officials that antifa was engaging in “domestic terrorist violence.” A whitehouse.gov petition calling for the administration to officially label Antifa a terrorist organization has garnered more than 100,000 signatures, requiring a response from the White House.
In short…
via http://ift.tt/2x59sKr Tyler Durden