Antifa
Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:10 pm
Here are two important articles on the Antifa movement. Most of the protesters in Charlottesville were not Antifa, and Antifa did not organize the rally, but Antifa was present and did cause violence. As far as I can tell, most of the protesters were not violent, and should not be grouped with Antifa.
Using violence to combat racism and fascism is the wrong approach, and it only leads to more violence.
The Rise of the Violent Left
Using violence to combat racism and fascism is the wrong approach, and it only leads to more violence.
The Rise of the Violent Left
What Trump Gets Wrong About AntifaAntifa’s activists say they’re battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead?
If the president is concerned about violence on the left, he can start by fighting the white supremacist movements whose growth has fueled its rise.
Trump is right that, in Charlottesville and beyond, the violence of some leftist activists constitutes a real problem. Where he’s wrong is in suggesting that it’s a problem in any way comparable to white supremacism.
As members of a largely anarchist movement, antifa activists generally combat white supremacism not by trying to change government policy but through direct action. They try to publicly identify white supremacists and get them fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments. And they disrupt white-supremacist rallies, including by force.
As I argued in my essay, some of their tactics are genuinely troubling. They’re troubling tactically because conservatives use antifa’s violence to justify—or at least distract from—the violence of white supremacists, as Trump did in his press conference. They’re troubling strategically because they allow white supremacists to depict themselves as victims being denied the right to freely assemble. And they’re troubling morally because antifa activists really do infringe upon that right. By using violence, they reject the moral legacy of the civil-rights movement’s fight against white supremacy. And by seeking to deny racists the ability to assemble, they reject the moral legacy of the ACLU, which in 1977 went to the Supreme Court to defend the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois.