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In…
activist political slang, ‘antifa’ refers to ‘anti-fascist’ and is synonymous with the militant wing of the anti-fascist movement.1
Antifa is a group. This group is made of smaller groups or cells. Each of these is…
a group of people who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose
…to quote the dictionary definition of an organization.
Also, individuals may physically join up with Antifa groups at riots without any prior contact with them after, for example, seeing a flyer for the event in person or online. Thus, Antifa is a group of organizations and individuals. These groups may not all have official memberships2 but they do have members. What other word would one use for the…
people who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose
loose collections of groups, networks and individuals.
They are right about that much, at least.
At times some of these organizations or cells from across a nation or across multiple nations will form larger organizations like multicellular organisms. By definition, these are national organizations and international organizations.
Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Klan members–often wearing masks and dressed in the organization’s signature long white robes and hoods–usually carried out their attacks at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals
What if we were to switch a few words?
Even at its height, Antifa did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Antifa members–often wearing masks and dressed in the organization’s signature black clothes with hoods–usually trying to carry out their attacks without being filmed, acting on their own but in support of the common goals
Like Antifa (or Islamic terrorists in many cases, for that matter), the KKK is decentralized. There is no single leader and I would imagine the KKK doesn’t file taxes. They are comprised of organizations and networks.
Consideration is being given to declaring ANTIFA, the gutless Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting (only non-fighters) people over the heads with baseball bats, a major Organization of Terror (along with MS-13 & others). Would make it easier for police to do their job!
His Twitter account would eventually be removed from the public square, of course, and without the consent of the public, though Twitter is a public company. But the tweet is archived here.
Trump was wrong. Antifa is not an organization - not a single organization.
He is right to imply that they are terrorists. However, one might question whether it would be to the public’s benefit if the government were to designate Antifa a terrorist organization. Beside the fact that they are not a single organization, how would membership be defined? It would be a reverse of plausible deniability - an implausibility of denial - because if the government has the flexibility to decide who is or is not Antifa, they will abuse that flexibility.
Thus, the concern is that, for example, some patriotic Americans peacefully protesting unconstitutional government lockdowns could be designated to be Antifa terrorists (even as Antifa attacks them at their otherwise peaceable assembly). It would surely be an other opportunity to further violate people’s rights. But I digress.
Almost a year later, on May 30th, 2020, Trump tweeted…
It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!
The following day, on May 31st, 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced in an official Department of Justice statement that…
the violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.
Notice that they did not take issue with the claim that Antifa is an organization/group. Some of the responses, however, were already claiming that Antifa is not a group and that these organizations don’t exist. Here’s the top response to serve as an example…
Benjamin Norton (apparently a journalist with about 181,000 Twitter followers) tweeted that Antifa is “not an actual organization” and later that it “isn’t an organization.”
antifa is not an organization. It does not have a leader, membership roles or any defined, centralized structure. Rather, it is a vaguely defined movement of people who share common protest tactics and targets.
Rating
They are correct to say Antifa is not a single organization and that it does not have a single leader or a centralized structure. However, as we’ll see, at least one Antifa organization has official membership with an official procedure for acceptance. They are also incorrect to claim that…
rather, it is a vaguely defined movement of people who share common protest tactics and targets.
The authors of the New York Times piecedo refer to Antifa as a group which is certainly more than an idea. They also write that Antifa are…
left-wing protesters who engage in more aggressive techniques like vandalism.
Vandalism? What about using acid as a weapon?3 How about Arson?4 Book burning?5 What about trying to fire off a gun wildly at a school with children inside while trying to kill a cop?6 What about their bombing and alleged attempted bombing?7 What about possible rapes?8 What about their attacks on members of the ‘marginalized groups’ they claim to protect, journalists & animals?9 How about their attacks on children?10 What about their connections to NAMBLA?11 Attacks on independent journalists?12 What about the multiple cold-blooded murders?13 Almost all of these occurred before they wrote this propaganda and vandalism is the worst they are willing to admit? This is the level of bullshit the New York Times is willing to stoop to, apparently.
But wait, it gets worse. They also suggested that Trump’s administration was falsely blaming…
…in the week prior. This was co-written by someone who they say is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. I have emailed the following to both of these propagandists...
Hello. I am requesting a comment for a report I am writing in which I include the fact that in your May 31, 2020 report for the NY Times, “Trump, Lacking Clear Authority, Says U.S. Will Declare Antifa a Terrorist Group”, you wrote that Antifa, "has come to be associated with a diffuse movement of left-wing protesters who engage in more aggressive techniques like vandalism." Why didn't you mention the fact that they have engaged in far worse acts of aggression like physical attacks on members of marginalized groups, arson, and murder?
Thank you, Justin
I have not received a response from either.
Also on May 31st, 2020, the Washington Post reported that according to Mark Bray, the openly pro-Antifa author of Antifa - the Anti-Fascist Handbook…
The groups do not make their membership rolls public, so tracking their scope is difficult, but they generally have about five to 15 members in a given city…
Those numbers are just insults to the intelligence, but, certainly, if they have members they are more than just an idea.
Antifa is not a single organization
…reported Eric Tucker of the Associated Press for the PBS News Hour on June 1, 2020 which is accurate, but they also reported that Antifa is…
an umbrella term for far-left-leaning movements that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left-leaning movements that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
Antifa is an umbrella term to describe radical left-leaning militant groups that typically confront neo-Nazism and white supremacists at demonstrations.
This Fox report also referred to Antifa as “activists” which hardly seems right and which is a bit surprising coming from what is supposed to be right-wing media.
has been described by experts as more of an ideology than an organization.
"It's not one specific organization with a headquarters and a president and a chain of command," said Mark Bray, a history professor at Rutgers University and author of "The Anti-Fascist Handbook." "It's a kind of politics. In a sense, there are plenty of antifa groups, but antifa itself is not a group."
issued by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center
…and…
distributed to law enforcement agencies around the country
…titled…
Domestic Violent Extremists Could Exploit Current Events to Incite or Justify Attacks on Law Enforcement or Civilians Engaged in First Amendment-Protected Activities
They report that…
despite repeated Trump administration assertions that the antifa movement has hijacked the ongoing protests around the country sparked by the police killing of George Floyd
…the bulletin…
points to white supremacists and other would-be domestic terrorists as the main problem lurking behind potentially lethal violence.
ABC News referred to Antifa as a “movement” while reporting that the bulletin…
makes only a limited mention of the left-leaning, loosely affiliated antifa movement
…which, they write…
appears to undercut recent criticisms of the movement by President Trump and top administration officials.
They report that Antifa is only mentioned in a footnote of this document which they quote as…
Some anarchist extremists self-identify as ‘Antifa,’ a moniker for anti-fascist that is also used by non-violent adherents. Identifying with ‘Antifa’ or using the term without engaging in violent extremism may also be constitutionally protected.
On June 22, 2020, the Washington Post complained that Trump said that Antifa were violent, implied they are not violent and claimed that they “don’t coordinate.”
They quote Seth G. Jones, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, saying that while there has been violence at protests, Antifa…
stood back, did not engage, certainly not in a violent way
…while implying that violence was committed at Black Lives Matter rallies by…
no substantial evidence suggests that dangerous antifa terrorists are threatening public safety, or even that any antifa “organization” exists.
Note that these reports are easy to selectively quote from to make it seem as if Antifa are just an idea. As the National Review reported…
The line from all Democrats will now be that “Antifa is an idea, not an organization” because Biden said so on the debate stage. This is a modification of FBI director Chris Wray’s statement that Antifa is an ideology or movement, not an organization.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the very next day, June 25th, 2020 the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler referred to Antifa as “imaginary” on the House floor…
Some argue that these groups are not organizations. I think what these simpletons are struggling to articulate as they grope blindly in the darkness of their ignorance is that Antifa are not legally established organizations like a corporation, or a political action committee. An organization need not be a legally established entity. It need only be “a group of people who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose” as it is defined. Antifa does not work together in an organized way as a whole, but individual cells or groups do, which means they are organizations.
On September 11, 2020, the Washington Post published a piece by the Antifa author Mark Bray in which he writes…
antifa is not an organization. Rather, it is a politics of revolutionary opposition to the far right.
There’s that false dichotomy again. It’s presented as if Antifa can’t be anything but either a single organization or an idea. It’s stupid and therefore effective.
We look at Antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization.
That’s ambiguous. He later stated (at 57:21), “Antifa is a real thing,” which seems clear enough, but then immediately after that he added…
It's not a group or an organization, it's a movement or an ideology, maybe one way of thinking of it, and we have quite a number and I've said this consistently since my first time appearing before this committee, we have any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists. Some of those individuals self identify with Antifa.
At that point he clearly said they are not an organization. As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that they are a single organization. Antifa is a group, a group of individuals and organizations, but it is not a single organization.
Well, we don't really think of threats in terms of Left and Right at the FBI.15 We're focused on the violence, not the ideology. Our domestic violent extremists include everything from racially motivated violent extremists, which we've talked about here in this Committee before, I think when I testified last year, for example, all the way to antigovernment, anti-authority violent extremists, and that includes people ranging from anarchist violent extremists, people who subscribe to Antifa or other ideologies, as well as militia types, and those kinds of.
In other words, according to the director, the F.B.I. considers Antifa to be…
Antifa aren’t exactly anarchists though many of them claim to be. But let us not dwell on this here.16 Chairman Thompson then said…
Well, I think what I'm trying to reflect on it is we hear from time to time that this organization, by name, we need to investigate. Secretary-Designee, if he was here, he would get asked this question, but he's not. He asked for an investigation of Antifa because they were the greatest threat to the Homeland. And if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that it's really not organizations so much as it is ideology. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think that's what I heard.
I appreciate that. We look at Antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization. To be clear, we do have quite a number of properly predicated domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchist extremists, any number of whom self identify with the Antifa movement. And that's part of this broader group of domestic violent extremists that I'm talking about, but it's just one part of it. We also have the racially motivated violence extremists, the militia types, and others.
The fact that the F.B.I. director said that…
people who subscribe to Antifa
…are…
violent extremists
…who are (or were) subject to…
domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchist extremists
…seems to go unnoticed. The fact that he also said…
Antifa is a real thing
…also seems to be ignored. A real thing made of real people who identify with a group and, under that group’s flag, assault unarmed people trying to exercise their First Amendment right to,,,
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government
…is not just an idea.
Notice also that the Chairman asked about Antifa organizations (plural) and the FBI director did not comment on Antifa organizations (plural). Later in his testimony (1:12:16), however, the FBI director stated…
And we have seen individuals, I think I've mentioned this in response to one of the earlier questions, identified with the Antifa movement, coalescing regionally into what you might describe as small groups, or nodes.
Later that day,the Associated Press published FBI director says antifa is an ideology, not an organization. Many people read a headline and, without reading the body, accept what the headline suggests or states as truth. Many people who would begin reading such an article would not read deep enough to see that they did write….
Wray did not dispute in his testimony Thursday that antifa activists were a serious concern, saying that antifa was a “real thing”…
This was republished by the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, Snopes, Breitbart, ABC News and their local affiliates, by CBS News local affiliates, NBC News locals, FOX News locals and many others included in the references below. With so many news outlets more-or-less claiming that Antifa is just an idea and not an organization it is no wonder that many people parrot this claim on social media.
the language used by Wray in his congressional testimony continues to defer to a term of art devised to wrap far-right extremists into the same category as antifascists and anarchists, thus satisfying the White House’s insistence that the latter two are an existential threat to America: “racially motivated violent extremists.”
Also on September 18, 2020, the Associated Press published an article with the headline, FBI director says antifa is an ideology, not an organization. This, of course, gives one a certain first impression, even if one reads deep into the article and comes across the admission that Wray also said they were a…
real thing.
This piece from the Associated Press was reprinted by numerous others including ABC News, ABC 5 KTSP News, ABC 7 News Boston/WHDH, ABC 27 News Harrisburg, Breitbart, CBS 6 KOIN, CBS 17, FOX 2 KTVU, FOX 40 Sacramento, FOX 44 News Waco, FOX 61 Connecticut, NBC Bay Area, NBC News WDSU 6, Seattle Times, Snopes, Washington Post, WDSU NBC, WGN9, Los Angeles Times, ABC 5 Eyewitness News KSTP, and CBS 19 to name a few.
And so the question of whether Antifa were an organization or just an idea continued. The question itself presumes a false dichotomy, of course, because they are not just an idea and they are not a single organization.
You know what, Antifa is a dangerous radical group
…and so, predictably, automatically, right on que, the claim that Antifa is just an idea and not a group or organization was repeated in the public square by those who are prone to such programming as if that magically means Antifa doesn’t exist or as if that excuses their actions.
Their claims are partly true, partly false. Antifa is not a single organization, but a group of individuals and organizations and certainly not just an idea. As the National Police Association asks, Biden: “Antifa is an idea not an organization”. So who threw that brick?
About seven months later, on April 15, 2021, FBI Director Wray testified at the House Select Intelligence Committee Hearing on Global Threats. Starting at 51:31 in this video of the hearing, Representative Michael Turner from Ohio asked Wray about Antifa, specifically about his past testimony that Antifa is not an a group or an organization. You can read what was said in the notes below18 and/or you can listen to what was said in the video here.
The short version is that FBI director Wray reiterated what he had previously said about Antifa that we went over. However, Representative Turner made a very good argument that the disparity between how the FBI approaches the incident on January 6th, 2020 at the Capitol and how they approach Antifa is an indication that the FBI is not very interested in investigating Antifa and when given ample chance to say whatever he wanted to say about it, director Wray, in his attempt to deny the disparity, was utterly unconvincing.
It’s perfectly clear that they are not a single organization. But do they engage in terrorism and do the organize?
Are Antifa Terrorists?
Leaving aside the question of whether or not they are a single organization, do they engage in terrorism?
Claim
Antifa engages in terrorism.
Rating
Yes, they engage in…
the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion
Some, like Mark Bray, on page 168 of his book, deny that Antifa engage in terrorism. They are wrong. They apparently don’t know what the word terrorist means or else they do but hope that you don’t.
On page 261, Bray claims to be a historian of - are you ready for this? - human rights and terrorism! There’s no shortage of proof of Antifa engaging in…
Some might say something like, “They’re not terrorists! They fight fascism!” This is incorrect. For years I have been communicating with a good number of the people Antifa has attacked. They are not even remotely close to being fascists, Nazis, racists, and so on.
According to the Anti-Defamation League before they removed the following passage…
Antifa have expanded their definition of fascist/fascism to include not just white supremacists and other extremists, but also many conservatives and supporters of President Trump. In Berkeley, for example, some antifa were captured on video harassing Trump supporters with no known extremist connections. Antifa have also falsely characterized some recent right wing rallies as “Nazi” events, even though they were not actually white supremacist in nature.
Again, the ADL later removed this from their website. At any rate, it seems this is nothing new. In Specters of Fascism: The Rhetoric of Historical Analogy in 1968, Ben Mercer wrote of…'
1970s in Western Europe
…that,
seeing fascism everywhere also proved highly tendentious...One effect of the incessant invocation of fascism was its decline in value.
One effect of incessantly crying wolf is that crying wolf has less of an effect.
So, Mark, as you say yourself, they have members, they are a group, they organize locally, nationally and internationally. Though you deny it, they engage in terrorism. How are they not a terrorist organization, indeed an international terrorist organization?
Does Antifa Organize?
According to an Antifa by the name of Mark Bray, in his book Antifa - The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Antifa organizes. Bray writes on page xxiv that his work is a…
reference book intended to promote organizing.
On page xxi he writes that his…
ability to conduct interviews with North American and European anti-fascists
…for the book…
was entirely reliant on the relationships
…he…
had established over more than fifteen years of organizing.
…On page xxiv, he writes that at least half of his book sales will fund Antifa. So it would seem that Bray is not out to make Antifa look bad.
He writes about Antifa organizing on pages xvii, xix, xxiii, 61, 62, 90, 91, 96, 97, 102, 103, 107, 114, 151, 156, 157, 159, 168, 172, 176, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 202, 203, 205, 213, 217, 219 and 222. There’s a section on “organizing strategies” starting on 214. Bray writes about Antifa “organizers” on pages 198, 199, 203 and 157 where he also writes of the…
difficulty of maintaining membership
…that some Antifa organizers have at times. Bray said in an interview that Antifa…
…across the USA. This didn’t stop that same Washington Post from making the intelligence-insulting claim about a month earlier that they “don’t coordinate”. Are they so stupid that they don’t know what the simple word ‘coordinate’ means or do they think you’re too stupid to know what it means?
the foremost organisation on the militant wing of Britain’s anti-fascist movement
…in the 1990s.
These are organizations whether one knows it or not or admits it or not. A group that organizes on a national level would be a national organization. If they organize across national borders, they are an international organization.
An organization need not be a legally established entity like a corporation. Again, they need only be…
a group of people who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose.
Antifa organizes on social media, through text, private message, email, in person and so on. They coordinate their actions. They share intel. They strategize. They have their own chants. Many of the members of this organization fly some version of the Antifa flag or wear the symbol as a patch or whatnot. They identify themselves as members of the group, as Antifa.
But do they organize on a national level? An international level?
Is Antifa a National Organization?
On page 119, Bray writes that the Antifa organization Redneck Revolt is…
a national organization that counted twenty-six branches as of April 2017.
This photo is taken from a NY Post article. Their caption for this image is, “18 W. 11th St. in Greenwich Village was destroyed by an accidental Weather Underground explosion (left). It was then rebuilt with a much-debated angular design by the Langworthy family (right).”
was formed in 1978 by former members of the Weather Underground, the May 19th Communist Organization (named after the shared birthday of Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh), and other groups.
Getting back to the Antifa group into which the Weather Underground melted, Bray writes that…
by the late eighties the group had about three hundred members organized in thirteen cities across the country.
On page 120, he writes,
Other leftist gun clubs/community self-defense groups include the Maoist Red Guards in Austin, Texas, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which includes eight organizations around the country…
Arising from growing recognition that anti-fascists needed to counter neo-Nazi activity more effectively on a national level, in 1992, the peak year of racial violence in the newly unified Germany,19 AA (M) led in the creation of the Anti-Fascist Action/Nationwide Organisation (Antifaschistische Aktion/Bundesweite Organisation, AA/BO). This was an umbrella organisation, founded in Wuppertal, of around a dozen regional ‘antifa’ groups (rising to seventeen by the end of 1995). To prevent hierarchies from being established, the organisation was based on the principle that each constituent group would send delegates to a nationwide meeting.
Copsey also writes that the aforementioned group Anti Fascist Action had “all but collapsed” in 1988 and in the following year it was..
resurrected as a militant, physical force anti-fascist group
…and was…
the work (primarily) of Red Action (RA), a hard-line, semi-paramilitary Marxist group. Now defunct, RA had been formed in 1982 by militant anti-fascists who had been expelled from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) for partaking in physical force, anti-fascist ‘fighting groups’ (or ‘squads’).
Copsey writes that…
At its peak during the mid-1990s, this re-launched AFA comprised some 35-40 branches across Britain with notable activist strongholds in London, Manchester, the Midlands, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
That would, of course, be a national Antifa group. Perhaps it is debatable whether the countries that make up the United Kingdom are nations themselves. At any rate, Copsey writes…
Organisationally, AFA was a decentralised federation, with groups stretching from Scotland to the English south coast. AFA in the north came together as a ‘Northern Network’ but London AFA, dominated by Red Action, produced AFA’s magazine Fighting Talk, and it remained the driving force behind AFA at national level.
Is he describing a national or international organization?
Is Antifa an International Organization?
In the introduction to his book (on page xxiv), Bray writes…
at the very least 50 percent of author proceeds will go to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund which is administered by more than three hundred antifa from eighteen countries.
in the late eighties, antifa spread across Europe to many countries, including Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden
…and we can hardly imagine that they would not organize with each other to some extent.
On page 107, he writes that the first Antifa group in America,
Rose City Antifa (RCA) in Portland, Oregon
…has a…
high number of Europeans in their group
…and…
always considered themselves to be connected to the European movement
…and that…
they organized solidarity events for Russian antifa.
On page 127, he writes about “the multinational” Antifa group called “Antifascist International Tabur” and that they joined the “International Freedom Battalion (IFB)” that…
was established in Rojava
…in Syria in 2015 that…
includes Turkish communist organizations
…as well as…
the French anarchist Henri Krasucki Brigade, the Greek anarcho-communist Revolutionary Union for Internationalist Solidarity, and the Bob Crow Brigade for British and Irish fighters.
On page 59 he writes of “the new International”20 calledthe “International Militant Anti-Fascist Network” which he writes included Antifa organizations from Germany, Canada and America and which was comprised of nine of the twenty-two “visiting groups” attending Antifa’s “more formal international coordination” called the “European Anti-Fascist Infos Network, the first international conference of militant anti-fascism” that he writes…
was held in London in October 1997.
He writes further more,
delegates represented twenty-two organizations from France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, the United States, and Canada
…but that thirteen of these declined to join this “International Militant Anti-Fascist Network” after some disagreement.
In his book, Bray recommends the website for Antifa International. This too suggests they are more than an idea.
…joined with the German Antifa organization called Antifaschistische Aktion…
in Göttingen on 2 October 1992 (to protest against the day of German Reunification).
Copsey also writes of a European (international) network which held a conference in Eindhoven…
which had been called to form a European anti-fascist movement on the basis of a manifesto drafted by the Anti-Fascist Front of Antwerp.” and of “an impromptu alternative conference” that was held by other Antifa organizations including the aforementioned AFA that “resulted in the launch of a new militant anti-fascist network, the European Anti-Fascist Infos Network. Significantly, the British contact for this network was not London AFA but AFA’s branch in Leeds, northern England (a Leeds AFA organiser could speak French and had personal contacts with people at SCALP-Reflex). The objectives behind this embryonic transnational anti-fascist network had been to exchange information and ideas, and where possible offer mutual solidarity and support.
That would be an international organization. Thankfully, he also writes…
AFA’s engagement with this particular transnational network soon ended.
Again, if one considers the UK to be comprised of four nations, the group AFA was an international Antifa organization if Copsey is accurate. At any rate, he writes…
The most significant finding to emerge from this case study is that transnational exchange was undoubtedly taken seriously by militant anti-fascists in the 1990s but critical political, ideological, and cultural differences rendered Anglo-German cross-border co-operation less effective than it could otherwise have been.
He is clearly describing organization across national borders.
The groups do not make their membership rolls public, so tracking their scope is difficult, but they generally have about five to 15 members in a given city, Bray said.
Many organizers lament the difficulty of maintaining membership.
One would imagine that there are also people,
those individuals self identify with Antifa
…as the FBI director put it (at 57:46), who are not members of any cell but who might join them in the streets, be part of the black bloc (explained below), and so on. Thus, this group, Antifa, is comprised of not just cells of people, but also people who do not belong to any cell.
Even USA Today acknowledges that these Antifa groups exist but that was before it became so important to claim otherwise to contradict Trump.
A bloc, is a group of people or nations, etc. with shared political interest. A group of Antifa dressed in black working together is called a/the black bloc. This strategy provides anonymity for members of the bloc and makes it difficult to track individuals. If one of them assaults a person it tends to be difficult to keep track of the individual who did it. It’s the same strategy employed by herds of prey to confuse predators.
In France, militant anti-fascists work toward merging small-group militant action with broader mobilization by working through intermediary and mass-level assemblies…the first level of organizing is the “antifa radical group,” and the second level is the “antifa collective,” such as Vigilances 69 in Lyon or Comité Antifa St-Etienne, mixing people from unions and community activists. Organizers in Toulouse are currently “experimenting” with a third level, “the anti-fascist assembly,” which groups together other activist and leftist organizations with antifa collectives.
cultural shifts and advances in communications technologies have altered how anti-fascists organize and how they present themselves to the world
…and on page 121 he writes of …
American antifa culture and organizing.
Speaking of strategy, his book includes a section on “organizing strategies” starting on page 214.
Some people can’t conceive of organizations having no leaders, no hierarchy, no horizontal pyramidal structure. But an organization or group of organizations need not be legally established, need not be hierarchal, need not a leader. Lynch mobs don’t need such things yet they are deadly. Lynch mobs don’t need leaders, only willing participants. So it doesn’t actually matter if they are organizations. What matters is they are destructive and deadly.
Usually society thinks of groups, groupings and organizations arranged in a tree-like structure, arborescence. Trees tend to be vertical with a main trunk, or a few main trunks, yielding major branches yielding smaller branches yielding even smaller branches and so on. Cut off a branch and you kill all it’s smaller branches. Cut through the trunk and you kill everything that branched from it.
This is not the only way of organizing. This is not how Antifa organizes. Think of how jihadi groups work. Is there any single “tree” to kill that would kill all those terrorist cells? No. That’s not how it works. Their foundation is not like a tree trunk. Their foundation is toxic individuals with toxic relationships organizing in groups.
Their organization is more decentralized and horizontal than vertical and hierarchal.
We live in a nook barely carved out of the wilderness. About a century ago, about 4 or 5 trees were felled and some soil was moved, some rough-hewn stone blocks were stacked to hold the earth in place and a house was built, tightly nestled between the trees. The plant-life between the trees in the immediate area of the house was disturbed. Some grass took root, but roses, grapevines and wisteria vines were planted which were later neglected and went wild. Wild berry bushes too which, along with the wild roses, are now just tangles of thorny vines and mounds of newer thorny vines growing on old ones, with occasional stunted flowers. They kill everything but the stronger trees. Those are killed by the wild grape and wisteria vines, but only on the margin between the forest and the home-front.
They would take over the home-front and the house itself if we let them. The ceiling would collapse, the walls cave in. It would end up like some cthonic mound spidering out a thousand barbed tentacles, entangled, confusing and horrifying to the eye, like a Lovecraftian demon or a black metal band logo.
But my point is that these plants have the same basic strategy. They are decentralized. They are made of individuals, clusters and superclusters. Kill any cluster or supercluster and they pop up elsewhere. It makes no sense to look for a main center to kill because there is none.
Their only inroad into the forest is with weak trees. They exploit the weak. They can only survive where they can exploit weaknesses, the corruption and neglect at the margins where I haven’t the time to clear them away. They must be replaced with something stronger, more resilient, something to counteract the hatred and anger that drives them - LOVE.
Conclusion
One might say that it’s more appropriate to refer to these cells as organizations than as groups because organizations are necessarily made of people whereas a group can be made of anything, like stars or hockey pucks. We wouldn’t want to dehumanize them by calling them a group, now, would we? Not when a group can be a bunch of lug-nuts or * ahem * a flock of sheep.
Either way; as a whole, Antifa is a group comprised of cells - smaller groups or organizations. While cells from across a nation or across multiple nations sometimes combine to form larger organizations, the group known as Antifa, a whole, has no central/total organization. Antifa is not an organization, not a single organization. Antifa is a group of organizations. These engage in terrorism.
Antifa is a terrorist group made of terrorist cells or terrorist organizations - some domestic and others foreign - that sometimes form national terrorist organizations and international terrorist organizations that are ultimately comprised of people who are terrorists, terrorists who threaten/use violence with the political agenda of preventing certain people from exercising their civil liberties and civil rights.
Antifa is not just an idea. Antifa is a collective of poisoned poisonous people.
Ultimately, Antifa grows from individuals who are motivated by hatred and anger. Look into the people who are arrested in Antifa riots (Andy Ngo publishes their mugshots). They are all lost, ignorant, hateful, angry, resentful people looking to lash out at the world, to harm the good, to kill the light. They want to burn it all down because they despise their own miserable selves and want others to be miserable too.
Many, perhaps most of us have suffered trauma, live in poverty, have been or still are abused. No one fails to experience intense suffering. We all know that no one here gets out alive. Yet most of us do not seek to destroy or hurt innocent people because of it. We do wrong, of course. But we are, at least, decent human beings who want to be happy and to make others happy. We overcome because we have the strength and good will to do so.
Not them. They are inferior.
They hate themselves so much that they resent happy, loving people and want to snuff out their light.
Let the light of love chase away these shadows.
∴ Liberty my right ∴ Truth my sword ∴
∴ Laughter my shield ∴ Knowledge my steed ∴
∴ Love my solace ∴ Honor my reward ∴
Update
Having finished this piece (so I thought), I began to read Andy Ngo’s Unmasked - Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy and found some passages that are relevant to the question of Antifa organizing. On page 17-18, referring to the George Floyd riots in 2020, he writes…
In the days after the riots broke out first in Minnesota and then elsewhere, a flurry of headlines sought to discredit Attorney General William Barr and President Trump, who stated that there was some evidence for antifa involvement in the riots.
“Federal arrests show no sign that antifa plotted protests” echoed a New York Times report.
These headlines filtered down through dozens of other protests and into the mouths of left-wing commentators on television. What the writers of these reports seemed to not understand is that antifa is a phantom movement by design. It is leaderless and structured to be functional through small, independent organizations known as affinity groups, and individuals. Only the ideology needs to be propagated for lone wolves or groups to be inspired. Part of that ideology involves extensive training on “digital security,” that is, using encrypting tools, apps, and web browsers to completely evade detection by authorities and others. It is no surprise that scant evidence materialized…Antifa are trained to hide their political affiliations.
As demonstrated with window breaking, it only takes a small group of people - even just one person - to set off a chain reaction. It makes sense that the overwhelming majority of those arrested at random are not aligned with antifa ideology. They don’t need to in order to play a role in the riots. The smashing of businesses’ windows serves as an open invitation to opportunist looters and rioters to wreak havoc. That’s the genius of antifa’s riot strategy: they don’t have to light the match.
On page 19, he writes…
On May 28, 2020, the Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists tweeted an announcement that it was organizing three days of “solidarity actions” at the state capitol.
On page 54…
Meanwhile, the daily violent antifa protests were becoming more organized and sophisticated. Media pundits inaccurately described what was happening as spontaneous and organic, but what I saw on antifa social media accounts was a deliberate, strategic, and organized plan to grow and entrench the riots. Through advertising on Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, they were widely successful in getting support not just from antifa fans but also from the wider left.
On pages 55-57…
To achieve their goals, antifa uses violence. But sustained, effective violence takes organization, planning, and money, in addition to participants. To achieve this, a smorgasbord of ad hoc antifa groups popped up. Describing themselves as “mutual aid” groups, they supplied everything from food and bail money to riot gear and weapons.
The Witches was one mutual aid group that formed to give out water, food, and supplies to rioters. Riot Ribs was a pop-up kitchen that cooked hot meals. Free food is a mainstay of the riots for a few reasons. It draws in protesters and vagrants to inflate crowd numbers. Secondly, it is effective for propaganda as it generates favorable news stories and photographs showing the “peaceful” side of the radical protests.
The Equitable Workers Offering Kommunity Support or EWOKS, provided volunteer “street medics” for comrades injured during the rioting. Similarly, a group calling itself “OSHU4BLM” claimed to be made of medical students affiliated with Oregon Health and Science University. (They later shut down after receiving notice that they weren’t allowed to use the OSHU brand.) PDX Shield provided homemade shields, which were more frequently used as battering weapons. PDX Community Jail Support aided arrested rioters immediately after their release from jail. They set up a camp outside the central police precinct and offered arrestees food, phone access, legal support, and rides home. In short, they streamline the riot catch-and-release process.
These numerous other anonymous “mutual aid” groups were all established between May and August 2020 in Portland. Using payment applications Venmo and Cash App, the groups were able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from a large number of anonymous donors around the country (and even internationally).
Thousands around the United States support antifa and the far left. They are willing to donate to their fundraisers. Politicians and celebrities promote their causes, and local media provide favorable coverage. Riot Ribs was one of the most successful Portland antifa mutual aid groups during the summer. It raised more than $330,000 but suddenly dissolved overnight in July 2020 and disappeared, along with the money.
Of course, as much as these mutual aid groups received to provide supplies to rioters, they pale in comparison to how much the Portland General Defense Committee was able to raise on GoFundMe. Similar to the wildly successful Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bails out rioters and those charged with serious crimes like murder, the Portland group pulled in over $1.37 million. The huge flow of cash is used to bail out every rioter arrested, cover heir legal expenses, pay for housing and new mobile devices, give donations to other groups, and whatever else they feel like supporting. When the charges get dropped or dismissed, and the overwhelming majority of them do, the bail bond is returned and reinvested in other nefarious causes.
The Portland General Defense Committee publishes a financial accountability page on its website. I can only assume the information reported is accurate. They say $20,000 was given to bail a fund in Eugene, Oregon. Bail bonds ranging from several hundred dollars up tp $50,000 were paid more than a hundred people. In effect, the group is using a GoFundMe campaign to channel money to causes that are otherwise not allowed on the platform. The site’s Terms of Services prohibit raising legal funds for those accused of violent crimes. But the Portland General Defense Committee does exactly that as people they bail out are accused of felony assault and other serious crimes.
And what exactly is the General Defense Committee? It is a local chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Defense Committee. The IWW is an anarchist-socialist labor union. Like the other antifa mutual aid groups, those involved use pseudonyms and monikers. However, the Portland chapter is a registered nonprofit with the state of Oregon. Its filing with the Oregon secretary of state shows the registered agent behind the group is Katherine “Corbyn” Belyea.
Belyea is one of the people who I allege had assaulted me in June 2019 at the antifa riot according to a criminal complaint. Before I was punched in the head by the mob, Belyea threw a cup full of liquid in my face. A photographer captured the moment. It shows Belyea grinning widely.
Below is the photo Ngo is referring to. It appears in his book but with Katherine Belyea’s face blurred. Note Katherine’s 5 O’Clock shadow.
Katherine Belyea can be seen in a video by Patriot Warrior Media starting at 7:49 here.
Ngo continues (pages 57-58)…
During the summer of 2020, the anifa organizing infrastructure was now in place. They had everything they needed to be on autopilot: a plan, people, supplies, and money.
In June, the city put up a protective fence around the Justice Center and the adjacent federal courthouse. In response, rioters came with tools to cut the fence open. Every night, police guarding the facilities were hit by hundreds of projectiles. When rioters ran out of supplies or things to throw, they were continuously resupplied y well-stocked support vehicles.
On June 1, a woman was stopped by police after she was observed allegedly handing out supplies to rioters. She sped off in response, hitting multiple vehicles in the escape. She was only stopped once her tires were slashed by spike strips laid by police. o charges were pursued.
In my time on the ground in Portland, I observed sophisticated communication strategies between different antifa unites during the protests. As in CHAZ, they communicated via walkie-talkies and sometimes subtle hand signals. Each faction of antifa served a function they had been trained for. Drivers carried supplies like water bottles, some of which were frozen solid and later used as projectiles against police. “Scouts” on foot, bicycles, or motorcycles watched the perimeter and kept an eye on every person entering the area. Those who looked suspicious were flagged and closely followed or monitored. On several occasions, random people accused of being “right-wing” were chased out or assaulted by the mob.
As the days went on, the weapons became more sophisticated - and dangerous.
On page 59 he writes of….
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a legal group with historical ties to the Communist Party.
He writes that the…
organization formally declared its support for antifa and political violence in a statement on its website in 2017: “While many abhor tactics that involve violence, historical evidence shows that direct action has contributed to shutting down fascist movements before they gain too much power or influence.” In effect, the NLG is the legal arm of antifa.
You may have seen people in bright green hats at Antifa riots. Those are the NLG “legal observer” hats. On Pages 79-80, he writes…
Between 2017 and 2019, there were around two and a half dozen violent protests and riots involving antifa in Portland. Before 2020, that was considered a lot. Most of the incidents were organized by Rose City Antifa (RCA), the oldest antifa group in the United States. It takes its name from the “City of roses,” a nickname for Portland.
Antifa began accelerating their mass organizing in early 2017 as Donald Trump took office. Within a couple of months, they had developed a sophisticated system that included propaganda, outreach, operation security, reconnaissance, and group fighting strategies. Despite the mantra claiming there is “no organization” to antifa, I could see their operations clearly took planning, coordination, money, and recruitment. From one riot to the next, their numbers grew and they became better at carrying out carnage on people and property. Still, without being inside RCA myself or speaking to someone who was, and they never willingly speak, the inner workings of the organization remained speculation. Then, in June 2020, the public finally received a rare glimpse into the workings of the group through a video release by Project Veritas, the independent investigative journalism site founded by James O’Keefe.
After being conditionally approved to join RCA on a probationary status, a journalist at Project Veritas who used the moniker “Lion” was sent the following welcome email on September 22, 2017, after spending time in Portland and befriending antifa. The email detailed the six-month vetting process that includes an intense radicalization process and training curriculum. Only upon completion of the program and the unanimous consent of members can one officially be welcomed into their organization.
He then includes the email which is rather long. It welcomes the “prospective member” to an initial mandatory orientation and classes. It alerts them to an attached syllabus. A class schedule is given. It concludes, “In Solidarity, Rose City Antifa”. After the email, Ngo continues (page 82)…
Since 2016, we have been told over and over by biased media and antifa apologists that antifa is not an organization. We’ve been lied to. While there is no single capital A “Antifa” organization with one leader, there are indeed localized cells and groups with formalized structures and memberships. Though officially leaderless, these are organizations by every definition.
On page 83-84, he writes…
The Syllabus
The fifteen-page RCA syllabus is broken into nine sections called “units.” Each unit addresses a different aspect of militant antifa training and has a set of required readings and operational texts for “further study.” Unit one introduces members to Rose city Antifa and its history, structure, and goals.
RCA is one cell within the Torch Network, a network of connected violent militant antifa groups across the United States. The radicals running the network are officially anonymous, but a search of the site’s domain registrant shows the name Michael Novick. Novick is a former member of the Weather Underground terrorist group. There are eight chapters in addition to Portland: Antifa Sacramento, Western North Carolina Antifa, Rocky Mountain Antifa, Atlanta Antifascists, Pacific Northwest Antifascist Workers Collective, Antifa Seven Hills (Richmond, Virginia), Central Texas Anti-Racist Action (Austin, Texas), and Northern California Anti-Racist Action.
“We are born out of, and pay our respects to, the Anti-Racist Action Network. We are dedicated to confronting fascism and other elements of oppression. We believe in direct action,” states the Torch Network in its website. “Direct action” is a dog whistle for protest activity that includes violence. To join the network, one’s group “must be vouched for by at least two network chapters, and delegates [need] two individual vouches.”
A bit further on he writes (page 84)…
This is the phantom cell structure of antifa that makes them analogous to global jihadism. A unifying ideology and political agenda ties together individuals, cells, and groups.
He continues to describe and discuss the syllabus in too great a length to include here, but his entire book is recommended. On page 87 he writes that Mark Bray’s book Antifa - the Anti-Fascist Handbook is on the RCA recommended reading list. This is the book I cited above a number of times. He also mentions that critical race theory and intersectionalism are incorporated into the training material (pages 88, 91, 92). On page 95 he writes…
But it’s not only RCA that has a formalized structure. The other cells in the Torch Network follow a similar plan. Antifa groups outside the network still operate similarly based on the sharing of the same extremist literature and training materials.
Ngo also writes about Antifa organizing on pages 103, 115-116 and 156. On pages 157 - 158 some of their organized terrorism training is described. On page 219, Ngo writes…
In June 2020, NBC News published an opinion essay by (Shane) Burley arguing against President Trump's decision to designate antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Burley's essay was perfectly fine as an opinion piece, but nowhere is it disclosed that he has direct ties to an actual formalized antifa organization.
On pages 236-237, he writes…
Antifa, regardless of what they call themselves, are an organized criminal network of groups. It's not just the violent hooligans who should be prosecuted. Organizers exchange money and resources with one another. They provide radicalization training and instructions on how to commit crimes. They cross state lines.
Clearly, Antifa organizes, and is comprised of organizations and networks of organizations (super organizations).
POSTSCRIPT
In response to my tweet with a link to this very article which you now read, Daniel Walters, who is not blue-check-marked on Twitter but who claims to be “senior investigative reporter at the Inlander, one of America's few surviving alt-weeklies” replied…
Thank you,
~ Justin Trouble
Liberty my right ∴ Truth my sword
Laughter my shield ∴ Knowledge my steed
Love my solace ∴ Honor my reward
Please see all my writings, my videos, and consider donating.
Also, please share and subscribe...
Regarding the question of official memberships, see the update section wherein we quote from Ngo’s book which would confirm that at least one Antifa group has official members.
Where such things are debated on social media, there’s the contention of whether there is more right wing or left wing extremism/terrorism/violence in the USA. This is generally framed as white racist types on the right vs Antifa and BLM types on the left. So, jihadi style domestic terrorism isn’t even mentioned in that framing. However, the director would later say,
we last year elevated racially-motivated violent extremism to be a national threat priority commensurate with a homegrown violent extremists. That's the Jihadist-inspired people here and with ISIS.
The jihadi threat that the F.B.I. apparently considers to be about equal in the USA with that of “racially motivated violent extremism” is forgotten as if it were insignificant or non-existent. But the far-right is supposed to be such a huge threat that it’s necessary to use violence to make sure they never speak in public. Well, logically, inescapably, if that were so, then Islamic extremism is a huge threat and it is necessary to use violence against this threat.
Furthermore, notice that he compared Islamic extremism with “racially-motivated violent extremism” and that “racially-motivated violent extremism” is not necessarily white or right, despite the stereotype.
Antifa are not, generally speaking, anarchists. First of all, the commonly used Antifa symbol (see below) is black and red to represent anarcho-communism. Anarcho-communism is communism that rejects, as Britannica put it, “Marx’s claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a necessary step on the way to communism”.
Of course, there are often differences between the flag someone flies and their behavior, or even their words. Anarchism, by definition, is on the libertarian extreme of the political compass. It is the opposite of authoritarian.
As I detail elsewhere, Antifa are not exactly anti-authoritarian when they side with the government against the rights of the people who protest the government mandates. Besides, what is Antifa in the flesh? When they come together in the real world, what do they do? How do they manifest? If they aren’t simply rioting, they are using threats/violence to stop certain people from gathering, freely associating, peacefully protesting, rallying, speaking and hearing others speak.
Antifa presumes to dictate, with force, that you do not have these rights. To use force to violate people’s rights is about as authoritarian as can be. At this point, the standard Antifa argument is that they aren’t violating people’s rights because only the government can do that. This legitimizes the government by placing the people called “the government” in an elite category above other people. That is an authoritarian view. They side with the government on the issue of lockdowns. That is an authoritarian stance. That is the opposite of anarchism.
Hence, the FBI director’s characterization of Antifa’s political stance as anarchist is inaccurate. Back to the question of whether or not they are an organization/group.
Rep. Turner: You have previously testified, have you not, that Antifa is not a group or organization is that your testimony today, that Antifa is not a group or organization?
FBI Dir. Wray: We consider Antifa to be more of a movement. Certainly there are -
Rep. Turner: So, Director Wray you - in other words you’re you’re confirming that there is no organization or entity naming - named Antifa that perpetrates violence against the United States government by attacking United States government federal buildings or violence against people of United States government? No organization or entity.
FBI Dir. Wray: There are certainly local and regional nodes, individuals who self-identify with Antifa, who commit violent attacks uh citing that as their motivation and we have a number of predicated investigations into such individuals. Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction. It’s a concern.
Rep. Turner: Director Wray, does - does Antifa as an organization have organized and coordinated training, financing, directions and logistics and targeting and locations? Let’s break that down. It is your - does Antifa have any coordinated or organizing - organized training for self-professed members of Antifa? Yes or no, Director Wray?
FBI Dir. Wray: Again, we have seen individual instances and small regional nodes of people coming together to, to train in some cases and to organize, yeah.
Rep. Turner: Excellent. So you’re saying there is organized training for self-professed members of Antifa.
FBI Dir. Wray: There’s not a - I guess the distinction I am trying to draw - maybe that’s why we’re sort of talking past each other - is that there’s not some big national structure that is responsible for the violence. What we have seen is locally organized nodes -
Rep. Turner: Does Antifa local or national levels have coordinated or organized financing and financial support?
FBI Dir. Wray: The - I think the financing issue is something we continue to investigate but nothing that I can share at this time with the committee on that.
Rep. Turner: So, is there or is there not?
FBI Dir. Wray: As I said, that’s something we’re continuing to investigate.
Rep. Turner: Well, they have obviously been deployed throughout the United States. We’ve seen them burning federal buildings the self-professed members claiming members of Antifa do they or do they not have organized financial support either on a local or national level?
FBI Dir. Wray: That is something that we continue to investigate.
Rep. Turner: You still don’t know. So you don’t know the answer to the question?
FBI Dir. Wray: I have nothing that I can share at this time. We continue to investigate the financing angle, it’s something we take very seriously.
Rep. Turner: So, does Antifa have any organized or coordinated targeting of locations or individuals for the perpetatio- perpetration of violence?
FBI Dir. Wray: At the local level in some cases the regional level we have seen organized activity; people working together in a targeted way.
Rep. Turner: So Fox News yesterday was reported that in the Twin Cities, St. Paul, and Minneapolis that they had individuals that were self-identified Antifa who have come into the cities who were not from the cities. They’re not local, director.
FBI Dir. Wray: Well, my, my definition of local doesn’t mean people who just live in the same city.
Rep. Turner: Oh, so like if you travel across the country to perpetrate violence then you become local where you perpetrate the violence?
FBI Dir. Wray: When I say local or regional, I’m including people from the surrounding area and that may or may not include people from other parts of the same state, for example.
Rep. Turner: Well, director, people have seen with their own eyes the reports across the country and your testimony does not comport to what the American public are actually seeing and it weakens their confidence.
Later in the hearing, Representative Markwayne Mullin from Ohio asked FBI Director Wray about Antifa (starting at 1:37:12)
Rep. Mullin: Director Wray I have several questions for you. A while ago you were asked if you’ve ever dealt with the situation as big as January 6 and I kinda just want to bring some things to your attention. Uh, how many federal law enforcement officers have been injured as a result of violence and targeted violence in Portland?
FBI Dir. Wray: I don’t have the exact number but I know it’s quite a few.
Rep. Mullin: Yeah quite a few yeah, just in July and June alone in 2020, there was 140 law enforcement, federal law enforcements that were injured in Portland. Why is the FBI not more aggressively pursuing these crimes?
FBI Dir. Wray: Uh, I think we are aggressively investigating -
Rep. Mullin: Well, I don’t think you’re if you don’t know the number, I’d say that’s pretty tight I could tell you how many capitol police officers were injured during the riots here on January 6th and I’m not even the one investigating it and you don’t know how many officers have been injured just in a two month period and you’re telling me you’re going to take it serious? I don’t - I’m not seeing that. Um, under the Biden administration there appears to be a wave of delinquency being granted to individuals arrested for federal crimes in Portland. Federal prosecutors are apparently approving deferred resolution agreements in number in a number of cases allowing perpetrators to do community service and avoid jailtime and criminal records. Why are we seeing such a disparity between the individuals charged in January 6th and those that are charged in Portland?
FBI Dir. Wray: Well, let me answer that in two ways. I think that the first part, eh, which is probably the most important part is that charging decisions, prosecutorial decisions are not made by the FBI but are by the US attorney’s offices -
Rep. Mullin: No, but you make suggestions, I get that. I understand that, but you absolutely bring the charges.
FBI Dir. Wray: That’s an important distinction - I’m sorry? Go ahead.
Rep. Mullin: But you absolutely bring the charges to them and then they decided how they’re gonna charge them. Is that correct?
FBI Dir. Wray: We investigate, we bring them the facts and they decide whether to - so a question about whether to defer prosecution would be a decision by the prosecutors -
Rep. Mullin: Do you think there’s a disparity between the two of how they’re being prosecuted January 6?
FBI Dir. Wray: So that gets to the second point which is I think you know in many cases charges related to the capitol -
Rep. Mullin: That’s not what I’m asking - is there a difference between the two, the way they’re being charged? You have a 140 plus federal officers that have been injured in Portland alone you have federal buildings that have been attacked, been burned, been stormed and you’re not treating it the same as you are with January 6th. Would you agree with that? Yes or no?
FBI Dir. Wray: I believe we are taking, we, the FBI are taking a consistent approach in both situations each -
Rep. Mullin: Consistently, I don’t
FBI Dir. Wray: Each, each
Rep. Mullin: I don’t buy that. You don’t even know how many federal officers you’ve been charged. You said, um, this is your quote, second March, ‘We focus on acts of violence and violations of federal law and when we see those, when we see those, we bring to bear the full weight of our resources our experiences and our partnerships.’ Are you bringing your full weight and resources against those organizations that support, finance, facilitate, against the White House when it was stormed?
FBI Dir. Wray: We have a number of investigations related to the violence that occurred over the course of the Summer and I think that’s what you’re referring to -
Rep. Mullin: I’m just specifically talking about the White House. I mean there is a big deal. There was 67 secret service officers were injured during a left wing assault and assaults that happened simultaneously with Antifa throughout different cities. Are you bringing the full weight to that?
FBI Dir. Wray: We mobilize scores and scores of personnel in response to the activity during the period you described and I was personally on scene down in DC at the Washington field office command post way into the night, night after night during that-
Rep. Mullin: Knowing, knowing that Antifa was behind yet you said in a statement that Antifa does not exist as a national organization are you trying to explain away Antifa in their definition or do you believe that Antifa actually exists?
FBI Dir. Wray: No sir, Antifa is a real thing and it’s not a fiction and we taken it extremely seriously -
Rep. Mullin: Then why did you say that Antifa - this is your quote - ‘Antifa does not exist as a national organization’ that’s your quote.
FBI Dir. Wray: I don’t believe that’s a direct quote from me but what I can tell you -
Rep. Mullin: Yes sir it actually is.
FBI Dir. Wray: Sir, what I can tell you is that we have seen adherence to the Antifa movement who organize at the tactical level locally and regionally and what you might call small numbers -
Rep. Mullin: So you do believe that Antifa exists?
FBI Dir. Wray: I have consistently said Antifa exists. It’s a real thing not a fiction. I know specifically that I’ve said that in congressional testimony.
Rep. Mullin: I appreciate that because we’ve, we’ve reviewed many large binders full of information about people being arrested in, in Portland and uh by viewing their social media sites uh by viewing what they’ve been saying they - Antifa is clearly coordinating uh their finances clear coordinating their hotels, coordinating their travel uh, throughout the whole thing and and which brings me to has the FBI invested resources to examine how Antifa is identifying people operating in different cities how many how much the money or where the money comes from, um, how they’re supplying the makeshift weapons, protective gear, planning and coordination?
FBI Dir. Wray: We are using our Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate things like tactics, funding, logistics -
Rep. Mullin: So you’re really using your resources to identify Antifa and go after them?
FBI Dir. Wray: Yes, sir.
Rep. Mullin: Alright, with that, I yield back. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Schiff then asked the Director if he would like to add anything else. He did,
FBI Dir. Wray: Well, I, I would just add. Mr. Chairman that , uh, I consistently have maintained that Antifa is a real thing, that it is not a fiction. Uh, when I refer to it as a movement, that is not a shorthand for suggesting that it’s not something that’s real and it’s not a shorthand for suggesting that it’s something that we don’t take extremely seriously. We have a lot of predicated investigations into anarchist violent extremists. Many of the are organized at a local level or regional level in small nodes. The number of investigations that the FBI has launched into this particular category of violent extremism has gone up dramatically over the last few years and we’ve had, I think, triple the number of arrests in that space last year than in the prior three years combined.
Here, the author included a footnote that reads, “2,584 recorded incidents, a rise of 74 per cent on 1991, see Panikos Panayi, Ethnic Minorities in 19thCentury and 20th Century Germany: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Turks and Others (London: Routledge, 2013), 255”
Bray capitalizes the word here as a proper noun to refer to yet an other Communist International or ComIntern. He writes about the First International and the Second International on page 9 and the Third International on page 10 of his book. He also writes about the Communist International on page 137.
Here is an “online newspaper” named after the Communist International.
