Anti-fascist demonstrators march in downtown Washington, near a rally attended by the far-right group the Proud Boys, in July, 2019.DAVE SANDERS/The New York Times News Service
“This Machine Kills Fascists,” read the sticker that folk musician Woody Guthrie first affixed to his guitar in 1943, inspiring generations of musicians to do the same. Given his beliefs and affiliations, Mr. Guthrie was almost certainly aware of a German organization known as Anti-Fascist Action, or Antifa for short, and would likely have been proud to consider himself an adherent, had it not ceased to exist 10 years before.
Does that mean someone like Mr. Guthrie would be arrested and charged as a terrorist, on the basis of that sticker and those sympathies, if he were alive in the United States today? Quite possibly.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump declared that “I am designating ANTIFA,... AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION” and that he was launching an investigation into “those funding ANTIFA.” Because the United States has no mechanism to designate domestic terrorist groups, like the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations designation, this likely means the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force will be tasked with investigating and prosecuting “antifa.”
We know this because it’s the second time Mr. Trump has declared antifa a terrorist group. The first, in May of 2020, followed protests against police violence in U.S. cities, during which some individual rioters may have had tattoos or banners bearing the word, a self-identification that has been popular with street protesters since the 1990s. Mr. Trump’s then-attorney-general William Barr announced that he’d investigate and prosecute “antifa and other similar groups” whose purpose “is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signalled new action against left-wing groups following the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, targeting the anti-fascist antifa movement as a 'terrorist organization.'
Reuters
Although more than 14,000 people were charged in those protests, no organization known as antifa – in fact, no left-wing organization at all – was ever identified or charged. That’s because, as experts and scholars have repeatedly concluded, no such organization exists beyond the level of loose circles of local protesters, or has existed in any substantial way since 1933. There is no funding, foreign or domestic, to be found, because there is no organization by that name.
That very fact makes Mr. Trump’s declaration far more threatening. He made it in response to the assassination of far-right agitator Charlie Kirk, part of a string of actions that have implausibly attempted to tie the murder to progressive, liberal and Democratic Party political views. Those actions have included crackdowns and firings of media figures and threats to outlaw mainstream liberal organizations that work against authoritarianism. The definition of “antifa” is so loose that virtually anyone who has spoken out against right-wing authoritarianism could be criminally charged.
There has not yet been any evidence that the young man charged with the murder had any organizational or ideological affiliations at all. However, police reportedly found cartridge casings and messages bearing the word “fascist” in apparent reference to Mr. Kirk – something that could potentially align him with the set of ideas that include a personal “antifa” identification.
If so, that would at least make the alleged murderer’s actions consistent, in a way, with the original Antifa.
Trump vows crackdown on left-wing groups after Charlie Kirk’s assassination
In the early 1930s, as the Nazi Party was rising, the Antifaschistische Aktion group was created by the Stalin-backed Communist Party of Germany. The group instigated riots and carried out killings – all of them directed not against Nazis but against the governing centre-left Social Democrats, whom the communists derisively called “social fascists” and viewed as the real threat. Even after March of 1933, when Hitler ended democracy and seized absolute power, a history of the era concludes that Antifa “continued to focus its efforts on opposing the Social Democrats… without identifying Hitler as the primary enemy.”
Many historians believe that by dividing the left against itself, Antifa played a big role in enabling Hitler’s rise. “But for the stupid and irresponsible role of [Antifa] in refusing a united front with the Social Democrats,” the left-wing historian Ian Birchall wrote, “it is highly unlikely that Hitler would have taken power at all.”
So, by using senseless violence to turn a marginal political figure into a martyr and provoke a brutal executive attack on freedom of speech and fundamental rights aimed at moderate and conventional politics, the alleged assassin does indeed have some striking similarities to the original Antifa – as a threat mainly to the democratic left.
It’s equally clear that the alleged killer represents nothing other than himself. The great majority of domestic-terrorism attacks and plots in the U.S. today and over the past 30 years have been by right-wing groups – in 2020, more than 90 per cent were, with most of the rest attributed to religious groups.
We know this because the U.S. Justice Department has thoroughly reported on these affiliations. And one of the Trump administration’s responses to the Kirk killing was to have that report removed from the Justice Department’s servers, just as it was inventing an antifa threat.