Author: Soeren Kern
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"The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others." — Mark Bray, "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," 2017.
"They're coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn't do this on their own. Somebody's paying for this.... What Antifa is doing is they're basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset." — Bernard Kerik, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department.
The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.... The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.
One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism ... an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).... The group's slogan states: "This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!"
U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that the American government would designate Antifa — a militant "anti-fascist" movement — as a terrorist organization due to the violence that erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States.
The Code of Federal Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85) defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
American media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have jumped to its defense. They argue that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure.
As the following report shows, Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to remove President Trump from office.
Gatestone Institute has identified Antifa groups in all 50 U.S. states, with the possible exception of West Virginia. Some states, including California, Texas and Washington, appear to have dozens of sub-regional Antifa organizations.
It is difficult precisely to determine the size of the Antifa movement in the United States. The so-called "Anti-Fascists of Reddit," the "premier anti-fascist community" on the social media platform Reddit, has approximately 60,000 members. The oldest Antifa group in America, the Portland, Oregon-based "Rose City Antifa," has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and 20,000 Facebook followers, not all of whom are necessarily supporters. "It's Going Down," a media platform for anarchists, anti-fascists and autonomous anti-capitalists, has 85,000 Twitter followers and 30,000 Facebook followers.
Germany, which has roughly one-quarter of the population of the United States, is home to 33,000 extreme leftists, of whom 9,000 are believed to be extremely dangerous, according to the domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV). Violent left-wing agitators are predominantly male, between 21 and 24 years of age, usually unemployed, and, according to BfV, 92% still live with their parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Antifa members in the United States have a similar socio-economic profile.
In America, national Antifa groups, including "Torch Antifa Network," "Refuse Fascism" and "World Can't Wait" are being financed — often generously, as shown below — by individual donors as well as by large philanthropic organizations, including the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros.
To evade detection by law enforcement, Antifa groups in the United States often use encrypted social media platforms, such as Signaland Telegram Messenger, to communicate and coordinate their activities, sometimes across state lines. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.
Historical Origins of American Antifa
In the United States, Antifa's ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.
As in Europe, the aims and objectives of the American Antifa movement can be traced back to a single, overarching century-long ideological war against the "fascist ideals" of capitalism and Christianity, which the Antifa movement wants to replace with a "revolutionary socialist alternative."
The first so-called anti-fascist group in the United States was the American League Against War and Fascism, established in 1933 by the Communist Party USA. The League, which claimed to oppose fascism in Europe, was actually dedicated to subverting and overthrowing the U.S. government.
In testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1953, CPUSA leader Manning Johnson revealed that the American party had been instructed by the Communist International in the 1930s to set up the American League Against War and Fascism:
"as a cover to attack our government, our social system, our leaders... used as a cover to attack our law-enforcement agencies and to build up mass hate against them... used as a cover to undermine national security... used as a cover to defend Communists, the sworn enemies of our great heritage... used as a cover for preparing millions of people ideologically and organizationally for the overthrow of the United States Government."
A precursor to the modern Antifa movement was the Black Panthers, a revolutionary political organization established in October 1966 by Marxist college students in Oakland, California. The group advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government.
Historian Robyn C. Spencer noted that Black Panther leaders were deeply influenced by "The United Front of the Working Class Against Fascism," a report by Georgi Dimitroff delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in July and August 1935:
"By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a theoretical framework to critique the U.S. political economy. They defined fascism as 'the power of finance capital' which 'manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE CAPITAL — the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician, and the racist pig cop.'"
In July 1969, the Black Panthers organized an "anti-fascist" conference called "United Front Against Fascism," attended by nearly 5,000 activists:
"The Panthers hoped to create a 'national force' with a 'common revolutionary ideology and political program which answers the basic desires and needs of all people in fascist, capitalist, racist America.'"
The last day of the conference was devoted to a detailed plan by the Black Panthers to decentralize police forces nationwide. Spencer wrote:
"They proposed amending city charters to establish autonomous community-based police departments for every city which would be accountable to local neighborhood police control councils comprised of 15 elected community members. They launched the National Committees to Combat Fascism (NCCF), a multiracial nationwide network, to organize for community control of the police."
In 1970, members of the Black Panthers created a terrorist group called the Black Liberation Army, whose stated goal was to "weaken the enemy capitalist state."
BLA member Assata Shakur described the group's organizational structure, which is similar to the one used by today's Antifa movement:
"The Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common leadership and chain of command. Instead there were various organizations and collectives working together out of various cities, and in some larger cities there were often several groups working independently of each other."
American Antifa
The roots of the modern Antifa movement in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, with the establishment of Anti-Racist Action, a network of anarchist punk rock aficionados dedicated to fist-fighting neo-Nazi skinheads.
Mark Bray, author of "Antifa Handbook," explained:
"In many cases, the North American modern Antifa movement grew up as a way to defend the punk scene from the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, and the founders of the original Anti-Racist Action network in North America were anti-racist skinheads. The fascist/anti-fascist struggle was essentially a fight for control of the punk scene during the 1980s, and that was true across of much of north America and in parts of Europe in this era.
"There's a huge overlap between radical left politics and the punk scene, and there's a stereotype about dirty anarchists and punks, which is an oversimplification but grounded in a certain amount of truth."
Anti-Racist Action was inspired by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in Britain in the late 1970s. The American group shared the British group's penchant for violently attacking political opponents. ARA was eventually renamed the Torch Network, which currently brings together nine militant Antifa groups.
In November 1999, mobs of masked anarchists, predecessors to today's Antifa movement, laid waste to downtown Seattle, Washington, during violent demonstrations that disrupted a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization. The Seattle WTO protests birthed the anti-globalization movement.
In April 2001, an estimated 50,000 anti-capitalists gathered in Quebec to oppose the Third Summit of the Americas, a meeting of North and South American leaders who were negotiating a deal to create a free trade area that would encompass the Western Hemisphere.
In February 2003, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated against the Iraq War. After the war went ahead anyway, some parts of the so-called progressive movement became more radicalized and birthed the current Antifa movement.
The Rose City Antifa (RCA), founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2007, is the oldest American group to use "Antifa" in its name. Antifa is derived from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. Antifa's logo, with two flags representing anarchism (black flag) and communism (red flag), are derived from the German Antifa movement.
The American Antifa movement gained momentum in 2016, after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist, lost the Democratic Party's nomination to Hillary Clinton. Grassroots supporters of Sanders vowed to continue his "political revolution" to establish socialism in America. Continue Reading @ Gatestone Institute
Who Is Funding and Organizing the Antifa Insurrection?
Someone is organizing criminals and vandals to loot and destroy cities but the corporate media don’t seem all that interested in getting to the bottom of it.
Someone is organizing criminals and vandals to loot and destroy cities but the corporate media don’t seem all that interested in getting to the bottom of it. In fact, Democrats and their allies in the press have been actively engaging in misdirection, lamely accusing white supremacists of being behind the mayhem plaguing “peaceful protests.”
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