Going After Antifa

This article first appeared in New English Review.

President Trump’s roundtable discussion this week on the topic of Antifa is a welcome development. Antifa is a loosely aligned movement that, for several years now, has engaged in riots, attacks, and disorders against the government and other institutions. They are violent, and in spite of their name (which means,”anti-fascist”), they are very fascist in nature.

Antifa, both in the US and Europe, has linked arms with the leftists of several stripes to protest a variety of issues, and whether it be the war in Gaza, anti-Israel, anti-Trump, or the anti-ICE enforcement, Antifa is ready to take to the streets and wreak havoc. They were prominent in the turbulent summer of 2020 when, among other things, they attacked the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon on a nightly basis. But now it is clear that the violence of  Antifa has reached new heights and that some of those who identify with Antifa are now looking to kill people, whether it be Charlie Kirk, President Trump, or ICE agents, as recent incidents have shown. The matter of combating Antiga has now taken on new urgency.

As I stated above, Antifa is a movement, not a formal organization. That is why I often use the terms “Antifa types” or “Antifa-inspired”. Yet at the same time, there is a degree of national organization, with sophisticated networks, and people organizing violent protests, sending protesters from city to city, and planning crimes across state lines. What we are seeing in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and other places is not about spur-of-the-moment anger on the part of local residents.  We are talking about professional agitators who respond to protests to ignite violence against people and property. What they are doing requires support from above in organization and financing. 

I noted that President Trump’s round table included courageous people like freelance journalist Andy Ngo, who, for the last few years, has documented these Antifa riots at great risk to his personal safety. He has been physically attacked by Antifa types on several occasions. He reports accurately what the mainstream news tries to ignore or downplay.

So now the federal government, the Justice Department, and Homeland Security are going to treat Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, which is exactly what it is. They are going to go after not just those who actually commit violence on the streets, but the organizers, those who plan, those who send people from one place to another, those who finance all this. Hopefully, they are not starting from scratch. If the FBI has been doing its job for the past several years, it should already have thick files on who the players are. It is time to put that case together, and they have an array of federal laws to use, principally the conspiracy statutes, which are designed to prosecute the major players, those who may never be at the scene of a crime, but who give the orders, do the logistical work, and supply the money.

Many in government are pointing fingers at people like George Soros and his Open Society, as well as the National Lawyers Guild, a Marxist organization whose volunteers can be seen at most of these events, trying to document excessive use of force by police, and distinguished by their lime green caps. If Soros has given money to Antifa to finance these riots, as many believe he has, he may have finally made his big mistake and opened himself to federal prosecution. If that is the case, the government should also be able to seize his funds.

It is time to put the federal conspiracy statutes to work and remove these gangsters from society and into prison where they belong.