Large numbers of Antifa activists first appeared in the United States at anti-World Trade Organization protests in 1999 in Seattle, and then more recently during the Occupy Wall Street movement. That’s the only moral thread that they can hang their hats on. Related stories
What’s the ‘Alt-Left’? “We’re ceding the moral high ground and ceding the spotlight to where it should be, which is shining the spotlight on the vile.”
Levin, who for decades has attended rallies at both extremes to study radical groups, said he put his own body between an Antifa member and a Klan member when Antifa protesters attacked with knives at a February 2016 a rally in Anaheim, California. And even when they are persons, the people we fight back against, they are evil. For that reason, many Antifa members in Charlottesville did not wear masks, Bhatt said. It’s real-life stuff that’s happening.”
Sanders, for his part, has disavowed violence and is not connected with Antifa efforts. On social media, many of the arrestees have posted anti-police messages and anarchist views. … When they organize, they kill people, they hurt people, they fight people. I’ve smoke-bombed places,” he said. They communicate and recruit largely through social media. “We’ve done mass mailings. In Berkeley, Antifa and alt-right activists have clashed several times since Election Day. “Anti-racists or anti-fascists are not a new phenomenon,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “No, it’s not OK to punch a Nazi,” Levin said. “If white nationalists are sophisticated at anything, it’s the ability to try to grasp some kind of moral high ground when they have no other opportunity, and that’s provided when they appear to be violently victimized. And for that, its members don’t apologize. (Credit: Natalie Behring / Getty Images)
From Oregon to Germany
Anti-fascists and the black bloc tactic originated in Nazi Germany and resurfaced in United Kingdom in the 1980s. They often denounce capitalism and government. Residents have gotten fed up with the escalating violence, Simpson said. “My efforts might be better suited by an organization that helps communities.”
The son of parents who immigrated from India, Bhatt is sure of one thing: He has no plans to stop protesting. They are the living embodiment, they are the second coming of Hitler.”
Crow explained the ideology this way: “Don’t confuse legality and morality. “The running through the street, breaking windows and everything in sight, we haven’t seen it as consistently as we’ve seen it in the last eight months.”
In that time, more than 150 people have been arrested. Before the June event, “we saw on social media that there was a lot of threats being put back and forth that gave us a lot of concern about physical violence,” Portland police spokesman Pete Simpson said. A federal indictment charges individuals in the group with starting fires, property destruction and physical violence that erupted on the streets as the 45th President of the United States took his oath of office. There was a moment I was at the front of this huge line of people, and we see this other huge group of people marching down another way, and when the two groups met, it felt like the entire city just erupted in cheers and roars.”
Anti-fascist counter-protesters wait outside Emancipation Park to hurl insluts as white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” are forced out after the “Unite the Right” rally was declared an unlawful gathering Aug. “But one thing is very clear is that free speech and protected speech can be very offensive and very hateful, but it’s still not a crime.”
Battle lines form between white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” and anti-fascist counter-protesters at the entrance to Emancipation Park during the “Unite the Right” rally Aug. A Kaine spokesperson said he was peacefully protesting, and wasn’t disruptive. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Indeed, it took months to track down members willing to share their stories. A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders has come out against “hard-left” violence, saying of protests over Coulter’s UC Berkeley appearance, “I don’t like this.”
“Obviously, Ann Coulter’s outrageous — to my mind, off the wall,” Sanders said. I’ve been in altercations. “But I think the rationale is that even if it did negatively affect my life, I had still contributed to this movement that was necessary. Before that, he said, Antifa protesters were cheering in celebration for having disrupted the neo-Nazi message. It’s affecting their commute.”
Law enforcement in several cities told CNN there’s no excuse for the violence. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic nominee for vice president, was arrested in Minnesota in March after protesting at a pro-Trump rally, he was dressed in black bloc alongside a group of Antifa supporters. “I fought (against) Nazis. In speaking to Antifa leaders across the country, CNN found very few who would take off their masks. “We did seize a large number of weapons or things that could be used as weapons,” Simpson said. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Rubber bullets and pepper spray
Nearly seven months after Trump’s election, police in Portland, Oregon, geared up for the 10th protest since Election Day pitting the alt-right and “hard left.”
On that day, June 4, police were coming off a violent May Day protest in which they watched Antifa activists run through the business district, destroying storefronts and setting fires. Antifa activists, who operate without any centralized leadership, told CNN that their goal is peace and inclusivity. “We were marching and chanting and engaged in this huge act of solidarity. One hundred percent, they came geared up to fight if it would be allowed.”
Despite Portland’s liberal reputation, it has a history of clashes between extreme groups on the right and left. Officers moved in with rubber bullets, pepper spray and smoke bombs. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Spurred to action by Trump
Antifa is impossible to track. Many shed their black clothing and left it on the streets as police decided whom to arrest. After a few hours, it seemed peace had won the day. “Each of us breaks the law every day. Officers stood shoulder to shoulder between two city squares — one filled with alt-right groups, the other with Antifa activists. Activists take martial arts classes together and strategize about how to achieve their main goal: taking down fascists. In New York’s Union Square on May Day, a masked member of the Antifa group Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council told CNN why he wore black bloc and waved a black flag. And that is a very bad thing because they harass people,” he said. So, he weighed his options. While Antifa members don’t fit a single category, they say many are millennials and many live on society’s fringes: undocumented immigrants, transgender people, low-wage workers, those who don’t conform to the traditional 9-to-5. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many are like Bhatt, a self-described government skeptic with liberal views who didn’t find mainstream politics a good fit for him. “Windows don’t have — they’re not persons. (Credit: Scott Olson / Getty Images)
‘This is self-defense’
For almost three decades, Scott Crow was part of the Antifa movement. He has said he didn’t engage in any violence and has pleaded not guilty. And we’re the ones who are fighting back.”
It’s a position taken by many Antifa activists: “This is self-defense.”
Antifa activists often don’t hesitate to destroy property, which many see as the incarnation of unfair wealth distribution. “People put on the masks so that we can all become anonymous, right? And that means avoiding police, whom many Antifa members see as an enemy, as well as skirting the scrutiny Antifa activists often get from alt-right trolls on the Internet. A 20-year-old man who had attended the rally later used his car to ram a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one of them. I’ve had guns drawn on me. It’s just that we make the conscious choice to do that,” he said. Earlier this year, Antifa activists were among those who smashed windows and set fires during protests at the University of California, Berkeley, leading to the cancellation of far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and withdrawal of Ann Coulter as speakers. Antifa demonstrators have marched in more than a half dozen protests since Election Day in Portland, Oregon, according to police. “Then what happened is these fiery embers crossed the fire line, so now on the far-left they say the best way to resist is violence because they’re out-gunned in this new era of President Trump.”
Police clash with demonstrators as they try to clear Antifa members and anti-Trump protesters from the area during a protest on June 4, 2017, in Portland, Oregon. “Even though it only takes one person to break a window, it doesn’t matter because the bloc moves together,” said a 26-year-old named Maura, who wouldn’t give her last name. “What I think is new is that they’re more active both in making themselves prominent at violent rallies and also trying to bridge into the disenfranchised peaceful progressive movement.”
Bhatt went in Charlottesville, too, and was just about five feet away from the car that drove through the crowd, killing protester Heather Heyer, he said. Experts Say It’s a ‘Made-Up Term’
USC Student Says He Was Among Counterprotesters Struck by Car in Charlottesville
At Least 2 Arrested at UC Berkeley Dueling Protests After Ann Coulter Event Canceled I’ve had death threats. And then, therefore, we are able to move more freely and do what we need to do, whether it is illegal or not,” he said. Antifa activists were in New York City on May Day. It’s affecting their business. Many of those arrested identified themselves as part of the Antifa movement. The anarchist movement is one that’s working outside structures. They pushed the masked Antifa activists into a corner and detained them. “We cover our face because the Nazis will try to find out who we are. Right or wrong, “that’s for history to decide,” he said. “It’s not good for the city. Some write that they feel disenfranchised in the current political climate, the CNN review found. Now facing a criminal record, “I don’t know,” he said. And we’re stupid if we give them that opportunity.”
White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” exchange vollys of pepper spray with counter-protesters as they enter Emancipation Park during the “Unite the Right” rally Aug. And their methods are often violent. Antifa activists, who operate without any centralized leadership, told CNN that their goal is peace and inclusivity. “But you know, people have a right to give their two cents’ worth, give a speech, without fear of violence and intimidation.”
The organizer of It’s Going Down said his website traffic has grown from a few hundred daily hits to between 10,000 and 40,000 hits on its best days. But Levin argues the violence is giving ammunition to racists — and is anathema to the Antifa mission. On the morning of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Keval Bhatt hunted through a closet in his parents’ Virginia home for the darkest clothes he could find. I’ve drawn guns on fascists. And sometimes that is violence.”
It’s a perspective several Antifa activists shared with CNN, even knowing that violence has led to hundreds of arrests across the country. “I thought, there’s a very good chance that I might get arrested, that my whole life could be radically altered in a negative way if I kept driving, and I was really close to turning around,” Bhatt told CNN. We’ve even gone door to door before in communities,” said the group’s leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Its name derives from “anti-fascist,” and it has come to represent what experts who track these organizations call the “hard left” — an ideology that runs afield of the Democratic Party platform and supports oppressed populations as it protests the amassing of wealth by corporations and elites. Hoping to keep June 4 from becoming another May Day, police created a human barricade. (Credit: CNN)
And with them, Bhatt got arrested. A left-wing ‘antifa’ protester holds up a sign in front of riot police as they cleared a park at a rally on June 4, 2017, in Portland, Oregon. “Violence against windows — there’s no such thing as violence against windows,” a masked Antifa member in Union Square told CNN. They range in age from 14 to 66, police records show, and include several students, a cook, a franchise restaurant owner and a retail manager, a CNN review of arrestees’ social media accounts found. When the son of Sen. “Everything from knives to brass knuckles to poles and sticks and bricks and bottles and road flares and chains. “You have to put your body in the way,” the group’s leader said, “and you have to make it speak in the language that they understand. The 19-year-old didn’t own much in black, the color he knew his fellow protesters would wear head to toe on the streets of Washington that day. Laws are made of governments, not of men,” echoing the words of John Adams. … People are excited about that.”
Like many young Antifa members who spoke with CNN, the turning point for Bhatt was when Trump in late 2015 ad-libbed a campaign remark toward a Black Lives Matter protester, saying he “should have been roughed up.”
In another moment that has catalyzed Antifa members, Trump in February 2016 told a campaign crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to “knock the crap out of” protesters holding tomatoes, adding, “I will pay for the legal fees, I promise, I promise.”
“There was a normalization of political violence which first started with regard to the Trump rallies,” Levin said. “We’ve gone out to areas that we know that a lot of Nazis live with, like, ‘wanted’ posters, like, ‘Do you have any information on this person?’ and put them up in the area, and we usually get a flurry of tips like, ‘Yeah, this person works here,’ and so on and so on.”
But like other Antifa groups across the country, the Portland sect gets the most attention when violence explodes at its rallies. Antifa leaders admit they’re willing to physically attack anyone who employs violence against them or who condones racism — as long as force is used in the name of eradicating hatred. “We’re trying to stop them from organizing. “There are people who were energized by Bernie (Sanders) that now are anarchists,” said an organizer of the website It’s Going Down, a newsblog for Antifa. There’s a reason why people are becoming polarized. “People are freaked out by a Trump regime, freaked out by the far-right. “And they’re looking for alternatives outside of party structures. Though counterprotesters deny they are to blame for violence, Trump this week declared “blame on both sides” — and has drawn intense criticism for his view. “There’s a crisis among the left,” he said. “Before J20 (January 20, Inauguration Day) happened I was convinced I’d go to NASA or some university to research,” Bhatt said. The movement, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as violent, and for that, its activists have opted to meet violence with violence. He was rounded up with more than 200 other people and charged with a felony for inciting a riot. But then police caught whispers that Antifa members were planning to push past police into the alt-right rally square. And white nationalists, neo-Nazis and others — who have been blamed for provoking violence at last week’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — claim it was Antifa groups that first got aggressive. People are just frustrated by it. “It feels to me like there’s a struggle in the country … of the different kinds of speech and what’s OK to say and what’s not OK,” Simpson said. I was still making an effort to make other people’s lives better, even if it made my life worse, and once I realized that, I had no regrets.”
Bhatt joined protesters dressed completely in black, some with their faces covered by masks — a tactic known as “black bloc” that aims to unify demonstrators’ efforts and hide their identities. And in jurisdictions across the country, police told CNN they’ve started enforcing with new vigor laws that bar people from wearing masks during gatherings. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s affecting their livability. Their protests are organized via Facebook. As Bhatt drove into the city for his first-ever protest, he hesitated. “The fires starting — that we saw on May Day — is something we haven’t really seen much of in the past,” Simpson said. It isn’t united through a national organization, and it cloaks itself in anonymity. “I’ve done a myriad of things to try and stop fascism and its flow over the years.”
Activists don black bloc, Crow said, as a means to an end. Indeed, over the past year, Antifa members have been involved in clashes across the country and the world, including in Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Alabama and Nebraska, and at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. And of late, in active areas, monthly meetings have increased in frequency to several times each week. Police say they haven’t seen anything like this since the ’60s. But their profile has been rising. Antifa members also sometimes launch attacks against people who aren’t physically attacking them. “It is new, and this, like, this rumble mentality of, ‘I’m going to bring my friends, you’re going bring your friends, and we’re going to fight it out in the park’ — it’s not something we’ve seen here,” Simpson said. A lot of people saw neo-Nazi symbols. “It’s killing the cause — it’s not hurting it, it’s killing it, and it will kill it,” Levin said. “We were marching down one of the streets, and energy was ecstatic,” Bhatt said. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
‘Put your body in the way’
With no central leader, Antifa adherents have found each other in local communities. He faces misdemeanor charges and has not yet entered a plea but will be in court next month. In Portland, where the Rose City Antifa has been active for a decade, members focus on outing people they believe are neo-Nazis, even trying to get them fired and evicted from their homes. Since Trump entered the world stage, they’ve condemned his push to tighten immigration rules and what some view as his tendency toward racism. Black bloc, one member told us, also unites the movement. “Indeed, we saw alt-right people manhandling African-American protesters,” he said, using a term many white-rights activists use to describe themselves.