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Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a broad, community-based movement composed of individuals organizing against racial and economic injustice. Those who identify with the label represent a large spectrum of the political left. The Trump administration frequently uses the term to describe any group or individual that demonstrates in opposition to its policies. Far-right extremists usesimilar tactics.

Since the election of Donald Trump, acts of racist violence have proliferated across the United States. Racists and misogynists feel emboldened to express and act on their views. White nationalist groups and resurgent traditional white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan have used Trumps victory to gain new recruits.

All that stands in their way are the groups of anti-fascist and anti-state resistors who have taken it upon themselves to prevent fascism from becoming a powerful political force in the United States. The story of what Antifa is, and why people are joining the movement to confront racism and fascism in the United States today is unprecedented.

Who are the anti-fascists? What motivates them to risk their lives to fight the far right? What is the history of anti-fascism and why is it relevant again today? How is anti-fascism connected to a larger political vision that can stop the rise of fascism and offer you visions of a future worth fighting for? Learn More

You will connect with anti-fascist organizers, historians and political theorists who will provide their expert advice, you will explore the broader meaning of this political moment. You will be able to help others understand the past scenes of street battles from Washington to Berkeley and Charlottesville What caused them? How to prevent them in the future? You will own your piece of the resistance by taking an active consistent role in promoting & growing Antifa.com.

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ANTIFA.COM | Join Us & Take Action Now

This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.

The movement called antifa gets its name from a short form of anti-fascist, which is about the only thing its members agree on.

President Donald Trump and some far-right activists and militants have claimed antifa is allegedly conspiring to foment violence amid the protests sweeping the U.S. In my forthcoming book, American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism, I describe antifa as a decentralized collection of individual activists who mostly use nonviolent methods to achieve their ends.

Their goal is to resist the spread of fascism. That word can be an inexact term, but generally antifa activists see fascism as the violent enactment and enforcement of biological and social inequalities between people.

Fascists go beyond viewing particular categories of people as inferior, based on gender identity, race and ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. They believe it is imperative to use violence to oppress and ultimately eliminate those groups. In addition, they use violence to oppose their ideological enemies, even if they are from groups they believe are not inferior, such as heterosexual white men.

The initial anti-fascist movements were founded in Europe and North America between the world wars, and were primarily organized by anarchists, communists and socialists three groups that were frequently targets of fascist violence.

The modern-day anti-fascist movement in the United States, including antifa, grew out of the Anti-Racist Action Network, a decentralized activist movement resisting racist skinhead subcultures and public demonstrations by neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan organizations in the 1980s and 1990s.

Anti-fascists objections arent simply that they disagree with fascists. Their problems with fascism are much more fundamental.

My own research has found that a significant proportion of anti-fascists are women, people of color, members of LGBTQ communities, or otherwise have some characteristics fascists seek to control or eliminate.

These anti-fascists, therefore, often see fascists as a threat to their personal existence, and their physical and emotional well-being as well as presenting threats of violence or vandalism to their communities and shared gathering spaces. They perceive their opposition as very much in personal and collective self-defense.

Because opposing fascism is a viewpoint rather than a formal organization, peoples actions vary widely. Informal or everyday anti-fascism can include speaking out against bigotry, standing up for victims of fascist harassment or confronting fascists in public places. Generally, these are relatively spontaneous actions that happen when anti-fascists encounter fascism in the normal course of their regular lives.

More formal anti-fascism can include large, well-funded mainstream organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, who monitor fascist activity and provide the public information on its scope.

But the antifa label is most often applied to smaller-scale groups of like-minded people who live in the same community, working to prevent fascists from threatening their targets and from attracting new followers.

These groups are rarely militant or violent. Most of them engage in commonly accepted forms of political activism. For instance, anti-fascists often work to find out where fascist groups and people are active in an area, and then share that information with the wider community, bringing that activity to public attention.

Anti-fascist activists also take advantage of the general social stigma associated with being a fascist, and identify people who participate in fascist events or post fascist messages online.

Culture is another part of anti-fascist work, including art and music. By creating T-shirts and stickers with inclusive messages, and hosting concerts, film screening and art shows, anti-fascists work to create an environment of inclusion and equality that doesnt directly attack fascism but simply exists in opposition to it.

There are more militant anti-fascists, too, who mostly engage in non-militant activism but are willing, at times, to use more confrontational tactics. These people are more open to counterprotesting, sabotage and the use of force, which includes acts of violence.

The varied and decentralized nature of anti-fascist efforts means it includes virtually anyone who opposes violent enforcement of social inequalities to engage in activism. A diverse range of participants and tactics falls under the umbrella of a broad effort to stop fascism.

Stanislav Vysotsky, Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What or Who is Antifa?

Many in the media treat Antifa as a diverse group of warriors against fascism and racism. This is an absolute fabrication.

At Occupy Wall Street, there were two very distinct groups. On one side of the park were the peaceful intellectuals. They ran the library and the general assembly, and organized services in the park. On the other side was the black bloc, a collection of black-clad punks, often with bandanas ready to serve as masks, who mostly engaged in drug use and drum circles. The latter group is directly related to the movement we now know as Antifa.

One thing that both of these groups hadand continue to havein common is that they are mostly young white people. This is not surprising; poll after poll shows us that the vast majority of far-left progressives are white. The intellectuals at Occupy understood and tried to address this, giving special treatment to the speech and ideas of their small cadre of non-white participants. The Black Bloc and Antifa take a different approach; they just cover their faces.

But when members of Antifa are arrested, the masks come off. And, as recent mugshots of Portland Antifa members show, these people are about as diverse as the Washington Generals.

At a time when many on the left are rightfully concerned about far-right white violence, why do so many seemed so nonplussed by far-left white violence, in most cases even refusing to acknowledge that thats exactly what Antifa is?

One sociologist writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz attempts to prove fanciful claims that Antifa is a rainbow coalition of the oppressed desperately fighting in their own immediate self defense. Stanislav Vustotsky writes:

Many militant anti-fascists become involved in this form of activism because aspects of their identity are directly targeted by fascist violence; they are queer, transgender, gender non-conforming, people of color, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and certainly identified in ways that intersected across these categories.

For them, anti-fascism was a means of ensuring their safety from a movement that threatens their very existence and venerates violence as the highest form of action. Even the Antifa activists who identify as cis heterosexual white males are the targets of fascist violence as race and gender traitors.

Vusotsky claims to have formally studied Antifainterviewing them, attending meetings, and engaging in the culture of anti fascism. Needless to say he doesnt exactly come off as a neutral party to all this. But what is stunning is what is not in his piece. He claims to have conducted ethnographic research, on the group. If so, where are the numbers that back up his assertion that Antifa is wildly diverse?

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Antifa has seen videos of their violent antics and can see for himself or herself that almost all of them are white dudes. Anyone who has ever been in their presence knows this too. I would be very interested to see this ethnographic research, and I am curious if Haaretz looked at it before publishing the authors bizarre claim. It strains credulity to believe that if Vusotsky had hard numbers to back up his assertion he would have simply left them out of his article.

The reason this point is so important is that it betrays a double standard that many in our media use regarding violent white activists. On the right, their whiteness is front and center; part of the toxic brew that stews their hate. But this is equally true of Antifa, which has its roots in the far left of the English punk scene in the 1980s.

Antifas goals are not those of most non-white Americans. Most non-white Americans dont want to destroy the systems of government, abolish the police, end capitalism, or cripple corporations. The group is absolutely trying to impose a style of anarchy that is steeped in (and almost unique to) whiteness.

When cowards wear masks to engage in violence, we must remove the masks to see who we are actually dealing withnot the fairy tale of diversity version. When Andy Ngo, a minority gay man, is mercilessly beaten up by white activists, the fact that the activists are white is a big part of the story in todays landscape. Dont believe the progressive narrative: Antifa is mostly a bunch of privileged white dudes.

David Marcus is the Federalist's New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

Original post:

Antifa Is Mostly Made Up Of Privileged White Dudes

WASHINGTON Having railed for months against protesters he depicts as violent Marxist anarchists, Sen. Ted Cruz led a hearing Tuesday that exposed a deep schism between Republicans impatient with unrest in U.S. cities and Democrats who see heavy-handed police tactics as a far bigger threat.

As the Texan painted Democrats as antifa sympathizers, they hit back, condemning him for stoking irrational fears and giving cover to a president with an authoritarian streak.

Cruz called the hearing to put a spotlight on the antifa and the Black Lives Matter movements, groups that President Donald Trump blames for endangering law enforcement in the guise of protesting racism and police brutality.

But this was as much a political skirmish as a fact-finding hearing about those groups.

Cruz repeatedly accused Democrats of demonizing federal law enforcement as storm troopers and Gestapo.

Elected Democrats want to ignore the violence of antifa. They want to ignore the violence on the left and they just scream `white supremacist, white supremacist, " he insisted.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat whose hometown of Portland has been the epicenter of clashes between protesters and police for two months, decried the presidents enablers an obvious reference to Cruz who pump up anxiety about mobs and anarchists while offering little concern about the heavily armed secret police who snatched Portlanders off the streets.

I agree theres a serious danger to American constitutional rights at this moment in history, Wyden said, and its caused to a great extent by the president and his enablers who are calling peaceful protesters anarchists and terrorists, and sending paramilitary forces into American cities.

Protests erupted nationwide after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, a black suspect who died after an officer pinned his neck to the ground with a knee.

Tensions quickly escalated and on June 1, federal police used tear gas, flash bangs and other tactics to clear Lafayette Square Park outside the White House, where thousands had gathered to protest police brutality and racism. Trump then strode through the park, posing for photos outside historic St. Johns Church while holding a Bible.

Accusing mayors in Portland and other cities of weakness, Trump has threatened to send in troops, and has deployed camouflage-uniformed federal officers from the Bureau of Prisons and Department of Homeland Security.

There was no anarchist violence in Lafayette Square. The only ones using force were federal law enforcement, said Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary subcommittee that Cruz chairs. If this subcommittee wants to protect Americans right to peacefully assemble, we should be focused on preventing federal officers from beating up protesters, tear gassing them, and shooting them in the face.

She called the hearing an effort to deflect attention from systemic racial injustice. President Trump is deliberately trying to undermine the massive protests for racial justice by dismissing them as anarchists.

The culture clash persisted throughout the three-hour hearing.

Cruz and allied witnesses promoted a vision of America and its police agencies under siege by anti-government radicals.

Democrats and their witnesses blamed right-wing provocateurs and an overly aggressive federal response for violence.

Cruz displayed video showing protesters attacking law enforcement.

Democrats countered with footage of protesters being beaten without provocation by officers, or detained by camouflage-clad federal agents driving unmarked cars.

Throughout, the Texan needled his adversaries.

Not a single Democratic senator condemned antifa. Not a one of them condemned antifas violence and terrorism, Cruz said as the hearing neared the end.

By then, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the deputy Democratic leader, among others, had offered condolences for police injured or killed in the line of duty, and explicitly denounced any form of violence by protesters: Neither violence or vandalism are acceptable in the exercise of ones constitutional rights.

Hirono took umbrage at Cruzs insinuations and dressed him down for posturing and poor listening skills.

No one is condoning any violence, she said. I dont think you listen. How many times have I had to say that we all should be denouncing violent extremists? You arent listening.

I hope that we dont have to listen to any more of your rhetorical speeches, she said. Im leaving.

For several months, Cruz has been at the forefront of the GOP effort to discredit antifa and Black Lives Matter. In July, he introduced a bill to let business owners and others sue local governments for property damage if they fail to stop riots.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, another Oregon Democrat, displayed a photo of right-wing militia dressed in camouflage and below it, a photo of federal agents in nearly identical gear, echoing complaints from protesters and local officials about unidentifiable, unaccountable federal forces.

These features -- officers with no identity attacking protesters, sweeping some into unmarked vans, are the features of secret police tactics from around the world. I never thought an American president would bringing such tactics to the streets of America. But Trump has, he said. Using secret police tactics against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters doesnt make him a defender of law and order. It makes him a violent suppressor.

Cruz defended the use of unmarked vehicles, noting that during some riots, marked police vehicles have been firebombed.

We have no secret police, testified Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security.

The top federal prosecutor in Dallas, Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas and head of a Justice Department task force on anti-government violence, was among the witnesses.

She recalled the June 2019 shooting at the Dallas federal courthouse, and the July 2016 killing of five police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.

Unlike the lawful protesters whose demonstrations they undermine, these anti-government extremists aim to tear down the rule of law in America, she said. They are drowning out the voices of the protesters that this country wants to hear.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., lauded law enforcement for the restraint shown at protests, given they cant always tell at a glance who is peaceful and who are the disruptors and the destroyers that show up.

But Michael German, a fellow at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, testified that Trump and others focused on antifa see a threat where none exists.

Misinformation about antifa spread by white supremacist trolls has diverted law enforcement resources and encouraged armed vigilante groups to patrol streets, he told senators, and the Trump administration has amplified this misinformation.

Not one homicide has been attributed to anti-fascists in 25 years, he noted.

But a witness invited by Cruz, Kyle Shideler, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based conservative think tank, described antifa as a shadowy network of cells and chapters dedicated to vandalism and assault, intent on overthrowing the Constitution.

The fact that antifa uses an elaborate but non-hierarchical structure thats hard to understand or penetrate is no excuse for law enforcement to ignore the threat, he warned.

Hirono objected to Shidelers presence, noting that major conservative gatherings have shunned the center because its founder has demonized Muslims, and it has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group.

We reject this claim, Shideler said when Cruz offered him time to rebut. We are particularly proud of our work trying to understand the ideology of jihadist terrorism. He accused groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League that apply the hate group label of engaging in antifa-like tactics to discredit opponents.

Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist from Portland who has devoted himself to documenting antifa, called it a violent insurrectionary group. He recounted an assault and urge lawmakers to take action.

Portland is the canary in the coal mine for America, he said. Look to my city to see what happens when a group like antifa is left unchecked.

Washington correspondent Paul Cobler contributed to this report.

View original post here:

Cruzs antifa hearing erupts in sniping as Dems accuse him of giving Trump cover for abusive tactics - The Dallas Morning News

The FBI had a question for Jhats mother. They wanted to know if her son was trying to join an Islamist group.

Three years later, the Department of Homeland Security was worried about Brace Belden. Officials said that the minor criminal and drug addict who started reading Marx and Lenin in drug rehabilitation was part of a nexus between Antifa activists and the Syrian Civil War.

Jhat and Belden were both American fighters in the same U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led force in Syria.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans have joined the Peoples Defense Units (YPG) and its successor, the Syrian Democratic Forces, as volunteers in the fight against ISIS. And the Department of Homeland Security has struggled to make sense of these foreign fighters, often attempting to tie them to the terrorist threat of the day, leaked documents show.

Its not terribly surprising that authorities were collecting this information,said Jason Fritz, a Johns Hopkins University lecturer who has researched foreign fighters in the YPG. Anybody that mobilizes to fight in a warthey dont have to, getscombat experience, theres probably some concerns.

But Fritz hasnt seen any cases of [YPG volunteers] being any kind of security threat over the past six years of the Syrian Civil War, particularly the leftists.

The YPG first gained prominence in the summer of 2014, when the left-wing rebel group was fighting a desperate battle against ISIS, now known as Islamic State. YPG guerrillas successfully turned the tide in Syria and even intervened in neighboring Iraq to prevent a genocide against the Yezidi people.

The group ended up taking in scores of volunteers from the West, both right-wing militants who want to defend Western civilization and left-wing militants who thought here are some people I agree with, theyre getting massacred, maybe I can help, according to Fritz.

Homeland security officials first took note of these volunteers in early 2015, an August 2015 field analysis report obtained by theNational Interestfrom theBlueLeaks archiveshows.

It was legal, albeitdiscouraged, for Americans to join the YPG. Although the U.S. government considered the closely-alignedKurdistan Workers Partyto be a terrorist group, it was backing the YPG with weapons and advisors.

But authorities were alarmed by veterans and active-duty service members who wanted to join the fight against ISIS.

U.S. Army veteran Jordan Matson had grabbed headlines with the Lions of Rojava, an online network he created to recruit Americans to fight for the YPG, and it seemed that many veterans were interested.

One active-duty Ohio National Guard member even inquired with his chain of command about transferring his status in order to travel to Syria, according to the field analysis report.

Homeland security officials biggest worry was that some of these American volunteers might actually be trying to join ISIS.

Analysts with Homeland Security Intelligence and Analysisassessed that homegrown violent extremists (HVE) intent on traveling overseasin support of [ISIS] or other Syria-based violent extremist groupspotentially could seek to circumvent U.S. law enforcement and travel restrictions by masking their true intentions and using the Lions of Rojavas [sic] facilitation network.

The analysts did make it clear that they had no information aboutISIS fighters actually using this route, but said it was an additional pathway to get into Iraq and Syria.

Robert Rnas Amos, an American who joined the YPG in early 2015, says that it would have been logistically difficult to join ISIS from within YPG-held territory.

I could understand that people who were not educated on the particulars of the situation could come to that conclusion, he told theNational Interest, but everybody knows, if they had [passport] stamps with Turkey, they could have been in ISIS, if not, they probably didnt, because thats the only way in.

Indeed, ISIS had awell-established routefor foreign fighters through the Turkish border.Foreigners who wished to join the YPG, on the other hand, would have to travel through Iraqi Kurdistan.

Nevertheless, U.S. authorities continued to act as if the YPG fighters were potential members of ISIS.

An American foreign fighter who would only be identified by his Kurdish codename Jhat said that FBI agents visited his familys home in 2017 while he was in Syria, supposedly [because] my passport was scanned entering Iraq but not exiting.

They asked them if Id expressed any interest in Islam [a]t which point my mom was like, no the opposite, he wrote in an encrypted text message. Frankly Im unsure if theyre truly so incompetent, or if my opsec [operational security] was just really on point, or if they knew enough and it was a feint to get more info.

Brace Belden, another American volunteer in the YPG, confirmed that some of his comrades-in-arms had like 8 hour interrogations by either the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security [w]here it was implied that they were in ISIS.

Belden now hosts the podcast TrueAnon, a talk show dedicated to investigating sex trafficking conspiracies by elites. But he says he has been interrogated by U.S. law enforcement every time he flies internationally and on some domestic flights as well.

They did ask about Isis [sic] slightly but mostly PKK/YPG, he wrote in an encrypted text message, using the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan Workers Party. They kept pressing me for troop strength which isnt generally something the equivalent of a grunt ever knows about in any war.

YPG fighters became attached to an entirely different security threat in 2020.

President Donald Trump wanted to crack down on ANTIFA, a vaguely-defined movement of militant left-wing anti-fascist protesters, in the wake of civil unrest around the police killing of George Floyd.

The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization, hedeclaredon Twitter on May 30.

There was one problem: only foreign groups can be designated as terrorist organizations underU.S. counterterrorism laws.

Turkey, which is opposed to the YPG and Syrian Democratic Forces, tried to provide a solution.

The Turkish government began to release supposedevidencethat Antifa militants were trained by the YPG. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan evenpersonally calledTrump to tell him of this theory.

The Syrian Democratic Forces political arm denied these claims.

Syrian Kurdish diplomat Sinam Mohamad told theNational Interestat the time that YPG volunteers were in Syria to fight the fascists of the terrorist group ISIS, not any other state. She added that the Syrian Democratic Forces had no interest in interfering in Americas internal affairs.

The Trump administration had found its hook, and the Department of Homeland Security began to compile dossiers on returning YPG fighters, according to anintelligence reportobtained by Ken Klippenstein ofThe Nation.

The reportstated that there was a clear connection in imagery between ANTIFA ideology and Kurdish democratic federalism teachings [sic] and ideology.

It disparagingly refereed to Belden, who has been open about his struggles with substance abuse,as a drug addict.

The report also stated that an unidentified Colorado-based individual who was in Northern Syria...posted an announcement to a popular anarchist extremist website seeking funds to return to the United States in October 2017.

Any unused money from the fundraising campaign would be funneled to Kurdish solidarity or ANTIFA efforts, according to the report.

A former YPG fighter who fits the description in the report spoke to theNational Intereston condition of anonymity, citing legal concerns.

The former fighter said he had been trapped in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan when apolitical crisisshut down the regions main airport. He eventually escaped to Baghdad International Airport in a 250-mile taxi ride, paid for with money he raised online.

None of the money was ever funneled to ANTIFA, the former fighter claimed, because he had to spend the rest of it on a plane ticket home from Iraqis capital.

Landed in Qatar or [whatever] with like 10k Iraqi dinar [$8.40] in my pocket, the former fighter wrote in an encrypted text message.

He added that ANTIFA is a political idea, not a group that could receive material aid like a political organization or army can receive, denouncing the obviously unconstitutional witch hunt by one of the most strategically backwards and incompetent administrations in history.

European countries havecriminalized fightingfor the YPG as well as prosecuted the people who havefinanced them.

But the United States is much more unlikely to do so.

For one, the Trump administration has been trumpeting itssupposed dealwith the Syrian Democratic Forces to extract Syrian oil, making it unlikely that the administration would turn around and declare Syrian Kurdish militants to be terrorists.

And the United States is unlikely to pass laws against fighting in foreign forces in general, as it approves of its citizens volunteering in the Israeli military, Fritz explained.

Instead, the Department of Homeland Security seems more focused on the message it can send with its search for terrorists in the YPGs ranks.

Its mostly to highlight that there are leftists who have gone and done something that most of the population considers extreme, Fritz said.

Read this article:

Communist ISIS Antifa: Homeland Security's Confused Pursuit of Pro-Kurdish Americans - The National Interest

WASHINGTON - Having railed for months against protesters he depicts as violent Marxist anarchists, Sen. Ted Cruz led a hearing Tuesday that exposed a deep schism between Republicans impatient with unrest in U.S. cities and Democrats who see heavy-handed police tactics as a far bigger threat.

As the Texan painted Democrats as antifa sympathizers, they hit back, condemning him for stoking irrational fears and giving cover to a president with an authoritarian streak.

Cruz called the hearing to put a spotlight on the antifa and the Black Lives Matter movements, groups President Donald Trump blames for endangering law enforcement in the guise of protesting racism and police brutality.

But this was as much a political skirmish as a fact-finding hearing about those groups.

Cruz repeatedly accused Democrats of demonizing federal law enforcement as "storm troopers and Gestapo."

"Elected Democrats want to ignore the violence of antifa. They want to ignore the violence on the left and they just scream 'white supremacist, white supremacist,'" he insisted.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat whose hometown of Portland has been the epicenter of clashes between protesters and police for two months, decried "the president's enablers" - an obvious reference to Cruz - who pump up anxiety about mobs and anarchists while offering little concern about the "heavily armed secret police who snatched Portlanders off the streets."

"I agree there's a serious danger to American constitutional rights at this moment in history," Wyden said, "and it's caused to a great extent by the president and his enablers who are calling peaceful protesters anarchists and terrorists, and sending paramilitary forces into American cities."

Protests erupted nationwide after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, a black suspect who died after an officer pinned his neck to the ground with a kneed for nearly nine minutes.

Tensions quickly escalated and on June 1, federal police used tear gas, flash bangs and other tactics to clear Lafayette Square Park outside the White House, where thousands had gathered to protest police brutality and racism. Trump then strode through the park, posing for photos outside historic St. John's Church while holding a Bible.

Accusing mayors in Portland and other cities of weakness, Trump has threatened to send in troops, and has deployed camouflage-uniformed federal officers from the Bureau of Prisons and Department of Homeland Security.

"There was no anarchist violence in Lafayette Square. The only ones using force were federal law enforcement," said Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary subcommittee that Cruz chairs. "If this subcommittee wants to protect Americans' right to peacefully assemble, we should be focused on preventing federal officers from beating up protesters, tear gassing them, and shooting them in the face."

She called the hearing an effort to deflect attention from systemic racial injustice. "President Trump is deliberately trying to undermine the massive protests for racial justice by dismissing them as anarchists."

The culture clash persisted throughout the three-hour hearing.

Cruz and allied witnesses promoted a vision of America and its police agencies under siege by anti-government radicals.

Democrats and their witnesses blamed rightwing provocateurs and an overly aggressive federal response for violence.

Cruz displayed video showing protesters attacking law enforcement.

Democrats countered with footage of protesters being beaten without provocation by officers, or detained by camouflage-clad federal agents driving unmarked cars.

Throughout, Cruz needled his adversaries.

"Not a single Democratic senator condemned antifa. Not a one of them condemned antifa's violence and terrorism," he said as the hearing neared the end.

By then, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the deputy Democratic leader, among others, had offered condolences for police injured or killed in the line of duty, and explicitly denounced any form of violence by protesters: "Neither violence or vandalism are acceptable in the exercise of one's constitutional rights."

Hirono took umbrage at Cruz's insinuations and dressed him down for posturing and poor listening skills.

"No one is condoning any violence," she said. "I don't think you listen. How many times have I had to say that we all should be denouncing violent extremists? You aren't listening.

"I hope that we don't have to listen to any more of your rhetorical speeches," she said. "I'm leaving."

For several months, Cruz has been at the forefront of the GOP effort to discredit antifa and Black Lives Matter. In July, he introduced a bill to let business owners and others sue local governments for property damage if they fail to stop riots.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, another Oregon Democrat, displayed a photo of right-wing militia dressed in camouflage and below it, a photo of federal agents in nearly identical gear, echoing complaints from protesters and local officials about unidentifiable, unaccountable federal forces.

"These features _officers with no identity attacking protesters, sweeping some into unmarked vans, are the features of secret police tactics from around the world. I never thought an American president would be bringing such tactics to the streets of America. But Trump has," he said. "Using secret police tactics against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters doesn't make him a defender of law and order. It makes him a violent suppressor."

Cruz defended the use of unmarked vehicles, noting that during some riots, marked police vehicles have been firebombed.

"We have no secret police," testified Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department.

The top federal prosecutor in Dallas, Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas and head of a Justice Department task force on anti-government violence, was among the witnesses.

She recalled the June 2019 shooting at the Dallas federal courthouse, and the July 2016 killing of five Dallas police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest.

"Unlike the lawful protesters whose demonstrations they undermine, these anti-government extremists aim to tear down the rule of law in America," she said. "They are drowning out the voices of the protesters that this country wants to hear."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., lauded law enforcement for the restraint shown at protests, given they can't always tell at a glance who is peaceful and who are the "disruptors and the destroyers that show up."

But Michael German, a fellow at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, testified that Trump and others focused on antifa see a threat where none exists.

"Misinformation about antifa spread by white supremacist trolls has diverted law enforcement resources and encouraged armed vigilante groups to patrol streets," he told senators, and "the Trump administration has amplified this misinformation."

Not one homicide has been attributed to anti-fascists in 25 years, he noted.

But a witness invited by Cruz, Kyle Shideler, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based conservative think tank, described antifa as a shadowy network of cells and chapters dedicated to vandalism and assault, intent on overthrowing the Constitution.

The fact that antifa uses an "elaborate but non-hierarchical structure" that's hard to understand or penetrate is no excuse for law enforcement to ignore the threat, he warned.

Hirono objected to Shideler's presence, noting that major conservative gatherings have shunned the Center for Security Policy because its founder has demonized Muslims, and it has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group.

"We reject this claim," Shideler said when Cruz offered him time to rebut. "We are particularly proud of our work trying to understand the ideology of jihadist terrorism." He accused groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League that apply the hate group label of engaging in antifa-like tactics to discredit opponents.

Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist from Portland who has devoted himself to documenting antifa, called it a "violent insurrectionary group." He recounted an assault and urge lawmakers to take action.

"Portland is the canary in the coal mine for America," he said. "Look to my city to see what happens when a group like antifa is left unchecked."

(Washington correspondent Paul Cobler contributed to this report.)

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Cruz's antifa hearing erupts in sniping as Democrats accuse him of giving Trump cover for abusive tactics - Newsbug.info

Alex Zielinski alerted Antifa militants to Andy Ngo's whereabouts during rioting in Portland where Ngo was reporting undercover. Zielinski's revealing of Ngo's location endangered both Ngo and those around him. Shortly after, Ngo was attacked by lasers in an attempt to blind him.

Ngo, editor-at-large for The Post Millennial, has been reporting on the Portland riots which have been going on nightly for two months.

"Heads up all, it looks like Andy Ngo is here, wandering around with @KOINNews reporters. I don't think they're aware," Zielinski tweeted mid-riot on June 20th. She is undoubtedly aware that Antifa brutally assaulted Ngo last year, leaving him with a brain hemorrhage.

Zielinski also knows that Antifa grunts terrorized Ngo's family's home, wearing print-out masks of Ngos face.

Still, Zielinski pointed a digital finger to where Ngo was. Antifa immediately tried to blind him with pocket lasers, damaging his eyes and scarring him with light sensitivity. Then they confronted him.

Earlier this month, federal agents were blinded by these lasers, and may never recover their eyesight.

Scientific American reported that green light pointers are not manufactured under federal regulations, are improperly imported to the US, and far exceed safety limits.

However, Ngo had to plead with local news crew to leave the scene with them or face another violent attack that could lead to physical violence against him.

"Even though Zielinski & I disagree on politics, I would never try to hurt her. I'm airing this now because the public should be aware of how local journalists work hand-in-hand w/antifa," Ngo explained on Twitter.

Last year, Zielinski interviewed a pseudonymous Antifa informer who made a sensational claim that Ngo was secretly collaborating with right-wing group Patriot Prayer. Ngo denies the allegation. He was never contacted for comment by Zielinski. Reason reported that Portland Mercurys alleged video evidence did not support the explosive accusation.

The Antifa activist, who sleuthed as a Patriot Prayer prayer member, stated to Zielinski at the Portland Mercury "that Patriot Prayer protects [Ngo] and he protects them."

Ngo allegedly tagged along with Patriot Prayer to film a violent scuffle with Antifa at Cider Riot, a left-wing sympathetic restaurant, only turning his camera on Antifa when members entered the scene.

"Right-wing writer Andy Ngo is with the PP group the entire time as they plan out their attack," wrote Zielinksi on Twitter. "He smiles as they joke about being outnumbered. There's no way he couldn't know the group was planning on instigating violence against people at Cider Riot."

The lie was then propagated everywhere and widely cited in Vice, The Daily Dot, and The Inquisitr as leftist propaganda, asserting that Ngo was a co-conspirator with the right-wing group. Ngo maintains that he was not.

Ngo acknowledged that he was never reached for comment and has had no opportunity to date to respond to the pseudonymous accuser.

"It appears that now Alex Zielinski is trying to get me killed because she was unable to stop me from reporting," Ngo tweeted.

The Post Millennial reached out to Zielinski for comment about her actions in outing Ngo and she replied "I don't know him. Sorry!" When asked for clarification of that, she said "I don't know him or have anything to say about his comments about my month old tweet."

Later, she tweeted that she had been offline for a few days, but that she had tweeted "during a protest" that "someone with a history of putting Portlanders' lives in danger" was "filming protestors in the crowd while 'undercover.'"

See the article here:

Left-wing journalist alerts Antifa to Andy Ngo's location, then they try to blind him with lasers - The Post Millennial