On the night of a recent Million MAGA March in Washington DC, a large man in a Proud Boys polo shirt runs at a Black woman from behind and punches her in the head. She falls to the pavement.

Russell Schultz sent video of the episode to CNN, saying the puncher should go to jail.

The sentiment is a bit of a shift for Mr Schultz, a former Proud Boy who's been filmed in street brawls himself and who often shows up at protests in Portland, Oregon, with a giant black flag that reads, "F--- ANTIFA."

Some have been filmed getting into street fights.

"Most of it is just to fight," Mr Schultz said.

"They want to join a gang. So they can go fight antifa and hurt people that they don't like, and feel justified in doing it."

Last year, he was indicted for rioting after a brawl between far-right protesters and anti-fascists in Portland.

He pleaded not guilty, and with another activist involved in the brawl - Joey Gibson of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer - he's filed a federal lawsuit against the Multnomah County district attorney, claiming they're being unfairly prosecuted because of their political beliefs.

Mr Schultz, 51, joined the Proud Boys in the fall of 2017 and left in May 2019. He says he quit, but the Proud Boys say he was "kicked out".

His exit should not be interpreted as a total repudiation of all the Proud Boys stand for, or a new enlightened state opposed to all political violence.

Mr Schultz still shows up at rallies, and he's still motivated by antipathy toward antifa.

The blurred line between what's ironic and what's sincere is a feature of the new far-right that was born on the internet in the Trump era. (Schultz said the word "joke" about three dozen times in the couple hours CNN interviewed him.)

It's harder for someone to be held accountable for what he believes if it's not clear what, exactly, he believes.

And it allows him to try on a persona with the safety valve of being able to say later it was all fake.

In person, Mr Schultz is mild-mannered and polite. In his old Proud Boys videos, he's menacing.

He now says he was just emulating the promo videos of professional wrestlers.

In 2017, Mr Schultz was at a free speech rally with Patriot Prayer.

"All (of a) sudden fights are breaking out all over the place, and here come marching across a field are these guys in black-and-yellow-striped polos," Mr Schultz said.

"And it, to me, it just looked like something from Braveheart."

They were the Proud Boys.

The "first degree" of membership in the Proud Boys is to declare you are one, which Mr Schultz later did.

The second degree is to be punched while reciting the names of five breakfast cereals, which he did, too.

"It was just a joke. No one hits hard," Mr Schultz says.

"The five breakfast cereals is a joke that's supposed to emulate getting beat into a gang.

"You know, it is just a spoof, a parody, but it got taken too far."

Here's another supposed joke: An ex-member recently said on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that he was staging a coup so Proud Boys would no longer capitulate to the left: "We recognise that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race."

Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio said there was no coup. Then both sides said they were just joking.

New wingmen and social media swagger

Mr Schultz is Jewish and says he voted for Barack Obama twice before voting for Mr Trump twice.

He liked the Proud Boys' joking and the drinking. But he began to notice some patterns among those who joined.

"They join the group now because it gives them a sense of belonging. They have this inner-person side that they want to be, but they're afraid to be.

"They're men who've never had wingmen before," he says.

"They're afraid to say what's on their mind for fear of getting into a fight. But if they have that guy or that group behind them, they're more bold in saying what they think, because they think someone has their back. ... The Proud Boys are the vehicle that attracts those people and accepts them in."

In the fragments of his social media presence left behind from his Proud Boys days (he got kicked off Facebook and Instagram), Mr Schultz's on-screen presence suggests he'd found the confidence to be quite outspoken.

Ahead of what he called a "pro-Jesus march" in December 2018, Mr Schultz posted a video warning antifa not to disrupt it. He says, in part:

"At the last rally I nearly ran over you with a car and I didn't feel bad about it one bit. You're lucky I didn't kill you because I wouldn't feel any remorse. ...

"You shoot me with faeces - I can't prove - you can't prove you didn't put something in it like HIV. ...

"I am going to shoot you. And here's where the best part of the odds is, I still have a chance to fight for my freedom in court. You don't have a chance to fight for your freedom cause you're f------ dead. See I'm going to shoot you in the chest or your head. Center mass. ...

"It might be in your best interest not to show up with faeces infested with HIV, whatever it is, and live, live so you can see what we're planning in 2019. Cause if you shoot us with faeces there's a good chance you might not survive to see 2019."

When CNN said these looked like violent threats, Mr Schultz defended them.

"They are violent threats and it's for good reason, too," he said.

"Antifa was saying they were going to come over and start throwing urine and faeces on us. And so that was my way of saying, 'OK, if you do that, that's a threat.' I don't know if it was AIDS-tainted. And I made that threat so they wouldn't come over. And they didn't come over. So, it worked."

Singled out by anti-fascist opponents

CNN reached out to Rose City Antifa, the Portland-area anti-fascist group, about these allegations.

"No one from our organisation threatened to throw poop at the Jesus thing. ... Rose City Antifa has never put AIDS in poop. Nor am I certain how one would do so."

This video had, in fact, been downloaded and posted by Rose City Antifa, which has been tracking Mr Schultz for years.

Though public protests are what get the most attention, most of what anti-fascists do - and Mr Schultz agrees with this - is online.

They research and document far-right activists they deem fascist and make that information public.

This resulting document is called a doxx - which can be a simple collection of biographical details but often functions as a kind of indictment, listing specific acts of racism or misogyny, as well as associations with other people deemed fascist.

In Mr Schultz's case, they made fliers about him and posted them around his neighborhood and his local bar.

"Violent Alt-Right Organiser In Your Area," the flier's headline reads.

"He was just one of the dudes in the crowd at rallies," explained A., an activist with Rose City Antifa who would not give a full name. (The vast majority of anti-fascist activists are anonymous, they say out of fear of far-right violence.)

"But outside of that context he's much more vocal, especially on social media."

Mr Schultz's social media presence was one of the most remarkable things about him, A. said, in that he made explicit threats.

Mr Schultz, in A.'s view, has "this 'I'm an operator' mindset that older right-wing men have. They get really into the idea (that) this is like their war - and thinking through and trying to get into the mind of the opposition.

"It's "very Rambo-y, but it also descends into a misogynistic and creeper vibe by listing all the terrible things they're going to do to you."

Included in Rose City Antifa's doxx of Mr Schultz is one of his old Facebook posts, which says, "Feminism only works on and when there are guys willing to f--- you."

Mr Schultz said this, too, was just a joke, just trolling.

In fact, he had a reputation for being "good at trolling," at saying things that would make antifa upset, Mr Schultz said.

"Like what you just mentioned, about women only have power as long as there's men willing to - you know - which, coming from me, with two beautiful daughters, you know, it's contrary to my whole life."

He explained all of his past commentary by saying: "Anything I ever did that was incendiary was so that (antifa) would see it and react to it."

He says he wanted more antifa activists to show up at right-wing rallies - not for the street battle, but for the more important media battle.

"I'm not baiting them into doing violence. I'm baiting them into showing up in enough numbers. Because when you see enough people in Black Bloc, people get scared," Mr Schultz said, referring to the activist tactic of wearing black clothes and face coverings to avoid identification.

"The people that aren't involved in (the protests), that don't think about it -- they see all these people looking like ISIS."

Consequences of an abandoned joke

A., of Rose City Antifa, said they did monitor the videos Mr Schultz and his comrades made as a way to gauge how many would turn out at their rallies and what their emotional state would be.

They took note when a far-right activist would give away a little more operational detail than he should have.

"I think a lot of people assume the end goal of doxxing is to get Nazis to not be Nazis anymore by convincing them of the flaws of their ideology," A. said.

"That's not necessarily the case."

There are other organisations that help deradicalise people. The main goal, A. said, is to provide a community resource to people directly affected by activists like Mr Schultz and "then present clear obstacles to their continued organising".

Before speaking to CNN, A. said, Rose City Antifa went through their old doxxes.

They see them as successful, particularly for the less prominent activists they've targeted.

"The older and slightly more marginal types - they really do not come around anymore."

Mr Schultz says he quit the Proud Boys in 2019 for a couple of reasons.

One, the men who wanted to climb the ranks of leadership were taking it too seriously, he says.

They were making a more formalised national hierarchy, Mr Schultz says, and he thought that would bring more intense scrutiny from law enforcement and reporters - and he worried that if one member committed a crime, they could all be liable for it.

Mr Schultz also felt pressure from one of his daughters to quit, he says.

The Proud Boys chairman says Mr Schultz was "kicked out," namely because he would "make a complete ass of himself" in videos on social media.

"Scorned ex-girlfriends are the worst. As soon as you break up with them, they want to lie to the world and say how small your equipment is," Mr Tarrio told CNN, in reference to Schultz.

"Currently there is no criminal activity happening in the Proud Boys."

Asked what Mr Tarrio would say about him, Mr Schultz said, "Oh, he'll probably talk crap about me. I don't care. ... Enrique always deflects."

As we watched the video of the man in the Proud Boys polo punch the woman in Washington, we asked Mr Schultz: Did he feel like he helped bring the nation to this point, with his propaganda?

"Yeah. Honestly, I had a role in it. I never advocated for the violence to come out of it, though."

In other words, he still says it was just a joke.

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Ex-Proud Boy on life inside the far-right group's ranks - 9News

When President Donald Trump convened the White House Conference on American History in mid-September, he wowed attendees with news that hed signed an executive order establishing a National Committee to Promote Patriotic Education.

This was necessary, he said, because U.S. teachers have been pushing students to hate America. The major culprit? The late Howard Zinns 40-year-old, 784-page book, A Peoples History of the United States. Trump accused the World War II veteran-turned-scholar of promoting propaganda intended to make students ashamed of their own history.

Unsurprisingly, Trumps audience ate up these declarations, but however rapturous the response, neither his rhetoric nor his conclusions were particularly new. In fact, he was repeating a longstanding trope about U.S. education, zeroing in on those responsible for delivering both critical thinking and concrete skills to future generations of leaders and workers. And, while Trump did not specifically mention college professors, the idea that a cadre of left-wing educators are indoctrinating impressionable young adults has become the raison dtre for a host of conservative groups that are working to establish a firm toehold on campuses throughout the 50 states: Campus Reform, the College Fix, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Leadership Institute, the National Association of Scholars and Turning Point USA, among them.

Of particular interest and urgency for them is the denunciation of scholar-activists who support Black Lives Matter and anti-fascism (or antifa).

Alexander Riley, a Bucknell University sociology professor, made the case against antifa on Campus Reforms daily blog, calling the anti-fascist movement a loose confederation of half-educated malcontents who entirely reject the logic of intellectual debate. He then went on to say that antifa groups want to crush the skulls of those with whom they disagree in the manner of sociopathic criminals throughout humanity.

Black Lives Matter has been similarly slammed, with founder Patrisse Cullors repeatedly referred to as a trained Marxist whose agenda includes the destruction of the family. Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Joness 1619 Project has also been hammered for teaching self-loathing.

As vitriolic as these statements are, it is important to note that Campus Reform does far more than publish a hyperbolic blog.

As Truthout has previously reported, Campus Reform trains conservative students to become paid campus journalists who report on progressive faculty and student groups whose views they oppose. It is a project of the 41-year-old Leadership Institute, a multimillion-dollar organization with deep roots in the Reagan-era New Right, that, in 2016 alone, spent $15.8 million on campus activities.

Conservative donors have been more than happy to pony up for the cause, and Campus Reforms work has been made possible thanks to the support of foundations connected to libertarian billionaire Charles Koch and dark money outlets, including Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund that the Charles Koch Foundation controls. Other support for Campus Reform has come from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, mutual fund manager Foster Friess, and other deep-pocketed donors.

This support has enabled Campus Reform to train students to monitor and report on progressive campus activism and establish conservative organizations to counter the purported left-wing biases they claim are evident at every college and university in the country. The group also places affiliated students on a fast-track to jobs at conservative think tanks; media outlets including Breitbart, The Daily Caller and Fox News; and with local, state and federal lawmakers once they graduate.

Case in point: Gabriel Nadales. Nadales is currently the regional field coordinator at the Leadership Institute and is a frequent contributor to the Campus Reform blog. Although he did not respond to Truthouts three requests for an interview, his YouTube videos, frequent appearances on Fox News, and writing about his time as an antifa activist consistently portray the anti-fascist left as hateful people who think they are opposing totalitarianism, but who are instead little more than domestic terrorists. As Nadales tells it, when he was 16, he was lured to demonstrations protesting cuts to public education. I wanted to be part of fighting for a better world, he told Fox News. I thought the U.S. was a fascist nation. I didnt believe in America.

That was in 2010. Nadaless conversion to conservatism, he says, occurred after he enrolled in southern Californias Citrus College, where he was introduced to the economic theories of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. Their insights, he says, caused him to do a complete 180 and he subsequently found his way to mentorship at the Leadership Institute, formed a Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Citrus, and took his spot on the conservative lecture circuit after he completed his studies.

Antifa does not stand for something. They stand against something. They stand against the First Amendment, Nadales told Fox Newss Laura Ingraham. They are such cowards that they have to cover their faces and are mostly up to something not good.

Nadales is hardly alone in making these assertions, and they have had an impact, placing faculty who have expressed support for antifa groups and Black Lives Matter in Campus Reforms crosshairs. Some have also found their way onto the Professor Watchlist maintained by Turning Point USA, a list of hundreds of college faculty members who are openly critical of capitalism, or who support movements for social justice that the right finds threatening to business as usual.

This includes Truthout contributor and Rutgers history professor Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, published by Melville House. My first run-in with Campus Reform was right after my book came out in August 2017 when they noticed me on Meet the Press, he told Truthout. It was two weeks after the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Bray says that Campus Reform misconstrued his comments about violence and reached out to the president of Dartmouth College, where Bray was then a visiting professor, for comment. President [Philip] Hanlon denounced me and because Campus Reform reported this, the story was picked up by Breitbart and I got hate mail and death threats. But more than 120 Dartmouth faculty and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) signed a letter of support for me, he said. This helped me enormously. The bonds of solidarity we build with each other make the threats and doxing less effective. Theyre absolutely essential.

Bray called these bonds into play again this summer after Trump called antifa a terrorist organization and Bray responded. Writing in The Washington Post, he noted that Trump misrepresented the anti-fascist movement in the interests of delegitimizing militant protest and deflecting attention away from white supremacy and police brutality that the protesters oppose.

Conservative media outlets including The American Spectator, Breitbart and the Campus Reform blog as well as the Israeli media outlet Haaretz picked up Brays comments. I continue to get negative pushback, Bray says, and while he finds this disturbing, it has not been silencing for him.

Like Bray, Campus Reform-target Johnny Eric Williams, a professor of sociology at Connecticuts Trinity College, has also remained outspoken. Although he was forced to take a semesters leave after he and his workplace were targeted by the group following tweets about racism and white supremacy that went viral, he has refused to stop speaking out. Ive been through the wringer, but its my job to tell the truth, he told Truthout. Since my leave, the administration has supported my First Amendment speech rights. Thats what academic freedom is all about.

Tenured Texas A&M sociology professor Wendy Leo Moore agrees. Moore is currently facing a two-day salary suspension for participating in Septembers #ScholarStrike. After Jacob Blake was shot, many of us felt that we had an obligation to do the strike in a way that paused and called attention to racism, police brutality and white supremacy, Moore told Truthout. I teach about criminal justice, and while I did not want to disrupt the flow of my classes, and knew that my students had been having a really challenging time due to COVID, I decided it was important to take a stand and participate.

Moore had been informed that the college opposed faculty participation and had been warned that the college considered the strike an illegal work stoppage, a violation of a Texas law banning strikes by state employees. It was not a strike against the state, Moore said. It was a work stoppage to support Black Lives Matter and [oppose] racism. It was a pedagogical decision for me to take part.

To date, Moores stance has been lambasted in several articles posted by Campus Reform, but like her peers, she is heartened to have received the backing of the American Sociological Association, PEN America and the AAUP, and expects to have a hearing before the colleges Committee on Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure on Campus in late November.

The right wing has targeted people who are pushing economic justice, environmental justice and racial justice, and any professor who explicitly supports Black communities or other communities of color can get the rights attention, said Jasmine Banks, executive director of UnKoch My Campus, an organization promoting fiscal transparency and democracy on campus. Their tactics aim to make it risky to promote equity and inclusion.

Naming names and stealth attacks including the surreptitious taping of speeches, lectures and programs are part of the rights game plan, Banks says. Since gotcha-type provocations orchestrated by well-known conservative provocateur James OKeefe took place in 2015, Campus Reform has largely focused on overt, coordinated disruptions and threats to particular faculty members, with each attack lasting for about a week before the group moves on to someone else.

Last winter, Liberty University business marketing student Addison Smith, a Campus Reform contributor and Turning Point USA activist, was accused of illegally recording private conversations on campus. Under Virginia state law, failure to get the consent of at least one party to the taping of a conversation is a felony, but as of October 20, 2020, Smith was still writing for Campus Reform and appears judicially unscathed.

Truthout reached out to the Campus Reform writers Lacey Kestecher, Leo Thuman and McKenna Dallmeyer to request comment for inclusion in this article, along with numerous people from the Leadership Institute, including Gabriel Nadales, but none of them responded to requests for comment.

Groups like Campus Reform work hard to create the illusion that conservatives are a beleaguered minority on campuses, says Isaac Kamola, a political science professor at Trinity College and creator of Campus Reform Early Responders, a year-old effort to assist individuals and institutions that have become the focus of right-wing acrimony.

In truth, theyre going after anyone who is not teaching a worldview that they subscribe to for example, that the U.S. was founded on structural racism a viewpoint they call un-American. This can then roll out into calls for violence against an individual or an institution, or calls for a professor to be fired or sanctioned.

But the ultimate agenda is not simply to boot out progressive faculty, Kamola says. Rather, its to gain a greater foothold into the academy for conservative, libertarian ideas. Their conservatives-as-victims narrative reinforces straight, white, male power. Charles Koch and his allies believe that if you can get people when theyre young, give them jobs and a chance to meet prominent scholars and activists, launch them into careers, youll have an unparalleled power base, he said. Our job is to call them out on this.

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Right-Wing Orgs Are Enlisting Students in Their War Against Campus Progressives - Truthout

In a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday, Ben Crump, the lawyer for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many more Black people killed by police, outlined who he'd like to see lead the Biden justice department. And he put a familiar face at the top of the list: Tony West, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations who happens to be Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' brother-in-law.

After an "exhausting" 2020 spent fighting for civil rights and "speaking truth to power," Crump wrote that he's cautiously optimistic "President-elect Joe Biden and his still-unnamed attorney general will be our partner in the hard work of repairing our criminal justice system." After all, Biden "ran on an ambitious criminal justice reform platform" that included promises "to end federal private prisons, mandatory minimum sentencing and the federal death penalty," among others, Crump wrote. "Moved by Biden's promises, Black voters carried him to victory in the presidential election," and now it's time for Biden to nominate an attorney general "committed to delivering the Constitution's promises of justice and equality," Crump continued.

To Crump, the choice here is clear. West ran the Justice Department's Civil Division under former Attorney General Eric Holder, where he "led various efforts to reduce racial bias, improve procedural fairness, strengthen the relationship between communities of color and law enforcement, and hold police departments accountable," Crump wrote. And while he's gone on to work in the private sector, West has "always remained a public servant at heart," Crump concluded.

Biden has so far revealed top picks for his communications and economic teams, as well as his choice for Homeland Security secretary. All of his cabinet picks will have to pass a Senate vote, and Crump notes West most recently was approved 98-1 to be associate attorney general. Kathryn Krawczyk

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GOP Sen. Josh Hawley tries to explain how Democrats are both 'Marxists' and 'corporatists' - The Week

Editorial Page Editor Adam Van Brimmer blogs on local topics of interest most weekday mornings in the "Savannahs Town Square" Facebook group. The following is an excerpt from one of those posts.

Talking Point: Thankful election hasn't produced violence in the streets

Perhaps my greatest fear about the Nov. 3 election was the risk of a violent aftermath.

Somebody was going to lose, and both parties have fanatical wings. What's more, one candidate was all but egging on his rabble-rouser supporters ("stand back and stand by") while the other appeared to lack the influence to suppress the far left.

Thankfully, we've seen little violence in America's streets since Election Day. The Million MAGA March in Washington, D.C., led by President Donald Trump's supporters, was largely peaceful, although there were some skirmishes once night fell. And it is unclear whether it was the protesters or the counterprotesters who initiated the clashes.

What's interesting now is the public opinion. In a pair of conversations with Republican voters over the weekend, I was told the absence of violence was evidence that the fears of right-wing rampages were a media creation. Also, the consensus was that if President Trump had won, we would have seen riots and more from the liberal militants. They cited supporters of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

We'll never know if the liberals would have risen up as described, although we can look to numerous peaceful anti-Trump marches staged over the last four years and think that we wouldn't be on the brink of a civil war. Yet those demonstrations were pre-George Floyd, and President Trump's rhetoric over the last several months has sharpened the edge.

Had Trump beaten Biden, the frustration might have boiled over.

Regardless, let's hope the fallout continues to be low key. Tensions will remain high at least through the Jan. 20 inauguration. President Trump continues to protest the election but has not (yet) moved to incite violence, which is good. And President-elect Biden has found the right tone for dealing with a difficult situation.

Let's hope both candidates -- and their more passionate supporters -- continue to suppress their darker instincts.

Read the blog posts and engage in the conversation by searching for "Savannahs Town Square" on Facebook and clicking the "join" button.

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Savannahs Town Square: Election results and the absence of violence - Savannah Morning News

Some political commentators have predicted that a Joe Biden presidency would spell the end of Antifa and its riots.

"Notice, there are no post-election riots because the media have declared Biden the next president, and Biden declares himself president," tweeted conservative commentator Mark Levin. "So, most of the looters, arsonists, rioters were, in fact, pro-Biden voters."

Comments like these reflect a widespread misunderstanding about Antifa. Antifa is not made up of supporters of the Democratic Party, even if it shares a hatred of the Donald Trump administration. It is a movement of anarchist-communist individuals, organizations and networks that seek the abolishment of the United States itself. That means no Republicansor Democrats.

To see what Antifa has done and what it's likely to do under a Biden administration, just look to Portlandthe epicenter of American Antifa militancy.

From May through October this year, Antifa and far-left extremists carried out more than 125 days of violent protests and riots. National media focused on the riots in July when thousands of protesters tried to tear down the barrier protecting the downtown federal courthouse. Some of them tried to burn down the whole facility. The Portland mayor, Oregon governor and other Democrats blamed the Trump administration. But like Levin, they were wrong to believe that Antifa has a partisan agenda.

As soon as federal officers withdrew at the beginning of August, Antifa simply moved its riots to other parts of the cityareas inhabited by residents. In the months after, the rioters have tried to burn down police stations and have vandalized dozens of businesses and homes. But since Election Day, not only have they not ceased their violence, they've stepped up their attacks on smaller targets to avoid arrests.

On Nov. 4, the day after the election, they gathered in the hundreds downtown and held a large banner declaring: "WE DON'T WANT BIDENWE WANT REVENGE!" The marauders marched through a business district where they smashed windows one by one using hammers. Nothing in their path was spared. A church that provided support services to Portland's homeless shut down its charity work due to severe damage to its building exterior. Gov. Kate Brown activated the National Guard for the first time to clamp down on the mass violence that night.

But it was just getting started. The day after, a mob of Antifa rioters gathered at the home of Portland city commissioner Dan Ryan and vandalized it as punishment for being the swing vote against a city council proposal to defund police.

On Nov. 8, another Antifa mob destroyed the exterior of the Multnomah County Democrats' headquarters using melee tools in a late-night riot. They spray-painted "F BIDEN" on the building to top it off.

Four days later, several dozen Antifa members secretly marched in the middle of the night to the offices of the Rapid Response Bio Clean, a business contracted with the city to clean and remove homeless encampments. There, they disabled the security cameras and smashed out the glass windows.

And just last Friday, in an evolution of riot tactics, Antifa publicly announced a downtown "direct action" via social media flyers. But this was a trick. The event was a decoy to fool police into responding to the wrong place while the main group of 100 Antifa members smashed out and vandalized more than two dozen businesses in northeast Portland. Police made no arrests.

Antifa's activities in Portland show that not only is the group still a force to be reckoned with post-Election Day, but it's also improving its organizing to evade arrest. The goal of the riots is the same today as it was before: drain public resources and make economic recovery after COVID-19 impossible for the public. Some signs show it is working. Businesses that didn't already shutter earlier this year continue to suffer routine damage costing thousands to repair each time. All the while, the entire state of Oregon has now gone under a new set of lockdown restrictions. Moribund businesses will meet their end.

Biden infamously said in the first presidential debate in September that Antifa is an "idea." He is right, but Antifa also organizes and carries out violence based on that idea. And it views him, Kamala Harris and the state as its primary enemies now that Donald Trump will soon be out of the way.

Andy Ngo is the author of the upcoming Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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After the Election, What's Next for Antifa? | Opinion - Newsweek

As the big tech tyrants tighten their grip, join us for more free speech at Parlerthe anti-censorship social media platform.

The Post Millennial can report the verified identity of one of the masked Antifa militants involved in pepper-spraying people at a pro-police protest in Portland last week.

Isabel Rosa Araujo, formerly known as Philip Vincent Haskins-Delici, is a 35-year-old Portland-based transsexual Antifa militant with a history of extremism. Araujo was part of a group of around 20 Antifa in black bloc who confronted a small conservative pro-police rally last Thursday afternoon in downtown Portland. The two sides argued with each other outside the Justice Center before Araujo, who was wearing a gas mask, used bear mace against one of the right-wing protesters. She was not arrested for assault.

Though this was the latest incident involving Araujo, she has a long history of far-left extremism that once caught the attention of federal authorities. Originally from New Jersey and a one-time Philadelphia resident, Araujo is a prominent Antifa militant in Portland known for creating propaganda drawings and her participation in protests.

Under various monikers, she posts obsessively about Antifa and Maoist politics. She even has an Antifa tattoo on her chest.

On her blog, Ramblings of a Black-Clad Trans Femme, Araujo wrote in a March 2019 entry under the pen name Crime Minister of Antifa that she was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service and Philadelphia law enforcement in 2008 after drawing a graphic cartoon showing late Republican Arizona senator John McCain being shot in the head.

Araujo is also a prolific social media user under various anonymously-run accounts. On Mastodon, an unmoderated open-source social media network similar to Twitter, she posts under the username @AnarchaTransLatinx. Many of her posts show photographs of her posing in black bloc with guns.

Araujo has also made explicit threats against this reporter. In August 2019, she posted a photograph of a person she stalked in Portland who she believed to be Andy Ngo. Later in the year she wrote: Can someone empty a few bullets on Andy Ngo please? In November 2019, she asked, So is anyone going to volunteer to help with putting a cap in Andy Ngo's doxxing / kill list creating ass?

Araujo is also a prolific user on Twitter under the username @RedGuardinBloc where she shares images and radical political tweets. Her posts confirm her participation in last weeks violent downtown protest. Others show that she creates propaganda for Antifa through homemade drawings. One COVID-19 health warning about wearing masks tells Antifa to cover their faces along with the text: The people who wear MAGA hats are more likely to spread the virus, assault them!

She also tweets photographs of her posing with various weapons. One photograph posted on Nov. 10 shows her posing with a large baton. At night, I often sleep with and answer the door with this beefy 36" riot baton, Araujo tweeted. Safety is a relative term, I prefer to stay dangerous.

Araujo writes frequently about a fear of fascists killing her. She could not be reached for comment.

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Violent Portland Antifa IDd as 35-year-old trans woman - The Post Millennial

A photo of Adam Rahuba of Pittsburgh, on an Instagram account in his name. The photo is also showcased on the homepage of http://www.disinformationartist.com. Rahuba appears to describe himself as an propagandist and American Troll.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 25, 2020 7:03 PM EASTERN. Sometimes after the publication of this story, the Instagram account for Adam Rahuba referenced (embedded) in the lower portion of this story was changed to private so some images from those embeds may not appear.

PITTSBURGH, PA Adam Rahuba, a self-purported Antifa leader in Pittsburgh, has had hisTwitter account suspendedfor what the social media giant claims are violations against theirpolicy on hateful conductafter allegedly calling for what amounts to an armed insurrection if President Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election to President-Elect Joe Biden by Sunday.

The tweet, which now onlyexists in screenshot formsince Rahubas Twitter account was suspended, was directed at Trumps @realDonaldTrump account and read as follows:

If you do not concede by Sunday at noon, we will begin to block roads in conservative areas. Your supporters will not be able to go to work or go to the grocery store to feed their families. We are armed and will retaliate to attempts of vehicular homicide.

Antifa is an organization comprised of activists who claim to oppose fascism and sometimes resort to violence and property damage in order to get their point across.

While Rahubas Twitter feed is currently suspended, all of his previous tweets are no longer able to be viewed; however,this reportalleges that his posting history was filled with repeated calls for hate and violence, especially against conservatives and Trump supporters. The Published Reporter is currently unable to verify these claims at this time due to Rahubas suspension.

However,according to a report by the Washington Post, Rahuba, 38, may actually wield little in the way of any real-world power; in contrast, he may actually be nothing more than an internet troll who stages numerous hoaxes and false claims on social media aimed at conservatives and right-wing groups, some of which have been picked up by news organizations such as Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit.

The Post article instead paints him as merely a part-time food-deliveryman and DJ who spent a period of time crashing on couches of friends in Pittsburgh. However, even if he is only a prankster and not a realactivist, this doesnt mean that his hoaxes couldnt or havent lead to others committing acts of violence on his behalf.

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Alleged Antifa Leader Suspended from Twitter After Threatening Violence Against Donald Trump If He Fails to Concede 2020 Election by Deadline - The...

President Trump tweeted out a false claim this week that the elderly protester shoved by police in Buffalo, New York, was a member of the anti-fascist political movement antifa. He is not.

Last Sunday, the president once again said he would designate antifa as a terrorist organization. He made the same remarks last year after antifa followers rumbled with the far-right group, the Proud Boys.

Antifa has never been accused of killing anyone, unlike the white supremacist hate group Ku Klux Klan, which is not declared a terrorist organization.

Attorney General William Barr says antifa was responsible for the looting and violence that cities across the U.S. witnessed early on in protests against George Floyds murder and police brutality against Black Americans.

However, federal court records show out of the 51 people facing federal charges, no one is alleged to have ties to the antifa movement, according to an NPR review.

Over the years, activists on the left have debated whether to disavow antifas tactics.

Antifa, a loose organization of sorts, has its roots in Germany and the United Kingdom during the uprising fascist movements of the 1920s and 30s, NBC News investigative reporter Brandy Zadrozny says.

The modern movement came to the U.S. in the 70s and 80s, and they were known for fighting skinheads at punk rock concerts, she says.

Their ideology is based around a hate for fascism and a belief that people who are thought to be fascists are inherently violent, she says. Antifa believes violence is a useful tactic to combat violence from the alt-right.

The idea is that if more people had brawled in the streets with actual Nazis then Hitler and the Nazi party would have never risen to power, Zadrozny says. So antifa has popped up again now with the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the alt-right and the rise of far-right extremists and white nationalist groups that have sort of come up all at the same time.

Antifa has no leader and no clear organization. However, there are organized, localized groups who have followings on social media, such as the Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon.

Many became aware of antifa as a political movement in 2017 when they showed up at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that gathered Nazis and white supremacists. In the same year, they helped stop Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right political commentator and Trump supporter, from speaking at the University of California, Berkeley by smashing windows and lighting fires on campus. Berkeley decided to cancel the event after the uproar.

Antifas goal is to deny fascists and far-right activist a platform, she says. Because of this, the right has long defined antifa as positioning themselves against free speech.

And it's not just violence in the streets, she says. It's also coordinated campaigns to shame out [and] harass those on the far right.

Theyve targeted far-right pundit Ann Coulter and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, for example, and have doxxed people who are associated with alt-right groups. Theyve said their strategy is to dehood Klansmen, Zadrozny says.

Inciting street brawls, such as what Portland residents have experienced, is not part of their main activities, she says. However, thats how antifa has largely been positioned by their critics.

High-profile politicians have claimed that antifa is showing up in small towns and wreaking havoc during anti-racism demonstrations. Zadroznys reporting for NBC News has found those claims are part of a top-down disinformation campaign from the president and the president's allies down to local law enforcement and then through social media.

The result has been small groups of armed militias showing up to counterprotest Black Lives Matter demonstrations all over the country, she says, from Florida to Idaho and Oregon.

In Klamath Falls, Oregon, Zadrozny says hundreds of armed counterprotesters showed up ready to fight this invisible monster they heard about on social media. They believed antifa was coming to their town to murder people, murder white people and take their guns and destroy their town. Of course, antifa never came, she says.

Their presence did, however, intimidate a large group of diverse people who came together to peacefully protest police brutality in their small town, she says.

This doesnt mean that antifa hasnt shown up to protests against police brutality, she says. It would make sense they would be present because a large factor in antifa ideology is anti-racism, she explains.

There are concerns that at some point, some peaceful protesters might get accused of being antifa, like what happened to the elderly man in Buffalo. She says a vigilante mob mentality is taking over small towns.

For example, she says, a man armed with a chainsaw ran off protesters in McAllen, Texas. And in Forks, Washington, a multiracial family on a camping trip was harassed and trapped by locals who accused them of being with antifa.

It just seems like a powder keg, she says. And people that I've spoken to, activists from small towns to larger groups on Black Lives Matter side, they're very concerned for their safety.

Cassady Rosenblumproduced and edited this interview for broadcast with Tinku Ray. Serena McMahon adapted it for the web.

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What Is Antifa? Separating Fact From Fiction | Here & Now

An Antifa leader known as Commander Red was busted carrying a flamethrower to a Wisconsin Black Lives Matter rally and dropped into the fetal position and began crying when stopped by cops, officials said.

Matthew Banta, 23, is known to be a violent Antifa member who incites violence in otherwise relatively peaceful protests, a criminal complaint in his Green Bay arrest record insisted, according to WBAY.

He was carrying stickers and a flag for the controversial group the name of which is short for anti-fascist along with military-grade 5-minute smoke grenades, fireworks rockets, and a flamethrower, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Banta was stopped after being spotted with a whole bunch of white people with sticks, baseball bats and helmets heading toward a BLM event in Green Bay, police said in the criminal complaint.

The others fled when a cop blocked them with his squad car, but Banta was stopped and dropped into the fetal position and began crying, the police report said. He complained that the officer got on top of him, which police denied, WBAY said.

Its worrisome when people associated with Antifa come here to Green Bay from out of town for the purposes of committing violent acts, Green Bay Police Chief Andrew Smith told the station.

At the time of Saturdays arrest, Banta was out on a $10,000 cash bond after being accused of pointing a loaded gun at a police officer as well as biting and kicking a cop at a protest earlier this month, the report said.

A condition of his bond was that he cant have a dangerous weapon, according to the Brown County district attorneys office.

The 23-year-old from Neenah, about 40 miles south of Green Bay, was charged with obstructing an officer and two counts of felony bail jumping after Saturdays arrest, the report said. He was released late Monday on $2,500 bond, court records show.

He was one of 15 arrested at Saturdays Black Lives Matter protest that turned violent in the city and was deemed an unlawful assembly, police said.

Burning buildings, hurting people, shooting, looting, vandalizing theres absolutely no way that is a form of protest, Smith told Fox 11 of his zero-tolerance stance.

Thats criminal behavior, he insisted.

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Antifa 'commander' with flamethrower cried when he was ...

Antifa may be a focus on the right, but it's hard to find in the court system.

Why it matters: Very few of the people charged in this summer's protests and riots appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, reports AP.

The big picture: More than $1 billion in damage was estimated after the uprisings following the death of George Floyd, as Axios' Jennifer A. Kingson reported last month.

Between the lines: Many of those charged are young people from the suburbs.

By the numbers: More than 40% of those facing federal charges are white, AP reports. At least a third are Black, and about 6% Hispanic.

The bottom line: FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress earlier this year that antifa is a "real thing," but it's hard to track because it's "not a group or an organization. Its a movement or an ideology."

The rest is here:

Most arrested in protests are not associated with antifa - Axios

Even allowingfor over-the-top campaign rhetoric, it seems pretty hard to associate the suburbanwomen of the Chathams with Antifa.

Peter King is trying.

Chatham Moms for Change, a Modern Hate Group? is the provocative headline on a lengthy letter circulated this week by King, the vice-chair of the Morris County Republican Committee.

In short, Kings missive alleges thatthe Democratic-leaning Chatham Moms group is guilty of vile social media posts, relentlessly and falsely attacking its opponents and stealingand vandalizing campaign signs.

In a chat this afternoon, King said these tactics are designed to intimidate people.

My opinionis that theyre trying to suppress peoples free speech, King said. And that, he added, is how hate groups flourish.

Kings letter is filled with generalizations, but an individual he criticizes by name is Jocelyn Mathiasen, a councilwoman in Chatham Borough. (For the record, there are two Chathams a borough and a township;these are separate municipalities, but the demographics are similar and one school district serves both towns).

King says Mathiasen spends much time engaged in dueling posts with the constituents shes been elected to serve.

Reached by phone this morning, Mathiasen said of Kings letter, I mostly just try to ignore the whole thing, its silly.

Some things here are beyond dispute.

One is that the Chathams have changed politically big time. A Republican bastion a decade or so ago, Democrats are now a majority on the governing bodies of both towns.

More broadly speaking, it was suburban women who keyed much of the success Democrats had in the 2018 midtermelection,both across the nation and locally. In Morris County, they were strongbackers of two large marches in Morristown that year one for womens rights and the other for gun control.

Similar to others, the Chatham Moms group popped up around the time of Donald Trumps election. On its Facebook page, the group describes itself this way:

At itsinception, members of thecommunity felt marginalized and unheard and formed this group. Over the past four years, there have been tensof thousands of moments of supportive messaging, political activism, education and volunteerism. Members at times have vented frustrations with local and national challenges, but the mission and our actions remain the same; to provide a place of support to empower its members to have a voice and make positive change in our community.

King is not impressed by this romantic notion of civic involvement.

He points to posts that he says wish COVID-19 on political opponents, ridicule minorities who support Republicans and label Republicans in the Chathams as racists, homophobes, misogynists and white supremacists.

Of course, its necessaryto ask, Isnt this the normal course of events in anincredibly divisive election? After all, I have heard much GOP rhetoric that labels Democrats as socialists and communists who support mobs running amok in the street.

King argues that in the Chathams, the strident rhetoric has morphed into destructive action.

Turns out that Laura Ali, the chair of the Morris County Republican Committee, lives in Chatham Township. She recently reported to police that signs on her property backing police and the president were stolen.

Kings letter says the signs were defaced with such things as F Pigs, F the NRA. and dumped outside the township police station. The letter also said that the perpetrators screamed vulgar insults at officers. He said many Republicans now fear publicly stating their opinions.

The police confirmed most of this in a Facebook post, adding that the suspects are 3 white females, one of whom may have pink hair.

Pink hair?

She shouldnt be that hard to find. The Chathams have changed, but this is not yet the East Village.

(Visited 1,398 times, 21 visits today)

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Republican Plays the Antifa Card on Suburban Women of the Chathams - InsiderNJ

Antifa has seen a steady increase in media attention ever since President Donald Trump was first inaugurated in January 2017. Republicans often portray antifa as a highly organized group of "terrorists" worthy of national watch lists.

Right-wing media blames antifa members for rioting and looting. Democrats have also condemned such violence, but many on the left say the rhetoric about antifa is greatly exaggerated, and that it's less of an organized movement than just something of "an idea."

But much of what politicians say about antifa isn't quite true. Here's what antifa is, what it isn't, and what you need to know.

Antifa is not a highly organized movement, nor is it merely an idea. Antifa is a loose affiliation of local activists scattered across the United States and a few other countries.

The term "antifa" is short for anti-fascist; it's used both by its adherents and its foes.

In general, people who identify as antifa are known not for what they support, but what they oppose: Fascism, nationalism, far-right ideologies, white supremacy, authoritarianism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia. Some antifa activists also denounce capitalism and the government overall.

Mostly, people aligned with antifa are on the left of the political spectrum. Antifa is not, however, affiliated with Joe Biden, the Democratic Party or its leaders. Biden has condemned antifa and called violence "unacceptable."

Antifa actions have included everything from tracking and publicly identifying members of alt-right groups to physically attackingadversaries.

In "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," author Mark Bray, an organizer for the Occupy Wall Street movement, lays out antifa's methods this way:

"Despite the media portrayal of a deranged, bloodthirsty antifa the vast majority of anti-fascist tactics involve no physical violence whatsoever. Anti-fascists conduct research on the far right online, in person, and sometimes through infiltrations; they dox them, push central milieux to disown them, pressure bosses to fire them

"But it's also true that some of them punch Nazis in the face and don't apologize for it."

During public demonstrations, antifa activists often wear top-to-toe black; even before the coronavirus pandemic, they were also known for wearing face coverings at public gatherings.

Antifa has no official national leadership, though followers have organized themselves into small, local cells that sometimes coordinate with other movements, such as Black Lives Matter. Some self-described antifa adherents have organized to confront Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, and other far-right groups during public demonstrations. Some of those rallies have devolved into violence.

Some antifa adherents keep a very low profile, while other local groups venture to give themselves a more public profile with a name and a website. One of the oldest such groups appears to be Rose City Antifa, which says it was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2007. According to its website, its main focus is "any work that prevents fascist organizing, and when that is not possible, provides consequences to fascist organizers. This is supported by researching and tracking fascist organizations."

Over President Trump's years in office, coverage of "antifa" has skyrocketed in the mainstream press. That coverage started on the day of his inauguration, when dozens of people took to the streets of the nation's capital in a protest that would soon grow violent. Authorities would later arrest several dozen of them, many of whom later identified themselves as antifa, and accuse them of starting fires and riots. Charges were eventually dropped for the bulk of the defendants, while others were acquitted by juries.

President Trump pointed a finger at what he called the "alt-left" following the infamous "Unite the Right"rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. After a white supremacist deliberatelyplowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman namedHeather Heyer, Mr. Trump sparked more outrage when he suggested an equivalency between the white supremacists and the protesters on the other side, who despite his claims were mostly peaceful.

"What about the alt-left that came charging at, what you say, the alt-right?" Mr. Trump wondered aloud. "Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact they're charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs, do they have any problem? I think they do."

In the years since then, media coverage has identified antifa as participants, and sometimes agitators, in clashes at numerous rallies and protests around the country. That includes a 2017 anti-hate rally in Berkeley, California, and a Patriot Prayer "freedom rally" in Portland, Oregon, in 2018.

In at least one instance, a person self-identifying as an antifa supporter has been linked to a deadly attack at a protest. Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, was considered a prime suspect in the August 2020 killing of 39-year-old Aaron "Jay" Danielson, a right-wing activist who was shot during heated demonstrations in Portland. Reinoehl was later shot to death by federal authorities as they moved to arrest him.

Reinoehl had described himself in a social media post as "100% ANTIFA."

In the summer of 2019, Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy introduced a resolution calling for antifa to be labeled as a domestic terror organization. President Trump voiced his support on Twitter.

But the Trump administration's own Department of Homeland Security and FBI don't appear to view antifa as aleading threat. A DHS draft document from September 2020 reportedly namedwhite supremacist groups as the biggest terror threat to America. That same document doesn't mention antifa at all.

The FBI also considers far-right groups the "top of the priority list." FBI director Christopher Wray said in February 2020 that the FBI places the risk of violence from racially-motivated extremist groups "on the same footing" as the threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and its sympathizers.

That's not to say the FBI hasn't also taken aim at antifa. After arson and looting broke out amid the protests in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd, Wray said: "We're seeing people who are exploiting this situation to pursue violent, extremist agendas anarchists like ANTIFA, and other agitators. These individuals have set out to sow discord and upheaval, rather than join in the righteous pursuit of equality and justice."

But the idea of designating antifa a terror group worries some civil rights advocates.

"The designation would grant federal law enforcement broad powers, under the federal terrorism code, to surveil and investigate anyone labeled as antifa," the Southern Poverty Law Centersaid in a statement. "It could also allow federal law enforcement to broadly target anyone involved in protests viewed unfavorably by the Trump administration, even retroactively."

The center added, "President Trump's announcement is rooted in politics, not the present realities of the terror threat in the U.S."

Antifa has earned its reputation for sporadic violence. But many other rumors about antifa have been spun from whole cloth, sometimes by people later identified as right-wing extremists. In June 2020, Twitter shut down multiple fake antifa accounts that were inciting violence against white suburbs; subsequent investigations tracked the accounts to Identity Evropa, a white supremacist organization.

Right-wing figures and other commentators on social media also have falsely accused unspecified antifa members of starting wildfires on the West Coast, prompting police and fire officials to appeal to the public to stop spreadingwhat one agency called "an UNTRUE rumor."

Another common conspiracy theory has alleged, without evidence, that billionaire philanthropist George Soros is funding antifa.

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What is antifa? Is it a group or an idea, and what do supporters want? - CBS News

In the days when you could still watch a nature documentary without feeling as if you were sitting through a politics lecture I saw footage of a pack of smaller predators taking down an elephant. At the time I remember thinking: Why dont you keep running? Why dont you knock the first one off and keep going? Strangely, I thought of that elephant again in the very different savannah of Portland, Oregon.

In recent years this city in the Pacific Northwest has become famous for a variety of reasons none of them good. As one long-term resident said to me last week: This used to be a very civil town. Not any more.

Of course, like every city in the west, the madnesses that already existed here have been exacerbated by the coronavirus and the ensuing decision to lock down the population and shutter the economy. As in cities across the UK, the businesses here are mainly closed, many for good. Some were able to get through one lockdown but very few can get through multiple lockdowns or the depression to come.

As a result, downtown Portland is a desolate, dangerous place, populated by homeless people who flooded into the area over recent decades, incentivised by left-wing administrations that allowed them to pitch their tents wherever they liked. In the main squares, unattended tables of food and drink are set out for them to pick at.

But it isnt just the virus or the reaction of the authorities that led to this wasteland. The giveaway is the status of the few shops that are still open. Almost all have hardboard affixed to their remaining windows. Some have bullet-holes in them, not fired by the police. The businesses that do still operate do so as in a city under siege.

Portland has been the epicentre of a confusion that has afflicted a smaller number of activists in our own country. That is the taught perception that they live in a patriarchal, unequal, cis-heteronormative, irredeemably racist society. In time this defamation sank in and caused a reaction. For years, the city has seen regular rioting by the far-left group Antifa. In the name of pursuing non-existent fascists these activists laid waste to their city, dragged passing motorists from their cars, hospitalised journalists whose reporting was disobliging and otherwise turned the city into a first-world slum.

After the killing of George Floyd at the end of May, protests in Portland were among the most violent in the US. They are still going on. The left-wing mayor forbade the police from working with the federal authorities to act meaningfully against the rioters and at the forthcoming mayoral election the only candidate running against him is an open supporter of Antifa.

Recent successful operations carried out by this candidates favoured militia include the pulling down of almost every statue and public monument in the city. The weekend before last it was Abraham Lincoln who fell. On another occasion in a quasi-pagan ceremony rioters repeatedly set a monument of an elk on fire and then pulled it down. A tour of the sights in Portland now comprises a huge variety of empty plinths. Few tourists will be returning for that. The remaining state and federal buildings are boarded up, graffitied over and abandoned.

Over the summer the President sent in federal guards, against the wishes of the local authorities. Today the remaining federal agents are among the few targets Antifa have left. I joined Antifa-BLM activists for a couple of nights this week.

First there was a Fuck Gentrification march (my first). With no policemen in sight, the activists used their own police force, including outriders on motorcycles, to block off roads and then parade through the streets screaming through megaphones at customers in the remaining bars and at the residents of an area which they claimed had once been lived in by black and indigenous families. The people who lived in many of these houses came out and put their fists in the air or waved in solidarity. Most had BLM or Dont hurt me posters in their windows. All were accused of living on stolen land by the mostly white marchers, whose other chants included Wake up, motherfucker, wake up.

A night later and we were outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility by the waterfront. This federal facility was boarded up, but Antifa like to try to burn these buildings down with the occupants inside. The federal authorities remain opposed to this. So a cat-and-mouse game kicked off, one which both sides are now practised in. The Antifa activists hurl projectiles at the boarded-up facility, beating drums to work themselves up into the violent frenzy they crave. Whenever the rioters get within a certain distance of the doors, and only after sufficient siren warnings have been given, the agents of law enforcement break out. Tear gas is fired and pepper bullets are used.

On Saturday the police came out shooting after fires were started in the street and Antifa made it to the door. A running battle saw the protestors chased back for a time, only for the police to retreat under a barrage of oink noises from the protestors including young white women (one in a pink onesie jumpsuit) shouting Nazis and screaming through megaphones at the officers about how much the officers children would hate their fathers.

Antifas tactic is to provoke the police into an act of violence on camera so the activists can then claim they are being oppressed. From everything I saw of the police including being cleared from an alleyway at gunpoint along with a dozen or so Antifa activists I would say that most US federal agents have the patience of saints.

Still the image comes to mind of the elephant brought down by the smaller predators. America is not being brought low by one beast, but by a whole pack of them. These predators include, though are not limited to: ignorance, educational failure, radical indoctrination, pandemic, poverty, narcissism, boredom, the disappearance of the adults, a belief that law enforcement is the enemy and much more. Why America didnt throw off the first attacker and keep on moving is a question I cannot shake off, whether this pack brings the big beast crashing down or not.

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My week with the baying Antifa mob - Spectator.co.uk

Very few of the hundreds of people arrested in the protests following the death of George Floyd are officially affiliated with radical left-wing groups like antifa, the Trump administrations favorite bogeyman, according to the Associated Press. Having pored through thousands of pages of court documents related to over 300 protest-related federal criminal charges for offenses like property destruction or disorderly conduct, the AP found that most were not the highly organized, urban-dwelling leftists President Trump has made them out to be. In reality, over 40 percent of arrestees were white, over two-thirds were under 30, and many were from the suburbsthe places Trump keeps vowing to protect from antifa. The AP found only one passing mention of antifa in a Boston shooting case. In September, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel that antifa is more of an ideology or a movement, not a formal organization.

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Antifa Is Mentioned Just Once in Court Docs for Hundreds of BLM Protest Arrests: AP - The Daily Beast

On Oct. 8, federal and state officials in Michigan announced they were charging 13 men accused of terrorism, conspiracy and weapons crimes in connection with an anti-government group.

At least six in the group had plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, investigators said surprising news that generated wide national coverage at a time when fears of civil unrest are already in the spotlight.

But some social media claims suggest that journalists lost interest in this headline-grabbing case after they discovered the suspects were sympathetic to Black Lives Matter and antifa. Antifa, which stands for "anti-fascist," is a broad, loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing activists thats been around for decades.

"Notice how the Whitmer kidnapping story disappeared after we found out the perps were ANTIFA and BLM anarchists," one post says.

"13 Antifa members arrested for plotting to kidnap a governor," another post says. "13 Antifa members ARRESTED for trying to KIDNAP Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to START A CIVIL WAR."

Both posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

First, the case is still very much in the news. But its also continuing to unfold, so theres a lot we dont know. However, there is no evidence that the kidnapping suspects are antifa activists. And we found that of what is now a total of 14 suspects, only one is known to have attended a Black Lives Matter protest. Another suspect criticized the movement.

The suspects and their ties

On Oct. 9, the day after the kidnapping plot was disclosed to the public, the New York Times published a story titled, "What we know about the alleged plot to kidnap Michigans governor."

The article doesnt mention Black Lives Matter or antifa, except for a reference to a tweet from President Donald Trump, who, criticizing Whitmer, said Democrats "refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities."

The FBI named Adam Fox was the leader of the kidnapping plot. Fox reached out to members of an anti-government group known as the Wolverine Watchmen for help, according to the Times.

Seven members of the Wolverine Watchmen were arrested and state authorities accused them of threatening to start a civil war and collecting the addresses of police officers to target them.

In addition to Fox, the names of the other men facing federal charges are Kaleb Franks, Brandon Caserta, Ty Garbin, Daniel Harris and Barry Croft.

The federal criminal complaint against these men frequently references a Michigan based "militia group." It does not mention antifa or Black Lives Matter.

The names of the men charged by the state are Paul Bellar, Shawn Fix, Eric Molitor, Michael Null, William Null, Pete Musico and Joseph Morrison. The state later arrested an eighth man: Brian Higgins.

The state affidavit in support of the criminal complaint against these men does not mention antifa or Black Lives Matter either. Rather, it describes the Wolverine Watchmen as an "anti-government, anti-law enforcement, militia group." The affidavit reads:

"Members of Wolverine Watchmen periodically met for "field training exercises" (FTXs) on private property in remote areas where they engaged in firearms training and tactical drills to prepare for the boogaloo, a (term) referencing a violent uprising against the government or impending politically-motivated civil war."

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told NPR that multiple white supremacist and anti-government groups acted "in concert based on shared extreme ideology."

Some of the suspects appeared at protests supporting different causes before their arrest, but of the 14 we only found evidence of one person attending a Black Lives Matter event. The individuals were aligning themselves with other causes.

The Null brothers both attended a protest against Whitmers executive orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus, according to the Times. They were photographed there carrying long guns.

A sheriff in Barry County, Mich., has also said that he met William Null several years ago when he came to his office to vent about the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the Washington Post. The sheriff said Null wanted to start his own cause "My Life Matters" which he eventually turned into what he called the Michigan Liberty Militia, according to the Post.

Later, Null told the sheriff that he drove to Flint during the citys water contamination crisis to pass out water bottles alongside Black Lives Matter activists, the Post said.

At least one of the suspects, Daniel Harris, did attend a Black Lives Matter protest, said Amy Cooter, a Vanderbilt University lecturer who studies militias in the United States. Harris who was quoted in the Oakland County Times saying he was upset about the killing of George Floyd and police violence.

A video clip shows another suspect, Brandon Caserta, standing in front of an anarchist flag saying Trump is a "tyrant."

Boogaloo movement more likely, experts say

Cooter, who recently dug into this issue on Twitter, told us shes seen "zero evidence that (the suspects) are antifa."

She speculated that some people are conflating anarchy and antifa to try to divert attention away from the suspects militia connections.

But anarchy is more closely related to the Boogaloo movement an extremist effort aimed at overthrowing the government than antifa, she said. Antifa activists tend to include communists, socialists and anarchists who protest against white supremacy and other far-right causes. Experts say that while they sometimes turn violent, the bulk of antifa organizing is nonviolent.

Many militia members are opposed to racism, Cooter said, and they expressed genuine outrage over the death of George Floyd, who died in Minneapolis in May after a police officer pressed his knee against Floyds neck. But she said their support for Black Lives Matter protests are rooted in "notions of anti-governmentalism, a more right-wing concept."

JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism, has also tweeted about the case. She criticized "Right-wing Facebook" for "trying to reframe the Michigan militia kidnaping plot as a left-wing extremist conspiracy." More recently, she described the defendants as "a mix of Boogaloos and militants."

Our ruling

The Facebook post claims that the suspects in the kidnapping plot are "ANTIFA and BLM anarchists."

We havent found anything to support the claim that the suspects are antifa activists. We looked for news coverage, court documents or expert opinion that could corroborate that and came up empty.

At least one of the suspects attended a Black Lives Matter protest. But to paint the group as a whole as antifa and BLM activists is disingenuous, and discounts the vast reporting from the media and state and federal officials on the militia and anti-government ties of the men arrested.

We rate this post Mostly False.

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Looking at the ideologies of the Whitmer kidnapping plot suspects - PolitiFact

The Associated Press checks out some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. This one is bogus, even though it was shared widely on social media. Here are the facts:

CLAIM: An antifa flier is circulating, calling on people to disguise themselves as Patriot Trump supporters during riots on Nov. 4.

THE FACTS: A meme of the flier has been circulating online since at least 2017. Theres no evidence that the meme is connected to antifa groups.

The fabricated flier states: Antifa comrades! On Nov. 4, dont forget to disguise yourselves as patriots/Trump supporters: wear MAGA hats, USA flags, 3%er insignias, a convincing police uniform is even better! This way police and patriots responding to us wont know who their enemies are and onlookers and the media will think there are Trump supporters rioting so its hard to turn popular opinion against us!

In 2017, there was a hoax that antifa would launch a civil war to overthrow the Trump administration on Nov. 4. Multiple memes and fabricated images circulated online, including this flier.

Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

There is no hierarchical structure to antifa or universal set of tactics that makes its presence immediately recognizable, though members tend to espouse revolutionary and anti-authoritarian views, said Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

This week, similar false claims surfaced. One tweet posted on Oct. 11 said: BREAKING REPORT: A flyer circulating the internet indicates ANTIFA members are recruiting others to DISGUISE THEMSELVES as Patriot Trump Supporters on November 4th... to cause confusion during RIOTSSTAY VIGILANT

The false post had over 10,000 retweets. In general terms, in right-wing circles, I havent seen any concerted efforts to try to understand what antifa or anti-facism are. The focus has been exclusively on using the specter of antifa as the boogeyman, Bray said.

Read more:

Is antifa asking people to disguise themselves as Trump supporters? It appears to be a 2017 hoax, recycled - OregonLive

In an October 2020 YouGovpoll,42% of Americanssaid white supremacists pose a bigger threat to American than antifa.

But whydo Americans feel this way about white supremacy and antifa? We asked our YouGov Chat users to go deeper and tell us what they really think about white supremacy and antifa. You can share your views on the topichere.

For those who said white supremacy is a bigger threat to America than antifa,many pointed out that antifa is not an organization,and that there are countless white supremacist organizations in America.

White supremacist terrorism is real. Antifa terrorists do not exist.

White supremacists actually have several organizations - like KKK - who operate both covertly and overtly. Antifa in the US is not an organization, but merely an idea. There is no formal group, no headquarters, no leader.

Others stated that they were worried about white supremacist ideals in America.

In contrast, most YouGov chat users who said antifa is a bigger threat to America than white supremacy,pointed their fingers at the demonstrations across the country.

I read the news articles about the violence in Portland and Seattle I don't see the sameamountof White Supremacists being allowed to riot every night in anywhere in the USA.

They are the only ones rioting, destroying things

Look what they are doing in some of our cities.

[A]ntifacause more damage than white supremacists.

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Everyday, members of YouGov Chat are asked to share their opinion on a topic in the news. We allow anyone to take part in these chats, and do not display or weight results in real-time. Instead, to make the experience informative but still interactive, the chat displays weighted data from YouGov Direct to show them how the rest of the country voted. This enables us to pose the question to all, while retaining data accuracy and validity when communicating results.

YouGov chat seeks to add to the what? (the quantitative poll result) by finding the why? (qualitative open ends) in a members own words. Learn more about YouGov Chathere.

Image: YouGov

Read more:

America Speaks: What is a bigger threat to America - white supremacy or antifa? - YouGov US

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Italians in Philadelphia have had it with the ongoing Italophobia that resulted in the unwarranted theft and destruction of Mario Lanza flags in his own park, Your Content has learned.

Attorney Robert Petrone reports this week, the flags in South Philadelphias Mario Lanza Park bearing the esteemed Philadelphia tenors face were replaced with flags with a cartoon bird on it.

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It has come to the attention of the Italian-American residents of Philadelphia that Mario Lanzas image has been removed from the flags adorning the park that is named in his honor. reads a letter drafted by Petrone to city officials.

We the undersigned are appalled that this was done without consideration for the community, during a time when we are in great pain at the recent and repeated removal of the likenesses of Italian-American icons all over the city, including (1) the removal of the statue of the first and only Italian-American mayor of Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, whose administration as Chief of Police integrated the police force by putting both African-American and Caucasian officers together in the same squad cars and promoting the first officers of color to administrative positions, (2) the boxing up of the statue of the first civil rights activist of the Americas, Christopher Columbus, at Marconi Plaza, and (3) the obliteration of the names of Columbus and many prominent Italian-Americans at the base of the Columbus monument at Penns Landing.

Despite that misguided historical revisionists have slandered Mayor Rizzo and Christopher Columbus of lateslander that has been debunked categorically of lateno such slander has ever been levied against Mario Lanza.

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There can be no other reason for the continuation of this course of conduct than blatant Italophobia. Petrone continued.

That Friends of Mario Lanza Park, entrusted as stewards of the park and its contents, would be so insensitive to the community in this regard, is unforgivable. Our community demands that Mario Lanzas likeness be restored immediately.

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Spearheading the news revolution for Americans across the nation, Your Content has brought a voice to those the media failed to acknowledge.

This story youve just finished was funded by our readers and we hope it inspires you to make a gift to Your Content so that we can publish more reports like this one that holds people in power to account and produces real change.

Your donation will help us ensure that we can continue this critical work. We are busier than ever covering stories you wont see anywhere else.

Originally posted here:

Lawyers Say Philly Officials Are Partaking In 'Italophobia' By Allowing Antifa to Target Them - YC

Two Antifa protest buddies have been charged for their alleged involvement in the plotting and execution of serious violent attacks on Seattle police at Antifa riots throughout September.

Danielle Elizabeth McMillan, a 29-year-old realtor, has been charged by King County prosecutors for attempted arson in the first degree, a Class A felony. She is accused of bringing a concealed firebomb to an Antifa black bloc riot outside the Seattle Police East Precinct on Sept. 1 in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, the area previously occupied by CHAZ. McMillan is alleged to have lit and thrown the incendiary device at the facility. The device failed to make it over the fence protecting the building and shattered on the ground.

McMillians alleged black bloc accomplice, 19-year-old Jacob Bennet Greenburg, is charged with felony first-degree attempted arson, felony first-degree assault and felony first-degree reckless burning in relation to three violent Antifa riots in September in the same neighborhood. He is the stepson of former Washington state lawmaker Laura Ruderman, who served in the 45th Legislative District as a Democrat from 19992005.

Greenburg is accused of successfully throwing a lit Molotov cocktail at the East Precinct on Sept. 1 shortly after McMillans failed attempt. The building was occupied by staff when it caught fire. The criminal complaint also accuses Greenburg of being the masked militant who bashed a Seattle Police officer on the head with a metal bat near the East Precinct on Sept. 23. The assault was captured on camera in a viral video. The officers helmet was cracked from the impact. Three days later, Greenburg allegedly returned to Capitol Hill at another Antifa riot where he was filmed squirting accelerant to grow a street fire.

The affidavit provides some of the clearest evidence of Seattle Antifa organizing using encrypted messaging applications like Signal and Telegram. Investigators seized two phones owned by Greenburg in late September which revealed a trove of alleged communications between him and McMillian showing the planning of terrorist attacks and the desire to kill law enforcement.

At [Cal Anderson Park] I can meet you, McMillan wrote to Greenburg on Sept. 1 before the riot. Whats needed for the cocktail, she asked.

He replied: Gas, mid sized bottle, wicc, rag

After the riot, they congratulated each other. They expressed a desire to memorialize the direct action with tattoos of Molotov cocktails and antifa symbols.

Can we like pls slit every spd [Seattle Police Department] throat, asked Greenburg. McMillan responded to him another time: Thanks for being a good and loyal protest buddy.

Further communications show they discussed launching a firebombing attack on the Seattle Police Officers Guild, gathering supplies and discussing how to destroy evidence.

In one chat thread, Greenburg bragged about firebombing the citys juvenile detention facility. On July 25, antifa in multiple American cities organized riots in solidarity with the Youth Liberation Front in Portland, who were involved in mass nightly violence against officers guarding the federal courthouse. Greenburg wrote: Oh I was also a part of the youth jail fires. Hell yea dude. Thats fucking awesome. I was the one who Molotov the east precinct and other then [sic] that Ive broken windows for other people to do [direct actions] and I tag all over the place.

In exchanges with McMillan on Sept. 24, Greenburg boasted about assaulting the officer on the head with a bat. Very proud of you! McMillan wrote. Greenburg responded, Appreciate it. Im proud too hehe. Wish he didnt have a helmet on lol. McMillan later asked him if he deleted their communications.

Beyond McMillans alleged violent Antifa activities, she has a long criminal record that includes convictions for assault, reckless driving, violation of a no-contact order and numerous drug-related offenses.

Over the weekend, real estate company Windermere announced McMillan was no longer employed with them.

Windermere tweeted: Earlier today we were made aware that Danielle McMillan was arrested on charges of attempted arson on the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct. Due to the alarming nature of the charges, Danielle was released from the office in Woodinville, WA where she was licensed.

McMillan responded to her former employer on Twitter, writing: Anyone can be charged with anything. People can judge all they want; there are thousands of innocent people who have been sent to prison. I have enlisted representation and how people react due to allegations is on them.

McMillan recently deleted or obscured all of her social media accounts. She previously used the name @realtor_1990 on Twitter before now changing it to @1158Garcia. Her deleted Facebook and Instagram accounts used the name, Realtor1312. The numbers 1312 correspond to the antifa slogan, ACABall cops are bastards.

McMillans bail was set at $100,000, which was paid. She has been reached for comment. Greenburgs bail is currently set at $750,000. He is still in the county jail.

See the original post:

Realtor and son of former Democrat lawmaker charged over Antifa firebombings and assault - The Post Millennial

It looks like were in for another week of wildfire smoke. Well find out why and when its expected to start clearing. And, there are stories going around Oregon that antifa set some of the wildfires...or maybe the Proud Boys. Well look at how those conspiracies proliferate and why theyre dangerous. And, how to recreate outdoors without wreck-reating.

Individual segments are available in our podcast stream or at http://www.kuow.org/record.

Washington State Department of Ecology atmospheric scientist and Washington Smoke Blog contributor Ranil Dhammapala says everyone was hopeful the smoke would clear out today...but that didnt happen. He tells Bill Radke what to expect this week, and when the smoke might clear.

Jevin West from the University of Washingtons Center for an Informed Public looks at how two conspiracy theories proliferated about the wildfires, and why those stories are dangerous. And he explains how to vet stories we see on social media.

The Seattle Times Lynda Mapes is mostly happy more people got outside this summer for physically-distant hiking and camping. But she discovered a lot of us dont know how to act when were in nature. She says we really need to learn.

Investigate Wests Rachel Nielsen reported on the record-breaking 1,800+ instances of foster children being housed in hotels and state offices over the last year, and why they werent housed in foster family homes or group homes.

Emily Washines of the Yakama Nation on the people the tribe has lost to Covid-19 as the state heads toward 2,000 deaths.

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Another week of wildfire smoke. But it's not because of antifa. - KUOW News and Information