Category Archives: Antifa

Raw Video: 'Restore our Historical Monuments Protest' Delaware News Journal

Standing below where the former Caesar Rodney statue stood in Wilmington's Rodney Square, Delaware Republican U.S. Senate candidate Lauren Witzke on Tuesday called for the statue's return more than two months after the City of Wilmington removed it.

The rally, organized by Witzke, also called for the return of the Christopher Columbus statue, which was located about a mile away closer to Trolley Square.

"We are calling for the restoration of our historicalmonuments," Witzke said to the around 30 people who attended.

"They're coming for our churches next," Witzke said. "All of our institutions, they're not safe against the Marxist mob."

Around 30 people attended the rally, called the "Restore our Historical Monuments Protest."

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Witzke spoke out against the current state of governments, which she said was "catering to Black Lives Matter Marxists." She later attacked Sen. Chris Coons for marching with "rioters and looters" during unrest in Wilmington in June.

Other speakers included Brice Ingram, a volunteer for the Witzke campaign. He called Black Lives Matter and Antifa a "battering ram" against the working class.

In words directed at what he called "the adversary," Witzke campaign staffer Jeremy Abbott said, "If you come for our families, we will show you a history of the second amendment."

In defense of the Columbus statue, Thomas Giorgispoke about the long history of racism directed toward Italian-Americans in this country.

Wilmington Police officers on bicycles were on hand across Market Street. Witzke asked the crowd to give them a round of applause and called for more funding and resources for police departments.

"We back the blue," she told them as a few waved back and smiled. "We love you and we have your back."

The protest started around 6:30 p.m. and lasted about 40 minutes. Itturned into a de facto campaign rally for Witzke, who will run in a September 15 primary against Jim DeMartino, who has been endorsed by the Delaware GOP.

MORE

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'The silent majority': At boat parade, Delaware Trump supporters express 2020 optimism

Contact Jeff Neiburg at jneiburg@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeff_Neiburg.

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Rally in Rodney Square calls for restoring of statues - The News Journal

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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: Definition and History:

The anti-fascist protest movement known as antifa gainednew prominence in the United States after the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, in August 2017. In Charlottesville and at many subsequent events held by white supremacists or right-wing extremists, antifa activists have aggressively confronted what they believe to be authoritarian movements and groups. While most counter-protestors tend to be peaceful, there have been several instances where encounters between antifa and the far-right have turned violent.

These violent counter-protesters are often part ofantifa (short for antifascist), a loose collection of groups, networks and individuals who believe in active, aggressive opposition to far right-wing movements. Their ideology is rooted in the assumption that the Nazi party would never have been able to come to power in Germany if people had more aggressively fought them in the streets in the 1920s and 30s. Most antifa come from the anarchist movement or from the far left, though since the 2016presidentialelection, some people with more mainstream political backgrounds have also joined their ranks.

These antifa sometimes use a logo with a double flag, usually in black and red. The antifa movement began in the 1960s in Europe, and had reached the US by the end of the 1970s. Most people who show up to counter or oppose white supremacist public events are peaceful demonstrators, but when antifa show up, as they frequently do, they can increase the chances that an event may turn violent.

Today, antifa activists focus on harassing right wing extremists both online and in real life. Antifa is not a unified group; it is loose collection of local/regional groups and individuals. Their presence at a protest is intended to intimidate and dissuade racists, but the use of violent measures by some antifa against their adversaries can create a vicious, self-defeating cycle of attacks, counter-attacks and blame.This is why most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive.

The current political climate increases the chances of violent confrontations at protests and rallies. Antifa have expanded their definition of fascist/fascism to include not just white supremacists and other extremists, but also many conservatives and supporters of President Trump. In Berkeley, for example, some antifa were captured on video harassing Trump supporters with no known extremist connections. Antifa have also falsely characterized some recent right wing rallies as Nazi events, even though they were not actually white supremacist in nature.

Another concern is the misapplication of the label antifa to include all counter-protesters, rather than limiting it to those who proactively seek physical confrontations with their perceived fascist adversaries. It is critical to understand how antifa fit within the larger counter-protest efforts. Doing so allows law enforcement to focus their resources on the minority who engage in violence without curtailing the civil rights of the majority of peaceful individuals who just want their voices to be heard.

All forms of antifa violence are problematic. Additionally, violence plays into the victimhood narrative of white supremacists and other right-wing extremists and can even be used for recruiting purposes. Images of these free speech protesters being beaten by black-clad and bandana-masked antifa provide right wing extremists with a powerful propaganda tool.

That said, it is important to reject attempts to claim equivalence between the antifa and the white supremacist groups they oppose. Antifa reject racism but use unacceptable tactics. White supremacists use even more extreme violence to spread their ideologies of hate, to intimidate ethnic minorities, and undermine democratic norms. Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years; they have murdered hundreds of people in this country over the last ten years alone. To date, there have not been any known antifa-related murders.

Antifa: Scope and Tactics:

Today's antifa argue they are the on-the-ground defense against individuals they believe are promoting fascism in the United States. However, antifa, who have many anti-police anarchists in their ranks, can also target law enforcement with both verbal and physical assaults because they believe the police are providing cover for white supremacists. They will sometimes chant against fascism and against law enforcement in the same breath.

While some antifa use their fists, other violent tactics include throwing projectiles, including bricks, crowbars, homemade slingshots, metal chains, water bottles, and balloons filled with urine and feces. They have deployed noxious gases, pushed through police barricades, and attempted to exploit any perceived weakness in law enforcement presence.

Away from rallies, they also engage in doxxing, exposing their adversaries identities, addresses, jobs and other private information. This can lead to their opponents being harassed or losing their jobs, among other consequences. Members of the alt right and other right wing extremists have responded with their own doxxing campaigns, and by perpetuating hateful and violent narratives using fake antifa social media accounts.

Because there is no unifying body for antifa, it is impossible to know how many members are currently active. Different localities have antifa populations of different strengths, but antifa are also sometimes willing to travel hundreds of miles to oppose a white supremacist event.

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Who are Antifa? - Anti-Defamation League

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.

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Antifa Is Mostly Made Up Of Privileged White Dudes

PORTLAND, Ore. Angela Foster started showing up in the early days of the protests in Portland as one of the novice activists standing off to the side with no gear to protect herself.

Roughly 40 demonstrations later, she has moved toward the front, wearing a mask, goggles and a helmet, and bracing for law enforcement officers to charge at her.

Were not leaving, Ms. Foster said in an interview on Sunday.

While President Trump on Sunday described the unrest in Portland as a national threat involving anarchists and agitators, the protests have featured a wide array of demonstrators, many now galvanized by federal officers exemplifying the militarized enforcement that protesters have long denounced. Gatherings over the weekend grew to upward of 1,000 people the largest crowds in weeks.

Some protesters have exhibited the lawless behavior that federal officials have cited to justify their crackdown: Some have thrown cans and bottles, shot fireworks or pointed lasers at officers. One was recently accused of hitting a federal officer with a hammer. On Saturday, protesters set a fire in the police union headquarters.

But many others have demonstrated in the streets through peaceful means, appalled by the aggressive responses by federal officers that have left some protesters injured and the air inflamed with tear gas. They have held signs and marched. At times when people have thrown bottles, other demonstrators have rushed to try to stop them. On Saturday, a group of women locked arms and chanted: Feds stay clear. Moms are here.

Attending the protests for the first time over the weekend was Christopher David, 53, a former Navy civil engineering corps officer and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

I wasnt even paying attention to the protests at all until the feds came in, Mr. David said. When that video came out of those two unmarked guys in camouflage abducting people and putting them in minivans, thats when I became aware.

He had taken a bus to the Portland courthouse and was about to leave around 10:45 p.m. when federal officers emerged and began advancing on the protesters. He said he felt the need to ask the officers, Why were they violating their oath to the Constitution?

Instead of getting an answer on Saturday, Mr. David, a 6-foot-2, 280-pound former Navy varsity wrestler, found himself being beaten with a baton by a federal officer dressed in camouflage fatigues as another doused him with pepper spray, according to video of the encounter.

Mr. David was taken to a nearby hospital, where a specialist said his right hand was broken and would require surgery to install pins, screws and plates.

Im appalled and disappointed at the feds behavior that whoever led them and trained them allowed them to become this way, Mr. David said. This is a failure of leadership more than it is a failure of their own individual behavior towards me.

Luis Enrique Marquez, a self-described anti-fascist who has been a fixture at protests in Portland for years, said the purpose of the federal officers arrival had appeared to be to scare the protesters. But he said the officers had instead galvanized them by displaying the types of actions that have concerned protesters for years.

With every act of violence they commit, our numbers seem to grow, people seem to get more angry, Mr. Marquez said.

Demonstrators in Portland, including some who identify as antifa, the loose coalition of self-described anti-fascist activists, have had years of conflict with law enforcement. But after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off a nationwide movement for racial justice and police accountability, the protest in Portland drew thousands to the streets.

That created powerful scenes including images of protesters blanketing the Burnside Bridge, each lying face down on the pavement for eight minutes and 46 seconds in remembrance of Mr. Floyd.

While those initial mass crowds have waned, hundreds of protesters have continued on with near-nightly confrontations with law enforcement.

Unlike demonstrators in Seattle at the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, in which they established a permanent location that created tensions over how the police should handle unrest inside the area, protesters in Portland have brought the same feel of communal support throughout the downtown area. Volunteers wearing red crosses hand out ear plugs, eye wash and hand sanitizer. A mobile snack van provides Gatorade and food.

Jeremy Vajko, who operates the snack van, said he initially operated in the CHOP zone in Seattle and then came to Portland to support the people on the streets.

I noticed there was problems with nutrition, he said. People are sleep deprived.

During the daytime, the protests can draw families, businesspeople and political leaders such as Jo Ann Hardesty, a city commissioner. At night, the crowd is made up mostly of young people. Dozens of protesters at the front carry homemade shields made out of materials such as 55-gallon drums. Others stand farther back, shining lasers or gathering materials for building barricades.

But protesters tactics have strained the city. Business owners, already struggling because of the coronavirus pandemic, have cited the protests as a reason residents have been staying away from downtown.

Susan Landa, who for almost 31 years has owned a business selling gems and minerals downtown, said she supports peaceful protests and even defunding and shifting funds from the police.

But she said some of the protesters seemed like vandals and restless young people who were taking out rage because of the pandemic.

She added: Most of downtown is boarded up. We dont feel safe enough to open up. Its killing our businesses.

Some leaders in the Black community have also questioned the tactics, suggesting that some demonstrators have seized the moment in the aftermath of Mr. Floyds killing to advance their own causes.

Last month, officers from the Portland Police Bureau repeatedly fired tear gas and made arrests of protesters, who have variously called for the abolishment or defunding of the bureau, and for more accountability for law enforcement officers. The citys officers now operate with new limits on the use of tear gas after a judge ordered it to only be used if its needed to keep people safe.

Protesters have focused much of their attention on Mayor Ted Wheeler, who also serves as police commissioner. Crowds have at times gathered late at night outside Mr. Wheelers condo building, shining lights and chanting about the perceived failures of his administration.

For weeks, Mr. Wheeler has called for an end to destructive demonstrations, saying he is concerned about groups who continue to perpetrate violence and vandalism on our streets. But as federal agencies have moved in to play a role in combating the unrest, Mr. Wheeler has said he told the federal officials to stay away.

City police leaders have said they are not coordinating with federal agencies on the protests. But at one point early Saturday morning, a line of federal officers was moving up one street while a line of local police officers was moving up another, both advancing to keep protesters on the move. It was unclear what level of coordination was involved in that effort.

Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post on Sunday that federal officials were trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Mr. Trump, who has said states need to dominate protesters, said Portland officials had lost control.

They are missing in action, Mr. Trump wrote. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE.

Local leaders have grown increasingly vocal in opposition to the federal presence after one protester appeared to have been shot in the head with what was described as a less-lethal munition, severely injuring him in a bloody scene that was captured on video. Federal officers have operated from unmarked vans, at times seizing protesters and pulling them into the vehicles.

Joel B. Barker, who runs a marketing agency, said that he had frequently participated in protests during the day near the Justice Center, which includes the county jail, and that he usually left before 9 p.m. at the latest. He said that the protests drew a diverse crowd, reflecting a range of racial backgrounds, age and socioeconomic statuses, and that there was a sense of unity.

He lives about a mile away, and the demonstrations have not had any repercussions close to his home. The demonstrators, he said, were largely peaceful and not there to foment disorder.

Mr. Barker said he felt rage that the city was being used for what he believed was a ploy for the president in an election year.

Its really terrible, he added, and I want America to understand how terrible it is to feel like a city you love is being occupied by your own federal government, because thats how it feels.

Oregons attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, has filed a lawsuit seeking to halt some of the detainment tactics used by federal officers. Her office has also opened a criminal investigation into the case of the protester who sustained a head injury.

Lisa Reynolds, a pediatrician who is running as a Democrat for a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives, said she had tried to keep her distance from the protests, largely because of the coronavirus crisis. But on Sunday, she said, she was going to be fitted for a respirator so she would be safer at protests where tear gas is used.

I think my fear kept me away, she said. I think this is a step where I need to put myself out there a little more.

Sergio Olmos reported from Portland, Rick Rojas from Atlanta and Mike Baker from Seattle. John Ismay contributed reporting from Arlington, Va.

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From Antifa to Mothers in Helmets, Diverse Elements Fuel Portland Protests - The New York Times

Does anyone doubt that Portlands leaders have lost control of the riots?

Weeks ago, damage to public and private property totaled in the tens of millions.

Now, who knows?

Over the weekend, rioters set fire to the Portland Police union headquartersa punctuation point on their slogan: all cops are bastards

Rioters tell police they hope officers and their families die.

The most radical member of the Portland city council, Joanne Hardesty, has declared Mayor Wheeler doesnt know what hes doingthat Feckless Ted should hand over control to her. God Forbid.

President Trump warned city officials in Seattle and Portland, regain some semblance of control or I will do it for you.

Seattle managed to clear its Occupied Zone on Capitol Hill.

Now, officials all the way from New York City based Oregon Senator Ron Wyden to members of congress and city leaders have announced they dont want federal law enforcement, telling them to go home.

Last time I checked, Portlandia still sits inside the United States of Americawhich means federal law enforcement has a role in doing the job if Oregon Leaders refuse to.

Mayor Wheeler insists he has the riots under control. Bet the Captain of the Titanic said the same thing.

Wheeler and the rest apparently want the war zone to continue and the downtown community lacks the guts to stand up and demand it stop. Will the last business to leave please turn out the lights?

-Lars

The post Lars Thoughts Who Needs ANTIFA To Destroy Portland? Ted Wheeler Is Doing A Good Job All On His Own appeared first on The Lars Larson Show.

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Lars Thoughts Who Needs ANTIFA To Destroy Portland? Ted Wheeler Is Doing A Good Job All On His Own - 550 KTSA

I cant stop thinking about Manuel Ellis.

I keep wondering if it werent for the global uprising for racial justice in the wake of George Floyds killing by Minneapolis police, whether Ellis killing would have passed by mostly unnoticed as so many have before him with just the word of the police satisfying a not particularly curious public.

Its high time for the public and the media to interrogate police statements more aggressively.

Tacoma police killed Ellis on March 3, but it wasnt until early June that his case started to get attention. Initially, as is all too common, early stories reported just the Police Departments narrative. Police said Ellis harassed a driver, struck their police car and slam dunked an officer to the ground. They attributed his actions to excited delirium, a term used by police to justify deadly force but described as pseudoscience by critics.

It wasnt until mid-June that it was revealed that the Pierce County Sheriffs Office investigating the case supposedly to create investigatory independence was at the scene of the killing as well. Video began to emerge that showed officers pummeling Ellis as he gasped, I cant breathe, words now tragically familiar. The medical examiner ruled Ellis death a homicide from oxygen deprivation due to physical restraint.

Now under scrutiny by activists, the general public and the media, the governor directed the State Patrol to investigate the killing. The state attorney general is reviewing Ellis case, as well as 30 other police deadly force incidents.

If we have learned anything from the protest movement of the past two months, we should have at least learned what people of color and other marginalized people have said forever: You cant uncritically trust official accounts when it comes to policing and protests.

Efforts to contest and control the Seattle protest narrative began in late May. As my colleague Danny Westneat wrote in early June, the Seattle police chief and mayors efforts to paint property destruction from the first days of the protests as the work of mostly white, outside agitators was not supported by facts.

Later, in mid-June, during the height of the media frenzy around the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), an assistant Seattle police chief told the media that protesters were extorting local businesses within the CHOP for money. The claim was repeated by the police chief the next day and then reported by media around the world, including this paper.

The problem was, there turned out to be no police reports alleging extortion.

The source of the claim was a conservative blog citing unnamed police officers. The police walked back the claim, but the damage was done. The extortion claim became a key component in breathless reporting about lawlessness in CHOP by conservative media, resulting in President Trump calling out the governor and the mayor in a tweet to Take back your city NOW. If you dont do it, I will.

The extortion story was one of many police storylines widely reported but unsubstantiated during the weeks of CHOP occupying Capitol Hill. Others included the police chief saying that calls for [police] service have more than tripled, during CHOP, which may have been an accidental misstatement but was nonetheless picked up widely in conservative media. Reporting by The Seattle Times showed that calls near the East Precinct actually dropped 31% in the first two weeks of June.

Seattle police also said in a tweet that improvised explosives were thrown at officers, but their tweeted photo of the device showed a candle.

Misinformation is not new. But the speed, ferocity and impact of misinformation that permeates coverage of the protest movement in Seattle and beyond is remarkable. According to media intelligence firm Zignal Labs, of 873,000 pieces of George Floyd protest-related misinformation tracked, 575,800 were about antifa being responsible for riots and looting. This misinformation led to armed groups descending on cities and towns like Snohomish to protect them from antifa threats that never materialized.

The speed, ferocity and impact of misinformation that permeates coverage of the protest movement is remarkable

Joan Donovan is research director of the Harvard Kennedy Schools Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She said the media need to do more to broaden their sources to include community members and not just rely on the official narratives.

I think its really important, Donovan said, not just to print the press release, but to try to substantiate any of the claims of politicians and police and police unions in times of high social unrest, because the struggle over the narrative is a proxy war. Its a proxy war between the protesters and the state.

The media have long been complicit in the police said convention in crime reporting, but that practice is getting an overdue revisiting and reckoning, including in this newsroom. Police should not be exempt from the skepticism and rigor we apply to other sources of information.As I remember being taught as a budding journalist long, long ago, If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

The shift cant come soon enough, as families like Manny Ellis have tried to get people to hear their calls for justice for years, and too few people have listened.

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The police have long been a reliable source for some. But its time to reexamine that trust - Seattle Times

As protests against police violence spread to every state in the U.S. and dramatic images flooded in from cities across the country, President Donald Trump and his attorney general spun an ominous story of opportunistic leftists exploiting a national trauma to sow chaos and disorder. They were the anti-fascists known as antifa, and according to the administration they were domestic terrorists who would be policed accordingly.

But while the White House beat the drum for a crackdown on a leaderless movement on the left, law enforcement offices across the country were sharing detailed reports of far-right extremists seeking to attack the protesters and police during the countrys historic demonstrations,a trove of newly leaked documents reveals.

Among the steady stream of threats fromthe far-right were repeated encounters between law enforcement and heavily armed adherents of the so-called boogaloo movement,which welcomes armed confrontation with cops as means to trigger civil war. With much of the U.S. policing apparatus on the hunt for antifa instigators, those violent aspirations appear to have materialized in a string of targeted attacks in California that lefta federal protective services officer and a sheriffs deputy dead and several other law enforcement officials wounded.

The cache of law enforcement materials was recently hacked and posted online under the title BlueLeaks, providing an unprecedented look at the communications between state, local, and federal law enforcement in the face of the nationwide protests. In an analysis of nearly 300 documents that reference antifa, The Intercept found repeated instances of antifa and left-wing protesting activities cast in cartoonishly grim terms alongside more substantive reports of lethal right-wing violence and threats that have received scant mention from top Trump administration officials.

Throughout the documents you see counterterrorism agencies using extremism so broadly as to mean virtually anything that encompasses dissent, Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLUs National Security Project, told The Intercept. There are instances in which people engaging in white supremacist violence get the benefit of the doubt as potential lone offenders, while people of color and those who dissent against government injustice are smeared as threats with guilt by association.

Michael German, a former FBI agent specializing in domestic terrorism and current fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the materials were rife with examples of law enforcement intelligence being politicized in ways that endangered both protesters and police alike. Terrorism is distinguished from other violence by its political nature and, as a result, counterterrorism is often highly politicized as well, German told The Intercept. Here were seeing where this politicization of counterterrorism is being reflected in intelligence documents that are going out and are intended to inform state and local law enforcement on the ground. He added:Overall, what you see is a strange sensationalization of the antifa threats and that doesnt exist when looking at the boogaloo documents.

German argued that the impulse to paint both sides of the political spectrum with the same brush, despite the fact that only the far right is actively killing people, is among the most dangerous features of modern American law enforcement. In his review of the documents produced in response to the recent protests, German said purported threats from antifa were routinely overblown, often framed vandalism as terrorism and were typically absent of concrete evidence of serious criminal activity.

Its chatter, its intelligence reporting suggests, he said. On June 2, for example, the Department of Homeland Security circulated a tweet to law enforcement agencies across the country reporting that antifa was stashing bricks to fuel protests. The intelligence made its way to a law enforcement fusion center in Maine. Last week, Mainer magazine tracked down the original source of the tweet: a far-right, pro-Trump biker who goes by the name the Wolfman, who claimed that Facebook kept deleting his brick-planting evidence because they are BLM supporters.

You have these heavily armed groups right there, who have a much more direct and lengthy history of violence than anything antifa or anarchist-involved does.

Even if antifa were staging bricks, German said, you have these heavily armed groups right there, who have a much more direct and lengthy history of violence than anything antifa or anarchist-involved does. Unlike the information circulated about antifa, much of the intelligence reporting in the BlueLeaks documents regarding threats from the far right is tightly focused on specific events, German noted. Thats the way it should be, he said. Far-right extremists have been targeting and killing law enforcement, not to mention members of the general public, for generations, German explained, and in fact, the governments own documents show that those ideas were percolating in extremist corners of the right at the same time that Trump and U.S. Attorney General William Barr were preparing to crack down on the left.

While antifa has been a right-wing boogeyman for years, the administrations rhetoric ramped up in late May, with Trump tweeting that he would designate the movement as a terrorist organization. Barr followed the tweet with a Department of Justice statement reporting that federal investigators would work to identify criminal organizers and instigators who were hijacking the protests, and warning that the violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.

In the weeks since Barrs statement was issued, The Intercept has published accounts of FBI agents in multiple statestargeting individuals with a perceived relationship to antifa for interviews and potential informant work.Meanwhile, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, an official fundraising arm of the president,has been runningcampaign ads urging donors to send money to show support for the administrations antifa enforcement campaign.

Yet the leaked materials show that on May 29, two days before Trump tweeted that antifa would be labeled a terrorist organization and Barr issued his DOJ statement, the presidents own DHS analysts issued an open source intelligence report detailing how a white supremacist channel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging service, was encouraging followers to capitalize on the unrest by targeting the police with Molotov cocktails and firearms.

The use of firearms greatly influences the scale and intensity of these events, a source in the group, titled National Accelerationist Revival, wrote on May 27, advising followers to break police lines with cocktails, chainsaws, and firearms. At the time, DHS reported, the group included more than 3,400 subscribers. Looting and shoplifting are both cool and whites should be doing it way more, the source went on. When the laws no longer benefit you, break them for personal gain. If you dont feel like buying something, steal it. If you dont feel like driving slow, drive fast. If you dont like someone, hurt them.

We ought to revel in the destruction of the police state, they wrote. It is just as necessary to break down the police state and the system of control as it is to spread racial hatred.

In a separate document disseminated the following day, DHS warned its workforce that the nations period of darkness would soon worsen, as violent protest movements grew. Domestic extremists would capitalize on the unrest to take over government facilities and attack law enforcement, DHS predicted, with protests following police killings of civilians posing a high risk of escalating to both premeditated and random attacks targeting law enforcement officers nationwide. The document went on to describe how users of a white supremacist extremist Telegram channel attempted to incite followers to engage in violence and start the boogaloo a term used by some violent extremists to refer to the start of a second Civil War by shooting in a crowd.

Among the developments cited in the bulletin was the May 29 assassination of a federal court security guard in Oakland. The alleged perpetrator would later be identified as Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old sergeant in an elite Air Force security unit. According to authorities, Carrillo would go on to ambush and kill a sheriffs deputy and wound several others in a second targeted attack days later. In court filings last month, the FBI reported thatthe airman had a ballistics vest bearing a boogaloo patch.Following a shootout with police, Carrillo reportedly used his own blood to scrawl phrases associated with the movement on the hood of a vehicle he had carjacked.

In the run-up to the initial attack, federal authorities said Carrillo made several comments in a Facebook group with his accused accomplices arguing that the protests were an ideal opportunity to kill law enforcement whom he referred to as soup bois, a reference to the alphabet soup of law enforcement titles and kick off a broader nationwide conflagration. Go to the riots and support our own cause, Carrillo reportedly wrote on the morning of the attacks. Show them the real targets. Use their anger to fuel our fire. Think outside the box. We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.

At approximately 9:44 p.m, Carrillo and his accused partner, Robert Alvin Justus Jr., rolled up in a white van outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building. The side door of the vehicle slid open and Carrillo opened fire. Fifty-three-year-old David Patrick Underwood was shot dead. His partner was wounded. Did you see how they fucking fell? Justus would later recall Carrillo exclaiming, as the van took off into the night.

California Highway Patrol officers keep a road closed in Ben Lomond near Santa Cruz, Calif., on June 8, 2020, as FBI agents continue processing the scene where Santa Cruz County Sheriffs Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller was killed by Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo.

Photo: Shmuel Thaler/The Santa Cruz Sentinel via AP

While Carrillo was on the run in California, the FBIs Minneapolis office circulated uncorroborated online discussions between unidentified individuals indicating that Antifa wanted to massacre National Guard personnel at the Minnesota State Capitol in an unprecedented vehicle-born explosive attack. In the June 1 report, the bureaus Minneapolis office noted that the intelligence coming in was based on photos of National Guard vehicles that did not appear to come from Minnesota, that it was the product of an outside office, and that given current circumstances in the Twin Cities, the FBI Minneapolis Field Office cautions that the source may have potentially provided intelligence to influence recipients.

That same morning, Trump tweeted a quote from Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade: I dont see any indication that there were any white supremist [sic] groups mixing in. This is an ANTIFA Organization. It seems that the first time we saw it in a major way was Occupy Wall Street. Its the same mindset. The president endorsed Kilmeades assessment, writing in all caps, TRUE! Later in the day, Trump appeared in the Rose Garden of the White House to announce that he would mobilize military forces to quash the violence and restore security and safety in America. The president was quick to point out the role of professional anarchists, violent mobs arsonists, looters, criminals, rider rioters, Antifa, and others in creating unrest. A federal officer in California, an African American enforcement hero, was shot and killed, he said, referring to Underwood and the targeted attack in Oakland.

Trump made no mention of groups on the far right. Behind the scenes, however, DHS was acknowledging media reports indicating that neo-Nazi, and other paramilitary far-right groups, are calling for terror attacks during the ongoing unrest throughout the United States.

A series of Telegram accounts linked to a wider network of paramilitary far-right extremists have indicated that ongoing disturbances are spreading Americas police forces thin, making this the ideal time to strike with a strategic attack, the agency reported in a round-up of intelligence reports coming in from around the country, published the following morning. One account, with thousands of followers and links to several neo-Nazi terror groups like The Base and the Nordic Resistance Movement, called for attacks on critical infrastructure. The agency noted that Twitter had recently removed a fake antifa account created by a known white supremacist group that had issued a call to violence.

Although the account only had a few hundred followers, it is an example of white supremacists seeking to inflame tensions in the United States, DHS reported.

According to a distribution list at the bottom of the report, the document was shared with the White House Situation Room, DHS headquarters, federal interagency operations centers, and state and local partners. The Intercept sent detailed lists of questions regarding documents in the BlueLeaks trove to the White House, the Department of Justice, and DHS. None responded. The FBI referred The Intercept to an interview director Christopher Wray gave to Fox News in a late June, in which he appeared to distance the bureau from the more strident antifa rhetoric of Barr and Trump. Our efforts are focused on identifying, investigating, and disrupting individuals that are inciting violence and engaging in criminal activity, the bureau said in a statement. We are not focused on peaceful protests.

Despite the apparent stream of intelligence indicating that the far right was looking to use the protests as cover to attack law enforcement and create disorder, the FBI,by June 2, was still uncertain whether the attack in Oakland was linked to the demonstrations. At this time, the FBI is unable to determine if this incident is related to the civil unrest in the Oakland area, the bureau noted in a lengthy situation report. Carrillos arrest was still four days away.

Onthe heels of Barrs antifa statement, the FBI noted that its field offices had been encouraged to canvass sources for intelligence associated with violent or illegal extremist activity.The bureau added that any attempts by law enforcement to arrest individuals openly carrying guns at protests, as well as increased use of the National Guard, was likely to draw more anti-government militias into the streets. The 16-page FBI report did not mention the boogaloo movement nor any of the many other domesticextremist groups of the American far right, by name. It did, however, highlight antifaand anarchists more than a half dozen times.

In Newark, New Jersey, police and FBI investigators had identified a probable Antifa related individual, who was arrested for possessing a knife, a hatchet, and a jar of gasoline. Though the mans charge was unclear, the FBI reported that it had obtained one of his Facebook posts which contained a video of him at the riots inciting others to steal from the stores while he stood guard. With the man having described himself as anti-government and anti-authority, the FBI reported that its Newark office believes this profile is consistent with Antifa. While agents were investigating the man in Newark, the FBIs field office in Spokane, Washington, was looking into an antifa group reportedly headed through Idaho and on to Minneapolis. In Denver, meanwhile, the FBI was investigating the alleged transfer of riot supplies to antifa members, and in Philadelphia, authorities were attempting to confirm if any of the individuals arrested by Philadelphia Police Department have Antifa affiliations.

The portrait the FBI painted of the country was chaotic, with nearly three dozen FBI SWAT teams in various stages of deployment nationwide. The report noted multiple officer related shootings in the 12 hours preceding its dissemination, including the killing of a police officer in Las Vegas and an assailant who allegedly fired on police officers and a National Guard patrol in Kentucky. Nearly 200 pistols and rifles had been stolen from locations in San Francisco and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the FBI reported; it was unclear by whom.

While a variety of groups had been linked to the unrest, the FBI noted that much of the violence and vandalism is perpetrated by opportunistic, individual actors acting without specific direction. Nonetheless, the bureau would continue to aggressively seek to corroborate whether or not there is in fact an organized effort to incite violence by either known criminal groups or domestic violent extremists, which apparently included running down uncorroborated intelligence about alleged participation of Venezuelan and Nicaraguan socialist groups. According to the report, with more than 4,000 arrests across the country, the FBI had tagged nearly 200 incidents as riot related threats and was in the process of investigating 40 cases associated with violent protests.

With Trump hyping antifa hysteria in Washington, D.C., reports of lurking leftists began cropping around the country. In Colorado, a Denver resident reported that they had followed a suspicious person into their apartment complex who looked to be attempting to set the building on fire. Fairly certain he was a member of an Antifa like group, the resident wrote, adding that there were two Antifa safe houses on our block. I know this because they have been walking past our house telling us they can offer shelter, food, supplies, etc. also they have been hiding on our stoop when Swat drives by and they keep discussing their plans and where they are going. They have a central phone # they are calling to get updates and where they need to go to, the resident said. Please nip this shit in the ass. This is the second time in two days we had someone attempt to burn down our apartment building/neighboring buildings. Get these terrorists out of our city please!

Please nip this shit in the ass. This is the second time in two days we had someone attempt to burn down our apartment building/neighboring buildings. Get these terrorists out of our city please!

The Colorado Information Analysis Center, a law enforcement fusion center, listed the type of activity described in the complaint as terrorism.CIAC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

It wasnt just residents worried about antifa. CIAC also received a request from the Douglas County Sheriffs Department seeking information on ANTIFA, and possibility of acts targeting our AOR area of operations. In neighboring Nebraska, the FBIs Omaha office was running down information indicating that an unidentified individual who claimed to be a member of ANTIFA had posted a Craigslist ad offering to pay up to 1,000 individuals $25 per hour to cause as much chaos and destruction as possible in nightly violent protests. In Virginia, the FBI warned that black lines spray-painted on federal buildings was a sign of antifa vandalism to come.

All over the country, from California to Texas to West Virginia, law enforcement was chasing antifa leads and looking to hunt down instigators. The BlueLeaks documents suggest a borderline obsession on the part of some law enforcement offices with painting antifa, anarchists, and left-wing dissent more broadly as a serious terrorist threat. In early June, New Jerseys Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) issued a two-page report detailing how legal observers with the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive association of attorneys and legal advocates that has been around since the 1930s and sends representatives to public protests to monitor police activity, were in fact an anarchist extremist subgroup.

Lawyers may be identified by their bright neon green hats or clothing; however, these individual [sic] may or may not be licensed lawyers, the office warned. Their role is to record information regarding the interactions Antifa members are having during an arrest. This individual will record the interaction with the aid of another member, while noting information. The lawyer will also obtain booking information and are known to argue with police over arrests and interactions.

Anti-fascists werebent on infiltrating protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police Officer Derek Chauvin to further their violent ideology, the New Jersey office reported, and continue to attack government institutions; use violent counter-protest tactics against adversarial groups, including law enforcement; and target political figures representing disparate views.

This was not the first time the New Jerseys homeland security office had set its sights on leftists. In a 2018 report, the office compiled a color-coded chart of the biggest terror threats to New Jersey. Anarchist extremists were third, in the moderate section below Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula but above the Islamic State. Anarchists made the list again in 2019, this time climbing to second, just below Homegrown Violent Extremists. They fell to third in 2020, however, with White Supremacist Extremists finally cracking New Jerseys top three afterseveral centuries of organized terror and killing.

TheIntercept asked NJOHSP about its justification forconsidering anarchists a greater public safety threat than terror groups that have killed thousands of people, and whether the office has ever aided investigations into legal observers. The office said that it does not disclose operational or investigative details and sources.

The government fusion centers that produce the kind of intelligence found in the BlueLeaks breach have been a problem for years, said Freddy Martinez, a policy analyst at Open the Government, a nonpartisan, nonprofit collective that works to peel back post-9/11 government secrecy through research and open records collection. Martinez was a lead author on a report published earlier this year detailing how the governments billion-dollar network of fusion centers exhibit a persistent pattern of violating Americans privacy and civil liberties, producing unreliable and ineffective information, and resisting financial and other types of standard public accountability.

The BlueLeaks documents show that the problems with fusion centers go beyond efficiency, Martinez argued. It would be easy to say that the information is inaccurate, wrong, costly, which I think is true, but it also sort of describes what the priorities of the federal government are on counterterrorism, he said. The government is aware of what theyre doing. Its a very intentional, Well, were just going to criminalize dissent any way we can.

German, the former FBI agent, described how sensationalized, incomplete, or biased fusion center reporting can have a dangerous impact on the ground, particularly in complex, emotionally charged protest situations. I always try to read these and put myself in the shoes of a young police officer that doesnt know anything about this subject, he said. All this tells me to do is be very afraid of these people and imagine the worst of anything that they do.

You can kind of understand why their response is so aggressive and violent, he said. Theyre scared to death, and theyre scared to death because theres this echo chamber of right-wing media, White House statements and, unfortunately, law enforcement intelligence.

Attorney General William Barr speaks during in a roundtable with law enforcement officials in the State Dining Room of the White House, on June, 8, 2020 in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

As law enforcement worked to find cases that would support the attorney generals portrait of a looming antifa menace, evidence mounted in late May and early June of right-wing extremists amassing weapons, plotting terror attacks, and killing law enforcement officials.

In Denver, CAIC reported a police seizure of several military-style assault rifles from a vehicle occupied by a group of self-identified anti-government individuals who call themselves Boogaloo Bois near a protest on May 29. The report, which began by noting that an anarchist blog had referred to police as pigs and included photos of anarchy As spray-painted on buildings, went on to list eight examples of far-right extremists across the country vigorously threatening violence towards recent protests, including sharing images of weapons stockpiles and tips on sabotaging police vehicles, neo-Nazis encouraging their brethren to dress up as law enforcement and film themselves attacking black people and calls to form small crews that would be willing to shed blood.

Similar reports were filtering in from law enforcement in Minneapolis and Austin, Texas, where intelligence analysts released a bulletin advising law enforcement to be on the lookout for three young men in tactical gear who were detained in possession of two AR style rifles, one AK style rifle, two handguns, and several hundred rounds of ammunition, as well as gas masks. The men gave conflicting statements about where they had been and what they were doing in Austin, the Austin Regional Intelligence Center reported. Searches of social media show sympathetic views toward the Boogaloo Bois, an anti-government movement, as well as several other anti-police sentiments, the report stated, adding that one of the subjects Facebook pages included a post that said he did not expect to be here next year and other comments suggesting that he may take action against law enforcement.

On June 4, the U.S. military weighed in on the protests in the form of a report published by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which noted that federal prosecutors had charged three men connected with the boogaloo movement with terrorism offenses intended to spark violence at protests related to Floyds killing. Like Carrillo in California, all three of the men Navy veteran Stephan Parshall, Army reservist Andrew Lynam, and Air Force veteran William Loomis had ties to the U.S. military, NCIS noted, adding that it had published a Threat Awareness Message regarding the boogaloo movement earlier this year.

Racially motivated violent extremist (RMVE) movements that subscribe to boogaloo have engaged in conceptual discussions about recruiting military or former military members for their perceived knowledge of combat training, the naval investigative agency stated. NCIS cannot discount the possibility of DoD affiliated individuals sympathetic to or engaged in the boogaloo movement.

A number of the details surrounding the Nevada arrests track with a longer history of militant, far-right extremism in the United States, said Kathleen Belew, a history professor at the University of Chicago and author of the book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Prosecutors in the case allege that before setting their sights on a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas, the three men discussed a potential attack targeting facilities at the Hoover Dam. According to Belew, the dam has been a target in the collective imagination of far-right extremists going back decades, including extremists linked to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.This goes way back, Belew told The Intercept. Its not just that theres a social movement that is attempting to kill cops and damage infrastructure targets and attack protesters its that its a movement that has been trying to do this for decades, if not generations, and has largely gone unopposed by our courts, by our law enforcement, by our military, by our executives.

The leaked documents charting law enforcements treatment of antifa versus groups like the boogaloo bois reflect adangerous American impulse to draw equivalencies, Belew argued. Many reasonable people carry around with them as part of the way that we learn about how politics works this idea that there are two sides of everything, she said. This is a deeply ingrained belief in our culture, and theres a historical set of reasons why we think about politics that way, but this is actually not a case where there are two sides of things that are the same.

The leaked documents charting law enforcements treatment of antifa versus groups like the boogaloo bois reflect adangerous American impulse to draw equivalencies.

This is a case where there is a long casualty list carried out by the white power movement, which has declared war against the country, she said. And there is, I think, a quite localized social movement of people who oppose it, but who have not attacked civilians, who have not attacked infrastructure, who have not attempted to overthrow the country.

With a pandemic still raging, soaring unemployment, the most expansive civil rights protests in generations, and a coming presidential election, the nation is facing an interlocking set of problemsthat elevate the risk for far-right violence, Belew noted. Were off the map in a number of ways, she said, and while historians are trained not to forecast the future, she added, I will say that as somebody who has been studying this for more than a decade, Ive never been so worried. Whats particularly troubling, she argued, is that the historical archive shows aclear link between wars abroad and rising right-wingviolence at home Belews book charts that history from the Vietnam War through militia movements of the 1990s. With the country now having been at war for close to two decades, thequestion of blowback is not a matter of if, but when and how. This set of conditions is very, very troubling for people who are concerned about white power violence,Belew said.

On June 6, the FBI released another situation report detailing the state of protests across the country. Though Barr and Trump had pointed fingers at a shadowy network of leftist agitators pulling the protests strings, the bureau continued to assess that the majority of the violence and vandalism appeared opportunistic in nature. With more than 13,600 arrests nationwide, the FBI reported that the Department of Justice had charged 70 individuals with federal crimes, most involving property damage and illegal activities that involved crossing state lines. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had reported 81 burglaries involving the theft of guns, the FBI noted, leading to an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms, as well as 876 reported arsons and 76 explosive incidents.

While the FBI report did note that both right wing and anarchist extremists could be involved in efforts to further ignite violence, it was again only antifa that was singled out by name. At one point, the FBI suggested that videos of law enforcement officers flashing the OK hand signal often used by white nationalists and the far right might actually be part of a left-wing plot to make police look bad. Some protestors and possible ANTIFA members attempted to bait law enforcement into displaying the OK hand sign, the FBI reported. These individuals plan to photograph the officers and use the photographs as propaganda to discredit the officers.

With the election four months away, the Trump administration has pressed forward with a seemingly coordinated effort to link the nebulous antifa movement to acts of violence committed by the far right.

Mourners view the body of Federal Protective Services Officer Dave Patrick Underwood after a memorial service on June 19, 2020, in Pinole, Calif.

Photo: Ben Margot/AP

On June 26, Fox News published an op-ed by Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of DHS, noting that Patrick Underwood, the federal court security officer gunned down in Oakland, was also a Black man whose life mattered.Cuccinelli suggested that his killing had been ignored because he was a member of law enforcement. As close trackers of the agency were quick to point out, Cuccinelli failed to mention that the man accused of killing Underwood has been linked to the boogaloo movement, which DHS leadership and the administration have been publicly quiet about. Cuccinelli, for his part, has been clear about the actors he sees as responsible for unrest in the country, tweeting on June 5, while his own agency was raising internal alarms about the far right and Underwoods family was still grieving, Their silence is deafening. Cities across America burn at the hands of antifa and anarchists while many political leaders are refusing to call it what it is: domestic terrorism.

The same day Cuccinellis op-ed was published, Barr sent a memo to top Justice Department officials announcing the creation of a new Task Force on Violent Anti-Government Extremists. In the memo, the attorney general argued that both antifa and the boogaloo movement pose continuing threats to lawlessness. Appearing at a law enforcement roundtable in Arkansas last week,Barr said that more than 150 people have beenhit with federal charges in relation to the recent protests. Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which partner FBI agents with state and local authorities, are currently pursuing more than 500 investigations, Barr added, targeting hardcore instigators.

We are building up our intelligence on these instigators, Barr said, noting that the JTTFs, which were previously used really for self-radicalized Jihadi threats, are now focusing on groups like antifa and boogaloo bois and others that are involved in this activity.

Shamsi said the Trump administration was using antifa as political bait.

It is a very dangerous thing when the top law enforcement official unleashes the massive weight of vague and overbroad terrorism labels and authorities for surveillance and investigation for political purposes, she said. Unsurprisingly, given what weve been warning about for years, those authorities are being used in deeply problematic ways. Its law enforcement agencies engaging in unjustified discriminatory investigations and bias-based profiling, which in turn generates inaccurate or unreliable information, which is then used by other federal, state and local agencies in a variety of contexts. Thats the problem with JTTFs and fusion centers and the post-911 infrastructure at its core.

For all of the governments talk of antifa, Mark Bray, a historian and author of the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,said he wasless than impressed with the depth of the Trump administrations research into the generations-old international struggle to combat fascism. What stood out to me is, among their sources, they have zero books, Bray told The Intercept, after reviewing fusion center documents from 2016and 2017 aiming to explain antifa to law enforcement. Most of the research seems like someone who spent a weekend on Google, Bray said.

Its not difficult to see why an administration like Trumps might zero in on antifa as a law enforcement target, Bray said. The fact that its this coalition politics of the radical left and that it does not have one specific united organization means that with some very rough reading of what antifa is, you can basically kind of paint the entire radical left as more or less antifa, and considering that there is a broad identification with the politics of anti-fascism beyond membership to a specific group, you can see how that could be useful, he said. I do think that thats certainly part of the equation and was part of the motivation.

While Trumps threatened designation of antifa as a terror organization has not come about for important legal and logistical reasons, that was never really the point, German argued. They know as well as anybody does, because theyre not stupid people, that there is no organization called antifa, the former FBI agent said. Its an absurdity what theyre talking about, but theyre using it as this umbrella term to justify militant or vigilante violence against these groups, and also police violence against these groups. Theyre identifying the enemy and thats whats very dangerous.

In a letter to the heads of the CIA and the FBI on Tuesday, Democratic Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont, both members of House Intelligence Committee, sought information on the spread of false information regarding antifa. In a statement to The Intercept Wednesday morning, Krishnamoorthis office said: The prevalence of misinformation on falsely advertised Antifa gatherings and invasions calls into question how our federal, state, and local law enforcement are combating, and determining the origins of these rumors. Our Congressional inquiry intends to further explore the involvement of fusion centers in possibly exacerbating these rumors, which appear intended to stoke fear and division in local communities across the country.

The Trump administration has capitalized on the perceived threats that rattle around the conservative media echo chamber for political gain before, and the effects on public safety have been disastrous and tragic. During the 2018 midterm elections, the president seized on the supposed threat of migrant caravans making their way north from Central America as a sign that the out-of-control left was destroying the country. Far-right domestic terrorists cited the immigration invasion rhetoric to justify attacks targeting Mexicans and Jews in Texas and Pennsylvania that left dozens of people dead.

During a July 4 address from the White House honoring the U.S. military and affirming his commitment to protect monuments to the confederacy, Trump described the work his administration is engaged in as the 2020 election approaches and protests across the country continue. We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing, he said.

German, who recently testified before lawmakers in Oregon about the longstanding problem of white supremacist infiltration in policing agencies, said it is critical to understand how the presidents language will be interpreted in many corners of the law enforcement community.

This rhetoric, reinforced by the attorney general, is not falling on unsympathetic ears the law enforcement intelligence network has been demonizing anarchists and other police violence protesters as a more dangerous threat for a long time, he said. Weve seen the way that the police responded to nonviolent civil disobedience at Standing Rock or in Ferguson versus the laissez-faire approach theyve used in a number of these white supremacist riots. They clearly can regulate their behavior. Why they choose not to when its groups protesting police violence is what I think local government needs to understand.

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Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests, not Antifa - The Intercept

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) Nearly two months of nightly protests that have devolved into violent clashes with police have prompted soul-searching in Portland, Oregon, a city that prides itself on its progressive reputation but is increasingly polarized over how to handle the unrest.

President Donald Trump recently deployed federal agents to quell the demonstrations in Portland that began after George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police, shining an unwelcome spotlight as the city struggles to find a way forward. The national attention comes as divisions deepen among elected officials about the legitimacy of the more violent protests striking at the heart of Portlands identity as an ultraliberal haven where protest is seen as a badge of honor.

I was born and raised here, and Im a graduate of the local public school system. I chose to make my livelihood here, I chose to raise my daughter here, said Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has faced criticism from all sides. And in all the years that I have lived here, I have never seen the community more divided. Nor have I seen it look worse.

Small groups of protesters have set fires, launched fireworks and sprayed graffiti on public buildings, including police precincts and the federal courthouse, leading to nearly nightly clashes with police who have used force thats caused injuries. Similar unrest engulfed many U.S. cities when Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck on May 25. But in Portland, which is familiar ground for the loosely organized, far-left activists known as antifa, or anti-fascists, the protests never stopped.

Lost in the debate are the downtown businesses racking up millions in property damage and lost sales and the voices of the hundreds of thousands of Portland residents who have stayed off the streets.

The impact is terrible because what people have seen on the TV ... has scared people who live outside the downtown. They feel its that way 24 hours a day, said David Margulis, who said the protests have caused sales at his jewelry store to drop more than 50%. I talk to people, on the phone, who tell me: I dont know if Ill ever come downtown again.

Soon after Floyds death, diverse crowds of thousands took to the streets every night for peaceful marches and rallies, filling a bridge that spans the Willamette River on several nights. Smaller groups, however, quickly turned to vandalism.

Police have arrested dozens of people, dispersing protesters with tear gas on multiple occasions. Federal law enforcement officers sent in two weeks ago by Trump to stop the unrest have further inflamed tensions, particularly after one protester was critically injured when a federal agent fired a non-lethal round at his head.

Federal officers used tear gas again Tuesday night, the same day four of Oregons federal lawmakers all Democrats sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding answers.

The mayor and police have repeatedly decried the clashes as a destructive distraction from the Black Lives Matter movement and make a sharp distinction between peaceful demonstrators and those bent on engaging with authorities, whom the police call agitators. Other officials, including several city commissioners, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and Oregons House speaker, have criticized the police for being too aggressive.

Its become a cycle of unrest, police response and further outrage.

Each nights protest is now turning into a protest of the night befores police activity. And so when people say we want this to stop, it cant stop because todays protest will be about what the feds or the Portland Police Bureau did yesterday, said Gregory McKelvey, an activist and critic of the police response.

Theres really this battle that were having right now a communications war over whos a good protester and whos a bad protester. And what the police and the mayor are trying to do is turn the city against the people that are out protesting, he said.

Some members of the Black community, which makes up less than 6% of Portlands population, say the continual clashes with police including in a historically Black part of the city are distracting from the message of racial justice.

Its very clear to me that this is not about accomplishing goals. This is about anarchy, and people are taking advantage of the demonstrations for their own reasons that have nothing to do with social justice, said Ron Herndon, a prominent civil rights activist. Any support you think you could get, you probably have lost from a lot of people because you have negatively impacted their lives.

Jo Ann Hardesty, the first Black woman on Portlands City Council, said protesters dont need to destroy property to effect change but believes the violence is a reaction to a newfound understanding, particularly among white people, about how abusive the police can be.

Nevertheless, Hardesty, who has dedicated her career to police reform, is confident Portland will come out of this stronger. Shes working to get a measure before voters circumventing the powerful police union to create an independent police review board. She also led a push last month to cut $27 million from the police budget.

We have to all figure out, how do we move the city forward? What we know is that we cant protest forever and ever. And what we know is that people want real change, Hardesty said. I think the more we invite people in, the less disruption well see on our streets.

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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus.

Read more from the original source:

Chaotic protests prompt soul-searching in Portland, Oregon - The Associated Press