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DISPATCHES I D E A S & P R O V O C A T I O N S

September 2017

In Venezuela, a Big Mac costs about half

a month’s wages. Or rather, it did,

until a bread shortage forced the burger

off the menu. — Rene Chun, p. 26

I l l u s t r a t i o n b y E D M O N D E H A R O

The Rise of the Violent Left A burgeoning antifascist movement wants to fight the alt-right’s fire—with more fire. BY P E T E R B E I N A R T

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S i n c e 1 9 0 7 , P o r t l a n d , Oregon, has hosted an annu al Rose Festival. Since 2007, the festival had included a pa-

rade down 82nd Avenue. Since 2013, the Repub lican Party of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, had taken part. This April, all of that changed.

In the days leading up to the planned parade, a group called the Direct Ac- tion Alliance declared, “Fascists plan to march through the streets,” and warned,

“Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.” The alliance said it didn’t object to the Multnomah GOP itself, but to “fascists” who planned to infiltrate its ranks. Yet it also denounced marchers with “Trump flags” and “red maga hats” who could “normalize support for an orange man who bragged about sexually harassing women and who is waging a war of hate, racism and prejudice.” A sec- ond group, Oregon Students Empowered, created a Facebook page called “Shut down fascism! No nazis in Portland!”

Next, the parade’s organizers re- ceived an anonymous email warning that if “Trump supporters” and oth- ers who promote “hateful rhetoric” marched, “we will have two hundred or

more people rush into the parade … and drag and push those people out.” When Portland police said they lacked the re- sources to provide adequate security, the organizers canceled the parade. It was a sign of things to come.

For progressives, Donald Trump is not just another Republican presi- dent. Seventy-six percent of Democrats, accord ing to a Suffolk poll from last Sep- tember, consider him a racist. Last March, according to a YouGov survey, 71 percent of Democrats agreed that his campaign contained “fascist undertones.” All of which raises a question that is likely to bedevil progressives for years to come:

If you believe the president of the United States is leading a racist, fascist move- ment that threatens the rights, if not the lives, of vulnerable minorities, how far are you willing to go to stop it?

In Washington, D.C., the response to that question centers on how members of Congress can oppose Trump’s agenda, on how Democrats can retake the House of Representatives, and on how and when to push for impeachment. But in the country at large, some militant left- ists are offering a very different answer. On Inaug uration Day, a masked activist punched the white-supremacist leader Richard Spencer. In February, protesters

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violently disrupted UC Berkeley’s plans to host a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart.com editor. In March, protesters pushed and shoved the con- troversial conservative political scien- tist Charles Murray when he spoke at Middle bury College, in Vermont.

As far-flung as these incidents were, they have something crucial in common. Like the organizations that opposed the Multnomah County Republican Party’s participation in the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade, these acti vists appear to be linked to a movement called “antifa,” which is short for antifascist or Anti-Fascist Ac- tion. The movement’s secrecy makes de- finitively cataloging its activities difficult, but this much is certain: Anti fa’s power is growing. And how the rest of the activist left responds will help define its moral character in the Trump age.

A n t i fa t r ac e s i t s ro o t s to the 1920s and ’30s, when militant

leftists battled fascists in the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. When fas- cism withered after World War II, antifa did too. But in the ’70s and ’80s, neo- Nazi skinheads began to infiltrate Brit- ain’s punk scene. After the Berlin Wall fell, neo-Nazism also gained promi- nence in Germany. In response, a cadre of young leftists, including many anar- chists and punk fans, revived the tradi- tion of street-level antifascism.

In the late ’80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began following suit, though they initially called their groups Anti-Racist Action, on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than fascism. Accord ing to Mark Bray, the author of the forth- coming Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Hand- book, these activists toured with popular alternative bands in the ’90s, trying to ensure that neo-Nazis did not recruit their fans. In 2002, they disrupted a speech by the head of the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group in Pennsylvania; 25 people were arrested in the resulting brawl.

By the 2000s, as the internet facili- tated more transatlantic dialogue, some American activists had adopted the name antifa. But even on the militant

Antifa’s violent tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left.

to tweet, “I don’t care how many differ- ent songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I’ll laugh at every one.”

The violence is not directed only at avowed racists like Spencer: In June of last year, demonstrators—at least some of whom were associated with antifa— punched and threw eggs at people exit-

ing a Trump rally in San Jose, California. An article in It’s Going Down celebrated the

“righteous beatings.” Antifascists call such ac-

tions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable minori- ties, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But Trump sup- porters and white national- ists see anti fa’s attacks as an assault on their right to

freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sus- tained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacra- mento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counter demonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed.

A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked anti fascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the uni- versity canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public safety,” white nationalists announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was wearing a base- ball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Sud- denly, Trump supporters had a viral video of their own. A far-right crowd- funding site soon raised more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging,

left, the movement didn’t occupy the spotlight. To most left-wing activists dur- ing the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, deregulated global capitalism seemed like a greater threat than fascism.

Trump has changed that. For antifa, the result has been explosive growth. Accord ing to NYC Antifa, the group’s Twitter following nearly quad rupled in the first three weeks of January alone. (By summer, it ex- ceeded 15,000.) Trump’s rise has also bred a new sympathy for anti fa among some on the main- stream left. “Suddenly,” noted the antifa-aligned journal It’s Going Down,

“anarchists and antifa, who have been demon- ized and sidelined by the wider Left have been hearing from liberals and Leftists,

‘you’ve been right all along.’ ” An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trump- ism fascist” is to realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard lib- eral appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious re- sponses in this political moment.”

Those responses sometimes spill blood. Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure ven- ues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fas- cists manage to assemble, antifa’s par- tisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.

Such tactics have elicited substan- tial support from the mainstream left. When the masked antifa activist was filmed assault ing Spencer on Inaugura- tion Day, another piece in The Nation de- scribed his punch as an act of “kinetic beauty.” Slate ran an approv ing article about a humorous piano ballad that glorified the assault. Twitter was inun- dated with viral versions of the video set to different songs, prompting the for- mer Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau

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Antifa’s violent violent tactics have tactics have elicited elicited substantial substantial support support from the from the mainstream mainstream left. left.

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of the train, three men interposed them- selves between Christian and his targets.

“Please,” one said, “get off this train.” Christian stabbed all three. One bled to death on the train. One was declared dead at a local hospital. One survived.

The cycle continued. Nine days after the attack, on June 4, Trump supporters hosted another Portland rally, this one featuring Chapman, who had gained fame with his assault on the anti fascist in Berkeley. Antifa activists threw bricks until the police dispersed them with stun grenades and tear gas.

What’s eroding in Portland is the quality Max Weber considered essential to a functioning state: a monopoly on legitimate violence. As members of a largely anarchist movement, anti fascists

don’t want the government to stop white supremacists from gathering. They want to do so themselves, rendering the gov- ernment impotent. With help from other left-wing activists, they’re already hav- ing some success at disrupting govern- ment. Demonstrators have interrupted so many city-council meetings that in February, the council met behind locked doors. In February and March, activists protesting police violence and the city’s investments in the Dakota Access Pipe- line hounded Mayor Ted Wheeler so per- sistently at his home that he took refuge in a hotel. The fateful email to parade organizers warned, “The police cannot stop us from shutting down roads.”

All of this fuels the fears of Trump supporters, who suspect that liberal

fueled by cheerleaders on both sides. As James Ander son, an editor at It’s Going Down, told Vice, “This shit is fun.”

P o r t l a n d o f f e r s p e r h a p s the clearest glimpse of where all of

this can lead. The Pacific Northwest has long attracted white supremacists, who have seen it as a haven from America’s multi racial East and South. In 1857, Oregon (then a federal territory) banned African Americans from living there. By the 1920s, it boasted the highest Ku Klux Klan membership rate of any state.

In 1988, neo-Nazis in Portland killed an Ethiopian immigrant with a base- ball bat. Shortly thereafter, notes Alex Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University and the author of Against the Fascist Creep, anti-Nazi skinheads formed a chapter of Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Before long, the city also had an Anti- Racist Action group.

Now, in the Trump era, Port- land has become a bastion of anti fascist militancy. Masked protesters smashed store win- dows during multiday demon- strations following Trump’s election. In early April, antifa acti vists threw smoke bombs into a “Rally for Trump and Free- dom” in the Portland suburb of Vancouver, Washington. A local paper said the ensuing melee re- sembled a mosh pit.

When antifascists forced the cancel- lation of the 82nd Avenue of Roses Pa- rade, Trump supporters responded with a “March for Free Speech.” Among those who attended was Jeremy Christian, a burly ex-con draped in an American flag, who uttered racial slurs and made Nazi salutes. A few weeks later, on May 25, a man believed to be Christian was filmed calling antifa “a bunch of punk bitches.”

The next day, Christian boarded a light-rail train and began yelling that

“colored people” were ruining the city. He fixed his attention on two teenage girls, one African American and the other wearing a hijab, and told them “to go back to Saudi Arabia” or “kill them- selves.” As the girls retreated to the back

bastions are refus ing to protect their right to free speech. Joey Gibson, a Trump sup- porter who organized the June 4 Portland rally, told me that his “biggest pet peeve is when mayors have police stand down … They don’t want conservatives to be com- ing together and speaking.” To provide security at the rally, Gibson brought in a far-right militia called the Oath Keep- ers. In late June, James Buchal, the chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, announced that it too would use militia members for security, because

“volunteers don’t feel safe on the streets of Portland.”

Anti fa believes it is pursuing the oppo site of authoritarianism. Many of its acti vists oppose the very notion of a centralized state. But in the name of

protecting the vulnerable, anti- fascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assem- ble and which may not. That author ity rests on no democratic foundation. Unlike the politi- cians they revile, the men and women of antifa cannot be voted out of office. Generally, they don’t even disclose their names.

Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like never before. As the president derides and subverts

liberal-democratic norms, progres- sives face a choice. They can recommit to the rules of fair play, and try to limit the president’s corrosive effect, though they will often fail. Or they can, in re- vulsion or fear or righteous rage, try to deny racists and Trump supporters their political rights. From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland, the latter ap- proach is on the rise, especially among young people.

Revulsion, fear, and rage are under- standable. But one thing is clear. The people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Port- land may consider themselves fierce oppo nents of the authoritarianism grow- ing on the American right. In truth, how- ever, they are its unlikeliest allies.

An antifascist demonstrator burns a Blue Lives Matter flag during a protest in Portland, Oregon, in June.

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