The Atlantic, “The Rise of the Violent Left”
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 venues 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 […]
The Washington Post, “Activists, wary of health-care bill pause, plan more protests against proposal”
The alliance between elected Democrats and protest groups, fragile just a few months ago, has strengthened even as protests have become more disruptive. In Georgia’s special House election, Republican groups spent millions of dollars linking the Democratic candidate to “the resistance,” with images of Women’s March protesters seeping into footage of anarchists smashing windows. Continue […]
NPR, “FACT CHECK: Is Left-Wing Violence Rising?”
Antifa are not new. They’re a latter-day version of the anarchists and “black bloc” groups who, over the years, have often challenged police and broken windows during May Day protests in Seattle and Portland. Their membership is hard to track, but it appears to be expanding beyond the West Coast. They are also embracing other […]
Newsweek, “Trump-Era Political Violence Deterring Democratic Candidates”
The two incidents played out against a backdrop of increasing political violence at protests, between the so-called Black bloc of hoodie-wearing anarchists and the newly formed cadres of right-wing men who show up at rallies armed with clubs and looking for a fight. Continue Reading
Washington Examiner, “UC-Berkeley: The place where free speech ends and violence begins”
When the smoke cleared, approximately 1,500 Berkley students, self-named Antifa “activists” (short for Anti-Fascists – yes, more irony) and “Black Bloc” anarchists were blamed for more than $100,000 in damage done to the school and community – all because they didn’t want someone with differing opinions to have a platform on their turf. Continue Reading
San Francisco Examiner, “UC Berkeley protest raises questions around the use of violence”
For decades, anarchist protesters have shattered windows and set fires at a contingent of larger demonstrations in the East Bay. But the destruction came into the spotlight earlier this month when protesters at UC Berkeley used “any means necessary” to disrupt the scheduled speech of right-wing provocateur and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Continue Reading
San Francisco Chronicle, “UC Berkeley probes staffer after post-protest Web campaign”
Wednesday’s destruction grabbed headlines around the world, prompting debate over the handling of the event by the university and outrage over the actions of the anarchists. The destruction led a range of conservatives — including Yiannopoulos and President Trump — to denounce UC Berkeley and its students. A day after the protests, Trump used Twitter […]
The New York Times, “Anarchists Respond to Trump’s Inauguration, by Any Means Necessary”
“Yes, what the black bloc did last night was destructive to property,” Eric Laursen, a writer in Massachusetts who has helped publicize anarchist protests, said, using another name for the black-clad demonstrators. “But do you just let someone like Milo go wherever he wants and spread his hate? That kind of argument can devolve into […]
The Washington Post, “‘Black bloc’ protests return for Trump era, leaving flames, broken windows from D.C. to Berkeley”
“By putting on our masks we reveal our unity; and by raising our voices in the street together, we speak our anger at the facelessness of power,” reads a popular anarchist credo that was printed on the inside of masks distributed at a violent anti-capitalist protest in London in 1999. Continue Reading
Paste, “The Violence in Berkeley is a Very, Very Bad Idea For the Left”
I have to admit: When I heard that a group of anarchists called the Black Bloc had sent “150 masked agitators” to an otherwise peaceful protest in order to disrupt a planned speech at UC-Berkeley by alt-right shithead Milo Yiannopoulos, and that they’d succeeded in scaring the hell out of everyone and shutting the whole […]