The Jews admit it. From HAARETZ…
The police interest in anti-fascism isn’t academic. It’s in lockstep with the narrative being pushed by the White House. As the protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd have raged, with as many as 11 protesters dead by police hands nationwide, President Donald Trump announced he would designate Antifa – short for anti-fascist – as a "domestic terrorist organization."
To start with, Trump’s statement about Antifa is absurd on multiple levels. It isn’t clear he has the legal authority to do so. And Antifa isn’t an organization, but a philosophy that guides anti-fascist street organizing. Who is its leader? What is its structure? Where is it based? How do you become a member? These questions have no answers because there are none. But no matter: it's certainly filler for Trump’s campaigning.
Trump’s public statement about Antifa should be terrifying, as any attempt to vilify anti-fascism by nature defends fascism a positive thing. But picking on anti-fascists as the scapegoat and hidden hand of the ongoing unrest is inherently anti-Semitic.
As the ADL reported, conspiracies about George Soros funding the unrest abound on the anti-Semitic American far-right.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who serially expresses extreme anti-immigrant views and flirtations with white nationalism, blasted Trump for his inaction in response to the protests, blaming the White House’s weakness on Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the administration’s most prominent Jew. Trump’s most recent of many instances of overt anti-Semitism was his praise of the "good blood lines" of Nazi-admirer, eugenicist and infamous anti-Semite Henry Ford.
Singling out "anti-fascism" as the prime villain in the ongoing anti-police protests is unsettling by itself, bearing in mind least 11 protesters have died during the protests, and the Trump far-right itself is linked to massacres like the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting. No one can link Antifa to the death of a single innocent person.
When the right vilifies Antifa, it should remind Jews of who actually protects them when racists are on the streets. According to several reports, during the infamous Charlottesville rally when white nationalists shouted "Jews will not replace us," local cops refused to protect a synagogue and several churches from potential violence. Activists who
identified with Antifa, however, did.
For many liberal and centrist Jews, that Antifa is unquestionably an ideology that sits on the far left, together with images of anarchists in masks marching directly toward columns of riot police, triggers discomfort, if not skepticism. Prominent centrists try to play a "plague on both your houses approach," denouncing both white supremacist militias and Antifa in the same breath.
As the National Lawyers Guild clarified in their denunciation of Trump’s statement: "The term Antifa originates in the 1930s when progressive activists organized to oppose far-right authoritarianism emerging throughout the world…It is not clear who or what the targets of a federal Antifa investigation would be, and whether such an effort would be lawful."
And right-wing talk of outlawing Antifa often use at as a catch-all for all left-wing politics. It’s an indication that the Trumpian right want to outlaw – or at least vilify – all politics on the left side of the center. Using such a broad brush when deciding who’s a terrorist should care any one: If Jews were every looking for a "first for they came for" moment, this is one.
Part 1