A recent poll by the polling firm Echelon Insights revealed that Antifa violence was the sixth most concerning issue for Republican voters, just under socialism, illegal immigration, and general moral decline. Democratic politicians have condemned the violence of Antifa and even the Anti-defamation League has said “most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive.” Despite the fact that white supremacist terrorism is far more deadly, Antifa, continues to be the focus of a lot of peoples fears.
Who is Antifa? To put it simply, the label Antifa is adopted by a loose affiliation of left and far-left activist (mostly socialist and anarchist) groups that are connected by a strong desire to combat Fascism and white supremacy, sometimes literally. Antifa see themselves as something of white blood cells, technically destructive, but for the greater good and health of the body politic. Most Americans first heard of Antifa in 2017 with the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in which white supremacists marched in the streets with the intent to harm others. Antifa stood against them and potentially saved lives.
Anti-fascism as a political movement goes back almost as far as fascism itself, becoming most popular in the years before World War II, both in America and Europe. Anti-fascism contains a much broader coalition of groups from the political spectrum than Antifa does, and while the two overlap they are not necessarily identical.
The modern American Antifa comes from Britain’s Punk scene of the 70s and 80s and groups of young Germans fighting the rise of neo-Nazis after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a reaction to Neo-Nazi skinheads invading the Punk subculture, anti-fascists began to intimidate and forcibly remove white supremacists from Punk spaces. Groups such as the Anti-Racist Action, originating in Minnesota in 1988, did the same in America. Antifa grew in spaces where white supremacists have been most active, such as the Pacific Northwest. Rose City Antifa, the oldest American organization that used the name Antifa, was formed in response to disrupt a white supremacist music festival called Hammerfest, in 2007. Since then, Anti-Racist Action has gone on to form the Torch Network, a loose collection of nine Antifa groups from across the country.
This is the sticking point of understanding Antifa: it can refer to a group or groups but it’s also a self-applied label. What separates Antifa from other antifascist groups is the desire to take direct action rather than influence policy reform. It is not that violence is the aim of Antifa but that many of Antifa members believe violence is a justified tool in dismantling fascism. It is not the only tool or indeed the primary one. Antifa promotes culture and art that is inclusive and anti-fascist, publicly identify people who take part in fascist events, and provides food and first aid as well as protection to larger protests.
While the ADL would prefer to use Antifa as a term solely for "those who proactively seek physical confrontations with their perceived fascist adversaries," Antifa members don’t agree. There are many people that consider themselves Antifa and non-violent, and some that, as historian Mark Bray, puts it, “argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.” In other words, Antifa believes that if more people had resisted the rise of fascism in the 1930s through violence and other direct action, they might have stopped it. Many Antifa members are focused on mutual aid projects like helping those hurt by the snowstorm in Texas. Antifa are disruptive and desire a major overhaul of the systems we live in, including ending oppression and violence. They, mostly, believe that as long as violence, or the threat of violence, is a political tool used by others, they should be able to wield it for good and to prevent more violence in the future.
The issue for a decentralized group of loosely aligned people is that anyone can call themselves Antifa and worse, anyone can use the name to discredit the mission, mischaracterize people and misinform or distract. Donald Trump and other alt-right figures have used the word Antifa to conjure up images of roving street gangs. They have tied Antifa to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests as a way to discredit, obfuscate, and reinforce racism without having to directly say things about the Black Americans that run BLM. They use Antifa as a way to distract from the Capital Riots on January 6th (the FBI recently refuted any involvement of Antifa in the riots). Local Delawareans have even had to start this facebook page in order to refute “Local neo-Nazis [who] created a fake ‘Delaware Antifa’ page.”
Regardless of whether or not you feel violence can be a justified political tool or consider destruction of property a kind of political speech, you can be take direct action to be anti-fascist and anti-racist locally in Delaware. For example, you can respond to white supremacy when you see it like Antifa and antifascists did in 2017 when they stopped a local bar from hosting a neo-Nazi band. You can look to help out non-violent local direct action groups like Food Not Bombs (Food Not Bombs is not connected to Antifa in any of their literature or public information) in their mission. To be anti-fascist and anti-racist is a requirement for a better world, but exactly how you practice it is up to you.
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