Oh, no! It's Antifa!

The protests over the killing of George Floyd continue across the country.  In some cities, widespread rioting and looting have occurred.

One of these cities was Sacramento, where the losses have been estimated at $10 million.  City officials have been quoted as saying that “outside agitators” were to blame.  Arrest records demonstrate otherwise, with the majority of those taken into custody being locals.

The vague catchall “outside agitators” has a familiar ring.  It came up in the South during the Civil Rights Movement as organizers worked to build solidarity against Jim Crow.  It came up again during the antiwar protests of the 1960s.  (I once visited a military museum where the narrative for its Vietnam War exhibit solemnly informed us that the demonstrations were provoked by agitators in the pay of the Soviets and Red Chinese.)  Now we are hearing it in the context of this week’s uprisings.

The agitators in this case are reputed by sundry sources to be the mysterious and menacing “Antifa.”  Conservative media for the past several years have conjured the specter of a frighteningly monolithic force of exceptionally well-organized fanatics poised to strike at the American heartland. 

The references have been sporadic until now.  The Tweeter-in-Chief, needing to be on the cusp of whatever flight of fancy has seized the “base” at any given moment, messaged that he would issue an executive order designating Antifa as a terrorist organization, an authority he does not possess, although reality has never stopped him from such sweeping proclamations.

Coming back to the situation in Sacramento, local news outlets reported yesterday that some residents in the suburbs had called law enforcement reporting suspicious activity they thought was protest-related.  Posters on social media platforms such as NextDoor stoked anxieties cautioning residents to be on the lookout for phenomena such as stacked rocks or bricks, individuals carrying water bottles filled with “a non-water substance,” and (my personal favorite) antifa who “like to dress up like wannabe ninjas, all black and face masks and usually carrying a backpack.”

The fears mostly proved unfounded, with only a few scattered street corner demonstrations.  People in those communities were probably more at risk from “patriots” who like to dress up like wannabe soldiers, all camouflage and all too often brandishing firearms. 

All of this begs the question of what is everyone from the White House to Fox News to suburbanites so worked up about.  Let’s keep our feet firmly planted on terra firma, shall we?

Firstly, antifa is short for “anti-fascist.”  Aren’t we supposed to be against fascism?  Nothing wrong there ideologically.

The next important thing to keep in mind is that hierarchical organization is antithetical to the antifa movement.  Antifa groups span a wide political spectrum, though they have certain shared values such as opposition to capitalism and discrimination.  Much of antifa activity appears to consist of information sharing and ad hoc confrontations with far-right agitators, such as those at the 2017 Unite the Right rally.  Many of them dress in dark colors as an expression of solidarity, and the masks afford protection from being identified as targets for retaliation.   

Antifa isn’t even a new movement.  I remember talk of antifa when I was an undergrad thirty years ago though I never knew anyone involved.  It has gained prominence since the 2016 election in large part because the far-right has become emboldened by a Trump presidency.

The relative tolerance for the far-right among white suburban Republicans is because it says things they agree with but are inhibited from expressing themselves on account of the thin veneer of civility remaining in the national discourse.  Consider some of the reasons the suburbs emerged.  Folks certainly wanted to escape the crowding of big cities, but just as importantly they didn’t want share their neighborhoods with people of color.  Redlining and restrictive covenants kept out any upwardly mobile African Americans and Latinos.

Even after these racist practices were outlawed decades ago, income inequality has kept suburbia predominately white.  However, slow as progress has been, acceptance of a multicultural society is growing.  Antifa’s perceived threat to people living outside the urban core, then, is purely symbolic.  It openly stands up to white suburbanites’ last best hope for preserving their way of life without getting their own hands dirty, whether that takes the form of President Trump’s dog whistle rhetoric or the overt militancy of neo-Nazis and Klansmen.  This is even more true of genuine mass movements like Black Lives Matter which may actually lead to dismantling the repressive structures people of color have confronted throughout the nation’s history.

But you needn’t worry for now, dear suburbanite.  Antifa isn’t interested in suburbia.  They aren’t coming for your tract houses and SUVs.  Not today, anyhow. Nor are they coming for your tacky strip malls, big box stores, and megachurches.  Don’t lose sleep over the fate of Walmart or Chick-fil-A for the time being, or that of your kids’ Little League games and your backyard barbecues.  This is a long-run struggle over hearts and minds, of how we define ourselves as a society.  You may wish it away, but a reckoning will be upon all of us soon enough.  It’s a question of being part of the problem or the solution.

© 2020 The Unassuming Scholar