If you were going to pick a weekend to get on board the antifa train, I’ll say this much: This probably wasn’t the weekend to do so.
The diffuse group of loosely organized groups of privileged thugs fights “fascism” by regularly engaging in fascist tactics designed to intimidate those with whom they disagree, ranging from the Proud Boys to random bourgeois institutions.
It’s unknown how much they’ve contributed to the violence and property destruction during the riots that have transpired in the wake of George Floyd’s death, but members often travel across state lines to engage in such activities, so the amount probably isn’t insignificant.
Given that this property destruction and violence has overshadowed not just the peaceful protesters but the death of Floyd himself, there are few brands right now that have a lower trust level with the general public than antifa.
And yet, there are some people for whom the siren call of antifa is still too much to resist. One of those people is Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the Minneapolis City Council.
You may have heard of his dad — Keith Ellison, former congressman and the current attorney general of the state of Minnesota.
According to a tweet from Ellison fils, he’s decided to cast his lot with the “anti-fascist” brick-throwers who are currently being blamed for some of the violence in his home city.
This came after President Donald Trump declared antifa to be a terrorist organization:
Now, to be fair, there’s almost zero chance this actually sticks because only foreign groups can be designated terrorist organizations. Domestically, The New York Times points out, these groups are dealt with as criminal structures.
There’s also the problem of antifa’s diffuse nature; given that these are small cells of radicals, interlinked only by a set of beliefs, a willingness to use violence to achieve their ends and a tendency to call themselves some permutation of “antifa,” it’s difficult to declare them any sort of overarching organization, much less a criminal or terrorist one.
But never mind that, since Jeremiah Ellison wasn’t terribly interested in these legal niceties.
Instead, his reaction seemed to be more along the lines of: “Oh, President Trump thinks antifa’s a terrorist group? I’m in, baby!”
Dantheman