American Antifa

The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism

Stanislav Vysotsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429560194
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the election of President Trump and the rise in racist and white supremacist activity, the militant antifascist movement known as antifa has become increasingly active and high profile in the United States. This book analyzes the tactics, culture, and practices of the movement through a combination of social movement studies and critical criminological perspectives.

Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with activists, this book is the first scholarly sociological analysis of contemporary antifascist activism in the United States. Drawing on social movement studies, subculture studies and critical criminology, it explains antifa's membership, their ideology, strategy, tactics and use of culture as a weapon against the far right. It provides the most detailed account of this movement and also cuts through much of the mythology and common misunderstandings about it.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students in sociology, political science, anthropology, criminology, and history; however, a general audience would also be interested in the explanation of what drives antifa tactics and strategy in light of the high-profile conflicts between fascists and antifascists.

1

Introduction

It was the punch memed around the world. On January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump was ascending to the presidency of the United States and protests raged in the streets of Washington, DC, Richard Spencer, the media gadfly who coined the term “alt-right,” was filmed being punched in the face by a masked, black clad protester. The image became an instant social media sensation generating endless memes, debates about the utility and ethics of punching fascists, and public awareness of a social movement that had largely operated underground – the militant antifascist movement, or antifa. In many ways, 2017 would become the year of antifa as supremacists, emboldened by the president and his administration, began mobilizing, so did counter-protesters who sought to oppose or prevent such mobilizations. High profile clashes between “alt-right” protesters and antifa counter-protesters occurred in Berkeley, CA, Portland, OR, and, most notably, Charlottesville, VA. Here militant antifascists defended pacifist protesters from fascist violence and successfully routed a supremacist rally, only to suffer violent reprisals in the form of targeted attacks on individuals and the intentional ramming of a crowd, resulting in the death of one person and the injury of 19 more. Charlottesville left many people asking questions about antifa activism and speculating about its strategies and methods.

Antifascism is simultaneously a complex and simple political phenomenon. At its core is a basic notion, the opposition to fascism. This generates a series of more complex debates about both what constitutes fascism as well as opposition to it. In the broadest sense, antifascism can be understood as “a thought, an attitude or feeling of hostility toward fascist ideology and its propagators which may or may not be acted upon” (Copsey 2000, 4). Such a definition takes an extremely broad view that antifascism is both an “active and passive” form of opposition that can incorporate a range from individual activists and collective groups to mass media and the state. An alternative framework views antifascism through the lens of activism distinguishing between non-fascists, that is individuals and groups that simply oppose fascism from an ideological or practical consideration and/or are not open fascists, and antifascists who actively organize to oppose fascist activity and mobilizations (Renton 1998). Antifa activism lends itself much more to the latter framework than the former; however, it may be useful to make an additional distinction between non-militant and militant antifascism. While both forms of antifascism involve some type of action in response to fascist movements, militants are defined by their willingness to use confrontational means, including violence, as part of their tactical repertoire (Vysotsky 2013). The sociological analysis of militant antifascists in this book reflects a synthesis of these three perspectives. Antifa can best be understood as activists who organize direct, confrontational opposition to fascism out of a distinct ideological and/or emotional response. The dynamics of militant antifascism are therefore driven by a series of ideological, emotional, and cultural processes that explain both movement formation and tactical preferences.

Additionally, an understanding of antifa must distinguish between formal and informal militant antifascism. Informal antifascism involves ad hoc and spontaneous activities that confront immediate threats posed by fascists. Much of this activism takes place outside of the public eye in subcultures and the underground spaces that they inhabit. Formal forms of antifascism consist of the activities of groups and organizations that distinctly focus on opposition to fascist organizing. These groups have clear membership structures and guidelines and work to strategically undermine fascist organizing. These two forms of antifascist activism are not mutually exclusive. As we shall see, there is significant overlap between formal and informal antifascism in the work of antifa activists. Individuals often come to formal antifascism through informal activity, and informal forms of activism are often driven by the active proliferation of antifascist politics within subcultural spheres.

Classical analyses of social movements often focus on the way in which movements engage with state and economic actors in an attempt to influence policy changes (Fitzgerald and Rodgers 2000; Jasper 2010). The “grand theories” of social movement activity have similarly looked at the way in which such changes are driven by macro forces such as political process and access to resources. Increasingly, social movement theory focuses on micro processes such as the role of emotion, interactions, and culture in movement dynamics (Jasper 2010). However, all such theories consistently analyze movements that are petitioning state or economic actors for change. Even the literature on countermovements or, more commonly, opposing movements, often looks at movements that operate on two sides of a policy domain rather than as movements developed in direct opposition to one another (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996; Zald and Useem 1987). In this respect, analysis of antifa activism is fundamentally unique in its examination of social movement activity. Unlike most opposing movements, antifascists are exclusively oriented in opposition to another social movement, or what could be more broadly described as an ideology. In many respects, this means that antifa activism represents an almost ideal-typical version of a countermovement. Militant antifascists are focused on opposing the movement activities of fascists rather than on working to develop state policies that address such movements. Their strategies and tactics are singularly focused on subverting the activity of fascists in any form. As such they are at best skeptical of state intervention, and more often outright hostile to it. Unlike most social movements, even other radical ones, militant antifascists “do not rely on cops or courts” and “go where they go” in their resistance to fascists. This dynamic of movement resistance often takes the form of (sub)cultural work and the active policing of cultural boundaries.

The primary question regarding antifa activism in popular discourse is one of tactical choice. Why do these antifascists purposely include violent and confrontational tactics in their movement repertoire? What dynamics drive militant antifascist tactical choices? What are the purposes of this use of confrontational and violent tactics in opposing fascist organizing and mobilizations? By framing antifascism as both a subcultural and social movement phenomenon, this book seeks to expand the framework of social movement studies by analyzing its intersections with the fields of subculture studies as well as cultural and critical criminology. In order to understand these dynamics, we must first address the historical processes that led to the contemporary incarnation of American antifascism.

Antifascism in the United States: a history and overview

Historical fascism and antifascism are often viewed as a European phenomenon. The term fascism is, after all, an Italian one coined by Benito Mussolini for his nationalist movement in 1919. As fascist movements developed in Italy, Germany, and throughout Europe, anarchist, communist, and socialist activists mobilized against them (Bray 2017; Testa 2015). Leftists often understood the struggle against fascism as an existential one, and they turned to militancy as a distinct model for opposing fascist organizing. Wherever fascist movements developed, they were often met with direct confrontation and even violence as a means of destabilizing them and demobilizing their supporters (Bray 2017; Copsey 2000; Renton 2001; Testa 2015).

The history of American fascism and antifascism is much murkier than its European counterparts. The United States, like Great Britain, has not experienced a period of formal fascist government, but traditions of authoritarianism, right-wing populism, and white supremacy run deep in American history and political life (Berlet and Lyons 2000; Burley 2017; Ross 2017). Militant antifascism in the United States draws on a history unique to the American experience including radical abolitionism, resistance to the Ku Klux Klan, African American self-defense, and the growth of domestic fascist movements, as well as the experience of their European counterparts.

The historical role of slavery in the formation of white supremacy and the “racialized social system” of contemporary American society (Omi and Winant 2014; Bonilla-Silva 2018) informs part of the contemporary framework of antifascism. The abolitionist movement represents in many respects a proto-antifascist movement because it is viewed, at least in part, as opposing white supremacy through its advocacy of the end of slavery and the rights of people of African descent in the antebellum era. Because of its advocacy of moral enlightenment and legal reform, in addition to its stalwart pacifism, the abolitionist movement may be understood as an early form of “liberal” or even “state” antifascism (Bray 2017; Burley 2017; Copsey 2000). Militant antifascists look to abolitionists’ most radical factions for inspiration and especially venerate the actions of John Brown whose activism against slavery culminated in the raid of a federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) with the objective of arming and fomenting a mass rebellion against slavery. Brown symbolizes the willingness to wage “war against slavery, working closely with black people and the hope that [white anti-racists] can step outside of their color and take part in building a new human community” (Garvey et al. 1999, 1). This type of bold action to oppose white supremacy is understood by many contemporary militant antifascists as a historical antecedent to their fight against white supremacists at the core of the contemporary fascist movement.

In the wake of the Civil War, the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations of white supremacist reaction to reconstruction serve as the historical originators of organized American fascist organizations (Berlet and Lyons 2000; Bray 2017; Burley 2017; Ridgeway 1995; Ross 2017). Formed as a fraternal organization by Confederate veterans shortly after the end of the war, the Klan spread quickly throughout the South as a means of terrorizing African Americans and their allies in Reconstruction and laid the groundwork for a culture of lynching and racial violence that would in part define the Jim Crow era and nearly a century of American history. Klan activity consisted of a series of mobilizations and demobilizations that can roughly be referred to as unique eras each with its own structure, tactics, and ideology: the first Klan (1867 to early 1870s), the second Klan (1915 to mid-1920s), the third Klan (1950s–1960s), and the fourth Klan (1970s–present). The first three eras of the Klan could not be accurately described as explicitly fascist, in part because the term itself would only be coined during the group’s second era; however, the form of nationalist white supremacy that they advocated ideologically aligned with more explicitly fascist movements in Europe and the United States. The first two eras of the Klan could be described as proto-fascist, whereas the third era represents a transition phase, and contemporary fourth era formations explicitly embrace fascist and Nazi ideology and imagery (Belew 2018; Berlet and Lyons 2000; Burley 2017; Ridgeway 1995; Ross 2017). Opposition to the Klan, therefore, is a crucial pillar of American antifascist history.

Resistance to each manifestation of the Klan involved a diverse range of tactical approaches ranging from campaigns to criminalize the organization and the practice of lynching more broadly to armed self-defense by African Americans. In response to violence and intimidation by Southern whites, black self-defense organizations developed as early as the reconstruction era. Many of these organizations were based on the Union Leagues, black fraternal organizations that “became the voice and instrument of newly freed slaves” (Cobb 2014, 41), which often included armed defense of meetings and community events from racist attacks. This tradition of African American self-defense carried over into the Civil Rights movement where individuals (including Martin Luther King, Jr.) and organizations such as the Deacons for Defense and autonomous chapters of the NAACP asserted their right to armed self-defense against white racist terror (Cobb 2014; Hill 2004; R. F. Williams 1998). It is specifically this tradition of self-defense that inspired the Black Panther Party (BPP) to demonstrate publicly asserting their right to openly carry firearms in protest against police violence against the African American community and the systemic racism of American society. The BPP identified the actions of police and the white supremacist system specifically as fascism, explicitly defining their activity as a form of antifascism (Burley 2017).

While the Klan represents the most persistent fascist movement in American history, European-style fascism also made in-roads into the United States generating a vigorous antifascist response. In 1933, the Friends of New Germany was founded as an official organ of Nazi Germany in the United States. The organization operated for several years with strong support in New York and Chicago. This group formally disbanded in 1936 and its members were incorporated into the German American Bund led by Fritz Kuhn, a German immigrant who had been naturalized as a US citizen. The activities of the Bund quickly attracted the attention of antifascist activists primarily from communist and socialist parties as well as Jewish communities in the cities in which it organized. Meetings of the Bund in New York, Newark, Chicago, and Milwaukee were routinely stormed by socialist and communist opposition who violently attacked attendees (Berninger 1988; Bernstein 2014). Among the most militant opposition to the Bund were notorious Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Abner Zwillman, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, and Meyer “Mickey” Cohen who recruited their toughest and often most brutal compatriots into antifascist action against the Bund in order to protect their communities (Bernstein 2014). These men ruthlessly smashed fascist meetings and attendees in acts of intimidation designed to demobilize the American Nazi movement. The peak of the Bund, and ironically its antifascist opposition, came in 1939 when 20,000 people attended a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden in order to ostensibly celebrate George Washington’s birthday. This event featured speeches by Kuhn and his deputies on a stage decorated in red, white, and blue, an image of Washington, and banners that declared him to be America’s first fascist. While the fascists rallied inside, 100,000 protesters massed outside engaging in skirmishes with police and Bund supporters. As Kuhn delivered his address, Isadore Greenbaum stormed the stage and attacked him in an act of futile antifascist defiance. Bund guards rushed to defend their leader and began pummeling Greenbaum, “It was an uncanny replication of Nazi street thuggery, a pack of uniformed men blasting away with fists and boots on a lone Jewish victim” (Bernstein 2014, 189). Police intervened and took Greenbaum into custody, but he fought against them in what contemporary militant antifascists would term a “three-way fight” (Bray 2017; Burley 2017) against both fascists and the state. The Bund collapsed shortly after this rally when Kuhn was imprisoned after being charged with embezzlement from the organization by the state of New York and membership declined with the entry of the United States into the Second World War. The public reaction to the German American Bund demonstrated the mass appeal of antifascism and the possibility of mobilizing militant opposition.

Post-war antifascism in the United States largely manifested in the Civil Rights movement. Its most militant forms were led by African American mobilizations for armed self-defense discussed above. The largely white student movement of the New Left took inspiration from the pacifist mobilizations of the Civil Rights movement and engaged in classroom and administrative building occupations as a form of protest against racism and the Vietnam War. As students experienced repression through arrest and dead ends in negotiations with college and university administrations, they took on more militant protest tactics engaging in conflicts with police. Informed by a countercultural anti-authoritarianism and Maoist anti-imperialism, the New Left often shared an analysis of fascism that extended well beyond American populist white supremacists to condemnation of all aspects of American capitalism. For these student protesters, the entire capitalist system built on racism and imperialism represented a kind of fascism (Varon 2004). It is during this era of radical protest in the 1960s and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Fascists and antifascists: A countermovement overview
• 3. Fascist and antifascist tactics
• 4. “Sometimes anti-social, always antifascist”: Antifa culture
• 5. Fascist threat and antifascist action
• 6. The anarchy police (revisited): A critical criminology of antifa
• 7. Antifa unmasked: A sociological and criminological understanding
• Appendix – Against Methodology: Ethnography, Autoethnography, and the Intimately Familiar
• Bibliography
• Index