*(2) Antifa anarchist-Communist group was created by the Comintern in the 1920s**(3) The Rise of the Violent Left - Peter Beinart **(4) Noam Chomsky: Antifa is a 'major gift to the Right'**(5) Washington Post: "Start Throwing Rocks" at Racists**(6) WaPo encourages Violence against White Nationalists**(7) Petition asks Trump to designate Antifa a Terrorist organization**(8) Charlottesville caused by Left & Right Identity Politics - Gilad Atzmon**(9) Next Steps to Fight White Supremacy**(10) Leftists Smash Christopher Columbus Monument**(11) Christopher Columbus statue smashed in Baltimore**(12) Occupy Oakland infiltrated, 'hijacked' by violence**(13) Germany shuts down Antifa-related website responsible for G-20 summit violence**(14) German authorities have banned the most influential internet website of Antifa**(15) Germany shuts Indymedia site for inciting G20 violence - NYT*


 *(1) Antifa was created by the Comintern, now composed of Trots & Anarchists*- Peter Myers, August 28, 1017Antifa are the same people who have been doing the World Economic Forum & other Globalist events for many years. They recently did the G20 in Hamburg.Antifa was a Communist front group created by a the CominternThey are now Trots and Anarchists.In the last ten years, they've taken to wearing masks, and black clothing (eg Copenhagen Black Block). Partly to hide their identities (some may be academics, teachers, public servants).The core is Trotskyist; Trots always exclude the nationalists. But Occupy Wall Street was different - it was set up by Anarchists (Kaile Lasn), and allowed the nationalists to participate in a common cause.Antifa excludes the nationalists, showing its Trotskyist pedigree.*(2) Antifa anarchist-Communist group was created by the Comintern in the 1920s***http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2282816-the-communist-origins-of-the-antifa-extremist-group/The Communist Origins of the Antifa Extremist Group Group promoted communist dictatorship in Germany on Soviet Union's behalf, and labelled all ideologies other than communism as 'fascism'By Joshua PhilippEpoch Times|August 18, 2017 AT 1:20 PM Last Updated: August 18, 2017 7:23 pm{photo} German members of Antifa, a Soviet front group that carried out violence and intimidation, give clenched fist salutes on Sept. 1, 1928. (Fox Photos/Getty Images) {end}The extremist anarchist-communist group Antifa has been in the headlines because of violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yet, while the organization has been applauded by some left-leaning news outlets for including white nationalists and neo-Nazis in its list of targets, the organization wasn’t always about targeting “fascism,” as it claims.The organization was initially part of the Soviet Union’s front operations to bring about communist dictatorship in Germany, and it worked to label all rival forms of government as “fascist.”The organization can be traced to the*“united front” of the Soviet Union’s third Communist International,* held at the World Congress in Moscow in July 1921, according to the *German booklet “80 Years of Anti-Fascist Action”* by Bernd Langer, published by the Association for the Promotion of Anti-Fascist Culture. Langer is a former member of the Autonome Antifa, formerly Germany’s largest Antifa organization, which was shut down in 2004.The Soviet Union was among the world’s most violent dictatorships, killing an estimated 20 million people, according to “The Black Book of Communism,” published by Harvard University Press. The Soviet regime is second only to the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong, which killed an estimated 65 million people.The idea of the united front strategy was to *bring together left-wing organizations in order to incite communist revolution*. The Soviets believed that following Russia’s revolution, communism would next spread to Germany, since Germany had the second-largest communist party, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany).It was at the fourth World Congress of the Comintern in 1922 that the plan took shape. Moscow formed the slogan “To the Masses” for its united front strategy, and sought to join the various communist and workers’ parties of Germany under a single ideological banner that it controlled.“The ‘unified front’ thus did not mean an equal cooperation between different organizations, but the dominance of the workers’ movement by the communists,” Langer writes.Benito Mussolini, a Marxist and Socialist who had been expelled from Italy’s Socialist Party in 1914 for his support for World War I, later founded the fascist movement as his own political party. He took power through his “march on Rome” in October 1922.In Germany, Adolf Hitler formed the Nazi Party in 1920 and mounted a coup attempt in 1923. The KPD decided to use the banner of anti-fascism to form a movement. Langer notes, though, that to the KPD, the ideas of “fascism” and “anti-fascism” were “undifferentiated,” and the term “fascism” served merely as rhetoric meant to support their aggressive opposition.Both the communist and fascist systems were based in collectivism and state-planned economies. Both also proposed systems where the individual is heavily controlled by a powerful state, and both were responsible for large-scale atrocities and genocide.The 2016 annual report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence service, notes the same point: From the viewpoint of the “left-wing extremist,” the label of “fascism” pushed by Antifa is often not actual fascism, but merely a label they assign to “capitalism.”While the leftist extremists launch attacks on other groups claiming they’re fighting “fascism,” the report states the term fascism has a double meaning under their extreme-left ideology, indicating the “fight against the capitalist system.”This held true from the beginning, according to Langer. For the communists in Germany, “anti-fascism” merely meant “anti-capitalism.” He notes the labels merely served as “battle concepts” under a “political vocabulary.”A member of the Antifa extremist group vandalizes a storefront in Nantes, France, on Feb. 14, 2014. (FRANK PERRY/AFP/Getty Images) A member of the Antifa extremist group vandalizes a storefront in Nantes, France, on Feb. 14, 2014. (FRANK PERRY/AFP/Getty Images) A description of Antifa in the BfV report notes that the organization still holds this same basic definition of capitalism as being “fascism.”“They argue that the capitalist state produces fascism, or at least tolerates it. Therefore, anti-fascism is directed not only against actual or supposed right-wing extremists, but also always against the state and its representatives, in particular members of the security authorities,” it states.Langer notes that historically, by labeling the anti-capitalist interests of the communist movement as “anti-fascism,” the KPD was able to use this rhetoric to label all other political parties as fascist. Langer states, “According to this, the other parties opposed to the KPD were fascist, especially the SPD [Social Democratic Party of Germany].”Thus, in what would today be considered ironic, the group that the communist “anti-fascists” most heavily targeted under their new label of “fascism” was the social democrats.On Aug. 23, 1923, the Politburo of the Communist Party of Russia held a secret meeting, and according to Langer, “All the important officials spoke out for an armed insurrection in Germany.”The KPD was at the front of this call, launching a movement under the banner of “United Front Action” and branding its armed “anti-fascist” wing under the name Antifaschistische Aktion (“Antifascist Action”), which it still carries in Germany and from which the Antifa organizations in other countries are rooted.At this time, Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) had begun to emerge on the world stage. In late 1923, Hitler launched his failed coup in Munich, emulating Mussolini.The Nazi Party employed a similar group for political violence and intimidation, called the “brownshirts.”Antifaschistische Aktion, meanwhile, began to attract some members who opposed the arrival of actual fascism in Germany, and who did not subscribe to—or were potentially unaware of—the organization’s ties to the Soviet Union.However, the violence instigated by Antifaschistische Aktion largely had an opposite effect. The ongoing tactics of violence and intimidation of all rival systems under the KPD’s Antifa movement, along with its violent ideology, drove many people toward fascism.“The Communists’ violent revolutionary rhetoric, promising the destruction of capitalism and the creation of a Soviet Germany, terrified the country’s middle class, who knew only too well what had happened to their counterparts in Russia after 1918,” writes Richard J. Evans in “The Third Reich in Power.”“Appalled at the failure of the government to solve the crisis, and frightened into desperation by the rise of the Communists,” he states, “they began to leave the squabbling little factions of the conventional political right and gravitate towards the Nazis instead.”Langer notes that from the beginning, the KPD was a member of the Communist Comintern, and “within a few years, it became a Stalinist party,” both ideologically and logistically. He states that it even became “financially dependent on the Moscow headquarters.”Leaders of the KPD, with Antifa as their on-the-ground movement for violence and intimidation of rival political parties, fell under the command of the Soviet apparatus. Many KPD leaders would later become leaders in the communist German Democratic Republic, including of its infamous Ministry for State Security, the Stasi.As Langer states, “anti-fascism is a strategy rather than an ideology.”“It was brought into play in Germany in the 1920s by the KPD,” not as a legitimate movement against the fascism that would later arise in Germany, he writes, but instead “as an anti-capitalist concept of struggle.”Christian Watjen contributed to this report.*(3) The Rise of the Violent Left - Peter Beinart *https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/The Rise of the Violent LeftAntifa’s activists say they’re battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead?Peter BeinartSeptember 2017 IssueSince 1907, portland, oregon, has hosted an annual Rose Festival. Since 2007, the festival had included a parade down 82nd Avenue. Since 2013, the Republican Party of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, had taken part. This April, all of that changed.In the days leading up to the planned parade, a group called the Direct Action Alliance declared, “Fascists plan to march through the streets,” and warned, “Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.” The alliance said it didn’t object to the Multnomah GOP itself, but to “fascists” who planned to infiltrate its ranks. Yet it also *denounced marchers with “Trump flags” and “red maga hats”* who could “normalize support for an orange man who bragged about sexually harassing women and who is waging a war of hate, racism and prejudice.” A second group, Oregon Students Empowered, created a Facebook page called “Shut down fascism! No nazis in Portland!”Next, the parade’s organizers received an anonymous email warning that if “Trump supporters” and others who promote “hateful rhetoric” marched, “we will have two hundred or more people rush into the parade … and drag and push those people out.” When *Portland police said they lacked the resources* to provide adequate security, the *organizers canceled the parade*. It was a sign of things to come.For progressives, Donald Trump is not just another Republican president. Seventy-six percent of Democrats, according to a Suffolk poll from last September, consider him a racist. Last March, according to a YouGov survey, 71 percent of Democrats agreed that his campaign contained “fascist undertones.” All of which raises a question that is likely to bedevil progressives for years to come: If you believe the president of the United States is leading a racist, fascist movement that threatens the rights, if not the lives, of vulnerable minorities, how far are you willing to go to stop it?In Washington, D.C., the response to that question centers on how members of Congress can oppose Trump’s agenda, on how Democrats can retake the House of Representatives, and on how and when to push for impeachment. But in the country at large, some militant leftists are offering a very different answer. On Inauguration Day, a masked activist punched the white-supremacist leader Richard Spencer. In February, protesters violently disrupted UC Berkeley’s plans to host a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart.com editor. In March, protesters pushed and shoved the controversial conservative political scientist Charles Murray when he spoke at Middlebury College, in Vermont.As far-flung as these incidents were, they have something crucial in common. Like the organizations that opposed the Multnomah County Republican Party’s participation in the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade, these activists appear to be linked to a movement called “antifa,” which is short for antifascist or Anti-Fascist Action. The movement’s secrecy makes definitively cataloging its activities difficult, but this much is certain: Antifa’s power is growing. And how the rest of the activist left responds will help define its moral character in the Trump age.*Antifa traces its roots to the 1920s and ’30s, when militant leftists battled fascists* in the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. When fascism withered after World War II, antifa did too. But in the ’70s and ’80s, *neo-Nazi skinheads began to infiltrate Britain’s punk scene.* After the Berlin Wall fell, neo-Nazism also gained prominence in Germany. In response, a cadre of young leftists, including many *anarchists and punk fans, revived* the tradition of *street-level antifascism.***In the late ’80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began following suit, though they initially called their groups *Anti-Racist *Action, on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than fascism. According to Mark Bray, the author of the forthcoming Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, these activists toured with popular alternative bands in the ’90s, trying to ensure that neo-Nazis did not recruit their fans. In 2002, they disrupted a speech by the head of the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group in Pennsylvania; 25 people were arrested in the resulting brawl.*Antifa’s violent tactics* have elicited *substantial support from the mainstream left.***By the 2000s, as the internet facilitated more transatlantic dialogue, some American activists had adopted the name antifa. But even on the militant left, the movement didn’t occupy the spotlight. To most left-wing activists during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, deregulated global capitalism seemed like a greater threat than fascism.Trump has changed that. For antifa, the result has been explosive growth. According to NYC Antifa, the group’s Twitter following nearly quadrupled in the first three weeks of January alone. (By summer, it exceeded 15,000.) Trump’s rise has also bred a new sympathy for antifa among some on the mainstream left. “Suddenly,” noted the antifa-aligned journal It’s Going Down, “anarchists and antifa, who have been demonized and sidelined by the wider Left have been hearing from liberals and Leftists, ‘you’ve been right all along.’ ” An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trumpism fascist” is to realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious responses in this political moment.”Those responses sometimes spill blood. Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.Such tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left. When the masked antifa activist was filmed assaulting Spencer on Inauguration Day, another piece in The Nation described his punch as an act of “kinetic beauty.” Slate ran an approving article about a humorous piano ballad that glorified the assault. Twitter was inundated with viral versions of the video set to different songs, prompting the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau to tweet, “I don’t care how many different songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I’ll laugh at every one.”The violence is not directed only at avowed racists like Spencer: In June of last year, demonstrators—at least some of whom were associated with antifa—punched and threw eggs at people exiting a Trump rally in San Jose, California. An article in It’s Going Down celebrated the “righteous beatings.”Antifascists call such actions defensive. *Hate speech against vulnerable minorities, they argue, leads to violence* against vulnerable minorities. But Trump supporters and white nationalists see *antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble*, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacramento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counterdemonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed.A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the university canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public safety,” white nationalists announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was wearing a baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Suddenly, Trump supporters had a viral video of their own. A far-right crowdfunding site soon raised more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging, fueled by cheerleaders on both sides. As James Anderson, an editor at It’s Going Down, told Vice, “This shit is fun.”Portland offers perhaps the clearest glimpse of where all of this can lead. The Pacific Northwest has long attracted white supremacists, who have seen it as a haven from America’s multiracial East and South. In 1857, Oregon (then a federal territory) banned African Americans from living there. By the 1920s, it boasted the highest Ku Klux Klan membership rate of any state.In 1988, neo-Nazis in Portland killed an Ethiopian immigrant with a baseball bat. Shortly thereafter, notes Alex Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University and the author of Against the Fascist Creep, anti-Nazi skinheads formed a chapter of Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Before long, the city also had an Anti-Racist Action group.Now, in the Trump era, Portland has become a bastion of antifascist militancy. *Masked protesters smashed store windows* during multiday demonstrations following Trump’s election. In early April, antifa *activists threw smoke bombs* into a “Rally for Trump and Freedom” in the Portland suburb of Vancouver, Washington. A local paper said the ensuing melee resembled a mosh pit.When antifascists forced the cancellation of the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade, Trump supporters responded with a “March for Free Speech.” Among those who attended was Jeremy Christian, a burly ex-con draped in an American flag, who uttered racial slurs and made Nazi salutes. A few weeks later, on May 25, a man believed to be Christian was filmed calling antifa “a bunch of punk bitches.”The next day, Christian boarded a light-rail train and began yelling that “colored people” were ruining the city. He fixed his attention on two teenage girls, one African American and the other wearing a hijab, and told them “to go back to Saudi Arabia” or “kill themselves.” As the girls retreated to the back of the train, three men interposed themselves between Christian and his targets. “Please,” one said, “get off this train.” Christian stabbed all three. One bled to death on the train. One was declared dead at a local hospital. One survived.The cycle continued. Nine days after the attack, on June 4, Trump supporters hosted another Portland rally, this one featuring Chapman, who had gained fame with his assault on the antifascist in Berkeley. Antifa activists threw bricks until the police dispersed them with stun grenades and tear gas.What’s eroding in Portland is the quality Max Weber considered essential to a functioning state: a monopoly on legitimate violence. As members of a largely anarchist movement, antifascists don’t want the government to stop white supremacists from gathering. They want to do so themselves, rendering the government impotent. With help from other left-wing activists, they’re already having some success at disrupting government. Demonstrators have interrupted so many city-council meetings that in February, the council met behind locked doors. In February and March, activists protesting police violence and the city’s investments in the Dakota Access Pipeline hounded Mayor Ted Wheeler so persistently at his home that he took refuge in a hotel. The fateful email to parade organizers warned, “*The police cannot stop us from shutting down roads*.”All of this fuels the fears of Trump supporters, who suspect that *liberal bastions are refusing to protect their right to free speech. *Joey Gibson, a Trump supporter who organized the June 4 Portland rally, told me that his “biggest pet peeve is when mayors have police stand down … They don’t want conservatives to be coming together and speaking.” To provide security at the rally, Gibson brought in a far-right militia called the Oath Keepers. In late June, James Buchal, the chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, announced that it too would use militia members for security, because “volunteers don’t feel safe on the streets of Portland.”Antifa believes it is pursuing the opposite of authoritarianism. Many of its activists oppose the very notion of a centralized state. But in the name of protecting the vulnerable, antifascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assemble and which may not. That authority rests on no democratic foundation. Unlike the politicians they revile, the men and women of antifa cannot be voted out of office. Generally, they don’t even disclose their names.Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like never before. As the president derides and subverts liberal-democratic norms, progressives face a choice. They can recommit to the rules of fair play, and try to limit the president’s corrosive effect, though they will often fail. Or they can, in revulsion or fear or righteous rage, try to deny racists and Trump supporters their political rights. From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland, the latter approach is on the rise, especially among young people.Revulsion, fear, and rage are understandable. But one thing is clear. The people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Portland may consider themselves fierce opponents of the authoritarianism growing on the American right. In truth, however, they are its unlikeliest allies.*(4) Noam Chomsky: Antifa is a 'major gift to the Right'***http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/noam-chomsky-antifa-is-a-major-gift-to-the-right/article/2631786Thursday, August 17, 2017by Steven Nelson | Aug 17, 2017, 12:00 AMThe left-wing "Antifa" movement is rising in prominence after clashing with white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., but one progressive scholar says the anti-fascists feed the fire they seek to extinguish."As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its*(5) Washington Post: "Start Throwing Rocks" at Racists*http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/267584/washington-post-start-throwing-rocks-daniel-greenfieldWASHINGTON POST: "START THROWING ROCKS"**August 15, 2017Daniel GreenfieldThis comes after the Washington Post ran a piece glamorizing left-wing thugs. Now Jeff Bezos' social justice tabloid continues hitting new lows in its war against civil society.Today's entry is a cutesy Black Nationalist piece by Nathan D. B. Connolly, a History professor at Johns Hopkins who writes "about racism, capitalism, politics". Even though Connolly is on sabbatical, Hopkins' The Hub decided to promote his rant. It's also on the AP wire.I'm not going to waste a lot of time taking it apart as I might have in some other context. It's the usual Black Nationalist bundle of revisionist history combined with "insights" about the evils of capitalism. And the failure of a liberal society to achieve his prefered objectives.The whole thing is built around a "rock, paper, scissors" framing metaphor. But the metaphor is an obvious dog whistle.The title is, "Charlottesville showed that liberalism can't defeat white supremacy. Only direct action can."The conclusion is, "Segregationists have again assumed their pedestals in the Justice Department, the White House and many other American temples. Paper alone won't drive them out. Start throwing rocks."There's enough plausible deniability that Connonlly can pretend that the "rocks" are a metaphor. Except no one is really that stupid."Resistance, be it forceful or clandestine, threatened or explicit, stands as our "rock." Rocks can look like armed self-defense or nonviolent direct-action campaigns.""Then, in April 1968, amid a flurry of other "rocks," riots shook American cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It took that rolling unrest, not the promise of further economic growth, to spur President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to action. Within a week they had passed the Fair Housing Act."The "rock" is a metaphor for, among other things, violence. That's the same game the political arms of terrorist groups play.Enough.We have the Washington Post running an editorial calling for street violence.That's a crime. We have very specific laws about inciting violence. It's time that they were applied.The left has shown that it will not control its extremists. Instead it champions them. Conservatives have three options.1. Back street violence in return. Which effectively moves us toward a civil war and dissolution of civil society.2. Ignoring the violence and letting the left get away with it.3. Legal sanctions against those engaging in violence and those behind the violenceDoor number 3 is scary. But numbers 1 and 2 are not viable options unless we want to wreck the country.I don't believe any court will hold the Washington Post accountable for this, but it would send a forceful message that there is a price to pay for inciting violence.*(6) WaPo encourages Violence against White Nationalists***http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267586/arrest-editor-washington-post-daniel-greenfieldARREST THE EDITOR OF THE WASHINGTON POSTInciting violent riots should have consequences.August 16, 2017Daniel GreenfieldDaniel Greenfield, a *Shillman Journalism* Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.Marty Baron lives in a $1.7 million condo in Logan Circle. It’s seven blocks away from the headquarters of the Washington Post. And a 12 minute drive away from the FBI’s J Edgar Hoover Building.Arrest him.His paper’s latest contribution to wrecking this country is an *editorial titled "Charlottesville *showed that liberalism can't defeat white supremacy. Only direct action can."It concludes with, “*Start throwing rocks*.""Resistance, be it forceful or clandestine, threatened or explicit, stands as our 'rock.' Rocks can look like armed self-defense or nonviolent direct-action campaigns," N.D. B. Connolly, a history professor at Johns Hopkins who specializes in racism writes."In April 1968, amid a flurry of other 'rocks,' riots shook American cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It took that rolling unrest, not the promise of further economic growth, to spur President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to action."*Incitement to riot is a crime.* And it’s about time that the Washington Post along with other media outlets was *held accountable for the violence that is tearing apart our cities and our campuses.***Free speech covers a multitude of ugly expressions. But as Brandenburg v. Ohio established, it doesn’t cover speech "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" if it is “likely to incite or produce such action.”Running an editorial in one of the most powerful papers in the country that concludes with, “Start throwing rocks" meets both tests. Even when it’s masked in metaphors and disguised with dog whistles.The Post’s writers and editors should know that better than anyone.Vox’s Emmett Rensin, an editor at a spinoff site founded by a former Postie, had tweeted ,"Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot." Vox suspended Rensin because “direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity.” Except at the Washington Post where encouragement of riots is just another day at the office.But it’s not okay. It is, as ex-Postie Ezra Klein pointed out, illegal. And there should be consequences. Even for wealthy and powerful media insiders living in historic Logan Circle townhouses.During President Trump’s inauguration, the Antifa violence that the Post celebrated and celebrates hit close to home with a limo being set on fire outside its headquarters. But the left-wing activists at the paper don’t appear to have been dissuaded by the fire outside. Nor has Marty Baron taken stock of just how close to the violence he lives. History suggests that radical left-wing violence doesn’t stop where its rich lefty patrons think that it should. Instead of taking stock, Baron’s paper celebrated the rioters.Shortly before the Commie-Nazi riot in Charlottesville, Baron’s paper ran an article that excused and justified the behavior of the left-wing rioters to the point that it was almost indistinguishable from their own propaganda. The thugs are described as a “community.” While only one of their victims is mentioned, the Washington Post found it necessary to list the menus of their potluck meals.Radical chic has its priorities.“What the court documents call ‘malicious’ and ‘violent’ acts, the anarchists see as a necessary way to draw attention to poverty, racism, educational inequality and other problems,” one paragraph read.DisruptJ20, the radical Soros funded hate group celebrated by the Post, is under Justice Department investigation. Hundreds of left-wing thugs associated with illegal and violent protests have been indicted on rioting charges.But the Washington Post let one of the left-wing thugs have the final word to make a recruitment pitch.“The main principles of anarchism is solidarity and the importance of solidarity within society,” Petrohilos said. “So I think it’s incredibly important that people are showing up for each other when we are seeing the harshest state repression in a generation.”Celebrating leftist thuggery is nothing new for the left-wing press. And the Washington Post has made no secret of its sympathies for the thugs before. Its ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness” rebranding positioned it as the voice of the “resistance.” And it didn’t limit that to non-violent protests either.When Senator Claire McCaskill condemned the inauguration riots that the Washington Post would later celebrate, it was another Post reporter who defended them.“Nothing is more unAmerican than protesters who are not peaceful. Disgusting,” McCaskill tweeted.“The participants in the Boston Tea Party would likely beg to differ,” Wesley Lowery retorted.Lowery covers “law enforcement” and “justice” for the Washington Post. One of his recent Post articles claims that black people are buying guns to protect themselves in the “age of Trump”. He fantasizes about a world where "Native Americans had halted the advance of whites at the Mississippi".Post people also have a habit of getting really close to the violence. Washington Post video reporter Dalton Bennett made headlines when he was thrown down by riot police during an Antifa march. On Twitter, Bennett admitted to visiting the DisruptJ20 site under DOJ investigation. His social media feed is full of the rhetoric that you would expect from one of the left-wing activists rather than a reporter.But the distinction between activist and advocate, between journalist and thug, is swiftly being erased. And the Washington Post is at the forefront of that erasure in the name of its own power and profit.Washington D.C. is a big government city. And Trump’s victory was the biggest threat to its usual way of doing things since Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. And the Post rose to the challenge. As it churned out “scoops” powered by dubious anonymous sources, its numbers rose.The Washington Post claimed a traffic increase of 50% at the end of last year with a 75% increase in new subscribers. It hit $100 million in digital revenues and added hundreds of thousands of digital subscribers. It's a huge change from a few years ago when the paper was losing $50 million a year.But holding out the endless promise of Watergate isn’t enough for many left-wing readers who want “direct action.” They want to throw rocks. And so the Post has sympathetic puff pieces about violent anarchists and barely coded incitement to violence to satisfy their uglier impulses.The frisson of radical violence isn’t new. Reporters have gushed over the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. Not to mention Lenin, Castro and Che. But unless we want to revisit the full terror of the riots that destroyed cities and plunged the country into despair, there must be consequences.And those consequences should not only be suffered by innocent bystanders who have rocks hurled at them, who are punched in the head or showered with broken glass by left-wing thugs because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.It’s the funders and inciters of the violence who must be held accountable. Those consequences must resonate even in a pricey townhouse in Logan Circle or in George Soros’ Bedford Hills estate.We cannot go on living in a country in which powerful elites are free to destabilize democracy for their own power and profit while blaming everyone else for the destruction that they unleash.Arresting the editor of the Washington Post will send a message that there are limits to the abuses that the democratic institutions of this country will tolerate from the undemocratic institutions of the radical left. It’s time to show those who would destroy our country that our laws are more than paper.Our nation is not, as the Post’s editorial dismissively mocks it, mere “paper.” It is the parchment of our founding documents, but it is also the stone of our great buildings, the bronze of our statues, the steel of our industries, the blood of those who died fighting for our freedom against thugs like these, and our determination that our nation will not fall to stone throwing thugs and their propagandists.Arrest the editor of the Washington Post. And send a message that rocks will not break us.*(7) Petition asks Trump to designate Antifa a Terrorist organization*http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-petition-asks-trump-to-formally-recognize-antifa-as-terrorist-organization/article/2632024White House petition asks Trump to formally recognize Antifa as terrorist organization**by Daniel Chaitin | Aug 18, 2017, 9:02 PMA new White House petition this week is calling on the Trump administration to formally recognize the Antifa movement as a terrorist organization."AntiFa has earned this title due to its violent actions in multiple cities and their influence in the killings of multiple police officers throughout the United States," the petition, started Thursday, states.Antifa is short for anti-fascists, and the people involved are generally extreme leftists known for their face-offs with right-wing activists, including recently in Berkeley, Calif. Antifa counter-protesters made an appearance in Charlottesville, Va. this past weekend and clashed with white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.Though he didn't use the term "Antifa," President Trump, who has been under fire for not taking a dedicated hardline stance against the white supremacy gathering, did express concern over the violent actions of the "alt-left" in Charlottesville."What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any assemblage of guilt?" Trump told reporters at Trump Tower on Tuesday. "What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. That was a horrible, horrible day."Trump added that there was "blame on both sides.""Terrorism is defined as 'the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims,'" an individual with the account name M.A. says in the petition."It is time for the pentagon to be consistent in its actions – and just as they rightfully declared ISIS a terror group, they must declare AntiFa a terror group – on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety," M.A. says.The petition only had 1,259 signatures as of press time. There is a 100,000 benchmark within 30 days after which the White House is compelled to reply.Similar petitions have taken aim at other advocacy groups since Trump took over the White House in January, but none had really taken off, including one demanding that Black Lives Matter be dubbed a terrorist group.*(8) Charlottesville caused by Left & Right Identity Politics - Gilad Atzmon***http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2017/8/15/being-in-virginia-in-timeCharlottesville and the Problem of Left & Right Identity Politics in AmericaAUGUST 16, 2017 BY 21WIREBeing in Virginia in Time . By Gilad AtzmonIn my recent book Being in Time – a Post Political Manifesto, I pointed out that the West and America in particular have been led into a disastrous Identity (ID) clash. This week in Virginia we saw a glimpse of it.In the book I argue that the transition from traditional Left ideology into New Left politics can be understood as the aggressive advocacy of sectarian and divisive ideologies. While the old Left made an effort to unite us all: gays, blacks, Jews or Whites into a political struggle against capital, the New Left has managed to divide us into ID sectors. We are trained to speak ‘as a…’: ‘as a Jew,’ ‘as a black,’ ‘as a Lesbian.’ The new left has taught us to identify with our biology, with our gender, sex orientation and our skin colour, as long as it isn’t ‘White’ of course.In Being in Time, I noted that it was question of time before White people would also decide to identify with their biology. And this is exactly what we saw in Virginia last weekend.Tragically, ID politics is a vey dangerous political game. It is designed to pull people apart. It is there to introduce conflict and division. I*D politics doesn’t offer a harmonious vision* of society as a whole. Quite the opposite, it *leads to an increasingly fractured social reality*. Take, for instance, the continuous evolution of the LGBT group. It is constantly expanding to include more and more sectarian sexually oriented social subgroupings (LGBTQ, LGBTQAI and even LGBTQIAP ).In the New Left social reality, we, the people are shoved into ID ghettos that are defined by our biology: skin colour, sexual orientation, the Jewish mother, etc.Instead of what we need to do: fight together against big money, the bankers, the megacorporations, we fight each other, we learn to hate each other. We even drive our cars over each other.I am opposed to all forms of ID politics, whether it is White, Black, Jewish, Gender or sex oriented. But, obviously if Jews, Gays and others are entitled to identify with their ‘biology’, white people are entitled to do the same. I think that universalism is what we used to call it when we still cared about intellectual integrity.The problem created by ID politics is extremely grave.ID politics doesn’t offer a prospect of peace and harmony. Within the context of ID politics, we cannot envisage a peaceful resolution of the current ID clash. Can anyone foresee the LGBT community embracing KKK activists into their notion of ‘diverse society?’ The same can be said about the KKK, are they going to open their gates to cultural Marxists?*ID politics equals ID clash, an irreconcilable conflict with no end*, the complete destruction of American and, to a certain extent, Western civilisation.  This may explain why George Soros and his open society are invested in this battle. As long as the working people are fighting each other, no one bothers to challenge the root cause of our current dystopia, namely the banks, global capitalism, wall street, Mammonism and so on.The remedy is clear. America and the West must, at once, *break away from all forms of ID politics*. Instead of celebrating that which separates us, we must seek what unites and makes us into one people.  I am advocating a radical spiritual, ideological and metaphysical transition. Whether or not we like to admit it, these moments of unity are often invoked by waves of patriotism, nationalism and religious figures. But they could also be inspired by the spirit of justice, equality compassion and love.  Neither the New Left or the Alt Right offers any of the above. They are equally invested in Identitarian ideologies. The electoral success of Trump, Corbyn and even Sanders or Le Pen points at a general human fatigue.  Readiness for change is in the air.The Identitarian Shift & the Primacy of the Symptom(Being in Time - a Post Political Manifesto  pg. 49)ID politics manifests itself as a set of group identification strategies. It subdues the ‘I’ in favour of symbolic identifiers: the ring on the appropriate ear, the nose stud, the type of skullcap, the colour of the scarf and so on.Within the ID political cosmos, newly emerging ‘tribes’ (gays, lesbians, Jews, Blacks, Whites,vegans, etc.) are marched into the desert, led towards an appealing ‘promised land’, where the primacy of the symptom (gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, skin colour etc.) is supposed to evolve into a world in itself. But this liberal utopia is in practice a sectarian and segregated amalgam of ghettos that are blind to each other. It has nothing in common with the promised universal, inclusive cosmos.*‘The personal is political,’* as the common feminists and liberal preachers have disseminated since the 1960s, is a phrase designed to disguise the obvious; the personal is actually the antithesis of the political. It is, in fact, the disparity between the personal and the political that makes humanism into an evolving exchange known as history. Within the Identitarian discourse, the so-called ‘personal’ replaces true and genuine individualism with phony group identification – it suppresses all sense of authenticity, rootedness and belonging, in favour of a symbolism and imaginary collectivism that is supported by rituals and empty soundbites.Why are we willing to subject ourselves to politics based on biology, and who wrote this new theology found in pamphlets and in the growing numbers of ID Studies textbooks? Is there a contemporaneous God? And who created the ‘pillar of cloud’ we are all to follow?It is clear that elements within the *New Left, together with Jewish progressives and liberal intelligentsia*, have been *at the heart* of the formation of the ideological foundation*of ID politics*. At least traditionally, both Jewish liberals and the Left were associated with opposition to any form of exclusive political agenda based on biology or ethnicity. Yet, one may wonder why does the New Left espouse such an exclusivist, sectarian and biologically driven agenda?*(9) Next Steps to Fight White Supremacy***This turned up in my inbox - Peter M.https://popularresistance.org/newsletter-success-against-racists/Success Against Racists, Build On ItBy Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.orgAugust 20th, 2017Last week, we wrote about the events in Charlottesville, Virginia in terms of their historical and political context. Since then, the national and international response to right wing mobilization has been rapid and powerful. The response has been global, e.g. women in Poland held photos of slain Heather Heyer while they blocked a far right wing march. The national conversation is changing to include criticism of white supremacy and confederate statues are being taken down.This week, we present a greater focus on the tasks of the movement for social justice and racial equality. It is possible to halt the rise of right wing extremism. To do that we must understand *what institutions maintain white supremacy* and turn our energy towards *ending racist institutions in the United States and globally.***There are signs that the right wing violence in Charlottesville last weekend may mark a turning point in the United States. Until Charlottesville, right wing white supremacist nationalists had been escalating their mobilizations. The “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville was the largest gathering of white supremacists in the United States in at least a decade. The Virginia Defender reports that “500 fascists gathered at Emancipation Park. Many came prepared for battle, with helmets, shields, body padding and visible weapons, including guns.” Events of the weekend showed that despite corporate media reports this was hardly a rally, it was two days of intentional violence directed towards blacks and anti-racists. And it failed.Rather than being intimidating, the open right wing violence galvanized people to rise up against it. The day after the Unite the Right event, the lead organizer, Jason Kessler, attempted to hold a press conference. He was forced to stop and leave the area as hundreds of locals chanted “shame.” That night, more than 700 solidarity events were held with Charlottesville from coast to coast. Hundreds of people rallied outside the White House and marched against white supremacy in Washington, DC on Monday night.Then, confederate statues, like the ones at the center of the protests in Charlottesville, began to come down.The first was inDurham, North Carolina where activists took it upon themselves to remove a statue dedicated to confederate soldiers. Baltimore activists planned to follow suit the next day with the announcement of a “Do It Like Durham” rally at the site of a statue of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson where they had erected a statue of ‘Madre Luz’ a few days before. However, the Lee/Jackson statue and three others were removed by the city government overnight. And by week’s end, the Maryland state government removed a statue of Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision which found slaves were property with no human rights, from the state house grounds. Other states are considering removal of their confederate monuments.The underlying issue is not the confederate statues, but what they represent – glorification of those who actively upheld *racist institutions that codified in law* the treatment of human beings as property and the rise of white supremacists. As Lee Camp explains in his latest episode of Redacted Tonight, confederate symbols were largely abandoned after the Civil War and came back in opposition to the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. The memorials were used to show opposition to ending Jim Crow and creating equal rights for African Americans.On Wednesday night, thousands participated in a candlelight vigil on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to denounce hate. On Friday, the Durham County government closed offices and sent employees home over concern about a possible white supremacist march that afternoon. Instead of fleeing, hundreds of people showed up in downtown Durham to march against the white supremacists, and when none showed up, the marchers celebrated with dancing in the streets. The next day in Boston, Massachusetts, tens of thousands of people marched to surround a so-called “Free Speech” Rally, also organized by white supremacists, although they tried to portray themselves differently. Only about a dozen people attended the rally, and they ended early because of the presence of the counter protesters. Some of those planning to participate in the rally decided not to attend out of fear of large counter protests.Henry Giroux writes in Truth Dig that the response to right wing terror this week was appropriate and essential:“As the historian Timothy Snyder has observed, it is crucial to remember that the success of authoritarian regimes in Germany and other places succeeded, in part, because they were not stopped in the early stages of their development. The growing call for illiberal democracies (code for authoritarian regimes) first begins with the popularization and normalization of hate and bigotry, which we have witnessed under the Trump regime, and then morphs into right-wing groups developing their own militias, organs of violence and paramilitary forces.”The movement for social justice and racial equality succeeded this week because it stood up to and diminished the power of white supremacists. This is a first critical but not sufficient step.Next Steps to Fight White Supremacy**Giroux goes further and ties the rise of right wing ideology to Trump and the failure of democracy under neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism undermines the basic social safety net required by societies and fuels wealth inequality, which creates insecurity and an opening for authoritarianism.Ajamu Baraka reminds us that the rise of right wing authoritarianism has been going on for the past four decades in the United States. He explains that it was the Obama administration’s use of extreme right wing elements in the Ukraine to overthrow their government that gave greater legitimacy to the extreme right in the European Union and the US. Baraka urges us to understand the greater context of what is happening, that white supremacy has a global structure in institutions such as the *International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization* and others.He writes, “The structures of white power, that is the structures and institutions that provide the material base for Euro-American white supremacy and its ideological reproduction, should be the focus of radical opposition.”Can we identify structures that perpetuate white supremacy and systemic racism in our own communities?They surround us in the ongoing existence of economic discrimination, lack of equality in education, an unjust court system, mass incarceration and more.Peter Certo explains that “Most days, it’s a mundane system that pits the law against our non-white neighbors — and laws don’t need anyone to ‘feel’ racist for them to work. They can look perfectly colorblind on paper, but they’re not.” [...]SolidarityThis past week, there were also efforts to divide the anti-racist movement. Divide and conquer is a time-tested tactic for weakening movements. Perhaps you witnessed or experienced it too? For example, the *commercial media (and the President) tried to blame Anti-Fascists for violence in Charlottesville when they were actually there to counter the open and extreme violence* of white supremacists. People who identify specifically as *AntiFa played a critical role in protecting counter protesters*, such as a group of faith leaders being attacked by white supremacists, and in providing immediate medical support to injured counter protesters. [...]Lastly, though this work is a struggle, we can also bring joy into it. Janey Stephenson describes a recent anti-fascist rally in London that involved dancing and how dance is used in protests. There was dancing in Durham on Friday in celebration that no white supremacists showed up. Barbara Ehrenreich writes, in Dancing in the Streets, that “Physical movement — a powerful escalation of typical protest chanting — not only releases emotion, it also creates bonding, trust and equality, dissolving hierarchy and increasing a sense of community.” *We celebrate the successes this week in marginalizing white supremacists.*We will remain vigilant to prevent their rise. And we commit to working to tear down systems of oppression and build a new world that works for all of us.*(10) Leftists Smash Christopher Columbus Monument*http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/21/leftists-smash-christopher-columbus-monument/by Ian Mason21 Aug 2017021 Aug, 2017 21 Aug, 2017Leftist vandals in Baltimore, Maryland, smashed a 225-year-old “racist” monument to discoverer of the new world Christopher Columbus with a sledge hammer in the wee hours of Monday morning, posting a two minute video of themselves in the act to YouTube.As reported by local news site Baltimore Brew, the masked vandal’s video and the signs they left beside the destroyed monument were laden with the same Marxist and college “critical race theory” jargon employed recently against supposedly “offensive” memorials to Confederate war dead and military heroes. An unseen narrator of the video speaks over footage of a be-hoodied man destroying what is described as the oldest monument to Columbus in the country. As he puts it, the crime is justified because:Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial invasion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere. Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas. That Columbian wave of destruction continues on the backs of Indigenous, African-American and brown people.Both Columbus and Father of American Republic George Washington, another recent target of far-left rage against “racism” and “white supremacy,” are described as “genocidal terrorists,” defended by Republican and Democratic “misleaders.” This is all evidence of “the culture of white supremacy … [that is] at the foundation of U.S. culture,” the narrator explains.Having made his definition of white supremacy clear, the narrator then insists it “must be replaced or people will continue to suffer and the planet will continue to die.” The video ends with a litany of websites and books linked to liberals, communists, and black nationalists.*(11) Christopher Columbus statue smashed in Baltimore***http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/347341-christopher-columbus-statue-in-baltimore-smashedBY JULIA MANCHESTER - 08/21/17 11:17 AM EDTA 225-year-old monument commemorating Christopher Columbus was vandalized early Monday amid the nationwide debate on removing Confederate statues and monuments.A video posted on Monday shows the monument being smashed. It shows two unidentified people taping a sign reading "The future is racial and economic justice" on the monument. One of them then hits the monument with what appears to be sledgehammer while the other stands next to the monument holding a sign that reads "Racism: Tear it down.""Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial invasion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere. Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas," the video's narrator, who identifies himself as "Ty," says."That Columbian wave of destruction continues on the backs of Indigenous, African-American and brown people," the narrator says in the video.The Baltimore Brew originally reported the incident.This comes amid a heated debate across the country over removing Confederate monuments in the wake of the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va. The violence in Charlottesville was in part spurred by a demonstration protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.President Trump weighed in on the debate last week and defended the statues, saying they were a part of history.“They were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said during a press conference last Tuesday.“This week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”The city of Baltimore removed all four of its Confederate statues last week.*(12) Occupy Oakland infiltrated, 'hijacked' by violence***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_OaklandViolent tactics and alleged infiltration by agents provocateurs[edit] The Occupy Oakland movement has attracted particularly strong controversy for its tactics. During protests, police have confiscated knives, scissors, mace, and tear gas, as well as large corrugated metal shields from protesters.[144] Protesters have also been recorded throwing bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices, and lighting flares at police.[145] Protesters have slashed tires and invading vacant buildings during protests, and Oakland citizens have expressed concern that the protests have necessitated a large police presence which has made the rest of the city less safe.[144] Several Occupy organizers and supporters claim that various groups, including some agents provocateurs, infiltrated Occupy Oakland in order to subvert and co-opt the movement, and/or discredit it by causing disruption.[146][147]At an Occupy General Assembly on January 29, protesters expressed a *schism* in the movement, with some claiming Occupy Oakland had strayed too far from its grassroots ideologies of economic justice, and claiming*use of violence was detrimental *to the movement in general.[144] The Occupy Bay Area Jewish Contingent, another Occupy movement, has sought to distance itself from Occupy Oakland, saying it had been*"hijacked" by violence*.[148] Members of Occupy Sacramento blamed Occupy Oakland members for at least one incident of violence in their city.[145][149][...] Position on Israeli-Palestinian conflict[edit]In February 2012, Occupy Oakland suggested that Israel had "prodded" the United States into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and they overwhelmingly endorsed a proposal in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.[156][157] Individual protestors interviewed by Jewish publication Jweekly, indicated the move was aimed primarily at seeking justice for Palestine, but the move drew criticism from the pro-Israel Jewish community as well as several Jewish leaders in the Occupy movement.[148] In a separate opinion piece, Jweekly said Occupy Oakland was in danger of costing the entire Occupy movement its support from the pro-Israel Jewish community.[158]Alleged hate crimes[edit]Three Occupy Oakland members faced charges of felony robbery and hate crimes stemming from a February 22 event where they allegedly battered and robbed a woman. The unidentified 20-year-old woman was walking down Piedmont Avenue from a Wells Fargo bank when she said she overheard Occupy Oakland members calling for a riot, and the told them not to riot in her neighborhood.[159] According to the Oakland police, she was then surrounded by protesters Michael Davis, 32, Nneka Crawford, 23, and Randolph Wilkins, 24, "and battered as they yelled vulgar epithets regarding their perception of her sexual orientation"[160] before taking her wallet. The woman contacted police who arrested one of the three later that day, and the other two February 29. They were charged on March 2.[161] The charges were dropped on May 21.[162]This page was last edited on 1 July 2017, at 18:32.*(13) Germany shuts down Antifa-related website responsible for G-20 summit violence***http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/08/26/germany-shuts-down-antifa-related-website-responsible-for-g-20-summit-violenceBeth Baumann Aug 26, 2017 12:25 pmGerman authorities on Friday made an unprecedented move by shutting down an Antifa-related website that is believed to be responsible for the protests that took place during the G-20 summit last month, Fox News reported.About the websiteAccording to the Local, a German newspaper, the website is believed to be the “most influential platform for the militant left.”“The prelude to the G-20 summit in Hamburg was not the only time that violent actions and attacks on infrastructural facilities were mobilized on linksunten.indymedia,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said, the New York Times reported.The website was founded in 2008 and dubbed the “weapon of the social struggle” in Germany, the Times reported. Organizers used the website as a hub to coordinate social movements around the world.Users frequently boasted about their criminal activity and political crimes, the Local reported.About the raidPolice raided properties that belonged to the website’s management team. No one was arrested but computer equipment was seized, the Local reported.“At the moment several premises are being searched,” Interior Minister Thomas Strobl told the Local Friday morning. “This step marks a major blow against the extreme left in Germany.”Behind the G-20 SummitDuring the G-20 summit, more than 20,000 police officers were deployed and more than 400 people were arrested. De Maizière believes the website was used to stir up the militant left. He also said the website has been utilized for years to create chaos and invoke violence in Germany.According to authorities, the website provided protesters with instructions on how to create Molotv cocktails, a homemade version of a grenade.The website was also used to “legitimize violence against police officers,” something deMaizière says is unacceptable and goes against the country’s “democratic order,” the Times reported.*(14) German authorities have banned the most influential internet website of Antifa*http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/08/26/german-authorities-ban-extremist-antifa-website-over-connections-to-g20-violence.amp.html*German authorities have banned the most influential internet website of Antifa *– the country's militant left -- in the wake of violence that occured last month outside the G20 summit in Hamburg.In an unprecedented move against violent left-wing extremism, Germany’s Interior Ministry informed the owners of the left-wing site about the crackdown Friday, the Local reported.Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière claimed the website helped incite the violence in Hamburg and warned of “serious consequences” of left-wing radicalism, the New York Times reported.“The prelude to the G-20 summit in Hamburg was not the only time that violent actions and attacks on infrastructural facilities were mobilized on linksunten.indymedia,” the minister said, identifying the website.He also said the site tried to “legitimize violence against police officers,” which he described as an “expression of an attitude that tramples human dignity.”“This is absolutely unacceptable and incompatible with our liberal democratic order,” he added.According to the Local, Germany’s internal spy agency once described the website, which has operated since 2008, as “the most important platform for violent left-wing extremism in Germany. For years it has been providing a forum for people to publish first-hand reports on left-wing crimes.”The platform has been used to coordinate actions against various causes – as the site’s forum allowed people to post anonymously – and played a key role in organizing the riots in Hamburg, the report said.Local police said at the time that the militants set up street barricades, looted supermarkets, torched cars and attacked police officers with Molotov cocktails, iron rods, and slingshots.The violent clashes between the Antifa and police led to around 476 police officers being injured, while around 186 demonstrators were arrested and 225 were temporarily detained.The Interior Ministry said the website was shut down because it “goes directly against the law in both its aims and actions,” Spiegel reported.The police, meanwhile, searched the properties connected to the owners of the radical website in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. “At the moment several premises are being searched,” said Thomas Strobl, the state’s interior minister.“This step marks a major blow against the extreme left in Germany,” he added.The computers and other evidence have reportedly been seized, although no arrests in connection to the investigation have been made.Following the announced closure, the extremist website now directs visitors to a “what to do” article calling the government’s move an “authoritarian crackdown.”It also urges people to spread “revolutionary material and ideas everywhere” and come up with “alternative ways to communicate with each other and the general public in times of intensifying state censorship and control.”The Associated Press contributed to this report.*(15) Germany shuts Indymedia site for inciting G20 violence - NYT*https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/world/europe/germany-bans-far-left-antifa-website.htmlGermany, in a First, Shuts Down Left-Wing Extremist Website**By EDMUND HEAPHYAUG. 25, 2017BERLIN — An influential website linked to violence at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg last month has been ordered to shut down, in the first such move against left-wing extremists in the country, officials in Germany said Friday.Thomas de Maizière, the interior minister, said that the unrest in Hamburg, during which more than 20,000 police officers were deployed and more than 400 people arrested or detained, had been stirred up on the website and showed the “serious consequences” of left-wing extremism.“The prelude to the G-20 summit in Hamburg was not the only time that violent actions and attacks on infrastructural facilities were mobilized on linksunten.indymedia,” he said, referring to the website.The Interior Ministry said the website was the “most influential online platform for vicious left-wing extremists in Germany,” and noted that it had been used for years to spread criminal content and to incite violence.The right to demonstrate peacefully is enshrined in the Basic Law, Germany’s 1949 Constitution, but the authorities have taken action *against hate speech and incitements to violence*. In June, officers raided the homes of 36 people accused of *hateful postings on social media*. And in January 2016, the Interior Ministry ordered a ban on a right-wing website, “Altermedia Deutschland.”Linksunten.indymedia, founded in 2008, billed itself as “a weapon in the social struggle” and said it was a “decentrally organized global network of social movements.” The ministry was able to move against the website because it viewed those running it as an “association,” and under German law, those can be blocked for extremist activity. The platform was not accessible on Friday, and the ministry said that its goal was to shut the site permanently.Raids in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg were conducted in the early hours of Friday against several leading members and supporters of the website, the ministry said in a statement.In Hamburg last month, about 500 police officers and an unknown number of protesters were wounded in clashes. The ministry said that the website had referred to police officers as “pigs” and “murderers,” and had featured *instructions for creating Molotov cocktails.*A spokeswoman for the political party The Left, Ulla Jelpke, told the newspaper Die Welt that the ban was an “illegitimate act of censorship” and an “arbitrary limitation of freedom of expression and freedom of the press.”Follow Edmund Heaphy on Twitter @edmundheaphy.-- Peter Myerswebsite:http://mailstar.net/index.html