(1) Blue (progressive) America doomed like late Imperial Rome - Joel Kotkin(2) Amazon TV series depicts an America in which blacks enslave whites(3) Nancy Pelosi open to taking down statues of Washington and Jefferson(4) Israel Shamir defends China's Cultural Revolution(5) Jennifer Zeng presents a Falun Gong view of China's Cultural Revolution - Eric Walberg(6) Farrakhan: Fauci, Gates Foundation 'Want to Depopulate the Earth', using Vaccines(7) Theodore Roosevelt invited (black) Booker T. Washington to dine with him in the White House(8) Defund the Thought Police(9) Antifa derives from communist & anarchist groups of 1920s & 30s Europe(10) Antifa culture war against "heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule"(1) Blue (progressive) America doomed like late Imperial Rome - Joel Kotkinhttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/urban-blues-kotkinUrban BluesThe fashionable radicalism now popular in progressive cities will ultimately fail and, in the process, hurt working people and minorities the mostBy Joel KotkinJuly 06, 2020On the surface, progressive "Blue America" has never appeared stronger. President Donald Trump’s leadership failures exposed by the pandemic and the recent disorders, is sinking him in the polls. His rival, Joe Biden, seems likely to concede his traditionally moderate stances to placate the Democrats’ youthful activist and identitarian wings. Radical "transformation" of the United States seems to some just months away.Yet even as their political power waxes, the woke progressives are engaged in a process of blue-icide, undermining their own urban base of disadvantaged citizens and their own credibility. Such self-destructive tendencies existed even before COVID-19 and the George Floyd upheavals, in the form of crushingly high taxes, regulatory burdens, and dysfunctional schools. The failures of Trump may help progressives in 2020, but their emerging policy agenda seems destined to benefit the red states, conservatives, and, sadly, the far right, later in this decade.Over the past several years New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have lost population and San Francisco seems likely soon to join them. Meanwhile the suburbs, exurbs, and sprawling cities of the interior have continued to grow. Politically, almost all the major blue states—New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and even California—are expected to lose seats in the House in the next congressional elections, while the big Sunbelt states, notably Texas, Florida, and Arizona, will gain.The departure of the urban middle class, with even millennials now joining the exodus, has left cities such as New York increasingly divided between a predominately white and Asian, overclass and a large, and often struggling, predominantly minority population. Without the restraints that traditionally come from a politically engaged middle-class constituency pushing for moderate and necessary reform, urban politics have evolved in directions unlikely to attract desperately needed investment and higher wage jobs in the inner city.These demographic changes have left the fate of our bluest cities in the hands of radicals such as the increasingly potent Black Lives Matter movement. The blue state political and media establishment, and their allies in the corporate elite, have conceded enormous credibility to a group whose stance is explicitly radical.Thoroughgoing police reform, the key reason for the Black Lives Matter movement’s growth, is clearly needed. But BLM’s politics go beyond even support for such widely unpopular measures as defunding, or even abolishing, the police and the prison system, and endorsing reparations. The group generally favors radical socialist economics to battle what its founders see as "racial capitalism." Besides favoring federal favoritism for Black institutions, it embraces single payer health care, huge tax increases, and other leftist positions that might not appeal to blue state oligarchs. It also condemns Israel as "genocidal."Blue state leaders have been slow to recognize—or perhaps slow to acknowledge—that BLM politics are more akin to the Black Panther Party of the 1960s than the Southern Christian Leadership Council. Academic Melina Abdullah, a prominent BLM spokesperson and co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter, is an open admirer of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. She describes the protests not as a cry for reform but an "uprising" or "rebellion." In late May, Abdullah explained: "We’ve been very deliberate in saying that the violence and pain and hurt that’s experienced on a daily basis by Black folks at the hands of a repressive system should also be visited upon, to a degree, to those who think that they can just retreat to white affluence." Among the areas where rioters visited pain was LA’s traditionally Jewish Fairfax district, where stores were destroyed and synagogues were vandalized and spray-painted with slogans like "Fuck Israel." A BLM leader in New York has endorsed the armed takeover of neighborhoods, something that has already occurred, with deadly results, in painfully white and hip Seattle.The outrage after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis grew not just out of generations of mistreatment by law enforcement, but also a worsening economic situation for working class minorities in big cities. The bluest, densest urban cores were already reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation worsened both by both White House incompetence and that of top elected local officials. But the impact has, for the most part, been more intense in densely populated blue urban areas, particularly those dependent on public transit.Density is both an inevitable fact of city life and an urban planning goal supported by blue state progressives, but it also increases the chances of pandemic spread, a pattern that has been clear since at least the Roman Empire. Historian Kyle Harper, in his brilliant The Fate of Rome, notes that the "precociously urbanized" empire created cities that were "victims of the urban graveyard effect." The rise of global trade and mass immigration in Rome, as today in our great cities, boosted the capacity to transmit and incubate pathogens.Even as the country has witnessed a resurgence in recent weeks of COVID-19 cases concentrated in red states like Texas and Arizona, the preponderance of infections and fatalities have taken place in dense, often heavily minority cities. The highest rates of fatalities have occurred in the New York area, locale for roughly one-third of all deaths. But other predominantly Black cities such as Washington, D.C., Trenton, New Orleans, and Detroit also account for a disproportionate share. Even with the recent surge, fatality rates in Sunbelt states like Texas, Arizona, and California are generally about one-eighth of those in New York and New Jersey.The pandemic risks represented by density, concentrated poverty, and transit use, can explain the generally harsher blue state lockdown policies. But, whatever their motives, the economic consequences could be profound. No one seems to know how or whether high-rise offices, subways and elevators can work efficiently when people have to be 6 feet apart.Even before the coronavirus, most new jobs were being created in suburbia; the urban core accounted for only 9.9% of all job growth between 2010 and 2017. This percentage is likely to shrink as information and finance firms shift to online work. Many workers are adapting to the shift from the 60th floor to the kitchen table and a large proportion seem to prefer it to commuting to the office.The trend is likely to encourage migration to less expensive regions or, for the better paid, a search for houses in the bucolic surrounding suburbs of cities like New York or San Francisco. The real estate firm Redfin has found that up to half of all new post-pandemic telecommuters want to continue to work from home, and, after interviewing potential and present homeowners, predicts a steady movement of skilled workers to smaller cities and outer suburbs. Overall, less dense areas are now growing much faster than denser ones.Big city diehards insist that "talent" will return in large numbers to the metropolitan cores. But in reality, even in fields like professional business services and technology, employment had already been drifting away from places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to less crowded, more dispersed regions like Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, Austin, Charlotte, and Orlando. This is now likely to break down the concentrations of knowledge workers even in marquee locations like Silicon Valley. As many as 2 in 3 tech workers in the Bay Area tell surveyors they plan to leave in the near future.Tech company employees and white-collar urban professionals may be able to pick up and leave big cities, but what about the service workers, many of them immigrants and minorities, who keep the cities running? They are more vulnerable in every sense: more vulnerable to infection, and to the bad economy—roughly half of all job losses in April were in such low-paying fields as restaurants, hotels, and amusement parks. Almost 40% of those Americans making under $40,000 a year have lost their jobs as the wage gains made during the first two years of the Trump administration have largely evaporated.In the longer run, the progressive policy agenda is likely to accelerate urban feudalism, driving out middle-class families and businesses from the big cities and coasts to the country’s interior and periphery and leaving behind only the lords and peasants.Most blue city politicians profess fealty to "social justice" but inequality has become much more pronounced in bigger cities than smaller ones or suburban areas. As the middle class has largely departed, the gap between the affluent urban elites and the marginalized masses has grown. Tensions between the two have been boiling over for decades, sometimes erupting in violent protests against gentrification, precursors to the current unrest.Caught between their poor constituents and a declining middle class, progressive politicians like Minneapolis’ Jacob Frey, Seattle’s Jenny Durkan, and New York’s Bill de Blasio, have looked the other way as their cities are trashed, sometimes refusing to arrest or jail vandals. Massachusetts District Attorney Maura Healey went so far as to excuse looting as a legitimate, even revered form of protest. Elite journalists compare the ransacking of Target and Apple stores to the protests to the Boston Tea Party.This rapid reprise of what Fred Siegel labeled "the riot ideology"—unleashing violence and disorder as an intimidation tactic to achieve progressive policy goals and extract economic concessions from government agencies who just want a way to make the violence stop—has no chance of actually improving conditions in the lives of people on whose behalf, supposedly, it is carried out. The rioting of the late 1960s weakened urban economies and led to devastating losses for minority property owners and businesses. Years of protests, including several riots—most of which were also spun as "uprisings" by prominent defenders—didn’t redress the causes of the protests or slow the spread of poverty: High-poverty urban areas doubled in population between 1980 and 2018.The return of the riot ideology in Los Angeles is unlikely to improve the lives of the inner city residents who will have to live through its aftermath—on the other hand, it could help some activists’ bankrolls to get a bit fatter. Overall Black-owned business and property owners have tended to be hit most profoundly in the wake of these disturbances. South Central Los Angeles, site of two of the worst riots in American history, has experienced a growing gap with the surrounding area in terms of homeownership, income and educational attainment.Politically, "the riot ideology" today will likely again also prove a loser. As is the case with peaceful protests now, there was strong support among most Americans for the early Civil Rights Movement. But as the protests became more violent, particularly in the late ’60s and early ’70s, public support receded. This helped secure victories for right-wing candidates like Ronald Reagan, elected the year after the 1965 Watts riots and, three years later, contributed to Richard Nixon winning the presidency.Looting is not widely popular even today. In Minneapolis, we may just be seeing the first fruits of police withdrawals and a new hands-off policy toward violence and disorder. Already one factory owner, whose facility was torched, has announced plans to leave. A friend, whose medical equipment company warehouse was also burned down, also plans to shift the facility, and over 100 jobs, to another state. And that is not to mention all the ordinary people whose ability to go about their lives in peace depends on government officials and law enforcement being willing to actually enforce the law.The emergence of chaotic, radical-controlled police-free zones in Seattle demanding the abolition of prisons, free college, rent control and funding for arts certainly won’t encourage serious business investment. This week a major investment firm that handles billions of dollars, announced its departure from Seattle and plans to move into a new office in Phoenix. Even more tragically, On June 29, two teenagers were shot inside the lawless zone—the fourth shooting in a span of 10 days. One of the victims, who was 16 years old, later died in the hospital.Not surprisingly, businesses in the Seattle occupied zone have already been forced to hire private security. Nationally, truck drivers have announced their intention not to deliver to cities without organized police protection. Local police outside Seattle also claim that their cities are being targeted by organized criminal gangs who use the protests as cover for their activities.Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot worries about large retailers not rebuilding their looted stores, saying it will take a "herculean effort" to keep them in the city. Major corporations like Target can close down their Minneapolis stores but still function in thousands of other locales, notably in the suburbs and exurbs. But it’s the locally owned stores that were already more vulnerable to the pandemic and often lack the resources to cope with long lockdowns or street violence, that may be hardest to keep.Minority owned and small businesses had already absorbed the biggest hits from the pandemic. Even before the protests and rioting, the coronavirus lockdowns were hitting Black-owned business far harder than any other large ethnic group. As many as 20% or 30% of California’s restaurants, suggests the California Restaurant Association, may never reopen. Some 60%, according to the organization, are owned by people of color.The current triumph of woke ideology on campuses, in the mainstream media, Hollywood, and in the corporate suite may smell like sweet success to progressives. But in the longer run, the progressive policy agenda—draconian climate change laws, strict rent control, reductions in public safety, banning single family zoning, and the like—is likely to accelerate urban feudalism, driving out middle-class families and businesses from the big cities and coasts to the country’s interior and periphery and leaving behind only the lords and peasants.Defunding police will not improve life on the ground in big cities. At a time when cities like Los Angeles and even crime-ridden Baltimore and Chicago adopt "tough" policies about enforcing lockdowns and arresting violators, they have also returned a generation of criminals to the streets sometimes by suspending bail. Crime is up in many cities, including, San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis, all cities that have emptied jails and reduced enforcement.The biggest impact of the assault on the legitimacy of law enforcement is felt in minority communities. Diverting funds away from the police may have been seen as politically expedient,but it has not helped Baltimore—a city with a long history of police abuse—curb its astronomic murder rate. Nor is there any reason to expect that fashionable "defunding" efforts would bring down Chicago’s persistently high homicide rate, curb the rising crime rate tied to the growing homeless population in Los Angeles, or slow San Francisco’s slide toward a lawless dystopia.The return to "riot ideology" may appeal to partisan journalists, academics, athletes, and entertainers, but it will not restore the viability of blue cities, particularly their minority neighborhoods. What’s truly needed in America’s big cities is not just a return to order, but a government determined to foster the cultivation of employable skills and the better paying jobs that go with them.Certainly it is not promising that in California, post-coronavirus recovery efforts are being led by woke tech oligarchs like Apple’s Tim Cook, who has placed most of his manufacturing in China, and extreme climate activists like billionaire Tom Steyer, who will seek to double down on the draconian climate agenda helping turn the Golden State into an increasingly neofeudal society. Nor do efforts in New York to have powerful oligarchs like Bill Gates and former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt steer their future, bode well for grassroots organizations and communities already pummeled by COVID-19, the digital assault on small business and now by rioting.To succeed, cities need to be aspirational, safe and healthy. No city thrives under contagion or the constant threat of violence or infectious disease; what humbled late Imperial Rome can also be visited on New York. Against such threats, the nonstop righteous anger, and ever-expanding demands, and the relentless "virtue signaling" by the urban elites will serve only to further alienate the middle class and the political center necessary to achieve compromise and reform.Of course, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles will continue to appeal to a subset of our vast population, including highly educated young, mostly childless people. The bright lights and charmed districts will survive and even thrive. But most Americans, particularly as they age and seek to start families, may no longer look at these disordered places with admiration or even envy. Blue America may not be quite as doomed as late Imperial Rome, but unless its policy agenda moderates and starts to prioritize measures that will materially improve the lives of ordinary people, it will be following a similar path, albeit one paved with the most self-righteous intentions.Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is now out from Encounter. You can follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.(2) Amazon TV series depicts an America in which blacks enslave whiteshttps://www.dailywire.com/news/new-amazon-series-shows-blacks-enslaving-whites-you-raped-our-daughters-what-if-we-rape-yourshttps://wethepeopledaily.com/2020/06/24/amazon-tv-series-stuns-audiences-with-extreme-anti-white-violence/SATURDAY JUNE, 27TH 2020Amazon TV Series Stuns Audiences With Extreme Anti-White ViolenceNEWS June 24, 2020  Joseph CurlJeff Bezos’ Amazon is set to unveil a new series called "Cracka," which envisions an America in which white people were enslaved by black people.Director Dale Resteghini released the trailer for the series on Friday, saying it would be available for purchase on Amazon Prime and elsewhere later in 2020. The trailer shows a white man with Nazi tattoos being transported to an alternate universe in which he is made a slave by black people.The title cards read: "You took our breath away, what if we took yours? You raped our daughters, what if we raped yours? You stole our freedom, now we steal yours."Other title cards read: "A dangerous new beginning," and "Welcome to your new world." During the trailer, a song plays in the background with the words, "n***erland, n***erland.""Where I come from, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be," the main character says as the camera cuts to a "Trump 2020" bumper sticker.In the series, the white neo-Nazi "protagonist" confronts some black people in a car, but is somehow swept away to another world. When he awakens, the tables are turned, and he is brutalized by black slaveholders. White women are seen being raped by black "slaveowners," and white men are seen being lynched by their black overlords.A synopsis explains the premise. "In a world where white privilege, systematic oppression, and minority protest in order to break the chains of bondage runs regular, white supremacist Michael Stone is doing everything he can to maintain his privilege by exercising every opportunity to ensure the America he knows and loves continues to remain pure and more importantly, remain white!"The lead role of white supremacist Stone is played by Lorenzo Antonucci, who had an uncredited role in HBO’s "Game of Thrones." Other cast members include Hakeen Kae-Kazim (Hotel Rwanda), rapper Saigon, Kathryn Kates, and James Darnell."The world isn’t ready for this one !!!!" wrote Saigon in an Instagram post about the upcoming show."What if it were your ancestors?" he wrote. "I could never be racist because I treat people how I want to be treated… When U see things through the eyes of other people, sometimes the message resonates."Some questioned whether Resteghini wants to spur violence by the series."Although some people claim that the new series doesn’t glorify violence against whites the show’s creator, Dale Restighini, has emphasised that he wants his fans to cheer when the show’s antihero, a white Neo-Nazi, is brutalised by a gang of black slave owners," Sausage Roll wrote.The trailer was met with disdain on YouTube. "Repulsive and hateful. What next, revenge movies set in the modern day? Seriously, how long until an entire generation of actual racists is created? Sometimes I think that’s what they want," one viewer wrote. "Hmm yes, because this will really help to ease racial tensions, won’t it? Smart move… Not!" wrote another.(3) Nancy Pelosi open to taking down statues of Washington and Jeffersonhttps://www.theblaze.com/news/nancy-pelosi-all-for-holding-a-review-on-taking-down-statues-of-washington-and-jeffersonJUNE 25, 2020Nancy Pelosi 'all for' holding a 'review' on taking down statues of Washington and JeffersonDuring an interview Thursday with Washington Post Live, host Robert Costa asked Pelosi for her response to activists who believe "there needs to be a reckoning of some sort" for America's slave-owning Founding Fathers.Speaker Pelosi said that while she feels any monuments to Confederates should be removed without question—albeit safely—she is also in favor of talks over whether statues depicting the nation's first and third presidents should also be taken down."I'm concerned about slavery in our country. I think it's a sin," the Speaker told Costa. "I also am concerned about what happened to Native Americans in our country, so we have a list of grievances that are part of the early years of our country and we do not want that to be continued by glorifying any of the people who perpetrated those injustices."Pelosi then suggested, "Rather than tearing down and defacing (monuments), why don't we just have a review.""I'm all for it. Let's review this," she reiterated. "Why are we glorifying the sins of the past? That doesn't mean because Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or others were slaveowners that we should undermine what they did for our country."The Democrat said when it comes to Confederates, "that's a different story," then added, "But you know what, subject everything to scrutiny and make a decision."You can watch the entire interview below. The discussion on monuments honoring the Founding Fathers begins at the 07:00 mark:The speaker's comments come as the Trump administration has called up the National Guard to assist in protecting monuments in Washington, D.C., and told U.S. marshals to prepare to defend monuments nationwide from destruction following weeks of riots that have left statues toppled across America.Confederate tributes were largely the target of activists during the initial weeks of protests, but statues of Founding Fathers, other U.S. presidents, and even abolitionists have been torn down by mobs in recent days.(4) Israel Shamir defends China's Cultural RevolutionFrom: israel shamir <israel.shamir@gmail.com>Subject: Re:China's 'Cultural Revolution' cf the U.S. oneAgain a violent anti-Communist Chinese freak, Jennifer Zeng. A Christian name and a Chinese surname is usually a hallmark of these pro-Western guerillas in China, like these HongKongers. And Epoch Times is their outlet, obsessing with anti-Communism. Her explanations of Chinese Cultural Revolution are all wrong, historically and factually. The Soviets disliked it, but with hindsight, the Cultural Revolution had saved Chinese Communism. Otherwise China would follow the USSR into disintegration.(5) Jennifer Zeng presents a Falun Going view of China's Cultural Revolution - Eric WalbergFrom: Eric Walberg <walberg2002@yahoo.com>Subject: Re:China's 'Cultural Revolution' cf the U.S. onepeter, this is falung gong! very shallow. an anti-communist diatribe. > Chinese friend of mine is doing a series of TV programs > called "Walking out of cultural death". For many intellectuals, Chinese > culture has already died; and China has already died in the cultural sense.program in PRC? that would be a good sign.we still don't know: was the cultural rev all mao orchestrated?there was nothing comparable in SU. i still don't understand it.mo yan is much more insightful. Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, Arcade, 2006.(6) Farrakhan: Fauci, Gates Foundation 'Want to Depopulate the Earth', using Vaccineshttps://www.newsmax.com/us/louisfarrakhan-anthonyfauci-billgates-islam/2020/07/05/id/975758/Farrakhan: Fauci, Gates Foundation 'Want to Depopulate the Earth'By Eric Mack    |   Sunday, 05 July 2020 11:07 AMDr. Anthony Fauci and Bill and Melinda Gates are seeking to "depopulate the Earth" by pushing potential vaccines to end the global coronavirus pandemic, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said Saturday in a video that went viral online."They're making money now, plotting to give seven billion, five-hundred million people a vaccination," Farrakhan, 87, said in a July 4 speech. "Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates and Melinda — you want to depopulate the Earth. What the hell gives you that right? Who are you to sit down with your billions and talk about who can live, and who should die?"At the Nation of Islam in Chicago, Farrakhan issued anti-vaxxer messaging, saying the only way to stop the virus is to repent your sins."I say to the African presidents: Do not take their medications," he said.He is calling on his followers to come together – virologists, epidemiologists and students of biology and chemistry – for a meeting to investigate the well-funded medicine initiatives, which "vaccinate you with their history of treachery.""I say to my brothers and sisters in Africa, if they come up with a vaccine, be careful," he said. "Don't let them vaccinate you with their history of treachery through vaccines, through medication."(7) Theodore Roosevelt invited (black) Booker T. Washington to dine with him in the White Househttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-removing-theodore-roosevelt-statue-is-a-step-too-farEDITORIALRemoving Theodore Roosevelt statue is a step too farby  | June 24, 2020 12:44 AMThe decision to remove a statue of Theodore Roosevelt that has stood outside the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History for over 80 years is an inflection point in the battle over public monuments.To be sure, there are certain nuances to the statue’s removal that distinguish it from other, more ridiculous recent cases. Importantly, the decision to remove the statue was not done by an angry mob, such as the outrageous toppling of statues of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant. Instead, it was proposed by the museum and accepted by the New York City government, which owns the building. One of those supporting the statue’s removal was Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, who serves as a trustee of the museum.What’s especially complicated here is that the objection isn’t to Roosevelt himself. The statue, which has been controversial for decades, features Roosevelt mounted on a horse with an American Indian on one side and an African tribesman on the other. Roosevelt is not being canceled — in fact, when the statue is removed, the museum will rename a wing after him.All of this having been said, we believe that it is a mistake to remove the statue.Roosevelt’s prominent place in front of the museum is no accident. His father founded the museum, and he spent his life as a passionate naturalist and writer about natural history. As president, he led conservation efforts as president.Opponents of the particular statue have complained that having Roosevelt towering over the African and American Indian figures is evocative of subjugation of other races. They also point to his own jarring statements about American Indians and race.However, like many figures in history, Roosevelt is complicated. For instance, he took a lot of heat when he invited friend Booker T. Washington to dine with him in the White House — the first time such a thing had ever happened."African-Americans were invited to meet in offices," explained Deborah Davis, author of a book on the famous dinner. "They built the White House. They worked for the various presidents. But they were never, ever invited to sit down at the president's table. And when that happened, the outrage was just unbelievable."Like its subject, the history of the statue itself, which is stunning as a sheer work of art, was also complex. In a video produced by the museum about the statue controversy, Harriet F. Senie, director of art museum studies at the City College of New York, explained that sculptor James Earle Fraser did not intend for the statue to portray subjugation of supposedly inferior races."The entire group, not just Roosevelt, was intended to be heroic," Senie said. "The allegorical figures — and these are Fraser’s words — may stand for ‘Roosevelt’s friendliness to all races.’ The figures represent the continents on which he hunted, as either gun-bearers or guides or both."Even if one were to argue that the effect of the statue is different today than when it was first commissioned in 1925 and unveiled in 1940, that’s how history works. We study the past, and we try to understand both the heroic aspects and grapple with the rougher edges and earn insight into how attitudes have changed over time. There is even a "woke" argument against removing the statue because doing so erases and sanitizes uncomfortable parts of our past rather than forcing us to confront them.It's one thing to discuss the removal of Confederate statues that were intended to honor those who betrayed the United States to preserve and expand slavery. But taking down Roosevelt as the city also debates removing a Thomas Jefferson statue means that there is no conceivable endpoint in the campaign to erase the past.(8) Defund the Thought Policehttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/24/defund_the_thought_police__143523.htmlBy Charles Lipson - RCP ContributorJune 24, 2020Due process is not the strong suit of mobs. Neither is nuance, open discussion, or disagreement. These inherent defects should be painfully obvious as mobs pull down statues, seize sections of cities, and demand the public approach them on bended knee, literally. Anyone who dares push back, perhaps with a mild tweet saying "All lives matter," faces immediate censure. If the mob is successful, any offenders will lose their jobs. Feckless employers are all too eager to appease the mob and hope it turns on another target.In this perilous environment, the most frenzied voices do more than dominate the public square. They monopolize it by silencing dissent. They have received full-throated support from the tech giants that control electronic discussion and the media giants determined to shape the narrative rather than report the news. Twitter and NBC are the poster children for this assault on free and open discussion. Their suppression in the name of "social justice" betrays the idea, best articulated in John Stuart Mill’s "On Liberty," that competing, divergent views lead to greater understanding and better decisions.The idea of an open forum, so basic to democracies, already lies a-moldering in the grave of academia, at least in the humanities and social sciences. Imagine applying for a job in Gender Studies and saying you oppose abortions after, say, Week 38. The term for such a person is "unemployed." Imagine merely calling for a discussion on the pros and cons of affirmative action, taking the negative side, and hoping to win tenure in political science, sociology, anthropology, or history. Bad career move. There is more robust political debate at the Academy Awards.University administrations are equally rigid. Rejecting affirmative action, questioning the implementation of Title 9, or opposing Black Lives Matter would end your chances of being hired by the admissions office or dean of students at nearly every American university. Yet all of them proudly tout, with no sense of irony, their "office of diversity and inclusion," fully staffed and generously funded. For them, of course, diversity never includes diverse viewpoints. It’s all about DNA and gender identity. Modern universities are now well-oiled machines to stamp out dissenting views. That’s been true for decades. What’s new, and disturbing, is seeing this orthodoxy spread to K-12 education, corporate HR departments, mainline churches, and newsrooms. The "thought police" are on patrol and ever-vigilant, twirling the twin batons of guilt and moral superiority.Dissent from their approved views is not just considered an error, much less an innocent one. It is considered immoral, illegitim  ate, and unworthy of a public hearing. Although both left and right have moved steadily toward this abyss, the worst excesses today come from the left, just as they came from the right in the 1950s. Opponents are seen in religious terms, as dangerous apostates who deserve to be burned at the stake, at least symbolically. You never expect the Spanish Inquisition. Yet here it is. That is the powerful iconography behind torching police cars and neighborhood stores. [...]Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.(9) Antifa derives from communist & anarchist groups of 1920s & 30s Europehttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16104/antifa-historyA Brief History of Antifa: Part Iby Soeren KernJune 12, 2020 at 5:00 amEmpirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups.Antifa's stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then "proves" Antifa's claim that the government is "fascist."Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right. — Bettina Röhl, German journalist, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2020."Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums." — Bettina Röhl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2020.U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blamed Antifa — a militant "anti-fascist" movement — for the violence that has erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States. "The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly," he said.Barr also said that the federal government has evidence that Antifa "hijacked" legitimate protests around the country to "engage in lawlessness, violent rioting, arson, looting of businesses, and public property assaults on law enforcement officers and innocent people, and even the murder of a federal agent." Earlier, U.S. President Donald J. Trump had instructed the U.S. Justice Department to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.Academics and media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have argued that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure. Mark Bray, a vocal apologist for Antifa in America and author of the book "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," asserts that Antifa "is not an overarching organization with a chain of command."Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.In the United States, Antifa's ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century. [...]The ideological origins of Antifa can be traced back to the Soviet Union roughly a century ago. In 1921 and 1922, the Communist International (Comintern) developed the so-called united front tactic to "unify the working masses through agitation and organization" ... "at the international level and in each individual country" against "capitalism" and "fascism" — two terms that often were used interchangeably.The world's first anti-fascist group, Arditi del Popolo (People's Courageous Militia), was founded in Italy in June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, which itself was established to prevent the possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on the Italian Peninsula. Many of the group's 20,000 members, consisting of communists and anarchists, later joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).In Germany, the Communist Party of Germany established the paramilitary group Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League) in July 1924. The group was banned due to its extreme violence. Many of its 130,000 members continued their activities underground or in local successor organizations such as the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (Fighting-Alliance Against Fascism).In Slovenia, the militant anti-fascist movement TIGR was established in 1927 to oppose the Italianization of Slovene ethnic areas after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The group, which was disbanded in 1941, specialized in assassinating Italian police and military personnel.In Spain, the Communist Party established the Milicias Antifascistas Obreras y Campesinas (Antifascist Worker and Peasant Militias), which were active in the 1930s.The modern Antifa movement derives its name from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. The group was established to fight fascists, a term the party used to describe all of the other pro-capitalist political parties in Germany. The primary objective of Antifaschistische Aktion was to abolish capitalism, according to a detailed history of the group. The group, which had more than 1,500 founding members, went underground after Nazis seized power in 1933.A German-language pamphlet — "80 Years of Anti-Fascist Actions" (80 Jahre Antifaschistische Aktion)" — describes in minute detail the continuous historical thread of the Antifa movement from its ideological origins in the 1920s to the present day. The document states:"Antifascism has always fundamentally been an anti-capitalist strategy. This is why the symbol of the Antifaschistische Aktion has never lost its inspirational power.... Anti-fascism is more of a strategy than an ideology."During the post-war period, Germany's Antifa movement reappeared in various manifestations, including the radical student protest movement of the 1960s, and the leftist insurgency groups that were active throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.The Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a Marxist urban guerrilla group that carried out assassinations, bombings and kidnappings aimed at bringing revolution to West Germany, which the group characterized as a fascist holdover of the Nazi era. Over the course of three decades, the RAF murdered more than 30 people and injured over 200.After the collapse of the communist government in East Germany in 1989-90, it was discovered that the RAF had been given training, shelter, and supplies by the Stasi, the secret police of the former communist regime.John Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, described the group's tactics, which are similar to those used by Antifa today:"The goal of their terrorist campaign was to trigger an aggressive response from the government, which group members believed would spark a broader revolutionary movement."RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof explained the relationship between violent left-wing extremism and the police: "The guy in uniform is a pig, not a human being. That means we don't have to talk to him and it is wrong to talk to these people at all. And of course, you can shoot."Bettina Röhl, a German journalist and daughter of Meinhof, argues that the modern Antifa movement is a continuation of the Red Army Faction. The main difference is that, unlike the RAF, Antifa's members are afraid to reveal their identities. In a June 2020 essay published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Röhl also drew attention to the fact that Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right:"The RAF idolized the communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, North Vietnam, in Cuba, which were transfigured by the New Left as better countries on the right path to the best communism...."The flourishing left-wing radicalism in the West, which brutally strikes at the opening of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, at every G-20 summit or every year on May 1 in Berlin, has achieved the highest level of establishment in the state, not least thanks to the support by quite a few MPs from political parties, journalists and relevant experts."Compared to the RAF, the militant Antifa only lacks prominent faces. Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums. Nevertheless, MP Renate Künast (Greens) recently complained in the Bundestag that Antifa groups had not been adequately funded by the state in recent decades. She was concerned that 'NGOs and Antifa groups do not always have to struggle to raise money and can only conclude short-term employment contracts from year to year.' There was applause for this from Alliance 90 / The Greens, from the left and from SPD deputies."One may ask the question of whether Antifa is something like an official RAF, a terrorist group with money from the state under the guise of 'fighting against the right.'"Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency explains Antifa's glorification of violence:"For left-wing extremists, 'Capitalism' is interpreted as triggering wars, racism, ecological disasters, social inequality and gentrification. 'Capitalism' is therefore more than just a mere economic order. In left-wing extremist discourse, it determines the social and political form as well as the vision of a radical social and political reorganization. Whether anarchist or communist: Parliamentary democracy as a so-called bourgeois form of rule should be 'overcome' in any case."For this reason, left-wing extremists usually ignore or legitimize human rights violations in socialist or communist dictatorships or in states that they allegedly see threatened by the 'West.' To this day, both orthodox communists and autonomous activists justify, praise and celebrate the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction or foreign left-wing terrorists as alleged 'liberation movements' or even 'resistance fighters.'"Meanwhile, in Britain, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in 1985, gave birth to the Antifa movement in the United States. In Germany, the Antifaschistische Aktion-Bundesweite Organisation (AABO) was founded in 1992 to combine the efforts of smaller Antifa groups scattered around the country.In Sweden, Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA), a militant Antifa group founded in 1993, established a three-decade track record for using extreme violence against its opponents. In France, the Antifa group L'Action antifasciste, is known for its fierce opposition to the State of Israel.After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of communism in 1990, the Antifa movement opened a new front against neoliberal globalization.Attac, established in France in 1989 to promote a global tax on financial transactions, now leads the so-called alter-globalization movement, which, like the Global Justice Movement, is opposed to capitalism. In 1999, Attac was present in Seattle during violent demonstrations that led to the failure of WTO negotiations. Attac also participated in anti-capitalist demonstrations against the G7, the G20, the WTO, and the war in Iraq. Today, the association is active in 40 countries, with more than a thousand local groups and hundreds of organizations supporting the network. Attac's decentralized and non-hierarchical organizational structure appears to be the model being used by Antifa.In February 2016, the International Committee of the Fourth International advanced the political foundations of the global anti-war movement, which, like Antifa, blames capitalism and neoliberal globalism for the existence of military conflict:"The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war."In July 2017, more than 100,000 anti-globalization and Antifa protesters converged on the German city of Hamburg to protest the G20 summit. Leftist mobs laid waste to the city center. An Antifa group called "G20 Welcome to Hell" bragged about how it was able to mobilize Antifa groups from across the world:"The summit mobilizations have been precious moments of meeting and co-operation of left-wing and anti-capitalist groups and networks from all over Europe and world-wide. We have been sharing experiences and fighting together, attending international meetings, being attacked by cops supported by the military, re-organizing our forces and fighting back. Anti-globalization movement has changed, but our networks endure. We are active locally in our regions, cities, villages and forests. But we are also fighting trans-nationally."Germany's domestic security service, in an annual report, added:"Left-wing extremist structures tried to shift the public debate about the violent G20 summit protests in their favor. With the distribution of photos and reports of allegedly disproportionate police measures during the summit protests, they promoted an image of a state that denounced legitimate protests and put them down with police violence. Against such a state, they said, 'militant resistance' is not only legitimate, but also necessary."Part II of this series will examine the activities of Antifa in Germany and the United States.Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.(10) Antifa culture war against "heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule"https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16149/antifa-history-part-2A Brief History of Antifa: Part II Antifa in the United Statesby Soeren KernJune 23, 2020 at 5:00 am"The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others." — Mark Bray, "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," 2017."They're coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn't do this on their own. Somebody's paying for this.... What Antifa is doing is they're basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset." — Bernard Kerik, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department.The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.... The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism ... an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).... The group's slogan states: "This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!"Antifa in the United States is highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. Pictured: An Antifa demonstration on November 16, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that the American government would designate Antifa — a militant "anti-fascist" movement — as a terrorist organization due to the violence that erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States.The Code of Federal Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85) defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."American media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have jumped to its defense. They argue that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure.As the following report shows, Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to remove President Trump from office.Gatestone Institute has identified Antifa groups in all 50 U.S. states, with the possible exception of West Virginia. Some states, including California, Texas and Washington, appear to have dozens of sub-regional Antifa organizations.It is difficult precisely to determine the size of the Antifa movement in the United States. The so-called "Anti-Fascists of Reddit," the "premier anti-fascist community" on the social media platform Reddit, has approximately 60,000 members. The oldest Antifa group in America, the Portland, Oregon-based "Rose City Antifa," has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and 20,000 Facebook followers, not all of whom are necessarily supporters. "It's Going Down," a media platform for anarchists, anti-fascists and autonomous anti-capitalists, has 85,000 Twitter followers and 30,000 Facebook followers.Germany, which has roughly one-quarter of the population of the United States, is home to 33,000 extreme leftists, of whom 9,000 are believed to be extremely dangerous, according to the domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV). Violent left-wing agitators are predominantly male, between 21 and 24 years of age, usually unemployed, and, according to BfV, 92% still live with their parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Antifa members in the United States have a similar socio-economic profile.In America, national Antifa groups, including "Torch Antifa Network," "Refuse Fascism" and "World Can't Wait" are being financed — often generously, as shown below — by individual donors as well as by large philanthropic organizations, including the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros.To evade detection by law enforcement, Antifa groups in the United States often use encrypted social media platforms, such as Signal and Telegram Messenger, to communicate and coordinate their activities, sometimes across state lines. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.Historical Origins of American AntifaIn the United States, Antifa's ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.As in Europe, the aims and objectives of the American Antifa movement can be traced back to a single, overarching century-long ideological war against the "fascist ideals" of capitalism and Christianity, which the Antifa movement wants to replace with a "revolutionary socialist alternative."The first so-called anti-fascist group in the United States was the American League Against War and Fascism, established in 1933 by the Communist Party USA. The League, which claimed to oppose fascism in Europe, was actually dedicated to subverting and overthrowing the U.S. government.In testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1953, CPUSA leader Manning Johnson revealed that the American party had been instructed by the Communist International in the 1930s to set up the American League Against War and Fascism:"as a cover to attack our government, our social system, our leaders... used as a cover to attack our law-enforcement agencies and to build up mass hate against them... used as a cover to undermine national security... used as a cover to defend Communists, the sworn enemies of our great heritage... used as a cover for preparing millions of people ideologically and organizationally for the overthrow of the United States Government."A precursor to the modern Antifa movement was the Black Panthers, a revolutionary political organization established in October 1966 by Marxist college students in Oakland, California. The group advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government.Historian Robyn C. Spencer noted that Black Panther leaders were deeply influenced by "The United Front of the Working Class Against Fascism," a report by Georgi Dimitroff delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in July and August 1935:"By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a theoretical framework to critique the U.S. political economy. They defined fascism as 'the power of finance capital' which 'manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE CAPITAL — the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician, and the racist pig cop.'"In July 1969, the Black Panthers organized an "anti-fascist" conference called "United Front Against Fascism," attended by nearly 5,000 activists:"The Panthers hoped to create a 'national force' with a 'common revolutionary ideology and political program which answers the basic desires and needs of all people in fascist, capitalist, racist America.'"The last day of the conference was devoted to a detailed plan by the Black Panthers to decentralize police forces nationwide. Spencer wrote:"They proposed amending city charters to establish autonomous community-based police departments for every city which would be accountable to local neighborhood police control councils comprised of 15 elected community members. They launched the National Committees to Combat Fascism (NCCF), a multiracial nationwide network, to organize for community control of the police."In 1970, members of the Black Panthers created a terrorist group called the Black Liberation Army, whose stated goal was to "weaken the enemy capitalist state."BLA member Assata Shakur described the group's organizational structure, which is similar to the one used by today's Antifa movement:"The Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common leadership and chain of command. Instead there were various organizations and collectives working together out of various cities, and in some larger cities there were often several groups working independently of each other."Other ideological anchors of the modern Antifa movement in the United States include a left-wing terrorist group known as the Weather Underground Organization, the American equivalent to Germany's Red Army Faction. The Weather Underground, responsible for bombings and riots throughout the 1970s, sought to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world."Former FBI Counterterrorism Director Terry Turchie has noted the similarities between Black Lives Matter today and the Black Panther Party and Weather Underground groups of the 1960s and 1970s:"The Black Panther Party was a Marxist Maoist Leninist organization and that came from Huey Newton, one of the co-founders, who said we're standing for nothing more than the total transformation of the United States government."He went on to explain that they wanted to take the tension that already existed in black communities and exacerbate it where they can. To take those situations where there is a tinderbox and light the country on fire."Today we're seeing the third revolution and they think they can make this happen. The only thing that is different are the names of the groups."American AntifaThe roots of the modern Antifa movement in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, with the establishment of Anti-Racist Action, a network of anarchist punk rock aficionados dedicated to fist-fighting neo-Nazi skinheads.Mark Bray, author of "The Antifa Handbook," explained:"In many cases, the North American modern Antifa movement grew up as a way to defend the punk scene from the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, and the founders of the original Anti-Racist Action network in North America were anti-racist skinheads. The fascist/anti-fascist struggle was essentially a fight for control of the punk scene during the 1980s, and that was true across of much of north America and in parts of Europe in this era."There's a huge overlap between radical left politics and the punk scene, and there's a stereotype about dirty anarchists and punks, which is an oversimplification but grounded in a certain amount of truth."Anti-Racist Action was inspired by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in Britain in the late 1970s. The American group shared the British group's penchant for violently attacking political opponents. ARA was eventually renamed the Torch Network, which currently brings together nine militant Antifa groups.In November 1999, mobs of masked anarchists, predecessors to today's Antifa movement, laid waste to downtown Seattle, Washington, during violent demonstrations that disrupted a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization. The Seattle WTO protests birthed the anti-globalization movement.In April 2001, an estimated 50,000 anti-capitalists gathered in Quebec to oppose the Third Summit of the Americas, a meeting of North and South American leaders who were negotiating a deal to create a free trade area that would encompass the Western Hemisphere.In February 2003, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated against the Iraq War. After the war went ahead anyway, some parts of the so-called progressive movement became more radicalized and birthed the current Antifa movement.The Rose City Antifa (RCA), founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2007, is the oldest American group to use "Antifa" in its name. Antifa is derived from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. Antifa's logo, with two flags representing anarchism (black flag) and communism (red flag), are derived from the German Antifa movement.The American Antifa movement gained momentum in 2016, after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist, lost the Democratic Party's nomination to Hillary Clinton. Grassroots supporters of Sanders vowed to continue his "political revolution" to establish socialism in America.Meanwhile, immigration became a new flashpoint in American politics after Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to reduce illegal migration. In June 2016, protestors violently attacked supporters of Donald Trump outside a rally in San Jose, California. In January 2017, hundreds of Antifa rioters tried to disrupt President Trump's inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC.In February 2017, Antifa rioters employing so-called black bloc tactics — they wear black clothing, masks or other face-concealing items so that they cannot be identified by police — shut down a speech by Milos Yiannopoulos, a far-right activist who was slated to speak at the University of California at Berkeley, the birthplace of the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Antifa radicals claimed that Yiannopoulos was planning to "out" undocumented students at Berkeley for the purpose of having them arrested. Masked Antifa vandals armed with Molotov cocktails, bricks and a host of other makeshift weapons fought police and caused more than $100,000 in property damage.In June 2018, Republican Representative Dan Donovan of New York introduced Bill HR 6054 — "Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018" — that calls for prison sentences of up to 15 years for anyone who, while wearing a mask or disguise, "injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates" someone else who is exercising any right or privilege guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The bill remains stalled in the House of Representatives.In July 2019, Antifa radical Willem Van Spronsen attempted to firebomb the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. He was killed in a confrontation with police.That same month, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy introduced a resolution that would label Antifa a "domestic terrorist organization." The resolution stated:"Whereas members of Antifa, because they believe that free speech is equivalent to violence, have used threats of violence in the pursuit of suppressing opposing political ideologies; Whereas Antifa represents opposition to the democratic ideals of peaceful assembly and free speech for all; Whereas members of Antifa have physically assaulted journalists and other individuals during protests and riots in Berkeley, California;"Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate ... calls for the groups and organizations across the country who act under the banner of Antifa to be designated as domestic terrorist organizations.""Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who 'fight fascism' with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege," said Cassidy. "Bullies get their way until someone says no. Elected officials must have courage, not cowardice, to prevent terror."Antifa Exploits Death of George FloydAntifa radicals increasingly are using incendiary events such as the death of George Floyd in Minnesota as springboards to achieve their broader aims, one of which includes removing President Trump from office.Veteran national security correspondent Bill Gertz recently reported that the Antifa movement began planning to foment a nationwide anti-government insurgency as early as November 2019, when the U.S. presidential campaign season kicked off in earnest. Former National Security Council staff member Rich Higgins said:"Antifa's actions represent a hard break with the long tradition of a peaceful political process in the United States. Their Marxist ideology seeks not only to influence elections in the short term but to destroy the use of elections as the determining factor in political legitimacy."Antifa's goal is nothing less than fomenting revolution, civil war and silencing America's anti-communists. Their labeling of Trump supporters and patriots as Nazis and racists is standard fare for left-wing communist groups."Antifa is currently functioning as the command and control of the riots, which are themselves the overt utilization of targeted violence against targets such as stores — capitalism; monuments — history; and churches — God."Joe Myers, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official and counterinsurgency expert, added:"President Trump's election and revitalization of America are a threat to Antifa's nihilist goals. They are fomenting this violence to create havoc, despair and to target the Trump campaign for defeat in 2020. It is employing organized violence for political ends: destruction of the constitutional order."New York's top terrorism officer, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, explained why the George Floyd protests in New York City became so violent and destructive:"No. 1, before the protests began, organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police."They prepared to commit property damage and directed people who were following them that this should be done selectively and only in wealthier areas or at high-end stores run by corporate entities."And they developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be."We believe that a significant amount of people who came here from out of the area, who have come here as well as the advance preparation, having advance scouts, the use of encrypted information, having resupply routes for things such as gasoline and accelerants as well as rocks and bottles, the raising of bail, the placing of medics. Taken together, this is a strong indicator that they planned to act with disorder, property damage, violence, and violent encounters with police before the first demonstration and/or before the first arrest."In an interview with The Epoch Times, Bernard B. Kerik, former police commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said that Antifa "100 percent exploited" the George Floyd protests:"It's in 40 different states and 60 cities; it would be impossible for somebody outside of Antifa to fund this. It's a radical, leftist, socialist attempt at revolution."They're coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn't do this on their own. Somebody's paying for this."What Antifa is doing is they're basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset."After photos appeared to show protesters with military-grade communications radios and earpieces, Kerik noted: "They have to be talking to somebody at a central command center with a repeater. Where do those radios go to?"Across the country, in Bellevue, Washington, which was also hit by looting and violence, Police Chief Steve Mylett confirmed that the people responsible were organized, from out of town, and being paid:"There are groups paying these looters money to come in and they're getting paid by the broken window. This is something totally different we are dealing with that we have never seen as a profession before. We did have officers that were in different areas that were chasing these groups. When we make contact, they just disperse."Antifa FinancingThe coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.AFGJ, which describes itself as "anti-capitalist" and opposed to the principles of liberal democracy, provides "fiscal sponsorship" to groups advocating numerous foreign and domestic far-left and extreme-left causes, including eliminating the State of Israel.The Tucson, Arizona-based AFGJ, and people associated with it, have advocated for socialist and communist authoritarian regimes, including in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In the 2000s, AFGJ was involved in anti-globalization demonstrations. In the 2010s, AFGJ was a financial sponsor of the Occupy Wall Street movement.AFGJ has received substantial funding from organizations often claiming to be the mainstream of the center-left. The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the Ben & Jerry Foundation and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism, a radical left-wing organization devoted to promoting nationwide action to remove from office President Donald Trump, and all officials associated with his administration, on the grounds that they constitute a "fascist regime." The group has been present at many Antifa radical-left demonstrations, also according to Influence Watch. The group is an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).In July 2017, the RCP bragged that it took part in violent riots against the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. The RCP has argued that capitalism is synonymous with fascism and that the election of President Trump would lead the U.S. government to "bludgeon and eliminate whole groups of people."In June 2020, Refuse Fascism took advantage of the death of George Floyd to raise money for a "National Revolution Tour" evidently aimed at subverting the U.S. government. The group's slogan states: "This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!"Antifa's "Utopia"Meanwhile, in Seattle, Washington, Antifa radicals, protesters from Black Lives Matter, and members of the anti-capitalist John Brown Gun Club seized control of the East Precinct neighborhood and established a six-square-block "autonomous zone" called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, "CHAZ," recently renamed "CHOP," the Capitol Hill Organized (or Occupied) Protest. A cardboard sign at the barricades declares: "You are now leaving the USA." The group issued a list of 30 demands, including the "abolition" of the Seattle Police Department and court system."Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we're not able to get to them," said Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Several people have been wounded or killed.Christopher F. Rufo, a contributing editor of City Journal, observed:"The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone has set a dangerous precedent: armed left-wing activists have asserted their dominance of the streets and established an alternative political authority over a large section of a neighborhood. They have claimed de facto police power over thousands of residents and dozens of businesses — completely outside of the democratic process. In a matter of days, Antifa-affiliated paramilitaries have created a hardened border, established a rudimentary form of government based on principles of intersectional representation, and forcibly removed unfriendly media from the territory."The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is an occupation and taking of hostages: none of the neighborhood's residents voted for Antifa as their representative government. Rather than enforce the law, Seattle's progressive political class capitulated to the mob and will likely make massive concessions over the next few months. This will embolden the Antifa coalition — and further undermine the rule of law in American cities."Antifa in its Own WordsThe American Antifa movement's long-term objectives are identical to those of the Antifa movement in Europe: replacing capitalism with a communist utopia. Mark Bray, one of the most vocal apologists for Antifa in the United States and author of "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," explained:"The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others. This long-term goal points to the tensions that exist in defining anti-fascism, because at a certain point destroying fascism is really about promoting a revolutionary socialist alternative."Nikkita Oliver, former mayoral candidate of Seattle, Washington, added:"We need to align ourselves with the global struggle that acknowledges that the United States plays a role in racialized capitalism. Racialized capitalism is built upon patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism." [...]