Never a boring moment in 2025. President Trump has ordered federal troops to Portland, Oregon. Their mission is to protect immigration enforcement officers (ICE) from Antifa-provoked violence. The troops will also be charged with protecting federal buildings and facilities from those who throw rocks, bricks, and flaming objects in the name of Antifa.
This has once again stirred up the debate about what Antifa is, exactly, and what it is not.
Is Antifa truly “anti-fascist”? Are Antifa like the Weather Underground? Or are they the French Resistance? Is Antifa an organization, or a mere set of ideas?
Does Antifa even exist at all?
Is Antifa a centralized organization?
No—not so far as anyone knows. Antifa is not a centralized organization with a command structure. There is no mustache-twirling, Snidely Whiplash-like character in an Antifa bunker, issuing orders to his minions throughout the country.
Antifa has no Bill Ayers, no Donald DeFreeze, no Che Guevara.
Very few violent political movements nowadays have a centralized leadership, though. A central command structure is much less essential than it used to be, prior to the Internet.
And even if a centralized leadership does exist, the head honchos seldom issue specific marching orders. Most of the ground-level actions are planned and executed by unaffiliated sympathizers who are “inspired” by a set of violent ideas. This is true at all extremes of the political spectrum.
The San Bernardino Islamic terrorists of 2015, Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, did not take their orders directly from the leadership of al-Qaeda or ISIS. They never communicated with Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
They were, rather, “inspired” by the rhetoric of such groups.
In the summer of 2015, an unemployed landscaper named Dylann Roof carried out a mass shooting in a predominantly black church in South Carolina. Dylann Roof did not act at the behest of any identifiable white supremacist group. Dylann Roof was “inspired” by violent racist rhetoric that he found online.
Does Antifa even exist at all?
Yes and no.
In one sense, there is no Antifa. There are local chapters, and numerous online groups formed under the Antifa banner. But there is no head office, no central leadership council.
There is, however, an Antifa narrative. Followers of the Antifa narrative believe that the US is a “fascist” country, and that this justifies their acts of violence against people and property.
It is therefore meaningful to use the term Antifa as shorthand to refer to those who share this narrative, and who act accordingly.
Is Antifa “anti-fascist”?
Online pro-Antifa memes often attempt to co-opt the legacy of the American soldiers, sailors, and marines who served in World War II, and who fought the actual, historical Nazis.
My grandfather was a US Navy sailor who experienced combat with the actual, historical Nazis.
He lived well into my adult life, and we had many philosophical and political discussions. I am quite confident that my grandfather would have despised the blue-haired rock and Molotov cocktail-throwing hoodlums of “Antifa”. Please don’t put him in the same category.
Most World War II veterans (and I knew many of them) were conservative in outlook. Very few World War II veterans respected the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and other far-left radical groups that were active when large numbers of World War II veterans were still alive. (The Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army also claimed to be “anti-fascist”. So this is a very old ploy.)
Declaring oneself “anti-fascist” does not put one on par with the actual, historical opponents of the actual, historical Nazis. To make such claims is a form of stolen valor.
Simply declaring oneself anything does not automatically make it so. I can declare myself to be Taylor Swift’s boyfriend. That doesn’t mean that Travis Kelce will be stepping aside anytime soon, or that Taylor Swift is even aware of my existence.
Similarly, I can declare myself to be black, female, or Chinese. People who are, in fact, black, female, or Chinese would rightly scoff at my claims.
Antifa adherents justify their violence through this collective self-deception, asserting that hoodlums who smash store windows and set buildings on fire somehow, magically, become anti-Nazi freedom fighters. (Antifa followers lack the self-awareness, of course, to grasp that the Nazis were the ones who smashed store windows and set buildings on fire in Germany in the 1930s.)
Antifa rabble-rousers also rely on hyperbole—which fools the (mostly) young and (mostly) unread Antifa foot soldiers whom you see on those riot videos. Every nation on earth reserves the right to enforce its immigration laws…And not only predominantly “white” countries. Mexico, Taiwan, Japan—they all enforce their immigration laws. The US has not become a Nazi dictatorship because we have a specific law enforcement agency (ICE) dedicated to this specific task. If the US is a Nazi dictatorship because we have ICE, then so is every other nation on earth. (The only countries that don’t enforce immigration laws are failed states, where there is little or no central governing authority.)
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I don’t know how bad things have gotten in Portland recently. But I do know that Portland was a “war zone” for months during and after the 2020 domestic disturbances. I certainly hope that no one gets hurt in the coming days—including the Antifa rock-throwers. Most of them are simply naïve and feckless. A few of them are genuine sociopaths. But none of them can claim to be “anti-fascist”, in the historical context of that word.
I’m pretty sure my grandfather, who fought the real Nazis, would have agreed.
-ET
