Indivisible, the progressive group of political agitators with chapters across the country, doesn’t want Americans enjoying Saturday’s Washington, D.C., parade celebrating the milestone 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. The group instead wants the spotlight firmly on their political agenda: anarchy.
Indivisible was behind the May 5 “Hands off” protests at many Tesla dealerships.
Saturday’s planned protest has a new theme, “No Kings.” It is a dog whistle that calls out Antifa, according to Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy.
“No Gods, no kings,” or sometimes, “No Gods, no masters,” are common anarchist or anti-fascist slogans, Shideler told The Federalist.
On the surface, Indivisible advertises for a peaceful protest. “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action,” the Indivisible website advises. But the name of the event calls out to Antifa, practically inviting them to attend the protests and shake things up.
Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a movement of many groups that engage in militant action against people they view as fascists.
“They have a long history of being the street muscle at protests,” Shideler said. “They are the ones who form the black blocs that are going to do the fighting with the cops and with counter protests, and their goal is to shut down people who they view as fascists.”
Indivisible people are not Antifa, Shideler said, “But they are sort of winking at the recognition that that these guys are out there and they’re going to do things that are a little bit more hardcore.”
In the Hands Off protests, Indivisible had a map of protest locations and times, many at Tesla dealerships.
“And it just so happens that some of those get firebombed by anarchists. It goes towards the interplay between the elements of the movements — between militant action and mass organizing of protests. They’re not the same people, but they move in the same ecosystem. So, on the one hand, Indivisible is not responsible for the violence, but also they can benefit from the violence because it brings attention to their cause,” Shideler said.
Shideler noted that nobody was talking about the No Kings protests until the Los Angeles riots happened. Now the planned protests are getting more attention than they would have, and Antifa groups plan to use the protests as recruiting grounds for more aggressive action.
Recruitment flyers urging protesters to break the law are being advertised online, to be printed and distributed in English and Spanish.
“When the law becomes the weapon of tyrant, we are all above the law,” the flyer claims. It calls for readers to follow the example of the “Los Angeles uprising” of “everyday people collectively dismantling police equipment, preventing ICE and the cops from enforcing Trump’s commands. In a democracy, you vote a president out. In fascism you prevent the dictator’s functionaries from carrying out his will.”
Not every Indivisible protest will devolve into a riot, Shideler said. They have a right to gather and protest. “But the militant left will find the places where it makes sense to them to take advantage of these events. And they will have a sort of symbiotic relationship where the organizers of the mass protest get media attention from the small scale violence that’s created by the anarchists and Antifa and sometimes large scale violence.”
“This is how some larger, seemingly more mainstream organizations benefit from the extreme left and their activities, because it moves the Overton Window of acceptable discussion to the left,” he said.