By design, antifa is a decentralized, left-wing movement of loosely knit “resistance” networks operating primarily in Democratic strongholds. But in recent years, antifa’s forces have become highly organized and increasingly sophisticated, with organized crime cells cropping up across the country. Part 1 of this Washington Examiner series, Antifa, Inc., will dispel the modern mythos and misconceptions surrounding antifa as well as document its rise in America, recruitment practices, and well-coordinated crimes.
“Antifa is an idea, not an organization,” former President Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee, declared on the 2020 debate stage.
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“Not a militia,” Biden insisted, amid more than 100 consecutive nights of antifa-led attacks on federal property, police precincts, and downtown businesses in Portland.
Antifa, short for antifascism, is indeed an extremist ideology, a blend of anarcho-communist beliefs opposed to adversaries and policies perceived as “fascist.” However, its left-wing teachings have incited self-identified members to assemble, form factions, and commit crimes in the name of so-called “antifascist” activism.
As Democrats and liberal media outlets downplay the threat of antifa militancy by portraying antifa as a right-wing bogeyman, this nationwide movement is growing in numbers and evolving into high-level criminal operations.
The rise of American antifa
With origins in interwar Europe, the political phenomenon known as antifa was born out of a “red united front” against Nazi Germany’s regime. In 1932, the German Communist Party established a new paramilitary unit, Antifaschistische Aktion, “Antifascist Action,” to serve as foot soldiers in this fight.
Today, antifa activists tout a modernized black-and-red version of Antifascist Action’s insignia while rioting in the streets and on online platforms to affirm their allegiance to the Marxist cause. In antifa’s contemporary two-flag logo, red represents communism, and black stands for anarchy.
The advent of antifa in America, a mutation of its European predecessor, was brought about by British influence. Antifascism first found a foothold in Britain’s 1970s punk subculture scene, where antiauthoritarian and anarchist views naturally aligned. Eventually, this cultural overlap migrated to the United States and burgeoned especially on the West Coast.
But the first-known antifa offshoot actually emerged out of the Midwest with the Minneapolis Baldies, a gang of skinheads who proclaimed to “hunt down” neo-Nazis. Circa the mid-1980s, the group set up Anti-Racist Action, a precursory confederation meant to spread “bare-fisted” antifascism nationally. At the time, organizers framed the fight as “anti-racist,” believing that combating “racism” was more familiar to Americans than fighting “fascism.”
Organization and onboarding
While skeptics claim that antifa has no organizational structure, the movement is subdivided into localized chapters, some of which are allied organizations, coalescing in most major U.S. cities.
In riot-torn Portland, Rose City Antifa, formerly the ARA Portland branch, remains America’s oldest antifa chapter bearing “antifa” in its name and arguably the most influential.
Founded in 2007, RCA belongs to the national Torch Network, a spin-off of ARA, alongside 11 other chapters stationed all over America, including Antifa Sacramento, Rocky Mountain Antifa, Pacific Northwest Antifascist Workers Collective, and Atlanta Antifascists.
The Minneapolis Police Department deemed Torch Network the “most radical” of antifa cohorts, “responsible for accreditation and recognition of national antifa chapters.”
RCA’s followers, like other cell members, are systematically taught violent street-level strategies to “destroy the enemy” or “bash the fash.”
“Practice things like eye-gouging,” RCA cadets are told, according to a hidden-camera Project Veritas video of the recruitment process. “It takes very little pressure to injure someone’s eyes.”
Project Veritas also once embedded at The Base, a New York City anarchist center teaching hand-to-hand combat. In these sessions, “fight instructors” coach antifa activists to “basically cut off both arteries.”
In 2019, investigative journalist Andy Ngo was brutally beaten, pelted with projectiles, and left hospitalized with a brain bleed by RCA militants on the streets of Portland. He has since successfully sued the RCA over his injuries in Ngo v. Rose City Antifa.
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Ngo said the RCA and other Portland-area antifa cells have quieted down compared to newly forged antifa networks.
“I think they are afraid of being prosecuted with federal conspiracy charges,” Ngo told the Washington Examiner, “and they are feeling demoralized after several of their militants were exposed in my civil trial and other criminal trials that have led to convictions.”
RCA’s inner workings were shrouded in secrecy until an undercover Project Veritas operative, codenamed “Lion,” infiltrated the antifa chapter and was conditionally approved to join on a probationary basis. In 2017, cell leadership sent Lion a welcome email blocking out a six-month onboarding process and curriculum.
Prospects are only allowed to enlist upon completion of this vetting program and the unanimous consent of current RCA members, as stipulated in the instructions. Full-fledged RCA members, as part of the Torch Network, must pledge to uphold the “Points of Unity,” aka vows to disrupt “fascist” activity, not cooperate with the criminal justice system, oppose “oppression,” and act in solidarity with others outside of the network who have similar aims, such as Black Lives Matter.
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Lion’s classes consisted of PowerPoint presentations such as “Intro to Firearms,” lessons on the history of militant antifascism, and an instructional course for performing reconnaissance, among other lectures outlined in the syllabus, such as seminars exploring how class, gender, and race relate to “the struggle against fascism.” Lion also learned about doxing, an intimidation tactic that entails publicly posting a victim’s private or identifying information, such as their home address.
As one of Lion’s initial tasks, RCA had instructed him to install a medley of computer applications used to bypass digital surveillance and maintain anonymity, including VeraCrypt, an encryption software; Tor, which enables access to anonymous browsing; and Tails, an operating system aimed at “preserving privacy.” RCA currently issues communications on an “anti-colonial” server “built by and for anarchists.”
Lion’s training took place at a feminist Portland bookstore called In Other Words.
“Community centers” and bookstores stocked with left-wing literature have historically functioned as fronts for antifa training. Slingshot Collective, a radical-left newspaper, advertises all such spaces, broken down by U.S. state, under its “radical contacts” list.
One of Slingshot’s co-ops, Firestorm Cafe and Books, a shop in liberal Asheville, North Carolina, is regarded as a regional antifa hub. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook is proudly displayed in Firestorm’s storefront. Its “Community Calendar” is filled with anarchist-oriented events, such as a book club dedicated to abolishing prisons and whose members include “incarcerated comrades.”
In 2019, concerned Asheville residents reportedly spoke out at a Council of Independent Business Owners meeting, accusing Firestorm of ushering in vagrancy through its syringe-exchange initiative as a means of reversing “gentrification.”
“It’s no accident, in my opinion, that you’ve got a bookstore fronting for an act of anarchy executed through the needle exchange program,” city employee John Miall said at the meeting.
Not-so-clandestine indoctrination efforts
Many of antifa’s indoctrination materials intended to radicalize and train recruits are publicly available “resources” published online.
CrimethInc, a leftist propaganda site, circulates a pamphlet popular among antifa activists called “Why We Break Windows: The Effectiveness of Political Vandalism.” The think piece, free to print as a PDF file, teaches that window-smashing is an act of protest against capitalism, classism, and racial inequality, shattering “the social construct of property rights.”
For “further reading,” the CrimethInc handout recommends follow-up reference material from friendly media outlets, including Time magazine’s “In Defense of Rioting” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Targeted Property Destruction,” a tribute to the writings of a biweekly Seattle-based anarchist gazette.
It’s Going Down, an antifa-aligned organization, is another revolutionary-left digital platform hosting columns such as “This Week in Fascism,” a weekly roundup of doxes and calls-to-action, as well as first-person anonymous accounts of property destruction.
The Anarchist Cookbook, a do-it-yourself guide for manufacturing homemade explosives, is also widely disseminated in far-left quarters. Its “recipes,” mostly gleaned from U.S. military and special forces manuals, include detailed instructions for making Molotov cocktails or incendiary devices, improvised weaponry, and tear gas. Firestorm sells an “action-oriented” rendition of the 160-page Anarchist Cookbook, similar to other copycat works marketed as sequels.
Operational playbook
Antifa’s prescribed uniform, universally worn while rioting, is an ensemble of “black bloc” and riot gear: all-black clothing such as ski masks helps conceal identities from law enforcement detection, paired with gas masks, body armor, and tactical shields to protect against police’s mob-dispersal measures.
During the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement uprisings in Los Angeles, antifa rioters allegedly used handheld radios to coordinate movement and evade capture, forcing hourslong standoffs with police. Hurling commercial-grade fireworks, bricks, glass bottles, and other projectiles at police is a typical antifa tactic, as is vandalizing government property, all to exhaust city resources. Antifa activists have also formed human blockades to trap police personnel inside precincts that they then set on fire.
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Calls-to-action, dubbed “direct actions” in antifa circles, are often posted on social media to get the word out about planned nights of rioting, typically staged outside police stations or in public parks ahead of smash-and-grabs targeting nearby small businesses.
Seattle’s Cal Anderson Park, near where antifa activists created the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the summer of 2020, is still a common staging ground for antifa activities.
CHAZ, later renamed the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, was a six-block commune erected at the corners of Cal Anderson Park and fortified by stolen police barricades. A militia-style security detail guarded the encampment at the behest of Seattle Antifascists. Many rifle-wielding activists appeared wearing patches of the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club, an antifascist “community defense” gun group named after a radical pre-Civil War abolitionist.
In addition to armed security, antifa activists frequently employ the help of ad hoc “mutual aid” allies, who supply material support ranging from food to weapons to bail money.
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In George Floyd-era Portland, Riot Ribs was a pop-up kitchen cooking hot meals for rioters. The Equitable Workers Offering Kommunity Support, a team of volunteer “street medics,” treated riot-related injuries. PDX Shieldsmiths provided makeshift shields to be used alternatively as bludgeons. PDX Hydration Station distributed batons and umbrellas for assaulting police and blocking on-scene footage, respectively. PDX Community Jail Support camped outside the Portland Police Bureau’s central precinct to offer riot arrestees legal assistance upon release from pretrial detention.
To fund these activities, antifa activists generally rake in grassroots funding through payment processors such as Venmo and CashApp. Of the most profitable and more formalized fundraising campaigns, the Portland General Defense Committee’s GoFundMe page had amassed more than $1.39 million at the peak of the 2020 George Floyd riots. The massive windfall went toward bailing out rioters, covering legal expenses, and paying for transitional housing, seemingly to streamline catch-and-release.