A funder of high-level antifa operations that some media outlets have heralded as an undisputed antifa “expert” is asserting on airwaves, without any journalistic pushback, that antifa is not an organization.

Numerous news outlets are embracing the assertions of Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, a 304-page guide widely regarded as “a how-to for would-be activists.”

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Last week, for example, Bray told The Intercept, which cited him as a “historian,” that antifa is “a broad politics, not a specific organization.”

Appearing in a viral Reuters video, Bray sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump officially designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Doing so, Bray warned, would “demonize the Left writ large” by giving the government the ability to label any political opponent as antifa.

A domestic terrorism designation specifically against antifa “could conceivably allow the administration to target anyone on the Left, anyone who dissents, anyone who protests,” Bray claimed.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, itself accused of endorsing terrorism, Bray disputed that antifa activity is well-funded as part of sprawling operations.

“Speaking of ‘antifa’ in the singular is misleading and plays into Trump’s efforts to repress the Left,” said Bray. “He is trying to promote the common right-wing conspiracy theory that there are shadowy financiers like George Soros playing puppet master behind everything the Left does.”

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“The reality is that antifa groups do not have large budgets at all, and what they have is basically crowdsourced or generated from members themselves,” Bray added. “It’s mostly for bail, really.”

But by Bray’s own admission, antifa is highly organized, with a funding arm providing material support for hundreds of members across the globe.

In the introduction of his handbook, Bray mentions that the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund, which bails out arrested antifa militants, is made up of over 300 organizers from 18 countries. The fund, in its 10th year of operation, is a project of Antifa International, an antifascist collective working to recruit followers and establish chapters around the world.

Bray himself is a financial backer of this transnational antifa bail fund. According to a disclaimer in his handbook, “at the very least,” 50% of proceeds from Bray’s book are funneled to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund.

Over the past year, Antifa International intervened in the criminal cases of antifascists from Finland, France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. “This was money well-spent,” according to the fund’s annual report. “No fewer than 15 of the anti-fascists whose lawyers we helped pay for since June 2024 walked away from criminal trials with not guilty verdicts or having their charges thrown out altogether!”

Antifa International has also helped out the heavily armed antifa cell accused of ambushing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas. Following the coordinated attack earlier this year, the international antifa cohort contributed $5,000 to the cell’s legal defense fund in an act of “solidarity.”

More than a dozen suspected members of the Texas antifa cell are facing a slew of federal and state charges, including terrorism, organized crime, and attempted murder, for their alleged involvement in the Independence Day ambush, which left a local officer shot in the neck.

The anti-ICE attack was mentioned at a White House press briefing on Monday, among a string of violent crimes that antifa radicals have committed in recent years, such as the detonation of a shrapnel-filled bomb outside Alabama GOP Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in February 2024.

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Bray, despite antifa’s documented history of firebombing government facilities, continued to downplay the movement’s threat during his latest media circuit.

“We think of terrorism as being Al-Qaeda, blowing up buildings, killing people,” Bray told Reuters. “The greatest form of violence that self-identified antifa in the U.S. has engaged in is basically fistfights.”

While underplaying antifa’s militant tactics, Bray openly advocates for far-left violence. In 2017, Dartmouth College issued a statement disavowing Bray, then a history lecturer at the university, over his “unabashed” support of revolutionary-left militancy.

Bray, currently an assistant professor teaching history at Rutgers University, describes his book in the opening pages as an “unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of anti-fascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the resurgent Far Right.”

Antifa is intended to serve as a “hopefully useful reference” and “promote organizing against fascism,” reads Bray’s preface. “I hope Antifa will aid and inspire those who will take up the fight against fascism in the years to come so that someday there will be no need for this book.”

For example, in a chapter on street-level strategies, Bray’s book teaches that antifa activists should preemptively attack perceived “fascist” enemies. “[A]nti-fascists don’t wait for a fascist threat to become violent before acting to shut it down, physically if necessary,” Bray wrote.

Though he is far from an impartial analyst, Bray has become a sought-after commentator on antifa since the publication of his handbook in 2017. Major media outlets, ranging from the New York Times to NBC, have featured him in print pieces and primetime TV hits, often relying on his perspective to explain or contextualize events involving antifa.

“For Al Jazeera or any other news outlet to have Mark Bray on to discuss antifa in a neutral manner is akin to having David Duke in his pomp on to give a neutral overview of the KKK,” said researcher Dr. Eoin Lenihan.

Lenihan, a scholar monitoring online extremism, conducted the largest-ever study of how antifa accounts have methodically used social media to organize boots on the ground. Based on social networking analytics and interaction metrics, Lenihan’s peer-reviewed paper identified Bray as one of antifa’s foremost influential thought leaders.

Bray mobilizes support for antifa on social media, all while attempting to obfuscate its organizing power in the public eye, Lenihan told the Washington Examiner. Lenihan said Bray’s hyperactivity is part of the movement’s strategy to diffuse anger after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and to save antifa from being labeled a terrorist organization. Authorities said the suspect accused of shooting Kirk had carved anti-fascist messages onto bullets intended for his conservative victim.

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According to Lenihan, antifa launders favorable narratives through uninformed or sympathetic media to muddy the waters around discussions about whether antifa is simply an idea. In response to Trump’s clampdown on radical-left violence, outlets are once again scrambling for authoritative voices on antifa and turning to self-proclaimed experts on the subject, sometimes courting antifa propagandists or apologists, either deliberately or unknowingly

Such is the case with news networks now seeking Bray’s opinion on Trump moving to declare antifa a domestic terrorist threat, Lenihan told the Washington Examiner.

Lenihan attributed Bray’s regular appearances in the press to general ignorance of his credentials, or lack thereof, and deep connections to antifa.

“Obviously, if Bray is invited to comment by major news outlets in full knowledge of his antifa background, then this conscious act of spreading disinformation about an extremist group is a profound betrayal of public trust that requires immediate attention,” Lenihan said. “Equally, ignorance of who he is, and what his relationship to antifa is, is also unacceptable.”

A quick Google search for an “antifa expert” or something similar likely yielded his handbook presented as a scholarly assessment of antifascism, Lenihan explained. Bookers inviting him to appear on their programs based on that alone is patently negligent, Lenihan argued, but is the most charitable explanation of why he is being peddled as an expert. It is possible, continued Lenihan, that journalists in search of a specialist see that Bray provided commentary on another well-known news site and accordingly decide, despite the reputational risk, that they are at least in good company alongside Al Jazeera and Reuters.

“This, obviously, is also of grave concern as it reduces journalism to a copy-paste exercise in which a lie or misrepresentation, once published, can spread throughout the national and international news ecosystem and become accepted narrative,” Lenihan noted. “Bray and his antifa-aligned friends in the media couldn’t hope for a better outcome.”

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Lenihan urged reporters to do their due diligence in separating antifa activists, posing as academics, from actual experts capable of balanced commentary about the group before welcoming them on air, as it is the obligation of any reputable news source to vet their guests and contributors thoroughly in advance.

The Washington Examiner contacted Bray for comment.