The progressive left and its media comrades have struggled in recent weeks to build a friendly story for “antifa”.
It is not an easy task. These self-proclaimed “anti-fascists” (hence the name) have shown up at rallies across the country since Trump’s inauguration, assaulting police with urine bombs, beat reporters bloodied, and putting the occasional car on Fire. All of this is sort of meant to protest fascism. Or Inequality. Or capitalism. It really depends on the day.
The good news is that knowing Antifa is to despise it.
Last weekend at BerkeleyAmerica saw him at a supposed “anti-hate rally,” 13 ranks of antifa have been arrested for fiercely attacking law-abiding protesters who back the Trump administration. After a series of gang-type ambushes on the streets, some of which were caught on a spooky video, the list of suspected charges against antifa included assault with a lethal weapon and criminal assault.
Unlike Charlottesville a few weeks ago, there was no proper Nazi rally in Berkeley, just a few regular Trump supporters gathered to exercise their First Amendment rights. It was too much.
Antifa has revealed itself to be a pack of childish vandals masquerading as heroic resistance. That a crowd of predominantly white men gather in paramilitary formation, dressed in head-to-toe black, with masks and batons to protest against “fascism,” shows that this group has no sense of religion. ‘story.
That some of his assault soldiers use shields with “no hate” on them like rams shows that they have no sense of irony either. There isn’t much that favorable media coverage can do to downplay or obscure the truth about antifa, and that is anti-free speech fanaticism. Berkeley’s violence broke that barrier.
Now the political left feels exposed. Otherwise, sympathetic outlets have called for “introspection”About antifa, and even Nancy Pelosi finally felt the need to denounce the violence of the masked malcontents. But nothing that we have seen from Antifa is new.
Despite some media efforts to explain the obvious, antifa has always been entirely indefensible. It is not a political movement, it is an explosion of violence, an expression of the delusional emotionality of the progressive left. Its primary mission is not opposition to fascism, but the suppression of ideas.
Words more than anything else seem to arouse the wrath of Antifa. They don’t rally against specific policies, for example, but they will swarm, threaten and shut down conservative speakers on college campuses. Antifa claims for herself the heckler’s veto under the guise of so-called “nazi punchBut he rarely, if ever, tries to hit real Nazis.
And so this lie is exposed for what it really is: an excuse to inflict violence on any ideological opponent, at any time, for any reason. All they have to do is use the term “Nazi” to smear a conservative, and fundamental respect for the freedom and rights of others no longer applies.
We cannot allow such brutality to dictate political discourse. This is a deeply disturbing trend that extends far beyond the fringe factions of the left. Hysterical progressives have been brainwashed into believing that the speech they dislike is hate speech, that hate speech amounts to violence, and therefore violence to prevent such hate speech is justifiable .
It is not enough to oppose loud and clear, they must be silent. Antifa wants to prevent certain speeches from happening, and he will use brute force to do so. It is simply censorship imposed by threats of violence, hiding behind the facade of a courageous struggle against Trump’s creeping fascism.
In reality, antifa is the closest thing to an authoritarian political movement in this country, and its ideology is a serious threat to freedom. Any concessions on their side only encourage the radical elements to demand even more restrictions on expression. Whether these hard-line leftists either failed to read or understood, the First Amendment is all too obvious. Nonetheless, it is incumbent on the rest of us – Republicans and Democrats – to educate the antifa about the non-negotiable place of free speech in America.
And it’s going to require saying a lot of things that they will consider hateful.
Buck Sexton is a political commentator, national security analyst and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “Buck Sexton with America Now”. He is a former CIA officer at the Counterterrorism Center, appears frequently on Fox News Channel and CNN, and has been a guest radio host for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Follow Buck on Twitter @BuckSexton.
The views expressed by contributors are theirs and not those of The Hill.
30 Aug 2017
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NOTICE | Antifa is not a political movement; it’s a delusional and violent explosion
The progressive left and its media comrades have struggled in recent weeks to build a friendly story for “antifa”.
It is not an easy task. These self-proclaimed “anti-fascists” (hence the name) have shown up at rallies across the country since Trump’s inauguration, assaulting police with urine bombs, beat reporters bloodied, and putting the occasional car on Fire. All of this is sort of meant to protest fascism. Or Inequality. Or capitalism. It really depends on the day.
The good news is that knowing Antifa is to despise it.
Last weekend at BerkeleyAmerica saw him at a supposed “anti-hate rally,” 13 ranks of antifa have been arrested for fiercely attacking law-abiding protesters who back the Trump administration. After a series of gang-type ambushes on the streets, some of which were caught on a spooky video, the list of suspected charges against antifa included assault with a lethal weapon and criminal assault.
Unlike Charlottesville a few weeks ago, there was no proper Nazi rally in Berkeley, just a few regular Trump supporters gathered to exercise their First Amendment rights. It was too much.
Antifa has revealed itself to be a pack of childish vandals masquerading as heroic resistance. That a crowd of predominantly white men gather in paramilitary formation, dressed in head-to-toe black, with masks and batons to protest against “fascism,” shows that this group has no sense of religion. ‘story.
That some of his assault soldiers use shields with “no hate” on them like rams shows that they have no sense of irony either. There isn’t much that favorable media coverage can do to downplay or obscure the truth about antifa, and that is anti-free speech fanaticism. Berkeley’s violence broke that barrier.
Now the political left feels exposed. Otherwise, sympathetic outlets have called for “introspection”About antifa, and even Nancy Pelosi finally felt the need to denounce the violence of the masked malcontents. But nothing that we have seen from Antifa is new.
Despite some media efforts to explain the obvious, antifa has always been entirely indefensible. It is not a political movement, it is an explosion of violence, an expression of the delusional emotionality of the progressive left. Its primary mission is not opposition to fascism, but the suppression of ideas.
Words more than anything else seem to arouse the wrath of Antifa. They don’t rally against specific policies, for example, but they will swarm, threaten and shut down conservative speakers on college campuses. Antifa claims for herself the heckler’s veto under the guise of so-called “nazi punchBut he rarely, if ever, tries to hit real Nazis.
And so this lie is exposed for what it really is: an excuse to inflict violence on any ideological opponent, at any time, for any reason. All they have to do is use the term “Nazi” to smear a conservative, and fundamental respect for the freedom and rights of others no longer applies.
We cannot allow such brutality to dictate political discourse. This is a deeply disturbing trend that extends far beyond the fringe factions of the left. Hysterical progressives have been brainwashed into believing that the speech they dislike is hate speech, that hate speech amounts to violence, and therefore violence to prevent such hate speech is justifiable .
It is not enough to oppose loud and clear, they must be silent. Antifa wants to prevent certain speeches from happening, and he will use brute force to do so. It is simply censorship imposed by threats of violence, hiding behind the facade of a courageous struggle against Trump’s creeping fascism.
In reality, antifa is the closest thing to an authoritarian political movement in this country, and its ideology is a serious threat to freedom. Any concessions on their side only encourage the radical elements to demand even more restrictions on expression. Whether these hard-line leftists either failed to read or understood, the First Amendment is all too obvious. Nonetheless, it is incumbent on the rest of us – Republicans and Democrats – to educate the antifa about the non-negotiable place of free speech in America.
And it’s going to require saying a lot of things that they will consider hateful.
Buck Sexton is a political commentator, national security analyst and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “Buck Sexton with America Now”. He is a former CIA officer at the Counterterrorism Center, appears frequently on Fox News Channel and CNN, and has been a guest radio host for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Follow Buck on Twitter @BuckSexton.
The views expressed by contributors are theirs and not those of The Hill.
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