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Journalist Nathan Stone and Producer Josh Carmody invite you to sit down for deep dives on the rapid changes happening in Trump’s new America.
00:02
President Trump's Antifa roundtable was as strange as expected. The guest list was a mix of the who's who of the administration bumping elbows with some of the most famous right-wing influencers. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about the growing threat of the fearsome terrorist group Antifa. In the meeting, Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to destroy the entire Antifa organization. The meeting was awash in high drama and dire warnings for America.
00:31
The only issue is that there is no national Antifa organization, and the vast majority of political violence in America is perpetrated by people on the far right of the political spectrum. Welcome to the Politics of New America. On the show today, we look at why it is that the Trump administration is going after a fictionalized version of Antifa, and review the actual history of the Antifa movement to show that American anti-fascists aren't the far-left bogeymen the administration wants them to be.
01:01
I'm your host Nathan Stone and with me today is producer Josh Carmody. I mean, remember the simple days when Antifa were just some rebel rousers there on January 6th to make all the nice, calm, respectable Republicans look crazy? Yeah, yeah. Are we going to talk about that today? I want the list of the Antifa members. Also, we say it differently. I didn't know anyone said it another way.
01:30
I say it like there's two E's in it and you say it like it is like more closer to the pronunciation of both words individually. Yeah, I I've noticed that amongst broadcasters as well. And I think it just depends on on who you listen to. I've never really thought about pronunciation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to call you on it like you better start saying it the way I say it. That's what turned it into a whole Star Trek. Yeah. Well, Josh, I
02:01
And if I is clearly such a impending threat to America that we couldn't not cover it on this show. And lately, the rhetoric has really stepped up. after the president's roundtable, I thought, OK, we need clearly to discuss this, because I don't know if any group since Al Qaeda has gotten as much attention from a certain American administration. Right.
02:30
This is a group that, spoiler alert, in the roundtable was compared to ISIS and the Taliban. So where in the world is this nefarious group uh headquartered? How can we shut them down? And fortunately for the administration, it's not something that actually exists as much as they would.
02:59
like it too, clearly. But let's jump in with a bit of stage setting here, because I want to lead with how this was discussed. And let's start with our pal, Christy Gnome, friend of the show. So I have some quotes from the roundtable.
03:30
One of the things you should know about this this get together was it was a big love in of Republicans and right wing influencers. Everyone was just, uh you know, fallen all over themselves to compliment the president and each other. Influencer these days, I feel like they they they, know, people lose their spot on the Avengers with these guys so quickly. You know what I mean? Yeah, just all of a sudden they're not in it anymore because like.
03:56
Guys like Tim Pool, who for our listeners, uh he was the one who said, your body, my choice. We meet a lot of ex Fox News broadcasters that have gone on to do other things in the sphere. uh Otherwise known as the the lineup of people behind Pete Hagseth waiting for his job to be available. uh But the the the headliner to me when I was going through this this list was probably uh
04:26
Jack Posobic, and we've talked about him before on the sounds familiar. Yeah. So he's the guy at uh the CPAC a couple of years ago that said that they were going to replace democracy with something better. OK. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. He's all around great guy. And uh so he was. Yeah, he was there just to.
04:52
We actually have a really good quote from him, so we won't spoil that one. But oh there is there's quite a few at of the prominent of today, Republican, Republican influencers there. But yeah, let's let's start off with setting the stage. And I think Kristi Noem does does this well here. She starts off by thanking uh President Trump for hosting this and, you know, taking this threat seriously.
05:19
So she says, thank you for hosting today and focusing on Antifa and the terrorists that they are. Let's not make any mistake. These individuals do not just want to threaten our law enforcement officers, threaten our journalists and citizens of this country. They want to kill them. Their agenda is to destroy America, sorry, to destroy the American people and our way of life. This president is standing in their way. He is stopping them from bringing their death and destruction to the individual citizens in this country.
05:47
that just want to raise their kids and their grandkids in peace and safety. I also want to thank everyone at this table for being so bold and so brave for standing up and recognizing the threat that Antifa is to our way of life. I mean, dear Lord, did Antifa bomb Pearl Harbor? Oh, God, they signed it with the Axis. Oh, no. The irony. uh Yeah. So then, uh Attorney General, Pam Bondi.
06:18
Not to be outdone here. ah Here's a good one from her. crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets. It's breaking down the organization brick by brick. Just like we did with the cartels. We're going to take the same approach. President Trump with Antifa destroy their organization from top to bottom. We're going to take them apart. I would argue uh that hasn't happened to the cartels at all. ah I don't know if they're really suffering all that much.
06:47
At least not in the way that they seem to be uh explaining it. Yeah, she could have added some helpful citations for us uh just to show that any of this could use some helpful citations. would I would love for some citations. Yeah. And so one of the things that this roundtable did was invited some of these these Republican influencers to talk about their experiences with anti.
07:16
Right? They're on the ground reporting, you know, just the facts, of course, because the facts don't care about our feelings. uh But they do care about Republican feelings. so he approached me so fast. He was wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and he told me that he didn't much care for my way of life. Yeah. And so.
07:45
Each one would take a moment to thank the president for being his glorious self, but then to share their experiences. honestly, I have the transcript for this and it's long and it's painful, but they focused on Portland because Portland, course, uh notorious hive of scum and villainy. Every one of these stories talked about
08:13
You know, how they how threatened they felt, you know, how they were they were attacked by by Antifa, ah you know, either physically or almost attacked, you know, just just got out in the nick of time. It the the drama in this roundtable is honestly impressive. But. ah
08:33
Not since Orson Welles War of the World, right? Moved so much fiction. Yeah, it's a good thing that they didn't broadcast this live because I can only imagine the panic ah that this would have caused. But yeah, a second quote by Pam Bond here just to show the heights that this reached. uh She's complaining here about, uh you know, media coverage.
09:01
Many times the legacy media has looked to the other way, refused to tell the stories. The networks have not really focused on what is, what this is and what damage it is doing to our country, and how this network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us just like the other terrorists we've dealt with for many, many years.
09:30
That is utter lunacy. And that's that quote, I think, is why we have to talk about what Antifa is and isn't today. And before we get into because I want to focus mostly on the history today of the organization. Shit. Now I'm doing it. The movement. It's not an organization. It's a movement to very different things. I'm going to I'm going to show you.
10:00
Sorry, I'm going to share uh one last quote just because I think it's quite humorous. This is uh Jack Bassobic, his introduction, his like minute to speak to the president. says, Mr. President, thank you so much for having us here today and holding this roundtable. Antifa is real and has been around in various iterations for almost 100 years, in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany.
10:29
Yeah, you got it. It was there. It was there. Do you know why it was there, Jack? Do you know why? Do know why Antifa was it was active in the Weimar Republic? Do know what happened to the Weimar Republic, Yeah, I mean, just hearing someone say that aloud is like.
10:49
I feel like I'm in a Saturday Night Live sketch where you like you start looking around looking for the other people to be reacting, but no one is. You're the only one. And you're like, oh, shit, I'm the host of this episode of Saturday Night Live. Yeah. All right. So clearly the administration is trying to make the Antifa movement into a terrifying left wing boogeyman and
11:19
And they're doing it. We've talked about this a bunch that there's always your enemy has to be both the strongest enemy possible, but also very, very weak. So, yeah. Oh, if the Civil War happens, all of us on the right, we're the ones who love guns. We're going to take them out super easily. But also, even though we are in control of all three branches of government, they're so ingrained in the deep state that they're also, they're technically the shadow government. And Trump is just desperately trying to pass bills that will save our lives.
11:49
Yeah, there's the mental gymnastics that you have to do for this kind of thing is outstanding and real Cirque du Soleil shit. But for Antifa, it's even more extraordinary because what they're building is an entirely fictitious organization around a movement that is as decentralized as any political movement, frankly.
12:19
uh in our our lifetimes and. Yeah, I would say the Simmerillian had more to do with reality than what they're constructing in terms of the hierarchy of Antifa as an organization. Yeah. And so let's let's kind of break it down to its its very basics here. Right. So Antifa, of course, stands for anti-fascism. And so that's.
12:43
very simply is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, fascist groups and uh individuals. And so, yeah, this did get its start in 1920s in Europe for reasons that will become very swiftly apparent. And so it's any kind of political action that you take in opposition to oh
13:13
fascist policies, fascist political parties, even just, uh you know, fascist groups is by definition anti-fascist. And so that is kind of the long and short of what anti-fascism is. And anti-fascism isn't entirely a left-wing political movement. It has encompassed people and organizations and governments.
13:43
uh from spanning left to right. And we'll talk about that and we'll talk about America's brand of anti-fascism because uh each nation's history and their history with fascist movements, fascist parties and uh that kind of far-right ideology, ideological growth is unique. Yeah, I would say, and also I would say
14:11
vegans have more rules about joining them than anti-fascism does as a movement in general. So we can define anti-fascism pretty easily. Let's just talk very quickly about fascism because it follows that we should we should have a base to start off from. And so fascism, it's a far right and very nationalistic ideology. And
14:40
It was kind of pioneered, what we think of as fascism today, uh by Italian fascists first, and then the German Nazis. And it became prominent in the 1910s. And then kind of the organization, kind of roots of the anti-fascist movement came around about 10 years after that in the 1920s when
15:09
When fascists started uh getting power and becoming a threat to kind of the wobbly uh governments of Europe in post First World War. So. Italy pioneered it right. uh Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, that that guy, ah he he is basically the father of.
15:38
modern fascism. so it comes to Italy in 1922. Now, Italy was a mess in, you know, the early 1900s following the First World War. The First World War was seen in Italy as an absolute failure because Italy got involved. uh Tons of young men were killed or, you know, crippled and they didn't really get anything out of it, right? The Treaty of Versailles
16:08
Italy didn't gain land in any great amount, right? They were kind of the forgotten power in this war. So you were World War one. This is World War one. Yeah. And they still had a monarchy at that time. I think up into World War two as well. Yeah. So yeah, it was like like other monarchies at the time it was it was kind of power was shared between basically like a parliament and the monarchy. Yeah. And it was it was kind of a.
16:37
push pull thing, kind of like the devolution of the British monarchy, but it hadn't, it never really got that far because of course, ah you know, everything that would happen. Italy has in kind of the, yeah, the after World War II or sorry, after World War I, it's got all of these veterans of the first World War who are angry, they're disenfranchised and
17:07
They feel like they've forgotten. feel like Italy was ignored, right? This is the kind of thing that probably simmered for a while in Italy as well, right? Because when you think of Italian history going back all the way to Rome, right? You have the first great Western Empire that, you know, stretched over the known world at the time. And ever since
17:37
the fall of Rome. Italy had balkanized into a series of small states. uh Napoleon invaded. You know, you've got a history of kind of subjugation of a people who were once great. And that's the thing about fascism. Fascism doesn't take root generally in places with...
18:02
countries and nations that are on the upswing, that are doing well, that are at the height of their powers. Fascism comes when a dominant power starts to wane or a people who feel like they've been hard done by situations outside of their control. It takes a weakened state, generally, for fascism to take root. Because that's where nationalism starts.
18:31
Yeah, it starts with economic problems and these and these and these this loss of power to be like, well, the beta borders that we that we that we pretend like God put here really are are what makes us great and everyone else the other, you know, and starts to drive that. And you need someone to blame. You need problems to blame people for. And. Fascism.
19:02
gives you quick, easy answers, right? And fascism will quickly blame all of the out-groups, the minorities, whether they be religious, racial, whatever, the other, the foreigner, because it's satisfying answer for those who don't want to believe that their problems are self-created, right? That this state, this great nation,
19:31
ah you know, is responsible for its own undoing. It's much, much easier politically, especially to blame an outgroup or to blame multiple outgroups uh for a decline. it preys on uh kind of an existing what was potentially uh an okay amount of patriotism. And it preys on that.
19:54
to get it fired up into a not OK amount of patriotism. Exactly. I was I think George Bernard Shaw was the one who said that patriotism is a conviction that your country is the best because you were born in it or something like that. I don't think that's the full quote, but it says something like that. But yeah, it is just like we made all these lines up. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And so, yeah. So Italy, Benito Mussolini gives Italy
20:23
this strong man that, you know, promises to fix all of their problems, promises to bring law and order back, promises the veterans, that to restore Italian pride. You know, he talks about creating a new Roman Empire, right? He wants an expansionist Italy because what Italy's done for the past couple centuries is watch Britain and France carve up uh Africa and Asia and
20:52
everywhere. And, you know, Italy, they had the same sense of pride, but they weren't this great power like their neighbors were. They were getting little brother. They were getting little brother. Yeah. They had to play Tails when they played Sonic. They were getting real mad about it. And Italy, you know, for what it's worth, I guess, had a little bit of...
21:20
an empire, you know, they had Ethiopia, though they had a real trouble. ah The Ethiopians gave them about as much trouble as they could handle. And so, yeah, the situation was ripe for this to happen. Now, Germany. Of course, the rise of Hitler, this it with Germany, it all goes back to the to the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, the absolutely crushing.
21:45
war debt and reparations that Germany had to pay to the Allied powers, leads to hyperinflation, leads to all sorts of trouble. the Weimar Republic was just an absolute mess as well. so both times that we saw kind of these early fascist governments, they never won the majority of support.
22:15
for the people, because most people, I think, either see through or see possible problems or just don't like what they have to sell. But through just sheer political ah boldness, Mussolini and Hitler were able to take power. Mussolini, famously, his march on Rome, he didn't attend it. He led his blackshirts.
22:44
March on Rome. He took the train in later when it was safe. So again, it's so much of these fascist leaders depend on the theater of the strong man. But I could talk about fascist governments all day. We got to get on to anti-fascism because that's where we're going here. But if you've ever wondered where the term fascism comes from, it's a fascis. And it's
23:11
Meaning is bundling. comes from uh Latin, of course. And this goes back to uh ancient Rome. And uh fascist Italy, actually incorporated the fascis in the flag for as long as fascist Italy lasted. uh so it's a bundle of sticks that has been tied around an axe head. And it represented a
23:39
magistrates power and jurisdiction in ancient Rome. And so it speaks very much to to a close bound law and order, right? This strong this bundle apes together strong nonsense that that is kind of where where this comes from. uh So some of the early anti-fascist. You say nonsense, but I got to stop you. I'd argue that the apes were very strong together in those movies.
24:08
Okay, if Congo taught us anything, apes together, very strong, unless you have a laser. Yes. uh So early anti-fascist posters and things would show a larger axe cutting through the fascies and splitting that uh in half. And I always thought that was fun. It's just like, oh yeah, we can have axes too. And our axes are bigger and we're anti-fascist, which is very cool. uh So the first time that
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anti-fascist is kind of used is uh by Mussolini and his regime because they described their opponents as anti-fascist, which was correct. And they, of course, uh brutally repressed and suppressed any kind of anti-fascist action. And
25:03
Originally, the anti-fascist movement kind of coalesced around various parts of the Italian populace. So, uh trade unions, um citizens' organizations, that kind of thing. um And they did found paramilitary groups because uh in the early 20th century, almost every political, each part of the political spectrum had their own
25:33
paramilitary groups. uh on the left, you'd have the communists and the socialists had paramilitaries. There were liberal paramilitaries as strange as that sounds. And of course there were conservative and fascist paramilitaries. So everyone kind of had their own thugs. Part of this emerging political climate, right, was
25:58
hyper partisan, violent action. so Mussolini's black shirts would fight with these anti-fascist citizens, kind of brigades. And eventually, of course, we know how it ends in Italy, of course, the fascists do win. And it's the same in Germany. um When we talk about what
26:29
anti-fascism looks like in the early 20th century versus today. There's kind of two main thrusts ah that kind of continue through history. And
26:47
uh Michael Seidman is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. And he's written on kind of this, this early history of Antifa and broken them into two main groups. So you can, I'll describe them here and you'll kind of see where the Trump administration has kind of picked up and where they want you to position.
27:16
Antifa in your mind, and then we're going to talk about where it actually is in the United States. So the first one is called revolutionary anti-fascism. So this was your far left form of anti-fascism. uh This was expressed amongst communists, uh anarchists, and it identified fascism and capitalism as the enemies of the movement and didn't
27:46
make a whole lot of distinction between fascism and other forms of right-wing authoritarianism. Now, there's also the counter-revolutionary anti-fascism. So this is the anti-fascism of the West, basically, of Britain and France and the United States in the 20s and 30s. And it was much more conservative in nature. And
28:16
Both Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle are kind of held by Sidemen as representing this form of anti-fascism. So even though Churchill, both Churchill and de Gaulle were staunch uh imperialists, they also strove to uphold the traditional kind of values or the current values of their nations, right?
28:45
So the French Republic, the British constitutional monarchy, and were vehemently against what fascism offered, despite the fact that, of course, they're closer on the political spectrum than of communists or anarchists would be. So they tried to win the masses by appealing to tradition.
29:14
opposed to appealing to revolution and they desired to ensure the restoration or continuation of the basically pre World War two regimes um and they also really disliked fascism's erasure of the of the separation between the public and private spheres right so in fascism the private sector and the state kind of marry
29:43
And a lot of people get this confused with socialism. in or socialism or revolutionary socialism in communism, what would happen is that the state takes over, right? Expropriates uh the large businesses, the oligarchies and puts them to work for the people. the state clears the board.
30:12
In fascism, the state and corporate or business interests are kind of melded together. So those companies still exist and their owners still exist, but they operate as functionaries of the state. it's it sounds similar on the surface level, but it is basically the opposite. it's a it's it's performative. They they um
30:42
And because one of the big gotchas that they that the right always tries to do is like, the Nazis, that was the National Socialist Party. And it's like, yeah, because fascism, as you're describing it here, which makes sense, is that they take things that sound socialist or things sound like they're for the people. then when you really break it down, it's they're they're just getting in bed with the oligarchs. They're not kicking them out. Yeah. And the there's there's actually uh
31:12
Back in the 30s, someone asked Hitler about this and there's actually a record of him saying that he basically wanted to eat the lunch of the socialists as far as political politically, right? He wanted people to move from socialism to fascism by taking populist policies, making them sound like socialist policies. And so.
31:41
the Nazi party National Socialism, he
31:46
It was never socialism for the people. was it was a a national uh attempt, right? Like this hyper natural nationalization and hyper. It's like reverse Robin Hood. It was it was reverse. Give to myself. Yeah, yeah, it's it's one of those ones where. It's it's a constant thing whenever someone brings it up on the right. Yeah, this. Oh.
32:15
Socialism is right in the name. We've also seen the Democratic Republic area, the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, Democratic People. What is the Congo People's DRC, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yeah, for a long time, very not democratic names mean basically nothing when you're talking about political parties or nations. We've we've seen that a lot.
32:45
in modern politics? Right? What's what's a Republican and what's a Democrat? What's a conservative? What's a conservative? Yeah. Yeah. What are we what are we looking to conserve exactly? Like is a conservative policy about traditional values? Whose traditional values? It's it's honestly it's not even worth talking about because it's just a hole with no end or a snake eating its own tail. I think it's more of an Ouroboros.
33:13
than anything else. It's you will eventually run into a circle uh of logic. But I think we've said on the show before a hydra eating its own ass. Yes, that's one of my favorite quotes from this show. uh
33:30
So counter-revolutionary anti-fascism is the fascism that you see most commonly in the United States today.
33:46
And it's also kind of the very roots of what is American anti-fascism. So FDR was big on trying to keep fascism out of the United States because the United States, again, in the 30s, not at the peak of its power by any means necessary, right? In the throes of the Great Depression, a lot of people angry, a lot of people
34:15
thinking, hey, this communism thing looks pretty darn good. And on the other hand, you know, other people thinking that this Hitler chap has a lot of good ideas. So. FDR has a real problem. But his solution to it was was very. Specifically American, don't I don't think. Like I said, it really depends on.
34:43
each nation's culture how they responded to the rise of fascism. So the Americans did the American thing, which is turn to Hollywood to produce some sweet culture for them. And so there was actually a couple of anti-fascist films produced and released in the United States uh during the 1930s, both in 34 actually. The first one called Hitler's Reign of Terror and
35:13
The second one called Don't Be a Sucker. And I've watched Don't Be a Sucker. And honestly, it's pretty darn good. I have to tell you, it's not bad. And they would continue and of course, ramp that up hugely during the Second World War. But. Yeah, I once made a very, very, poor bet with somebody where they were. I.
35:42
said there's got to be more vampire movies than there are World War Two movies. And I was so mistaken. It wasn't even funny. Like to the tune of like 200 more movies than there are. Oh dear Lord. It was insane. Like even just going off a rudimentary list, I was like able to count up like here's 110 vampire movies over 100 years of cinema. And I was like, oh, just.
36:11
Just in the span of like 1930, whatever, 1949, there was 170 World War II movies. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And so America, it turned kind of its its burgeoning cultural might towards fending off homegrown fascism and
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FDR during his long presidency, before World War II started, he tried to balance America's isolationist political wing against his own more uh pro-Western, pro-European interventionist ideas.
37:07
So he kind of very gently nudged the United States where he could towards uh aiding Britain and France and kind of preparing for the war that everyone saw coming. uh so through those actions and through kind of using this, this kind of the new.
37:33
medium of cinema and radio, they were able to kind of take this anti-fascist action. So World War II happens, the fascists lose, everyone's really happy about that. And we go through a period where Europe is rebuilding, economies are growing. Venezuela's population goes up. Yeah.
38:02
And we see that, you know, the fascist ideology, especially in Europe is pretty much stamped out between Eastern Europe, where, uh you know, the communist bloc is vehemently anti-fascist. It's a good way to have a date with a gulag is to be a fascist.
38:32
But in the West, you get the baby boom, you get economic expansion, right? You get recovery. And so things start to be better. And even though, you know, Britain and France lose their empires in the following decades, the quality of life for the average person increases. And...
39:00
So there's no appetite for fascism. also World War II wasn't that long ago, so everyone kind of remembers what happens. uh And in the United States, the same thing happens, right? You get this, you now have a bipolar world between liberal democracies and a communist bloc, but there's no room for fascism.
39:27
However, times change, economies wax and wane. And so the modern birth of Antifa in kind of the later half of the 20th century is traced kind of to Britain and Germany, and specifically uh the punk scene in both of those.
39:56
uh in both of those nations because over uh in that time was kind of a reemergence of this this underground movement of uh neo-nazism, right? The skinheads were the big thing and the skinheads uh dress. They dressed punk, right? It was it was very much kind of the style.
40:27
that they chose and they were kind of the first, I think, flashing light on the dashboard that says, oh, we want to look at this. Why are these discredited, heinous views starting to cycle back into society again? so with the re-emergence of
40:55
uh You know, fascist thought, fascist beliefs and people committing fascist acts of violence. uh The equal opposite force, course, Antifa, uh starts up again. And it started with the punk scene because people were starting to equate punks with Nazis. And the punks didn't like that because
41:22
If you've ever spoken to a punk vehemently anti-nazi vehemently anti-nazi and anti-fascist uh and generally tend to be pretty far left on the on political spectrum. So they started uh kind of this this new street level anti-fascism.
41:41
And so what's good for the goose is good for the gander here. in kind of a little bit later in the 80s, American punks started to do this as well. they initially. So in Germany, the the the groups, I believe, were called uh anti-fascist action. It was kind of their their movement. In the United States.
42:10
The punks there went with anti-racist action or the ARA on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than they would be with fighting fascism. So in the 80s and 90s, those ARA activists actually would travel with popular punk rock bands uh to prevent
42:38
Klansmen or neo-Nazis or other assorted, uh you know, fascist groups from attending their shows and trying to recruit people there.
42:52
And so the model of the time was we go where they go. So if the fascists were going to show up somewhere, they were going to be there to make their lives hell. so they did get involved in the wider political scene outside of just the punk movement.
43:18
In 2002, the ARA disrupted a speech in Pennsylvania by Matthew Hale, who was the head of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator. uh so that kind of devolved into a huge thing that led to 25 arrests. uh In 2007, Rose uh City Antifa, which was the first group in the United States to use the name Antifa.
43:48
was formed in Portland, Oregon. Don't listen to that part. If any of the administration is listening, don't listen to that part. ah
44:02
So there's the end. There are groups throughout the country, which is what why it's a movement and it's it's not centralized, right? No one is giving out Antifa commands. There is not, you know, Antifa protesters aren't going from Minneapolis down to Portland, right? To meet up and talk Antifa strategy. These are grassroots movements of people.
44:30
generally in specific communities who stay in their specific communities, whether that's a geographical community or like the, you know, the punk precursors, right, like touring with bands and stuff. And it's
44:47
This is a movement that has coalesced around figuring out what fascists do and trying to stop them from doing those things. So when the administration wants to destroy Antifa, it's not really a thing that is possible because it's simply actions that you take against a fascist government.
45:18
Um, and I, we haven't even talked about how troubling it is that you're specifically targeting anti-fascist action, but I feel like that's a little bit obvious at this point. Like we don't have to go into the ideology of the Trump administration at this point. Um, so
45:42
What we have in the United States today is a decentralized movement.
45:48
But not only a decentralized movement, they're also a counter revolutionary movement, right? There's, and I will say there will be some folks in Antifa that are revolutionary ah in their aims and their goals. However, the United States has almost no serious uh left wing movement.
46:17
that is organized and that has the potential to grab any real amount of political power. But what they do have is a lot of people who are very concerned that a government that they see as fascist or that has fascist sympathies, certainly, uh is looking to destroy the constitutional republic of the United States.
46:46
That actually makes them counter-revolutionary, anti-fascist. These are the folks that are looking to preserve the old regime, the old way of doing things, the way that America has done things ah more or less for the last 250 years.
47:10
Who would have thought that it was the left coming off the top ropes trying to save the Republic? What? So what you have in the United States at its core is a very liberal antifa movement. And so by targeting this movement, this isn't targeting communists and socialists and Marxists. This is all the same thing. But this isn't targeting the people that
47:39
you make them out to be. This is targeting people who are trying to preserve what America very up until very recently was and that gives all of this a far more sinister bent I think than
48:01
fighting imaginary communists. uh So. they but I mean, they are getting to that point of, you know, there are I would say that there are definitely people on the right, whether these are people in power or people who are the followers, like in the the the MAGA movement, who are getting to a point of being so scared of Antifa that Antifa is going to come out of their.
48:27
breakfast cereal and get them like to the point that and people got there with communism. Yeah. And through the scares, like we look at the way people were persecuted for potentially being a communist, you know, during the Cold War. Well, I think that they're trying to get there with Antifa, where there's there's really no one to point to as a head as a figurehead. There's no I mean, yeah, there's just nobody to point a finger at. You just are
48:57
vaguely gesturing. And that allows you to start sweeping people up in mass arrests. It sure does. Yeah.
49:06
Because time is a flat circle, will mention that the. What FDR put in place to that anti-fascist uh machine that they built with propaganda, the help of the media in the United States after the Second World War was turned into an anti-communist propaganda machine. And so this isn't.
49:36
entirely new, but at least in the aftermath of the Second World War, you actually had a antagonist, right? You had the Soviet Union. That was a real thing that existed. In this sense, Antifa doesn't exist in the way that they want it to, which was kind of the whole point that I wanted to make today, but
50:08
They're not actually the only ones that have been moving against anti-fascist ah organizations and groups. uh We have seen in Germany uh some politicians and some action targeting Antifa. And Viktor Orban in Hungary uh decided that
50:37
in just last month that he was going to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization. So this these right wing governments really crib off of each other and they're always looking at what worked and what didn't in other in other governments in other places. So I would expect this to continue.
51:07
in other countries that share the same ideology at a base level as Trump's America. One thing I will mention, because I think it's important before we end today, is there was a memo on
51:37
countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence that Trump signed. He also signed an executive order purporting to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. He can't do that legally. That's not his job. uh Now, does that matter anymore? God only knows. But uh the president cannot designate domestic terrorist organizations. uh
52:07
He can designate foreign terrorist organizations. But again, separations of powers. I believe that's Congress's job. Not that Congress is up for much anymore. Congress is sitting around with their feet up, just sipping on a margarita. People are coming to Congress and be like, hey, did you you going to get that done? Yeah, no, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah, no, it's cool. It's cool. I got it. Like I guarantee I guarantee.
52:37
when the midterms come up, we're going to see that version of Congress that's like, oh shit. And they get up real fast and they spill their margarita. I'm not saying they're going to get anything done that is going to be good for anybody, but something will happen. And right now it just seems like they are. What was even the point of a shutdown? It seems like they're already on vacation. yeah. Yeah, the the shutdown.
53:04
Oh, boy. I thought about talking about that a little bit today, but we've talked about. We'll talk about shut down some more. Yeah. mean, the fact that we had to do a whole hour long history of Antifa really left us like we just exposed our bellies on all the other stuff we couldn't talk about. Yeah. So I do want to end on this uh this memory or sorry, this proclamation. It's the National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM seven on countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence. So we talk about
53:34
these round tables and this political theater that Trump is doing around Antifa. This memorandum is kind of the building of...
53:51
Ayyyy uh
53:54
This is kind of the building of infrastructure in terms of law to go after this movement. so even though Trump absolutely positively cannot designate domestic terrorist organizations, um
54:18
He can kind of prioritize as the executive.
54:26
the Department of Justice and his various cabinet to go after uh identities and ideologies.
54:39
and what he's targeting in this memorandum is, he calls it, the umbrella of self-described anti-fascism, which includes anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, the support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
55:09
breathtakingly broad. Honestly, you could arrest anyone for anything at any point. Were we expecting less? A nation built on broad, sweeping generalizations. This goddamn country, anyone who says that the United States Constitution was well written has never read the damn thing because it is just vague generalities after vague generalities with
55:38
implied handshake agreements that we're all going to be nice, reasonable people to each other. But they couldn't even organize signing their own Declaration of Independence into a neat and legible manner. Yeah. And so they also want to go after campaigns of radicalization. So and we already know what that looks like for this administration. Right. We saw this with uh the targeting of pro-Palestinian
56:08
protest organizers, right? And they were saying, you know, that is radicalization. Okay, sure, protesting genocide, definitely a radical thing to do. uh But when you combine that with these kind of anti-American activities that they are uh saying that they're going to be targeting, we get kind of
56:32
McCarthyism on steroids, right? We may as well set up the you know, the house investigation of un-American activities and just
56:44
uh, start, start the witch hunts again, because this is absolutely ridiculous. And uh
56:54
The things that they're promising or threatening to do, right, include...
57:02
uh, freezing, you know, obviously arrests, but freezing, uh, funds for organizations, um, you know, kind of these, these huge time consuming investigations, basically going after groups through lawfare as well as, uh, just good old fashioned arrests.
57:27
And they also go after funding for a lot of these groups through kind of going after grant making organizations. They're planning on investigating not just entities providing funding, but also their officers and employees. So just as an example, if you were part of a charity that raised money for a cause and
57:58
They find some way to link you with, you know, protesters for that cause, or maybe you show up at a protest or you're fundraising there or you're supportive. You're just out protesting, right? Then you get in trouble. The organization gets in trouble. And so it's this this huge. Threat of intimidation, arrest and economic ruin that that's come from this this thing. And again.
58:27
This is a presidential memorandum. This they have kind of the same force as an executive order, which means that uh can be overruled by Congress. Hey, Congress, if you want to do that, it'd be real cool. But don't count on that. That's the sound of them drinking their margarita. And again, these are presidential directives. So as the executive, he kind of tells what tells his cabinet what to focus on in their departments, what to focus on.
58:56
And this is a clear shot across the bow of anyone thinking about protesting. Honestly, just anything at all that they don't like. um Because if you're not careful, you too could be an anti-fascist. And yeah, so I think that's about all we got for this one. ah I just really thought we should look at the roots of Antifa and kind of what it actually is as opposed to this.
59:25
insane creation, this Frankenstein's monster of communism and, you know, anything else under the sun they want to put into this poor monster. And again, I will reiterate, has no specific name attached to it. When you think of somebody like Trump who loves his nicknames for people, he loves singling people out, he loves making fun of them, he loves bringing them up for years on end.
59:54
He does not have a specific name to attach to this. And that right there kind of gives away the store. Yeah. Oh, you know, if if there was some, you know, national umbrella organization for Antifa, that the whoever the the head, the CEO of that. Their name would never leave Trump's lips. He would be he would be blaming them for for anything and everything.
01:00:22
And they tried with the last few people who have committed arguably the most egregious political violence of the year. And they've tried to kind of pin it on them or have them be part of it. But then they can't. There's like. And it's it's the kind of thing, too, where if you if you take even a moment to look up the statistics on political violence in the United States, it is overwhelmingly a.
01:00:51
a right-wing political issue that it's generally people on the right killing. Just people in general, people on the left, people on the right, people in the center. Political violence isn't cut and dried and it's not black and white. We shouldn't always try and put people who commit it into a certain group or camp because a lot of times people will self-radicalize.
01:01:21
And it's it's not an organized thing. It's not a conspiracy. It's someone with a very easy to obtain gun thinking that they're going to go out and change the world because of, you know, some some beliefs that they've they've. Self reinforced. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the unit bomber hated.
01:01:48
Computers. And I think everybody loves computers for the most part. So like, where do you slot them in? know, yeah. And that's that's the real trouble with a lot of that is we just we look at deeply troubled individuals dealing with a lot of mental issues and we try and fit them into into political camps that, you know,
01:02:17
that our opponents are in. And it just doesn't work, right? Oh, yeah. It's like the Supergirl movie from the 80s. You try to apply logic to it, and it doesn't work. not going to work for you. You're going to have a bad time. So I hope you've enjoyed our little trip through Antifa history today. And we'll see you next week for more exciting American political talk.
01:02:47
We're gonna have we're gonna have to do like a real scattershot episode on the next one. We're just gonna come back Oh, we got a headline so yeah, 10 speedrun Alright, see ya
01:03:01
Thanks for listening. you enjoy the show, please subscribe, give us a five star rating on your podcast platform of choice, and tell all your friends. The Politics of New America is hosted by Nathan Stone and produced by Josh Carmody. You can follow us on Blue Sky at Politics New America.
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