Defend Antifa!

Last week, the media was full of hand-wringing articles intended to terrify the masses against a new spectre haunting the United States. Not Trump, nor the failed state that sows death and spreads sickness in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Not the prospect of nuclear war. No, the masses are now supposed to fear “antifa” militants and their “violence.”

Communists and anarchists have proudly worn the mantle of antifa (short for anti-fascists) since the very beginning. Communists gave their lives in the tens of millions to fight Nazis in Europe, and armed, multinational communist fighters have long battled the Klan’s fascist terror in the South. Anarchists in Europe and the U.S. have long been on the frontline against militarized cops and their Nazi running dogs at protests and through direct action.

These are the antifa militants that the Washington Post encourages us to fear. They want us to fear the brave heroes in Durham who brought down a racist statue symbolizing oppression, and they want us to fear the the brave heroes who defended the disabled, elderly and children alike in the streets of Washington, D.C., on Trump’s inauguration day. They want us to fear the brave fighters who faced down fascists in Charlottesville, despite extreme violence from cops and Klan alike.

The media and ruling class have never been so divorced from the sentiment of the working class and oppressed. Antifa is not a group or a tendency, not a party or a structure. It is a sentiment that all freedom-minded people cherish in their hearts and minds across the world: an end to racism, capitalism and war.

In a week in which the criminal U.S. regime threatened to revoke immigration status for millions of young people across the country, a week in which chemical leaks and explosions happened across Texas in the wake of Harvey, the ruling class thought it necessary to point the finger at the vanguard forces who are fighting for justice. It really shows the level of utter contempt the bosses and their enforcers have for our class — that they would terrorize, torture, imprison and murder us, and then encourage the masses to hate the people struggling for liberation.

Fascists, the Klan and the police have a body count that stretches into the millions. Here in the U.S., they have been responsible at all levels of power — from the Oval Office to the streets — for the murder, incarceration and lynching of countless Black and Brown people. Those who fight them — from those who are facing felony charges to those who are martyred in the struggle — are heroes, not enemies.