How To Actually Cover Stories About Antifa

- Hello, I'm a special newsperson and here's some special
news.
You may have been hearing a lot
about an activist group known as ANTIFA.
- ANTIFA.
- But who are they?
Why are they systematically razing the countryside
and burning entire cities to the ground?
Are they for fascism or against it?
- Why not classify ANTIFA as a terrorist group?
- Very violent group of protestors that
call themselves ANTIFA.
(melancholic music)
- To answer that last question,
we must examine their name.
ANTIFA stands for anti-fascist.
Anti is a preposition meaning in opposition to
and fascist is a word meaning fascist.
Good, but are they really anti-fascist or
is their name, like inflammable, an oxymoronic
word invented by the illuminati to
confuse us into self-immolation?
A recent protest and counter protest
at Berkeley has generated some alarming headlines.
A Washington Post article retweeted by President
Trump described the situation as, Black-clad
ANTIFA members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators
in Berkeley.
There were other alarming headlines as well.
Masked anarchists violently rout right-wing
demonstrators in Berkeley, claimed an SF Gate
headline and PBS reported the disturbing news
that, Black-clad anarchists swarm anti-hate rally in
California.
If you read these headlines, you
get the sense that thousands of
angry chaos-goblins are attacking
peaceful anti-hate protesters for no reason.
But that PBS headline is misleading because
ANTIFA wasn't attacking an anti-hate rally,
rather, they were part of the anti-hate
rally protesting a right wing group called
Patriot Prayer and their rally was called No to
Marxism in Berkeley.
The news stories I mentioned did very little
investigation into this group and its motives.
They call them peaceful right wing protesters
and go as far as to say that their
leaders consistently denounced racism, which
sources are telling me is now somehow
a very brave thing to do.
Fox News and The Mercury News cited
Southern Poverty Law Center, an
organization that tracks extremism, as
proof that Patriot Prayer isn't
categorized as a hate group.
Cool, let's take them completely at their
word, no need to actually read the
statement that SPLC released about
the rally and oops too late I did that.
It turns out that SPLC released an
article ahead of the Berkeley rally
and the first sentence is, Joey Gibson's
Patriot Prayer has trolled the Northwest
with a series of rallies designed to
provoke violence and populated with extremists, but he
says he's changed his approach.
They write that Patriot Prayer organize
with the clear intent of attempting to
provoke a violent response from far-left
ANTIFAscists.
They also point out that Patriot Prayer often shows up
with armor and bats and often instigates fights.
So, they're trolls specifically looking to get
into fights with ANTIFA.
But at least they're not racists, I mean,
Joey Gibson, Patriot Prayer's leader, openly
denounced neo-Nazis.
Except whoops, he's doing a really
bad job of it because White supremacists
keep showing up to his rallies.
And that's exactly what is drawing ANTIFA
to counter-protest.
According to the SPLC, White nationalists,
skinheads and other identitarian activists have been
involved in all of Gibson's rallies in Portland, though
generally without announcing their presence.
Interesting that Fox and the other news sources
we quoted didn't mention this.
They also didn't mention that one of these neo-Nazis
at Gibson's rallies later attempted
to attack a Muslim woman and her
friend while shouting racial slurs
and ended up killing the two men
who came to the women's defense.
You might say, Well, it's not fair
to judge an entire far-right group
whose troll of a leader publicly
said he disavows neo-Nazis just because a few
of them are neo-Nazis and one of them
committed a hate crime.
But the media is all about judging the
entirety of ANTIFA over the actions of a few
and doesn't hesitate to present
Patriot Prayer as a completely
peaceful, non-racist group.
Also, Gibson himself claimed that
discriminating against Muslims
isn't bigotry but, you know.
He disavowed racism!
So.
I'm not saying ANTIFA did no wrong
during the Berkeley rally or that
it's good that they're allowing
alt-right trolls to bait them into fights.
These fights are used to create a false-narrative of fringe
lefties committing violence.
This false narrative is a historical
tool used by fascists and our media is
falling for it like Elmer Fudd in
wabbit hell.
Using violence, even to counteract
violent fascist ideologies gets
into very tricky territory.
At what point is it necessary?
Is it effective?
Does it actually make things better?
And if it's not in self-defense, what does it accomplish?
In fact, take a look at this clip from the rally.
(blows whistles)
- Get out, get away, you.
Out.
- Why are you guys beating us up for?
(screaming over each other)
- A far right protester runs up to a
group of ANTIFA and pepper sprays
them a few times and ANTIFA rushes
over to knock him down with their shields.
The Trump supporter is clearly trying to
instigate violent confrontation.
But why is he bringing pepper spray to a shield fight?
Probably because he thinks that once the crowd of angry
protesters descend upon him, he'll look like
a peaceful, hapless victim.
And judging by the way the media interpreted
the rally, he was right.
And sure, he instigated the altercation, but ANTIFA
gave a disproportionate response, one that
isn't justifiable as self-defense.
But even if these protesters felt
like the pepper-sprayer deserved
it, they're still giving him the
martyrdom and victimhood he was
trolling for in the first place.
This is a common tactic of the
far-right and of hate groups.
That fun video of a crying Nazi is
actually sinister when you think about the intentions.
- Everybody and their mother wants to ruin my life.
If I wanted violence it's not a difficult
thing for a guy like me to find.
- That dude's not crying.
Here's him before the rally.
- I carry a pistol.
I go to the gym all the time.
I'm trying to make myself more capable of violence.
The amount of restraint that our people
showed out there I think was outstanding.
Whatever you think of my opinions
that's going to be something that puts
you in danger.
I think that a lot more people are
going to die before we're done here, frankly.
We're not non-violent.
We'll kill these people if we have to.
- And let's see the tears.
- And so.
Yeah.
There we go.
- Literally none?
Cool.
Neo-Nazis, like Nazis, want to
appear like victims, not only to
help recruit their base, but to
appeal to the media.
They're just rebranding themselves for the mainstream.
These aren't your grandmother's Nazis, but they're.
They're still Nazis.
So even though ANTIFA can be criticized for some
of their methods, the media still has a
responsibility to portray the events in an
accurate and objective manner.
Remember the news stories we just discussed?
Probably, it was very, very, recently.
With headlines like Black-clad ANTIFA members
attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley and
Masked anarchists violently rout
right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley.
Compare those to the more restrained headlines that preceded
the White Supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, such as 1
dead, 34 injured in clashes at Virginia or
One dead as car strikes crowds
amid protests of White nationalist
gathering in Charlottesville.
These headlines are ambiguous about
where the violence is coming from,
in fact, they don't even specify
who was killed and by whom.
It's hand waved as a clash.
But it wasn't a clash that killed
Heather Heyer, a young leftist
woman who died while protesting the
White supremacist rally.
It was a car driven by a White supremacist,
who intentionally drove into the crowd of protesters.
And DeAndre Harris didn't get injured amid
protests, he was beaten up by White supremacists.
Imagine if these stories were written in the
style of the post-Berkeley news stories, they'd read
something like, White Nationalists storm
peaceful left-wing protests, killing one or
Hat and polo-clad Neo-Nazis violently attack minorities.
It's important to note this lopsidedness in reporting, where
ANTIFAs are explicitly labeled and blamed for violence,
whereas White supremacists are labeled as victims.
This helps contribute to the all sides narrative.
Recently, there was a Washington
Post op-ed called, Yes, ANTIFA is
the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.
The author echoed the same lazy
reporting that claimed ANTIFA
attacked peace-loving right-wing
protesters and equates violence to totalitarianism.
Now just as we examined the word ANTIFA to arrive
at anti-fascist, let's examine fascism and
totalitarianism, which are specific political ideologies.
Fascism is an authoritarian, nationalistic
government that uses undemocratic force to suppress
opposition and control wealth.
Totalitarianism describes a government in which there
are no balances to power, that can have
absolute control over all aspects of life.
Simply being violent, even though it's valid to argue that
it's morally wrong and unproductive, is not the same as
being totalitarian.
Drinking seven Four-Lokos and trying to start a
fight with a mailbox, while violent and mean to
mailboxes, isn't totalitarianism.
Violent protests aren't fascism and you can make
coherent arguments against violence
at protests without forgetting what words mean.
Journalists, your name has journal in it, a thing you
put a bunch of words in.
So maybe you should be more particular about
how you use words, rather than
making up things that sound sort of right.
If it feels like the media is
devoting as much time criticizing
ANTIFA as they are actual fascists,
it's because that's uh.
That's how it is.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting or FAIR, hey!
Did a review of op-eds and editorials in
the wake of Charlottesville, comparing the
frequency of criticism of ANTIFA versus actual fascism.
They found 27 opinion pieces denouncing Neo-Nazis and
White nationalists and 28 pieces that denounced ANTIFA.
It's as if for every 27 articles about how
harmful cancer is, the media felt
they had to devote 28 to explain
how some people who are fighting
cancer are actually holes.
This isn't isolated to news about the
Charlottesville protest.
Recently, there was another protest
in Portland, which the Washington
Post described as, ANTIFA, Far-right protesters
clash again in Portland, disrupting peaceful rallies.
First of all, there's that word clash again.
And second of all, this peaceful rally was
another Joey Gibson affair, who
we've established is a violence troll who
can't stop attracting White Supremacists like
they're cat hair.
Also, these reports makes it sound like
ANTIFA and neo-nazis were roughhousing with each other
like the Jets and the Sharks, except the Jets
believed in ethnic cleansing instead of
being a Jet all the way.
The story describes how ANTIFA attacked police officers
by throwing bottles and rocks.
Well, that's not good.
It's actually bad and it's a great way
to undermine your own protest.
Nine people were arrested and charged
with interfering with police officers and
disorderly conduct.
So justice served, we can all pack it
in and nope, buried deeper in the article is this
little nugget, a man drove a car into a group of
protesters.
Luckily, nobody was injured, but it was a close call.
People had to jump out of the way
as the car accelerated in reverse
to target protesters.
The article didn't specify whether the man was
alt-right and the only clue we
have is that his car was festooned
with Confederate flags, so I guess
that mystery will never be solved.
This has been our new segment Foreverly Unsolved
Mysterious Doings.
Well, at least the guy who attempted to murder
protesters was arrested like the ANTIFA people who
threw bottles, wait, what's that?
He wasn't?
Well, okay apparently he wasn't arrested.
He was detained and then released because
purposefully putting your car into
reverse to try and mow down protesters is one of those
slap-on-the-wrist kinds of things.
Yay.
And since this was a kind of downer
story, here's a bit of fun, after
the wannabe terrorist driver was
arrested, a group of chucklenuts
called the Proud Boys made an appearance.
The Proud Boys describe themselves as a pro-western
fraternal organization, AKA Diet Nazi.
I prefer Pepsi.
Join the conversation.
The Proud Boys, apparently cranky
that their friend got detained,
drove around and blasted pepper
spray at protesters from their car.
Police stopped them without detaining them because boy Nazis
will be boy Nazis.
After they were allowed to go, they crashed into a
Police car.
Do we have a clip?
Dang.
Do we have an audio clip?
That's exactly how it sounded.
Splendid.
Anyways, this story would be even more fun if it wasn't
about casual acceptance of low-carb
neo-Nazis by police.
So let's talk about something cuter.
Horses!
Well, horseshoe theory at least,
which admittedly is less cute, but
we'll keep rolling footage of horses being
cute and dumb.
Aww.
Horseshoe theory is the idea that
radicals on both sides of the spectrum are the same.
Thus, Neo-Nazis are somehow the
same as the counter-protesters and
ANTIFA who oppose them.
This isn't new.
- There's blame on both sides.
- No, further back.
- My dearest Martha.
Battle rages on and that is no good for me.
Weirdly relevant, but too far.
I'll just.
During the civil rights era, politicians equated
civil rights activists with the KKK.
Dwight D Eisenhower himself criticized what
he called extremists on both sides.
If that sounds uncomfortably familiar, we may want to
rethink this idea that Donald Trump's awful
rhetoric is unprecedented.
There was even a headline during the
1950s that said, Integration Extremists on
Both Sides Urged by School Head to Keep Quiet.
Remember that old saying about how
we definitely shouldn't learn from
history so we can keep repeating it
because reruns are fun?
Recently, the FBI and Department of
Homeland Security assessed and
labeled ANTIFA activities as domestic terrorism.
Surely there's no historical precedent of the FBI
targeting protest movements.
Wait, what's that?
There totally is?
Oh boy.
Well, apparently the FBI sent Dr
Martin Luther King Jr a letter urging him to kill
himself.
So.
Remembering this is important, especially now that
anti-protester legislation is on the rise.
That's right, there are 30 new anti-protest bills
that were proposed and six legislatures have approved
harsher penalties and fines for protesters.
Gasp, our free speech is being suppressed?
I'm sure there will be a bunch of far-right think pieces
outraged over this.
What?
There aren't?
Cool.
Yeah, I know.
Have you not seen this show before?
Geez.
Anyways, Oklahoma just increased sentencing
for trespassing, which could now
result in six months in jail, as
well as property damage as a result
of protesting, which could be met
with 10 years in jail which is too
long in jail, for a person breaking a thing.
Some measures are specific, like upgrading the charge
against those who block the interstate from gross
misdemeanor to a felony, but some are more
vague, like anti-loitering bills
that give police more freedom in
determining whether protests can be
classified as unlawful loitering.
And maybe we shouldn't be giving
too much unchecked power to police
because while some, I assume, are
good people, a lot of others are
like that cop who tried to illegally
collect blood from a patient and arrested the nurse who
tried to stop his weird cop-vampire routine.
If you think this kind of legislation won't be used by
already great judges of the law to
clamp down on protesters, it already has.
212 protesters were arrested after anti-Trump
inauguration demonstrations, some
of whom now face up to 80 years in prison.
Even if these people were all guilty of thing
damage, this seems excessive, but even their
guilt isn't clear.
The Office of Police Complaints is reviewing the
conduct of the Police Department during the protests.
Lawyers have launched a class action lawsuit that claims
police made false arrests and used excessive force.
Even journalists were arrested.
One of whom is Aaron Cantu, a writer for the Santa Fe
Reporter, whose charges don't even
include property damage, but merely
being present while damage occurred.
He faces a possible 75 year sentence.
Look, property destruction is bad and sometimes
looks extremely dumb and getting
into a fight with police isn't
good, but facing life in prison is
excessive punishment, especially
for someone who may have just been
adjacent to the incidents.
And for those that were directly
responsible for the vehicle damage,
broken windows and an officer's
broken wrist, they should face
legal consequences, but also, maybe
they don't deserve decades in prison?
Maybe?
People, more valuable than property?
Maybe?
I dunno, just a thought.
Just a thought.
On the other side of both sides
of violence at protests, remember
the guy who tried to drive his car
into protesters and how he got off
without even being arrested?
Republican lawmakers in six states
are trying to make it so even if he
ended up hitting protesters, he
could still be legally protected.
Representative Keith Kempenich of North
Dakota decided that the Water Protectors
and pipeline protesters were leading too cushy of a
life, being legally protected from cars running them over.
Protesters who intentionally block and challenge
motorists are quote, the definition of terrorism, according
to Kempenich.
Running over protesters with a two ton metal
motion machine that can easily
pulverize the human skeleton, is
apparently not terrorism.
They just, felt challenged, got mad and
used their kill tool to try to kill people.
Kempenich isn't alone.
Like I said, the Department of Homeland Security
has classified ANTIFA activities as
domestic terrorist violence.
Compare that to the measures recently taken against far
right-wing groups, which the SPLC
and Anti-Defamation League's Center
on Extremism say are responsible for the lion's share of
extremist-related murders and violence.
But don't worry, Donald Trump, somehow the president of an
entire county.
Country, has slashed funding for
organizations that fight far-right
extremism by over 10 million dollars.
And according to the SPLC and Anti Defamation
league far right extremists are responsible
for most of the politically motivated violence in the
country so, wait, I thought this was good news?
No?
Groups that exist to curb the violence of right wing
extremists have lost funding?
Good, good, great, yay.
Good, yay.
So the next time someone says we should be
opening dialogue instead of protesting, remember that these
effective local outreach programs and nonprofits
that sought to target and intervene with extremism
have been de-fanged.
The vampire guy from before.
Fangs.
To lighten the mood, I want to quote.
(stummers)
Jean-Paul Sartre.
The quote comes from 1944s Anti-Semite and the
Jew, about antisimetism, but broadly it's
about hate and where it comes from
and interacting with Nazis or alt-Nazis.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware
of the absurdity of their replies.
They know that their remarks are
frivolous, open to challenge.
But they are amusing themselves, for it
is their adversary who is obliged
to use words responsibly, since he
believes in words.
The anti-Semites have the right to play.
They delight in acting in bad faith,
since they seek not to persuade by
sound argument, but to intimidate and disconcert.
If you press them too closely, they will abruptly
fall silent, loftily indicating by
some phrase that the time for argument is past.
What the Sartre-man is saying is
that anti-Semites and hate groups,
such as neo-Nazis, the alt-right
and White nationalists, twist the
rules of decency and engagement to their advantage.
They cry victim while calling for the subjugation
or murder of other races.
They march in paramilitary gear and
carry semi-automatic weapons, then
complain about the violence of the left.
And when they feel cornered, they rip their
little nazi-Polos.
- [Man] You can't just take your costume off.
- And refuse to engage with questions.
I wish there was a good quote about.
- [Man] So you just came here for the fun.
- Never believe that anti-Semites are
completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies.
- [Man] Yeah yeah, so you're not a real White supremacist.
- They know that your remarks are
frivolous, open to challenge.
- [Man] Which part?
- But they are amusing themselves,
for it is their adversary who is
obliged to use words responsibly.
Since he believes in words.
The anti-Semites have the right to play.
- [Man] When's the fun part come?
- They delight in acting in bad
faith, since they seek not to persuade
by sound argument, but to intimidate and disconcert.
- [Man] for what?
- The time for talk is over.
- [Man] This is the guy who took his
White supremacist uniform off.
- If you press them too closely.
- [Man] You were a White supremacist until people
started chasing you and then you took the uniform off.
Are you gonna put it back on?
So it's like cosplay?
- They will abruptly fall silent.
Loftily indicating by some phrase
that the time for argument is past.
Nailed it.
Also?
Yes.
That was fun.
But what's insidious about this is they
get to shed their dumb little shirts, hats,
khakis and Tiki torches and blend into society,
while the minority targets of their
violent rhetoric do not.
They know that the media's default setting is
even-handedness and civility regardless of context and they
will use that to their advantage.
Whenever an ANTIFA protester throws a punch,
they'll use that to justify murder and they know there
will be as much news coverage of the punch or thrown bottle
as there will be of the murder, or, like 28-27.
They get to be both victim and victimizer, using our good
faith in freedom of speech and laws to continue to push for
more mainstream acceptance.
So we have to keep countering their
protests and calling them out on
their dogwhistle tactics and their lies.
At a Berkley protest of Ben Shapiro, the alt right spread
the news that a woman was stabbed by
ANTIFA, except she fell and according to the police,
there was no stabbing in the city of Berkley last night.
Here's the Chairman of Trump Students and Fox News
contributor Ryan Fournier spreading
the news that Here is the ANTIFA
terrorist who was arrested last
night with a weapon at Berkley
pictured with Hillary Clinton.
Wow, I wonder if Hillary gave her the weapon.
Oh the weapon was a sign that she brought to the protest?
Cool.
Tweet's still up, Ryan.
Great, you suck.
Wait, what was I talking about?
Right, it's 2017 of course I'm talking about Nazis.
There are ways to counter Nazis other than punching them and
that starts with the media doing a better job of holding
fascists accountable for the crap they do and say and to
actually do research into groups who claim to
be sheep in wolve's clothing.
Journalists have a responsibility
to look beyond what alt-right and
White nationalists brand themselves
as and lay bare the fascist
violence their rhetoric implies.
We can't completely dismiss protesters
because some of them are violent
and we can criticize the violence
without taking the morally lazy
perspective that in terms of fascists and
ANTIFA-ascists, both sides are equally bad.
Wish there was a better way to say it.
- There's blame on both sides.
- Nope.
Oh!
Here's a cool life hack for determining which side is
worse, is one of them Nazis then it's the Nazis the Nazis
are worse, lifehack.
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How To Actually Cover Stories About Antifa - Some News

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