Three apparent antifa activists were arrested at a Portland rally Saturday that claimed to be about resisting the “fascist” forces of white supremacy.
However, when the assault suspects’ mugshots were released on Sunday and Monday, critics noted that they all appeared to be white. The revelation played into a common criticism of antifa: While the movement justifies its embrace of violence in terms of self-defense against a supposed racist threat, its members appear to mostly hail from America’s white majority.
The irony was heightened in the case of the Portland demonstration because a mob of antifascist activists was filmedassaulting gay Asian journalist Andy Ngo, seemingly because of his critical coverage of their movement.
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As on previous occasions, conservative social media users circulated dozens of mugshots said to be of antifa members. All but a handful of the people pictured looked white.
One America News host Jack Posobiec concluded: “Antifa is white ISIS.”
Independent journalist Tim Pool deemed the movement to be “one of the largest white identitarian groups in the US.”
Meanwhile, in an article entitled “Antifa Is Mostly Made Up of Privileged White Dudes,” The Federalist’s David Marcus argued that antifa’s racial makeup is in keeping with that of the left in general.
Antifa mugshots and far-left championing of minority causes
Conservative commentators have long blamed overeager whites for radicalizing the progressive movement in the name of minorities. David French made the case for National Review in a February essay.
“Change is fast, and there is no toleration for those left behind,” he wrote. “And ironically enough, a large part of this angry white activism is conducted on behalf of a black and brown population that is more moderate and more religious than their woke white champions. At a time when being a ‘white savior’ is seen as a mark of insensitivity — denying the power and autonomy of nonwhite Americans — white savioring is practically the mission statement of woke Twitter.”
Still, antifa activists and their supporters have stood by their self-defense narrative.
In an op-ed published Monday in Haaretz, Stanislav Vystosky, a critical sociologist at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, claimed that “many militant anti-fascists” become activists “because aspects of their identity are directly targeted by fascist violence; they are queer, transgender, gender non-conforming, people of color, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and certainly identified in ways that intersected across these categories.”
According to Vystosky, antifa is a “means of ensuring their safety from a movement that threatens their very existence and venerates violence as the highest form of action.”
He claimed: “Even the Antifa activists who identify as cis heterosexual white males are the targets of fascist violence as ‘race’ and ‘gender’ traitors.”
*see full story by the Pluralist