Quick Takes // By Ben FrankelSomething Is Happening Here: The Portland Killing, Pt. 1
On Saturday, a follower of antifa allegedly shot and killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer. Experts on terrorism and extremist movements note that if the charges against the alleged shooter are proven, then, as far as can be ascertained, this will be the first killing by an antifa follower. The important question is whether the killing is a one-off, or whether it signifies something deeper and more menacing. Gary LaFree, a University of Maryland criminologist, said: “We’re getting these situations where people with opposing perspectives are going in as volunteers” to enforce their views in violent ways. “I think it’s going to be inevitable if you keep having situations like this, things are going to get out of hand.”
______________________________
“There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear”
Buffalo Springfield
“For What It’s Worth”
Stanyslav Vysotsky’s article we publish today (“What – or Who – Is Antifa?” HSNW, 1 September 2020) — I discuss his book on antifa below — was written before the weekend killing in Portland, Oregon, of Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer, by an antifa follower. Experts on terrorism and extremist movements note that if the charges against the alleged shooter are proven, then, as far as can be ascertained, this will be the first killing by an antifa follower.
The important question is whether the killing is a one-off, or whether it signifies something deeper and more menacing.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has recently assembled a database of almost 900 politically motivated plots and attacks in the United States since 1994, ending in May 2020. The database shows that in the 1994-May 2020 period, 329 murders were linked to far-right groups. Not one murder was committed by antifa followers.
Vysotzky, an authority on extremist movements (and the author of the definitive American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism), sees antifa less as a movement — it has no members or membership rolls; no membership fees; no acceptance tests; no leaders; no publications; no offices; no organizational structure or institutions; no committees; no agreed-upon ideology; no voting by anyone on anything, etc. — and more as a generalized attitude, an approach to politics and social life, a view point, a disposition.
Moreover, different followers of antifa define the fascism they object to differently: some of what is labeled as “fascism” by different followers of antifa is as generalized as “oppression,” “inequality,” and “injustice”; or somewhat more defined, such as “racism,” “bigotry,” or “homophobia”; or very specific – anti-LGBT attitudes.
Compare that to, say, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon: in a speech he made in 2014, he admitted that his thinking on politics and society was influenced by the Fascist Italian philosopher Julius Evola (1898-1974). Evola was a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles in the first half of the twentieth century – and the thinkers who developed the theoretical frameworks for Italian Fascism and German Nazism owe many of their ideas to Evola.
The point here is not that we should agree with Bannon or Evola – there is much to criticize
