Something Is Happening Here: The Portland Killing, Pt. 1

in both — but we should give them credit: Both understood the need to anchor the political solutions they advocated in a broader and deeper world view, and both (Evola much more so) worked to develop and expound such a world view.

But antifa? Here is what Visotzky says: “These anti-fascists… often see fascists as a threat to their personal existence, and their physical and emotional well-being.”

This personalized interpretation of the “fascism” to be resisted, and the fact that there is no organization and structure, means this: Not everyone can just call himself or herself a “Resident of Maryland”; a “Harvard University student”; or a member of the Kiwanis Club – but anyone can call himself or herself a “member” or “follower” of antifa because there is nothing to join, nothing to register for, nothing to belong to, no specific ideology to uphold, no leaders to follow, nothing to pledge allegiance to. The “fascism” which this antifa follower or that antifa follower wants to resist may vary with one’s personal inclinations, preferences, or idiosyncrasies.

Vysotzky views antifa as a largely benign and decentralized group of activists, mostly on the local level – but one which does have a small, militant fringe element willing to engage in violent acts (mostly destruction of property and, less frequently, non-lethal attacks on police officers). It would be interesting to see Vysotzky’s comments on the killing in Portland.

Vysotzky’s view of antifa is shared by practically all other students of extremism and domestic terrorism: all of them view the threat to public safety from far-right extremism as orders of magnitude greater than that posed by antifa. This is also the consensus assessment of all U.S. law enforcement agencies on the federal and state level, and of the U.S. intelligence community. The law enforecment aservices and domestic intelligence agencies of European countries have reached the same conclusions.

Which brings us to the question we raised at the beginning: Does the killing in Portland signify that some followers of antifa are now willing to engage in the kind of violence they have shunned before, or is it an isolated case of a deranged and violent individual?   

Tomorrow, in the second part of this short discussion, I will discuss some of the recent studies dealing with antifa, the differences in its activities in the United States and Europe, and what some of the leading scholars of left-wing extremism say about the threat the group poses for public safety.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire