https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...66c7a6-a36a-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html
The Trump administration on Sunday intensified its effort to pin blame on the far-left “antifa” movement for violent demonstrations over police killings of black people, as the president vowed on Twitter to designate antifa a terrorist organization and Attorney General William P. Barr asserted that it and other groups’ activities constituted “domestic terrorism.”
Trump cannot, for practical and legal reasons, formally designate antifa a terrorist organization, and neither he nor his attorney general has made public specific evidence that the far-left movement is orchestrating the fiery protests that have erupted in dozens of U.S. cities.
Protests — especially those of the scale seen in the United States in recent days — are complicated affairs, often drawing participants with a range of political ideologies and motivations, including some with bad intentions. But some observers said they see in Trump’s targeting of antifa an attempt to shift focus away from what sparked the demonstrations: outrage over killings of black people by police.
“The idea of antifa ‘masterminding’ what’s happening over the last few days — if you know anything about the subject — is ludicrous,” said Mark Bray, a historian and author of the 2017 book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.” “There’s a real investment on the part of the administration and their allies in portraying these recent protests as organized from the top down, and not a spontaneous outpouring of rage.”
At nightfall in Minneapolis, a dichotomy between the violent and the nonviolent often emerges, with brief arguments ensuing at the appearance of shattered bricks clutched in palms or glass bottles filled with accelerant and a dangling rag. In conversations with The Washington Post over the past several days, protesters from as near as South Minneapolis and as far as California have listed varied motivations for the unrest, from a desire to see additional officers charged in Floyd’s death, to general frustration with the police, to boredom during the coronavirus.
Trump first pointed to antifa Saturday, tweeting, “It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!” Soon after, Barr appeared on TV in apparent support of the president, saying, “In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups, far- left extremist groups, using antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from outside the state to promote the violence.”
Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is not a national group, but more of a far-left ideology spawned as a reaction to the far right, Bray said. In some places across the country, there are groups that call themselves “antifa” that “are very well organized and tightly knit,” he said. Some coordinate with one another.
Who are the antifa?
The groups do not make their membership rolls public, so tracking their scope is difficult, but they generally have about five to 15 members in a given city, Bray said. That, he said, is why it is so difficult to believe they are primarily responsible for engineering the violence in so many places.
“If antifa on its own could orchestrate a national campaign of burning down police stations and burning down malls, they would have done it years ago,” Bray said. “They agree with these kinds of actions. But the number of people involved is so small.”
T.V. Reed, a Washington State University professor who studies protests and social movements, said conservative politicians have long “exaggerated the importance” of interlopers infiltrating protests, and they “are clearly doing it again.” But the matter, he said, can be complicated, as violent, right-wing extremists might see an opportunity to discredit the protests, and petty thieves seize the occasion to loot.
“There is simply no way at this stage to separate out all these competing elements,” Reed said. “But, bottom line, the heart of the protest is legitimately angry but nonviolent folks with a real set of grievances.”
Police turn more aggressive against protesters and bystanders, alike, adding to violence and chaos
A Justice Department spokeswoman said Barr’s allegation about far-left groups was based on “information given to us by state and local law enforcement.” State and local officials in Minnesota, though, have given a different account.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) suggested that white supremacists or drug cartels were perhaps responsible for the violence. The claim about white supremacists, state officials said, was based on a review of online postings, which showed far-right activist groups encouraging their followers to descend on the state. Federal law enforcement officials said they were not aware of any cartel involvement.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told Fox News Sunday, “We have evidence that outsiders have been present and, in some cases, have played a very negative role.
“But I’ve been talking with protesters and trying to get a sense of who some of these folks are, and I’ve heard mixed things,” Ellison said. “Some of the negative stuff has come from people in Minnesota and some of it has come from people on the outside What I’d say is we’ve got enough to handle on our own and that what we really need to do is refocus on justice for Mr. Floyd.”
