Honestly, we understand why you are confused.
Here’s the simple explanation: Antifa refers specifically to people who are attempting to prevent fascists from spreading fascism. Antifa calls this “deplatforming” and it can involve a variety of tactics, including getting fascists kicked off social media, making noise so they can’t be heard when they are speaking in public, or using moderate (nonlethal) violence. It’s that last detail that has fascists, cryptofascists (fascists who deny being fascists), and (possibly) conservatives really freaked out — if you try to spread fascism, some antifa might punch you in the face.
There’s a much longer explanation, but if you get confused, you should really refer back to the simple explanation because that’s the important part.
The first antifa movements were in pre-Nazi Germany, where many people, including communists, anarchists, trade unionists, and even liberals, saw the danger of fascism and met Nazis in the street to try to stop them before things got out of hand. Unfortunately, there were two separate anti-fascist groups and they did not get along: Eiserne Front (Iron Front) was first to form, led by social democrats, trade unionists, and liberals. Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action) was next, led by the communists. Antifascist Action and Iron Front were formal organizations (not like today’s antifa). Today’s antifa generally (but not always!) takes the name antifa from the nickname of Antifascist Action, but takes the symbol (circle with three arrows pointing down and left) from the Iron Front. Had they been able to get along, things might have turned out better, but they were not, and ultimately the Weimar Republic chose to side with the Nazis due to their fear of communism.
Here’s where the confusion happens: Antifa is short for anti-fascist, but not all anti-fascists are antifa. In fact, all good people are anti-fascists. When someone asks us if the Mid-Missouri JBGC is “antifa” we say “no” because we don’t do the specific things that antifa does — we do not attempt to deplatform fascists, and we would not initiate violence or even escalate a situation toward violence. The law explicitly says that antifa’s activities are illegal (because US law says it is legal for fascists to generally advocate for genocide), and our club only participates in legal activities. (We do, however, recognize that there is nothing unethical about antifa’s approach to fascism.) If you hear about an anti-fascist organization, like ours, odds are it is not antifa.
The Trump administration is clearly fascistic, so it is no surprise that they oppose antifa and have attempted to criminalize “membership” in antifa — even though antifa is not a formal organization, and therefore has no members. They are also trying to blame antifa for arson and other acts of property destruction, but when vandals have been caught, law enforcement has never been able to connect them to antifa. They’ve tried to blame antifa for violence at protests, but when the police stop physically attacking protesters, the violence magically goes away — a good indication that it is the police that cause most protest violence. This follows a long history of right-wing groups intentionally misrepresenting the left and should come as no surprise. What’s surprising is that so many Americans believe these accusations.
There are rare exceptions to the rule that antifa are not organized; those exist in regional antifa groups that are explicitly organized and proud of their deplatforming mission. The most famous of these would be Rose City Antifa in Portland, OR. However, even in Portland, most of the people engaging in deplatforming of fascists will not be formal members of Rose City Antifa. If you visit their website, you’ll see that they explicitly say that their mission is to deplatform fascists. If you haven’t heard the name of your local antifa organization, then you probably don’t have one in your area. Columbia, MO does not have any kind of organized antifa; in fact, we don’t think it even has any unorganized antifa.
Antifa are not terrorists. I suppose a lot of fascists out there are pretty terrified of getting punched in the face, but that doesn’t fit our standard definition of terrorism, which requires that someone dies or at least might have died from the attack. I can’t emphasize this enough: Antifa specifically means people who try to deplatform fascists (not kill them), so if someone is a terrorist (attempting mass murder), then what they are doing is not “antifa” because that is not what antifa does. It is theoretically possible for an anti-fascist to be a terrorist — but a recent analysis of terrorism in the US found that no one had died from left-wing terrorism in the last 26 years (which was the limit of their study).
In a desperate attempt to define the left as “terrorists” some analysts (including the one linked above) have included property damage in their definition of terrorism, which is absurd, and some attempt to conflate leftism with Black people (in short, that’s a mistake). Regarding left-wing terrorism, the primary concern among US law enforcement is that they might at any moment start doing terrorism — it’s a delusion based on our culture’s villainizing of the left.
It is the right wing that regularly produces terrorists. That includes — but is not limited to — white supremacists (like both the Oklahoma City bomber and Charles Manson), religious extremists (like the 9/11 attackers and people who attack abortion clinics), misogynists (like the guy who blew his hand off making a bomb to kill “hot cheerleaders” or the Sutherland Springs, TX church shooting), and homophobes (Pulse Nightclub shooting, Upstairs Lounge attack).
Antifa is rarely organized and there is no national or international antifa organization. While antifa are anti-fascist, most anti-fascists are not antifa and anyone who is opposed to fascism is an anti-fascist. What’s important in identifying antifa is that they actively deny fascists a platform for advocating for fascism; antifa actions may include non-lethal violence. Most anti-fascists do not use violence to deny fascists a platform because doing so is illegal.
RELATED LINKS
The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States — Center for Strategic and International Studies (June 2020). This study includes the popular conflation of property damage with terrorism.
The Green Scare: How a Movement That Never Killed Anyone Became FBI’s No. 1 Domestic Terrorism Threat — Alleen Brown, The Intercept (March, 2019)
Top Nixon adviser reveals the racist reason he started the ‘war on drugs’ decades ago — Alex Lockie, Business Insider (July 2019)
Antifaschistische Aktion — Wikipedia
Iron Front — Wikipedia
Incitement to Genocide — Wikipedia. International law says that incitement to genocide is illegal, but US law allows it for the most part in the interest of free speech (only incitement of a specific act of violence is strictly illegal); even if incitement to genocide were illegal in the US, antifa’s deplatforming would still be vigilantism, and thus illegal.
The Terrorist Threat Confronting the United States — testimony of Dale L. Watson (Executive Assistant Director, Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence Division, FBI) before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (February, 2002). I’ve included this because it illustrates the fact that “domestic left-wing terrorism” does not exist in the USA. Notice how they conflate both property damage and rebellion against the US occupation of Puerto Rico with domestic terrorism in order to create the impression that there is a domestic terrorism threat from the left.
America’s Armed, Antisemitic Far Right Is Prepping to Defend Trump in November — Alexander Reid Ross, Haaretz (August, 2020)
Trump is calling protesters who disagree with him terrorists. That puts him in the company of the world’s autocrats — Angela Dewan, CNN