MUST READ — “Antifa”: International Brownshirts and Soldiers of the European and American Left

Donald Trump’s announcement he would be “designating Antifa as a Terrorist Organization” on May 31 focused scrutiny on the network of violent far-left groups espousing “antifascism”, which often enjoy NGO, media and taxpayer support in Europe.

By Collin McMahon in Germany

“We have a number of investigators at the department that are working with DOJ and working with FBI. We know that they have opened up a number of cases specifically targeting some of the leaders of Antifa and other organizations that are involved,” acting Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf told Fox News.

German AfD foreign policy speaker Petr Bystron urged President Trump to “to examine the international Antifa terror network all the way up to the highest levels in press and government, and issue travel bans and international arrest warrants where necessary and appropriate.”

In Europe, Antifa is frequently supported by taxpayer funding and works openly with political secret police, law enforcement and media to suppress conservative voices and parties. Speaking in the German Parliament March 12, Green Party delegate Renate Künast acknowledged state funding for Antifa, complaining the funding is too spotty: “I’m sick of having to fight for money for NGOs and Antifa groups, merely relying on temporary contracts”. A 2018 report by the Bundestag research service also documented federal funding is going from the Family Ministry to Antifa groups as part of the “anti-radicalization” program “Living Democracy!” A query by Bystron recently revealed that 9 million Euros German taxpayer funding went to left-wing Open Society related NGOs in 2019.

Writing on Breitbart, Christopher Tomlinson has now documented the history of Antifa in Europe, calling it “a warning to America.” Antifa, Tomlinson explains, “does not stand just for simply anti-fascism but rather for the organization Antifaschistische Aktion, originally the paramilitary arm of the Pro-USSR German Communist Party (KPD). Its actions today are not merely against fascism, but explicitly for a mix of anarchism and communism by any means necessary.” The first incarnation of Antifa 1932 was a communist paramilitary street-fighting organization, comparable to the Nazi Brownshirts, Mussolini’s Blackshirts and the Socialist Iron Front, Tomlinson writes.

 

“The modern Antifa movement, which has no formal link to the first Antifa, also began in Germany — West Germany at the time — in the anarchist squatter movement of the 1980s. The organization then largely fought against the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which has recently all but vanished in the polls, scoring just 0.4 per cent of the vote in the 2017 national election. The modern Antifa movement has embraced anarchism as well as communism; their logo emulates that of their 1930s incarnation but portrays the black flag of anarchism alongside the red flag of international socialism and communism.”

In the Cold War, Communist East Germany explicitly framed itself as an “Antifascist” state, to claim the moral high ground against the purportedly “fascist, imperialist” West under US/NATO leadership.  Thus, according to official Communist propaganda, the deadly Berlin Wall was not built to keep East Germans in, but was an “Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier”.

Former members of the East German Stasi have today increasingly infiltrated the state apparatus of West Germany, such as “hate watchdog” Amadeu Antonio Foundation, headed by former Stasi secret agent Anetta Kahane. In the East German state of Thuringia, which is now ruled by the former East German Communist Party, several former Stasi members now serve in government, as Stasi historian Hubertus Knabe documented. Knabe was the one to lose his job as head of the Berlin Stasi History Center, however, not the Communists.

The current head of Thuringian Secret Police Stephan Kramer also serves on the board of “hate watchdog” Amadeu Antonio Foundation, a freelance employee of which was arrested February 2019 for torching the car of an AfD politician in Berlin.

While the German government has increasingly gone after the right-wing conservative AfD party with secret police methods, the Antifa have provided the street violence. The AfD suffers more violent attacks than all other political parties in Germany put together. In January 2019, masked assailants attacked AfD politician Frank Magnitz from behind in an alley, nearly killing him. In February 2019, left-wing antifa website Indymedia published “assassination instructions” for attacks on AfD members, and just a few days later, four members of the AfD youth wing were attacked on their way to a screening of a film on the Warsaw Ghetto, including one Jewish member who felt “reminded of the 1930s.”

In March of this year, AfD chair Tino Chrupalla suffered smoke inhalation and had to be hospitalized when his car was torched outside his home. On May 16, three members of conservative auto workers union Zentrum Automobil were attacked by a mob of approx. 40 left-wing extremists on their way to an anti-shutdown protest in Stuttgart outside Mercedes HQ. One of the men was shot in the head point-blank with a tear gas gun, leaving the man comatose and still fighting for his life. The MSM took five days to even report the near-fatal shooting, employer Mercedes has yet to comment.

These methods have now been imported to the USA after Donald Trump’s election in Nov. 2016. Writing in his book “All Out War“, Ed Klein documented how George Soros attended a meeting of the “Democracy Alliance” along with Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, one week after Trumps election. “Soros presented a plan to merge the three major donor groups – the Women Donors Network, the Solidaire Network, and the Democracy Alliance – into a powerful new fund specifically aimed at undermining Donald Trump’s agenda and developing a rapid response to Republican policies.” This was the birth of “The Resistance”.

Writing in “The Big Lie” 2017, Dinesh D’Souza notes that “Soros is the main funder of some 200 leftist groups, including Planned Parenthood, MoveOn.org, and various left-wing environmental and human rights organizations. All are resolutely opposed to Trump and the GOP. The Women’s March, billed by the media as a spontaneous eruption against Trump, was heavily subsidized by the Soros Network. Soros also backs so-called anti-fascist groups and Black Lives Matter. In 2015, for example,  Soros’ Open Society gave $650,000 to support Black Lives Matter agitation in the wake of the Freddie Gray killing in Baltimore. This year, the Soros-backed group Alliance for Global Justice gave $50,000 to the militant thugs associated with the group Refuse Fascism.”

Refuse Fascism” was established shortly after the November 2016 election, writes David Horowitz’ “Discover the Networks”: “The creators of RF were Revolutionary Communist Party members Carl DixSunsara Taylor (an advisory board member with World Can’t Wait), and Andy Zee (a spokesman for the Manhattan-based Revolution Books shop managed by the Maoist activist C. Clark Kissinger). One of RF’s founding “initiators” was Cornel West.”

“Refuse Fascism” was Ground Zero of the US “Antifa” movement, instigating the violent riots in Washington, DC at the inaugural on Jan 20, 2017, and the violent riots at UC Berkeley at the scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos on February 1, 2017.

Now, it seems, the violent “Antifa” thugs have vowed to prevent Donald Trump’s reelection – by all means necessary.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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