Some Antifa activists who showed up in Berkeley, California on Sunday revealed how radical they truly are, with a chant that called for the destruction of the United States:
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told CNN in mid-August, “What they’re trying to do now is not only become prominent through violence at these high-profile rallies, but also to reach out through small meetings and through social networking to cultivate disenfranchised progressives who heretofore were peaceful.”
Scott Crow, a former Antifa organizer who worked with the group for roughly 30 years, added, “There is a place for violence. Is that the world that we want to live in? No. Is it the world we want to inhabit? No. Is it the world we want to create? No. But will we push back? Yes.”
Antifa is often not interested in dialogue; only shutting down those with whom they disagree. In February, Portland’s city council had to shut down its public forum because Antifa activists would not allow it continue.
There’s also the attempt to paint Antifa as less extreme than it is; Mark Bray, historian at Dartmouth College and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, told Vox, “What tends to happen is they disband once they’ve successfully marginalized or eliminated the local right-wing extremist threat, and then return to what they normally do — organizing unions, doing environmental activism, etc.”
So what kind of “threat” was there in Berkeley on Sunday that precipitated enough violence from Antifa that even the leftist Washington Post had to report it? That violence is documented here.
There are those on the moderate Left who are willing to engage in the open dialogue for which America is famously celebrated. But Antifa is not interested in that, and their true agenda just may have been revealed by their ugly chant on Sunday.