BUT WHY? Antifa Is Appropriating The Philadelphia Flyers’ Horrifying New Mascot, ‘Gritty’

The Philadelphia Flyers unveiled their new mascot, Gritty, a month ago, to widespread horror among hockey fans (and mockery on social media). But it turns out that the orange monster has at least one group of dedicated fans: Antifa.

The black-clad “anti-Fascists,” who spend their time, ironically, trying to establish fascism, have taken Gritty under their wing as a symbol of the underclass’ fight against the repressive capitalist regime, the WSJ reports.

“Gritty belongs to Philadelphia, not to far-left activists. Still, in an era when everything from Nike and the NFL to your local restaurant is a political battlefield, this development is as predictable as it is sad,” Jillian Kay Melchior writes. “Not only can’t we have nice things; we can’t even have silly, creepy things.”

Gritty’s radical roots were revealed last week when anti-fascists proposed replacing a mural of former Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo with a massive portrait of Gritty, but the leftists declared their love for the 7-foot … thing … almost immediately upon introduction. Socialist magazine, Jacobin, tweeted that “Gritty is a worker,” in late September, and in early October, an anti-capitalist Gritty meme factory opened its doors on Twitter.

“@FellowGritty” quotes Marx and Lenin, advocates for “indigenous peoples,” for the minimum wage, and, occasionally, for a Gritty-led “worker’s revolution,” which may not terrify the bourgeoisie so much it’s just terrifying.

Gritty will not fight your wars of empire pic.twitter.com/JSXgcTIMms

— Fellow Worker Gritty (@FellowGritty) October 7, 2018

But why Gritty … why now? Why appropriate one of the strangest mascots in sports history — a stunt that easily unseated the Philly Phanatic and the Chicago Cubs’ habitually half-naked Cubby bear, Clark?

The answer seems to elude even Philadelphia anti-fascists, who tried to explain it, to no avail, to the Daily Beast.

“Gritty is a symbol of Philadelphia,” they said. “It’s not that he’s an anti-fascist character; it’s that he’s representative of the people, and the people of Philadelphia are grittily anti-fascist.”

So be it.