Antifa is Still Alive and Kicking

By: Chris Johnson

It’s funny, you know, if you Google “Antifa Shooting,” the top stories that come up are from a year or two ago, but a DuckDuckGo search immediately brings up what I wanted to bring to your attention today.

From what you’d hear from most news outlets, Antifa violence is a thing of the past, even the “mostly peaceful” ones that just burn buildings and loot stores. Atlanta is keenly aware, however, that this is not the case, as is Seattle.

Protestors have been camped out for months on the grounds of the planned construction site of a new training facility for the Atlanta Police Department. Last December, several protestors were arrested for things like throwing rocks and bottles at officers and possessing pipe bombs and trip wires. Funny thing about these protestors – who were obviously prepared to do much more than protest – is that most of those arrested were not even from Atlanta.

A spokesperson for the group told local news that “Destruction of material is fundamentally different from violence. All reported acts appear to be explicitly targeted against the financial backers & goons of the Atlanta Police Foundation, a shady nonprofit that funnels weapons and military gear into our city to wage war on black and brown folks.”

That’s a shaky argument that can no longer be made. The situation escalated last week, when a protestor opened fire on the police, striking an officer. The officer is reportedly recovering, but the offender is not.

According to Atlanta FOX5: “The shooting happened around 9 a.m. Wednesday during a ‘clearing operation’ at the site, Georgia Department of Public Safety Colonel Chris Wright said at a press conference at Grady Memorial Hospital. Investigators say law enforcement officers were attempt[ing] to get a man out of a tent located on the property.

He did not respond to commands given to him to exit and at some point, Wright said that a protestor fired a shot, hitting the trooper. Officers returned fire, killing the suspect.” 

Six more protestors were also arrested in the aftermath of the shooting, all but one were from out of state.

Antifa’s response to the shooting was to call for a “Night of Rage”  the following Friday, in Atlanta and around the nation. While Friday’s events turned out to be unremarkable, Saturday night turned violent in downtown Atlanta, as a police cruiser was set on fire, and the windows of local businesses were broken.

Antifa’s Atlanta project to “Stop Cop City” has support from Antifa cells nationwide, and not only the ones that travel to Georgia to commit acts of violence.

In Boston, on the same night that the police car was set on fire in Atlanta, “The son of House minority whip Katherine Clark (D., Mass.) was arrested in Boston for assaulting an officer and defacing a monument during an Antifa riot on Saturday night,” according to the National Review.

Early in January, a group of anarchists vandalized the Florida office of the construction group contracted to build the training center; they also sabotaged the company’s equipment and vandalized their trailer at a current Florida job site:  a children’s hospital.

This took place shortly after an act of arson was committed against the Bank of America for funding the Atlanta training facility project.

A bulletin was quickly posted to an anarchist news site claiming credit for the fire:

“Last night I broke into a Bank of America in Portland, Oregon and started a large fire. According to news reports, the fire grew quickly and took firefighters more than an hour to extinguish.

“I attack for revenge against capital for the hell it creates, to break the illusion of police control that usually protects it, and just because I can.

“Bank of America funds the Atlanta Police Foundation and a thousand other projects of control. Earlier that day, the six friends in Atlanta charged with “domestic terrorism” were released from jail. May this fire bring them some warmth in winter.

“Long live anarchy!”

This is all beginning to sound an awful lot like terrorism, if you ask me. The argument could even be made that it’s insurrection, I suppose, trying to overthrow the authority of a state government. But how have the apprehended members of this movement fared when brought before the court? So far, according to Nick Arama at Red State, they’ve been released on bail between $6,000 and $13,000.

Compare that to the conservative protestors still being held for their participation in the January 6 protests.

Lastly, as we think about Antifa’s action across the country, we must turn to the organizations’ flagship location: Seattle, Washington, former host city to the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), formerly known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), where for weeks Antifa activists held the area surrounding the capitol against law enforcement as they squatted, vandalized, and pillaged public and private property surrounding the state capitol.

City residents and businesses have been pursuing a lawsuit against the city of Seattle and the officials making decisions at the time, seeking restitution for losses accrued during Antifa’s protests and which the city declined to even attempt to squelch.

Well last week, a federal judge leveled heavy sanctions against Seattle when it was revealed that the former officials involved in the suit, including the mayor and police-chief, deleted their text messages to each other for this period of time. From the Seattle Times: “The judge pointed out that the plaintiffs’ attorney sent several letters to the mayor’s office and other officials alerting them to the lawsuit, which was filed June 24, 2020, yet the city didn’t issue an order telling officials to preserve relevant evidence, written and electronic, until July 22.

“By then, the order states, former Mayor Jenny Durkan, former police Chief Carmen Best, fire Chief Harold Scoggins and four other key city officials at the time — Seattle Public Utilities official Idris Beauregard; assistant police Chief Eric Greening; SPD’s chief strategy officer Chris Fischer; and Seattle Emergency Operations Center coordinator Kenneth Neafcy — had purged their phones of tens of thousands of text messages.”

The Times also says, Judge “Zilly said that when the case goes to trial he’ll instruct the jury that it may presume the text messages were detrimental to the city’s legal position and that there’s significant circumstantial evidence they were deleted intentionally.”

Area businesses and residents have plenty of good reasons to be upset. Seattle government voiced support of the “Defund the Police” movement, prompting the vacancy of 509 law enforcement positions, according to Seattle talk show host Jason Rantz. Officer Mike Solan had no problem identifying the problem on Rantz’ show: “The big picture is quite clear that we can’t recruit enough people to be cops in this city, mostly because of the political climate we still find ourselves in.”

The result has been a heavy spike in crime for the city, prompting many business, most recently a prominent Nike Store, to close for good: “The store has been a downtown staple since it opened in 1996, but after the pandemic and rising crime, the shoe giant has switched gears announcing that they will be closing their doors along with other Seattle stores, like Starbucks, Seattle Credit Union, and a host of local small businesses. 

Seattle has been dealing with a violent crime spike in recent years, including a 23% increase in fatal shootings in 2022. The city is also contending with issues of homelessness, drug use and cratering foot traffic stemming from the pandemic.”

To top it all off, Seattle based real estate company Redfin has identified post-CHOP Seattle as the “fastest-cooling market in the nation.”

Seattle has long had a reputation for its liberal voting block, but the events with Antifa – and the leftist government’s coddling of them – showed the rest of the country where that ideology leads. Now those who live there are seeking compensation, and the rest of the country seems to be saying there’s nowhere they’d like to live less.

Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kempf has his work cut out for him with his Antifa problem, but at least he has Seattle’s example of what NOT to do. Hopefully he’s wise enough to learn that lesson.

 

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