Antifa clashes with police and journalists in Charlottesville and DC

Antifa says it fights fascists and neo-Nazis. But this weekend, members attacked cops and journalists.

Sunday’s counter-protests against the white nationalist Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, DC, were largely peaceful. Thousands of people held multiple rallies across the city to celebrate diversity and push back against the hateful views the white nationalists espouse.

But a few left-wing “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) counter-protesters did engage in violence, throwing eggs and water bottles and shooting fireworks at police officers and some journalists who were covering the demonstrations.

NPR reporter Tim Mak captured video of the scene:

Mak also narrowly missed getting hit with an egg himself:

Demonstrators also clashed with journalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, during an event marking the one-year anniversary of the killing of Heather Heyer by an alleged white supremacist at the first Unite the Right rally.

NBC News’s Cal Perry posted video of protesters shoving their hands into Perry’s camera, trying to cover the lens and asking him to stop filming:

A bit later, Perry posted another video of a protester shouting “Fuck you, snitch-ass news bitch! Fuck you!” and aggressively swatting away Perry’s camera:

This is not the first time antifa protesters have been violent. In August 2017, about 100 anarchists and antifa members assaulted far-right demonstrators who were marching peacefully in Berkeley, California, with pepper spray, water bottles, and direct physical assault.

As Vox’s German Lopez wrote at the time, “The argument for antifa activists is that the current crop of right-wing protesters — which are partly but not entirely made up of neo-Nazis, KKK members, and other white supremacists and nationalists — are so extreme that they must be stopped swiftly and even violently.”

Lopez continued:

Antifa supporters worry that if these groups’ views aren’t completely robbed of any kind of platform, they could gain legitimacy — and take advantage of democratic ideals like free speech to, ironically, promote their undemocratic messages. Violence is one way to get them off the stage.

What this view misses is the backlash that may come from political violence: that such violence can reinforce right-wing views about the left. As Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University and editor of Dissent magazine, told me earlier this year, “[N]on-leftists often see [the left] as a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view.”

This weekend in Charlottesville and Washington, DC, though, it wasn’t neo-Nazis and white supremacists antifa attacked. It was police who were there to help keep the peace among all the demonstrators and journalists who were there to cover the events.

How that factors into antifa’s ideology is anyone’s guess.