By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
One of the least safe places to be in Berkeley,
California, is in the vicinity of someone holding a “No Hate” sign.
So-called anti-fascist, or antifa, activists bearing
shields emblazoned with those words assaulted any of the handful of beleaguered
Trump supporters they could get their hands on at a small political rally over
the weekend. All in the cause, mind you, of demonstrating their supposed
opposition to hatefulness.
Too many people were willing to perfume antifa in the
wake of Charlottesville, where it clashed with Nazi thugs who caused, and
deserved, a wave of national revulsion. But Berkeley demonstrates once again
the true nature of this left-wing movement, which is thuggish in its tactics
and totalitarian in its sensibility. Anyone who at this point makes excuses for
antifa — or worse, justifies it — is participating in its moral rot.
The antifa goons showed up in force at Berkeley at what
had been a small “anti-Marxist” rally of Trump supporters at a public park.
Antifa wore its usual fascistic garb of black masks and body armor. They
overwhelmed the police who had been trying to maintain order and, holding aloft
smoke-spewing flares, chanted, “Whose park? Our park!”
They then treated suspected Trump supporters with all the
decorousness of torch-wielding medieval villagers who believed they had
stumbled upon a witch. A leader of a pro-Trump group had to run from a mob that
pepper-sprayed and beat him, until he was taken into police custody for his own
protection. The targets weren’t Nazis bearing Nazi regalia, but supporters of
the duly-elected president of the United States. Or people who were guilty of
the offense of committing journalism — a reporter was beaten by the antifa
cadres.
Antifa benefited enormously from the horrific events in
Charlottesville. It became Nazis versus the people standing up to the Nazis,
and in that formulation the people standing up to the Nazis always win. There
can be no moral equivalence, we were told, between Nazis and their opponents.
But that depends on who the opponents are — there is a vast difference between
peaceful counterprotesters and violent thugs, even if they are marching on the
same side.
There was certainly moral equivalence between Hitler and
Stalin. Likewise, bully-boy fascists spoiling for a fight and black-clad
leftists looking to beat them up exist on the same moral plane. They both
thrill to violence and benefit from the attention that comes from it. They both
reject civility and the rule of law that make a democratic society possible.
They both are profoundly illiberal.
All this was lost in the reaction to Charlottesville.
Liberal commentators spread memes comparing antifa to American GIs who stormed
the beaches at Normandy. The comparison would be apt if the 1st Infantry
Division got together to spend an afternoon beating up fellow Americans rather
than giving its last measure of devotion to breaching Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
There is a cottage industry in excuse-making for antifa.
Mark Bray of Dartmouth College says in the Washington
Post that its activists are characterized by “their willingness to
physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and
preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly,”
i.e., assault people and shut down uncongenial speech as they deem necessary.
Todd Gitlin of Columbia University writes in the New York Times that antifa is “not squeamish about its means” — but
he is clearly squeamish about describing it frankly.
There will always be thugs who enjoy breaking things and
hurting people. The real scandal is that otherwise respectable people are
willing to look the other way or explain away the violence, so long as its
perpetrators are on their side. They are just as cowardly as the mask-wearing
antifa thugs who are brave enough to punch and kick people, but not to show
their faces.
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