Far Left and Political Violence: Overview

Introduction

The 2016 presidential campaign that resulted in the election of Donald Trump prompted leftist political activism not seen in the United States in decades. In the September 2017 issue of the Atlantic, Peter Beinart asserted the majority belief among mainstream progressives that President Trump is a racist and that his campaign had "fascist undertones." According to Beinart, the question for many politically progressive Americans in the wake of the Trump victory is this: "If you believe the president of the United States is leading a racist, fascist movement that threatens the rights, if not the lives, of vulnerable minorities, how far are you willing to go to stop it?" Though peaceful activism has been by far the most common avenue of political protest across the spectrum, some militant leftists, like militant far-right groups, support the use of political violence.

Though the United States has a history of leftist militant activism that can be traced from radical abolitionists such as John Brown and his followers through the massive labor protests of the Gilded Age and the early decades of the twentieth century, culminating with the violent leftist groups of the 1960s and '70s, recent decades have seen a precipitous drop in far-left political violence. During the 2016 campaign and after, however, far-left activists in the antifa movement have used violence and the threat of violence, in some cases succeeding in shutting down events where far-right groups were intending to march or speak. Far-left activists have also used nonviolent but damaging tactics such as "doxing," or the exposure of personal information about people they have identified as engaging in white supremacist activities. Some see this as a necessary reaction to an administration that they believe is promoting racism and fascist ideals, targeting vulnerable populations. Others believe that political violence undermines the very civil liberties that the Left claims to protect and escalates violence on both sides, further endangering the rule of law.

Understanding the Discussion

Antifa: Antifascist movement comprising a loose association of autonomous groups, often operating in secret, who seek to disrupt right-wing extremism and hate through direct action and other techniques.

Doxing: Slang term for the practice of publicizing personal information about an individual on the internet and using this information to call attention to their political affiliations and/or activities.

Leftist: Supporter of the political Left, liberalism, and progressivism, typically seeking radical change in socioeconomic equality and justice.

Organized labor: An association of workers united as a single, representative entity, such as a union, to improve the workers' economic status and working conditions through collective bargaining with employers.

History

The Far Left, and at some points in the last century, even the mainstream Left, has a history of activism that included violent agitation, generally led by labor activists. At Chicago's Haymarket Square in 1886 and West Virginia's Blair Mountain in 1921, union organizers rallied a broad swath of supporters from the left-leaning population in violent clashes with police and industrial authorities.

More recent far-left groups, particularly those identifying as antifascist, see themselves aligned with elements of the labor movement, but find most common cause with the antifascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and in particular, with the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in London. The Battle of Cable Street broke out when a loose and diverse coalition of protesters gathered to prevent Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists from marching through London's East End neighborhoods. Protesters ranged from ordinary citizens to anarchists, labor activists, and socialists, and despite police protection for the fascist march, the protesters formed a blockade and fought off around three thousand Fascist Black Shirts and six thousand police officers with primarily homemade projectiles and incendiary devices. The British Union of Fascists was not able to complete their march, and the British fascist movement eventually lost support and never gained significant political traction.

Antifascist movements have existed elsewhere in Europe, though with significantly different results. Groups like Spain's Partido Comunista de España, Germany's Antifaschistische Aktion, and Italy's Arditi del Popolo opposed fascist gangs and the regimes that followed them by organizing paramilitary forces and organizing violent resistance, including assassinations. Despite these efforts, fascist regimes assumed power in these countries using some semblance of a representative process, a fact that American antifa activists point to in their mission to prevent fascism through nongovernmental intervention. After the defeat of the German and Italian fascist regimes in Europe during World War II, antifascist organizations disbanded or reorganized.

In the 1970s and '80s, leftist activists again came into conflict with fascists and neo-Nazis in the punk rock scene, beginning in the United Kingdom, where fascists began to infiltrate and influence the punk rock scene. Antifascist punk rock and anarchist groups engaged in street-fighting with neo-Nazi skinheads in Europe and, later, in the United States as well. These leftist punk activists called their loose affiliation Anti-Racist Action (ARA) and appeared in number at musical events and festivals to challenge racist groups and prevent recruitment. In 2002, ARA members disrupted a speech by the leader of the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group in Pennsylvania, and the ensuing brawl between white supremacists and ARA members led to twenty-five arrests.

Though isolated incidents of antifascist punk activism or violent disruption were noted, the uptick in political violence in the early 2000s was generally identified with the Far Right. In a 2011 New York Times op-ed piece, Michael Kazin asks why the American Left had failed to organize "a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession" compared to the Tea Party on the right in the late 2000s. Kazin concludes that leftist agitation had failed to produce leaders who followed through on their promises, notably to end the Vietnam War and to eradicate poverty. Leftist activists increasingly focused on institutions and corporations, such as banks and animal-testing laboratories, rather than small groups or individuals, and used economic disruption, such as boycotts, to effect change.

Far Left and Political Violence Today

In a 2017 Washington Post article, "Why the American Left Gave Up on Political Violence," Yoav Fromer explains that in the late twentieth century, not only had leftist political violence failed to produce results, but it had backfired terribly, reducing support for the Left rather than building it. Fromer also argues that nonviolent methods galvanized much more support and that the people who joined the Left tended to be marginalized themselves and therefore had experienced violence and rejected perpetrating it. Fromer deems far-left political violence "worrisome" but says that it is "incomparable to the scope and breadth of organized violence demonstrated by the extreme right."

Regardless whether political violence on the Far Left is comparable to that on the Far Right, it has increased since the campaign and election of Donald Trump. Though affiliation with such groups is difficult to track, given their decentralized structure, New York City Antifa (NYC Antifa) saw a tenfold increase in its social media following. At rallies, marches, and other organized events, far-left protesters have used violence, or the threat of violence, in some cases succeeding in shutting down the event.

On January 20, 2017, at Trump's inauguration, a masked protester punched white-supremacist Richard Spencer. In April 2017, organizers of the annual Rose Festival parade in Portland, Oregon, canceled the parade after the city's police department said it could not provide sufficient security in the face of actions announced by antifa groups. One group, Direct Action Alliance, declared, "Fascists plan to march through the streets. . . . Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed." The organizers of the parade had also received an anonymous email warning that hundreds of counterprotesters would "rush into the parade" and would "drag and push . . . out" Trump supporters and others promoting "hateful rhetoric."

Other protests have occurred on college campuses, where conservative speakers have been assaulted or their speeches violently interrupted. In August 2017, activists, some identified as antifa, clashed with the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups, and white nationalists at a far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Charlottesville rally turned violent as protesters and counterprotesters clashed, leaving dozens injured and one counterprotester, Heather Heyer, dead. Heyer died after being hit by a car allegedly driven into a crowd by James Alex Fields Jr., who was described by acquaintances as a Nazi sympathizer. Fields was arrested in connection with the hit-and-run incident and was later indicted on thirty counts of federal hate crimes in June 2018.

Following the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, the activist movement Black Lives Matter led protests across the country. Several protests, including protests in Minneapolis and Chicago, led to riots, looting, and violence committed by both sides of the political aisle, as well as violence by the police.

In addition to direct action, far-left activists also employ doxing, a method of shaming or outing members of fascist or far-right white-supremacist groups online. Doxing, which is not unique to antifa activists, uses technology to assemble and disseminate an individual's personal information online, sometimes resulting in lost employment or removal from public positions.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

Bibliography

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Hersh, Joshua. "Extremism Experts Are Starting to Worry about the Left." VICE News, 15 June 2017, news.vice.com/en‗us/article/3kpeb9/extremism-experts-are-starting-to-worry-about-the-left. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Kaste, Martin, and Kirk Siegler. "FACT CHECK: Is Left-Wing Violence Rising?" NPR, 16 June 2017, www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255619/fact-check-is-left-wing-violence-rising. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Kazin, Michael. "Opinion: Whatever Happened to the American Left?" The New York Times, 24 Sept. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/whatever-happened-to-the-american-left.html. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Kishi, Roudabeh, and Sam Jones. "Demonstrations and Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020." ACLED, 3 Sept. 2020, acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Penny, Daniel. "An Intimate History of Antifa." The New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-intimate-history-of-antifa. Accessed 11 June 2024.