Trump, social media, right-wing news stir up antifa scares

LEITCHFIELD, Ky. — The group gathered around the town square, waiting for the arrival of what has become a new American boogeyman: antifa.

Michael Johnson and others were certain that school buses full of radical left-wing extremists from big cities were coming to Leitchfield, Kentucky, where about 50 of their neighbors had gathered on the courthouse lawn to chant, “Black lives matter!” and wave signs in solidarity with the nation’s surging protest movement.

The June 10 protest ended peacefully with no sign of any antifascist activists in the town of less than 7,000 people, but Johnson and his son sat awake outside their house all night, armed with a shotgun, just in case the antifa rumors he saw circulating online were true.

“There’s no reason not to believe it after you watch TV, what’s going on,” said Johnson, 53.

It’s a scene that has unfolded in many other cities and small towns this year, the product of fear and conflict stoked by bogus posts on social media, right-wing news outlets and even some of the nation’s most powerful leaders.

President Donald Trump has said the federal government would designate antifa as a “terrorist organization“and has blamed it for violence at protests against racial injustice and police brutality. Attorney General William Barr has claimed groups using “antifa-like tactics” fueled violent clashes in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes.

However, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel last Thursday that antifa is more of an ideology or a movement than an organization. While the FBI has had domestic terrorism investigations of “violent anarchist extremists, any number of whom self identify with the antifa movement,“Wray noted that extremists driven by white supremacist or anti-government ideologies have been responsible for most deadly attacks in the U.S. over the past few years.

A man suspected of fatally shooting a Trump supporter after a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Oregon, last month had described himself in a social media post as “100% ANTIFA.“Federal agents later shot and killed the suspect, Michael Forest Reinoehl, in Washington state.

But federal arrest records of more than 300 people at protests across the country include very few obvious mentions of the word antifa. They could be hard to identify, however, because there is no domestic terrorism statute under which to charge protesters involved in violence or vandalism.

Louisville, Kentucky-based attorney David Mour has represented many protesters involved in demonstrations over the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was shot by Louisville police officers when they barged into her house in the middle of the night to serve a search warrant. Protesters have occupied a square in downtown Louisville for more than three months. All along, Mour has dealt with wild rumors that antifa is somehow involved.

“It’s constant. These people are just trying to generate fear and frenzy. They’re trying to blame all this stuff on antifa, and I’m like, ‘Who exactly is antifa? Where are they? Who are you talking about?’ It’s insane,” he said.