Daily Verse | Job 41:11
“Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.”

Happy Thursday, my Daily Broadside friends! Pants are required to enter this establishment.

I’m turning over the keyboard tomorrow to a childhood friend, military veteran, musician, author, fitness instructor and devoted Christian family man who blogs at Muscular Christianity Online. Bruce Gust and I go back to our early teens in a church youth group where his dad was a leader and mentor I admired. He blogs on politics (and other topics) from an unapologetic Christian perspective, and he’s agreed to provide a “Daily Broadside” for the next two weeks.

My thanks to him in advance. You’ll be in good hands.

Before I go, however, I owe you Part II of the essay I wrote about Antifa for Salvo magazine last year. Yesterday in Part I I explored the history of Antifa, including where it came from and how to define the movement. Today I explain why it’s important to understand this movement and showcase their most recent offense at the time of writing.

This article first appeared in Salvo #55.

Reason for Surveillance:
Antifa’s purported objective is to prevent the spread of fascism, as reflected in racist groups like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists. But its concept of racism seems to have evolved to include “institutional” or “systemic” racism and “white privilege.” Antifa has often made common cause with Black Lives Matter, Inc., as indicated by how often “BLM” is spray-painted on monuments, buildings, barricades, and vehicles during protests and riots in which Antifa participates. Will Antifa’s definition of “fascist” expand to include all white people as intrinsically racist?

This isn’t a far-fetched concern. According to Scott Crow, a former Antifa organizer, liberals are starting to adopt Antifa’s radical ideals. “They would never have looked at (those ideals) before,” he said, “because they saw us as the enemy as much as the right-wingers [did].”⁸ If Antifa’s ideals go mainstream, white people, as well as Christians and conservatives of all colors, will increasingly become targets.

In fact, that has already happened. In February 2017, Antifa members set fires, threw rocks at police, and vandalized businesses in the course of protesting the appearance of Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California—Berkeley.⁹ Numerous policemen and civilians have suffered violence at their hands.

Most Recent Offense:
In August 2020, Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the conservative group Patriot Prayer, was shot to death on a street in Portland, Oregon, following a series of confrontations between participants in a pro-President Trump caravan and counter-protesters along the route.¹⁰ The shooting was caught on video, and the apparent shooter, Michael Reinoehl, later seemed to admit killing Danielson, allegedly in defense of “a friend of mine of color.”¹¹ Earlier, Reinoehl had written a social media post proclaiming, “I am 100% ANTIFA all the way! I am willing to fight for my brothers and sisters! . . . Today’s protesters and Antifa are my brothers in arms.”¹² Reinoehl was killed a few days later as investigators tried to arrest him near Olympia, Washington.

When Joe Biden claimed during his first debate with President Trump that “Antifa is an idea, not an organization,” the president responded: “When a bat hits you over the head, that’s not an idea. Antifa is bad. Antifa is a dangerous, radical group.”¹³ He’s right—it is a group. Rhetorical subterfuge must not be allowed to confuse us about who Antifa are or what they want.

Notes: Part II
8. CNN (May 31, 2020): https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-trnd/index.html.
9. New York Post (June 1, 2020): https://nypost.com/article/what-is-antifa-and-why-does-trump-want-to-label-it-a-terror-group.
10. Washington Post (Aug. 30, 2020): washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/29/blm-activists-counterprotesters-clash-portland-leading-arrests.
11. The Independent (Sept. 4, 2020): independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/portland-protests-trump-supporter-killing-michael-forest-reinoehl-aaron-jay-danielson-a9704296.html.
12. Ibid.
13. Real Clear Politics (Sept. 29, 2020): realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/09/29/biden_antifa_is_an_idea_not_an_organization.html.