President Trump’s designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist entity has the corporate media seething. In a vacuum, journalists expressing outrage at a president quelling domestic terrorism would probably sound insane. But for anyone familiar with the leftist press’s longstanding affection for antifa, the media’s response has been all too predictable.
Media Sophistry: Antifa Isn't Real, It's Just A (Good) Idea
Most lefty journalists’ lame attempts to defend antifa fall into one of two categories: the stupid, and the mendacious.
The stupid defense goes something along the lines of: “Uh, they’re literally called anti-fascists. They’re fighting fascism. How can that be bad? Do you like fascism?”
This kind of reasoning barely merits a response. Of course, there is nothing preventing any group, be they domestic terrorists or otherwise, from giving themselves a misleading name. The founders of the KKK could have dubbed themselves the African-American Appreciation Association if they’d wanted to. Antifa’s name is misleading because the average antifa member’s definition of “fascism” is so broad as to encompass virtually every school of political thought that ever has existed or will exist, save for their own particular brand of neo-marxism.
More savvy journalists prefer the mendacious defense, which revolves around a false dichotomy between ideologies and organizations.
Disgraced former-FBI Director Christopher Wray exemplified this rationale when he testified before Congress in 2020 that antifa was not an organization, but rather an “ideology,” and a “movement.”
This is a lie not because antifa isn’t an ideology or movement. Indeed, it is both. Rather, the lie is that this somehow disproves the existence of the numerous, very real antifa cells peppered throughout America – particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
Consider this take by fed goon-turned-MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi from 2020:
There’s no organization to it. There’s no home office in Springfield for antifa. There’s no president for antifa. And so, it’s a movement and an ideology.
Obviously, many groups can and do exist without an official headquarters or figurehead. Figliuzzi has wasted countless hours on daytime MSNBC shows sobbing that White supremacist violence is the greatest domestic terror threat facing America. But White supremacy is an ideology. By Figliuzzi’s logic, how can White supremacists possibly be domestic terrorists, when they lack a home office and a president of White supremacy?
Imagine if some conservative news network were using this infantile reasoning to decry the federal government going after White supremacist terror cells. Such behavior would no doubt rouse suspicion that the talking heads on that network were trying to cover for the terrorists, and that they secretly supported them.
Consider this blogger's suspicion roused.
Cozy Interviews, Whitewashing, and Bias by Omission
The corporate media’s free PR for antifa is not limited to fallacious arguments, which usually don't convince anyone with an IQ above room temperature. Left-wing news networks also assist their radical friends by concealing the bulk of their violence from the public, downplaying their extremism, and even granting them a national platform to defend themselves.
It would be impossible to compile an exhaustive list of all the antifa violence and murder that the left-wing media have either excused or ignored. However, a few instances stand out as particularly egregious:
Despite recently claiming on a podcast, “I don’t even know what antifa is,” former NBC political director Chuck Todd invited antifa professor Mark Bray onto his MSNBC show to hawk his “Anti-Fascist Handbook.” Todd was so taken with Bray that he invited him back later that same week to further discuss his violent leftist politics.
In 2018, on the anniversary of the notorious “unite the right” rally in Charlottesville, NBC sent a team down to Virginia to look for nazis. Instead, they ran into a group of antifa, who attacked the crew and assaulted at least one reporter. But the following morning on NBC's Today, correspondent Garret Haake omitted the attack from his report, instead throwing his own colleagues under the bus in order to spare antifa some negative publicity.
A May, 2019 episode of CNN’s United Shades of America featured host W. Kamau Bell palling around with a self-described antifa chapter from Washington state. Bell allowed himself to be charmed by the dorky cadre of radicals, and was especially enthralled by one member's brass knuckles, which she brandished proudly for the camera. So strong was the camaraderie that after the episode aired, he encouraged his followers to “support them” on social media.
Things took a bad turn two months later, however, when one of that group’s members, armed with a rifle and incendiary devices, attempted to burn down a DHS detention center in Tacoma, Washington. He failed and was shot to death by police, and CNN never acknowledged the connection.
The media also have partly or completely concealed the following attacks by antifa (though this list, too, is far from complete):
- Physically assaulting peaceful pro-2nd Amendment protestors.
- Physically assaulting ICE officers.
- Terroristic threats and intimidation against Tucker Carlson, including attacking his home.
- Physically assaulting two U.S. Marines.
- Brutally beating and hospitalizing independent journalist Andy Ngo.
- Physically assaulting a man for wearing a MAGA hat.
- Shooting at an ICE office in San Antonio.
- A mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio (the event was covered; the shooter’s politics were omitted).
- Attempting to murder law enforcement officers.
- Attempting a catastrophic train derailment, resulting in domestic terror charges.
It’s possible that most corporate journalists don’t actually approve of everything antifa does, and that all this whitewashing is instead meant to help Democrats.
If Americans were fully aware of just how active, destructive, and hateful this violent portion of the Democratic Party’s base truly is, the resulting hit to the Democrats’ already rock-bottom approval rating would be catastrophic. Thus, the left-wing media have turned a blind eye to the terrorism of their co-partisans.
