MARSCHALL: American cities burn as liberals continue to deny Antifa's existence
By victort1 // 2023-02-01
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This month’s violence in Atlanta, a reported “night of rage,” is the latest proof that Antifa is real. (Article by Dr. Zachary Marschall republished from HumanEvents.com) But don’t tell liberals that. They consider themselves too smart to believe that Antifa exists – almost how atheists think themselves too clever to believe in God. There are many smart people on the left, but the so-called educated liberals who populate and consume mainstream media are not as smart as they think, because they never think to consider they might be wrong. A small group of thugs destroyed property in downtown Atlanta on January 21 in an anti-police protest. Atlanta police are now charging six people with committing domestic terrorism by smashing windows and arson, echoing the Atlanta mayor’s outrage and characterization of the violence. The National Review, Daily Mail, and Fox News are reporting that the charged individuals are members of Antifa. But MSNBC is going out of its way not to cover the violence, and CNN is dancing around who is responsible and the scope of the destruction. Denying that property destruction counts as violence, freelance writer David Peisner, whose work has appeared in illustrious publications such as Playboy and TV Guide, argued last week on CNN that property destruction is a “real blurring of the lines in the use of the word violence.” CNN’s online coverage continues to push the narrative that these protests were mostly peaceful, as if the country still buys that delusional line. Liberals won’t listen to things they don’t want to be true. Instead, they construct fanciful and overly complicated explanations that they pass off as sophisticated musings. In a 2020 debate with Donald Trump, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden argued that “Antifa is an idea not an organization.” In 2021, MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle argued more laboriously, “Antifa is this sort of abstract boogeyman word that we keep hearing on the other side.” During the interview with Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC), Ruhle then used January 6, 2021 to suggest that political violence only comes from the right. “We all saw it,” Ruhle said of January 6, 2021, devoid of context or logic. These prominent liberal figures have one thing in common. They believe that because they cannot see Antifa the same way they can see groups like the KKK or the Proud Boys, it must not exist; it must be a phantom of the right’s malicious imagination. In that respect, Antifa-denying liberals are as illogical as atheists. Many atheists do not believe God exists because they do not see proof of his presence. But faith in God is, by definition, belief in what cannot be seen. Copious amounts of research and reporting on Antifa have been published. If more liberals had the capacity to listen to or read what they do not want to acknowledge, they would understand that Antifa’s organizational structure explains its evasive character. In 2018, the Congressional Research Service published a two-page explainer on Antifa’s history and organization. “The U.S. antifa movement appears to be decentralized, consisting of independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals,” the report states. “[T]he movement lacks a unifying organizational structure or detailed ideology.” Antifa is essentially anarchistic. Its organization is based on a loose network of decentralized clusters that have coordinating and organizing abilities, but without a visible top-down chain of command. That nonhierarchical structure makes its operations harder to perceive from the 30,000-foot view that mainstream media takes to observe and then superficially explain social phenomena. The report also demonstrates that CNN’s coverage of the violence aligns with Antifa’s patterns of behaviors. The report states, “When they harm property or brawl with opponents, antifa members tend to rationalize such crimes either as defensive reactions to the aggressions of their foes or as part of their own need to defend society from fascism. In some instances, antifa followers show up at protests prepared for physical skirmishes, carrying weapons as well as gear such as shields and helmets.” That summary aligns perfectly with CNN’s account of January 21. “The protesters marched in a ‘peaceful manner’ down a central Atlanta street, but a group within the crowd later began ‘committing illegal acts,’ including breaking windows and attacking police cruisers, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said in a news conference,” CNN’s coverage states. Antifa’s patterns of behaviors are well-documented, and there is consensus in the media about how the violence broke out. So, there is no excuse for mainstream media journalists not to investigate and report on the extent of Antifa’s involvement on this night. Nicole Armbruster,  a self-identified Antifa member who was charged in 2020 for physically pushing Human Events' own Jack Posobiec, explains in a 2021 Reuters interview that she has a litany of arrests in cities where her clandestine group has staged demonstrations and protests. “We are prepared to put our bodies on the line in the event of police or fascist or racist violence,” Armbruster told Reuters. The recent protests in Atlanta were in reaction to “Cop City,” the epithet for a large police training complex the city is trying to build. Instead, liberals want to talk about abstractions and the meaning of the word violence, as if they haven’t already gone along with the woke anti-racism arguments that silence, complicity, and words are all violence. Liberals want ‘sophisticated’ and ‘nuanced’ conversations about these things. But they never want the truth. The truth is that former Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms supported the project during her time in office and the current Democratic mayor, Andre Dickens, condemned the violence as domestic terrorism while reminding the public that the perpetrators traveled from outside the city to have their night of rage. The people who were charged with domestic terrorism are far left of these two mayors, and their journey to the city is in line with how Antifa moves across the country to incite often-violent demonstrations, as Armbruster recounts. But mainstream media liberals do not want to hear it. They want explanations and arguments that arrive at anything else than what actually is. That’s because confronting reality means these media liberals would have to admit – at least some of the time – that they are wrong. Being wrong is not the mainstream media’s truth, so it cannot be the truth in their columns or nightly broadcasts. Evidently, more cities will have to burn before the liberal elite will see Antifa for what it is and what it does. Read more at: HumanEvents.com
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