Dumb takes on Antifa

Can we just not with the Communist bit?

I actually like our VP candidate Spike Cohen quite a bit. I think he's a great communicator and brings a lot to the table for outreach and recruitment. So, then he tweeted this yesterday in response to President Trump's statement about labeling Antifa as a terrorist organization:

"This is a major turning point for the US with profound implications for everyone.

There's no Antifa organization, list of members or defining features of Antifa members.

This means anyone can be labeled "Antifa", & thus "terrorist".

This means you can be labeled a terrorist."

Now, I am not even going to talk about whether it's realistic or a good idea to label Antifa as a terrorist organization. I *am* going to say I'm more than a little disappointed that Spike chose to echo "pro Antifa" notions in his tweet.

Maybe Antifa has a higher level organization, maybe they don't. It's not important. "Everyone knows" what you mean when you say Antifa. It's clearly at minimum a *movement* that is populated by people who share an ideology. You can identify its characteristics:

--politically hard left/communist

--"direct action" against the "alt right", "punch Nazis", etc.

--"black bloc" tactics

--they have a damn flag (seriously)

So to say that since they are "unorganized" and that makes it not ok to label them as terrorists, I'll just point out Al Qaeda operated in much the same way: decentralized "cells" as part of a larger broad movement. This isn't intended to equate Antifa and AQ by any means, I'm just pointing out lack of a clearly defined higher level organizational body is not a disqualifier from being a terrorist "organization".

With that said, one would THINK that Libertarians would go out of their way to distance themselves from such folk, but...sigh.