Analysis. They are the enemies of Donald Trump, who calls them "a terrorist organization" and wants to put them on the same list as Hamas, the Colombian Farc or Al-Qaida. Antifascists (or "antifas") are accused of manipulating protesters denouncing police violence and racism in the United States, after the murder of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020.
These demonstrations of anger often turn into riot, and the American president sees the hand of it"Outside agitators". A way to discredit a movement whose scope is unprecedented and where the Whites are mobilizing with the Blacks.
"What Trump says is a racist message. It’s a way of saying that black people are incapable of organizing themselves and that they need white activists, that’s ridiculous. ”, says Luis (who requested anonymity), a political scientist and former American anti-fascist activist. "It’s also a way of not hitting black activists directly", abounds Ugo Palheta, sociologist, lecturer in educational sciences at Lille 3 University and author of The possibility of fascism (La Découverte, 2018).
" The anti-fascist fight is dependent on the other pole. When the far right dies, it dies out. The reverse is also true "
The term "antifa" does not correspond to any national, structured organization. They are multiple affinity groups, numerically weak, with shifting political identities: largely libertarian, they can also be Marxists in all variants of the term. All of this makes the "antifas" convenient to use as a scarecrow, since they cannot deny or respond to the charges of manipulation.
American anti-fascism has experienced new vigor since 2016 and the coming of Donald Trump to power. "The anti-fascist fight is dependent on the other pole. When the far right dies, it dies out. The reverse is also true, underlines Thomas Moreau, a fine connoisseur of this milieu and author of a forthcoming essay on contemporary anti-fascism. Since Trump’s election, anti-fascists have created a new space for themselves. "
Extremely violent clashes
The opposition between Trump and the "antifas" does not date from June 2020. The antifascists very early targeted the figures of the "alt-right", systematically disrupting their speeches, their meetings, becoming among the opponents the most determined, the most showy, to "Trumpism". Naturally, they are in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
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