How many people has Antifa shot and killed, run ov

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Accusations in a Mirror: How the Radical Right Blames Rising Political Violence on the Left

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/06/1...lence-left

The far-right monopoly on violence

The specter of the “violent left” has been one of the main animating forces in the radical right in recent years. But it’s just that – a specter. It’s not a rising campaign of terror, but a phantasm. To believe in the myth of the unhinged, violent left is to ignore the reality that the far right is responsible for the vast majority of political violence.

Between 2014 and 2018, men radicalized in racist online spaces killed 81 people and injured 104 others. In 2018, “every single extremist killing” – 50 total – “had a link to right-wing extremism,” according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, and 78% of those were white supremacists.

Racists killed 13 people in October alone. A man in Kentucky gunned down two black people in a grocery store and, only days later, white nationalist Robert Bowers was charged with killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. That same week, Cesar Sayoc was arrested for allegedly sending 13 explosive devices to prominent Democrats frequently demonized by the right-wing press.

This year has shown that the white power movement is a transnational threat. In March, an Australian man killed 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. His acts and those of other violent white nationalists before him inspired 19-year-old John Earnest, who faces federal hate crime charges following a shooting at California synagogue that left one worshipper dead and injured several others.

There is a segment of the far left that, at times, eschews non-violence. They have shown up to political rallies armed with weapons prepared to do battle in the streets. Anti-fascist protesters committed significant property damage during inauguration day protests.

Later that year, Rep. Steve Scalise was shot on a baseball field by a man who expressed support for left-wing policies on social media. But left-wing violence has been declining for decades.

On the whole, the incidents the right can point to as evidence of rising leftist violence are minor (including throwing eggs, water bottles and, most recently, milkshakes) – and often highly exaggerated by those citing them – in comparison to the terroristic acts and mass murders committed by men like Roof.

Antifa is also not what the far right makes it out to be. The loose network of anti-fascist organizers employ several (sometimes violent) tactics, but they are hardly the powerful, shadowy, billionaire-backed group the far right often describes. What is in reality a very small movement has become the boogeyman of the far right, and one they often incorrectly use as a stand-in for the left as a whole.

Most people who engage in protests and activism related to leftist causes are simply exercising their right to free speech. At protests, where crowds during the Trump era have overwhelmingly been made up of those somewhere on the left of the political spectrum, the right claims responsibility for the most egregious acts of violence.

According to the Crowd Counting Consortium, there were over 8,700 protests in the United States in 2017 alone. An estimated 89% of those attending demonstrations were either protesting Trump or his policies, amounting to more than 5 million people.

None of them killed anyone, but James Alex Fields did when he rammed a crowd of anti-racist activists his car at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. It was also a far-right supporter who police say shot a counterprotester outside a Milo Yiannopoulos speech in January of that year. “I can’t wait for tomorrow,” the shooter’s husband messaged a friend the day before the event. “I’m going to the milo event and if the snowflakes get out of hand I’m going to wade through their ranks and start cracking skulls.”

Another shooting took place in October. Three white nationalists traveled from Texas to Gainesville to attend a speech by Richard Spencer at the University of Florida and later harassed a group of people who had protested the event. Goaded on by his companions, Tyler Tenbrink took aim and shot a single bullet at one of the protesters who held his hands in the air.

He missed. “I came here to support Spencer,” he told The Washington Post, because he had been threatened by “the radical left” after he was identified as a “Unite the Right” attendee. Tenbrink is now serving 15 years in prison for his crime.

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