Professors realize that Antifa presence 'increased the risk of violence' at protests
'In other words, antifa appearances at racial justice protests greatly increased the risk of violence,' the scholars recently wrote for The Washington Post.
Campus Reform has extensively documented violent incidents involving Antifa groups.
Two Pennsylvania State University scholars researched Antifa for The Washington Post and found that the ‘anti-fascist’ organization’s presence at protests increased the likelihood of violence exponentially.
John D. McCarthy and Kerby Goff found that Antifa showing up to a protest increases the likelihood of injuries 15-fold and arrests by 7-fold.
“When antifa did attend protests, the incidence of violence was extremely high compared to the level at protests it did not attend,” McCarthy and Goff write. “In other words, antifa appearances at racial justice protests greatly increased the risk of violence.”
“Were right-wing groups the real source of the violence? That’s not what our research found,” they added.
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Campus Reform has covered Antifa’s violence and intimidation tactics, including a recent Dartmouth College event that was swiftly canceled due to “security concerns” after an Antifa group threatened violence should the event have taken place as scheduled.
The Dartmouth College lecturer who wrote the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Mark Bray, has openly supported violent tactics used by the groups in response to purported acts of White supremacy and fascism.
Additionally, one Antifa group in 2017 openly promoted violence and vandalism at Clemson University, while another Antifa group violently attacked peaceful protesters that same year at an Evergreen State College free speech rally.
Stanford University professor and Antifa leader David Palumbo-Liu, who co-founded the Campus Antifascist Network, has been planning a “broad, visible, and loud network” to mobilize against campus conservatives.
Stanford’s College Republicans organization sent Campus Reform a statement alleging that Palumbo-Liu “has a concerning record of inciting and justifying political violence.”
Meanwhile, scholars, politicians, and media personalities have downplayed the threats and violence carried out by various Antifa Groups.
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Then-Presidential Candidate Joe Biden infamously said, “Antifa’s an idea, not an organization,” which prompted former Antifa militant Andy Ngo to accuse Biden of “downplay[ing] and deny[ing] the threat of the organized militant far-left.”
At a University of Pittsburgh event, Dean Kathleen Blee characterized media coverage of Antifa-related violence in wake of the Charlottesville rally as a “strategy a number of the defendants took” to depict the conflict as “a battle with this amorphous evil force of Antifa.”
She mocked, “Maybe everything is Antifa!”
In 2007, an anti-fascist organization based out of Portland, Oregon, was the first to call themselves “Antifa,” and in 2013, the most radical chapters of the ARA formed the Torch Antifa Network.
Portland’s Rose City Antifa and the Torch Antifa Network are “associated with a militant version of anti-fascism” according to the Penn State scholars for the Washington Post.
Campus Reform has reached out to John D. McCarthy, Kerby Goff, and Penn State University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
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