Anti Maim

Maybe it's good news that it wasn't Sean Hannity who was spouting off about how "stupid" Heather Hayer was for going out and marching with antifa. It was Sean's radio show, but it was his guest host Jonathan Gilliam who did the spouting. The former Navy Seal and current media "voice of truth" got his camouflage knickers in a twist because "This girl goes out and marches with antifa and gets killed by one of these neo-Nazi people when she got hit by a car, but she was still marching with antifa." She was asking for it, right Mister Seal? 
Over the past week, I have been confounded by this new label: Antifa. Initially, I figured there must be something more sinister lurking within this moniker. Was it some leftover from the Sandinista? Could its origins be traced back to some dark past with foreign agitators plotting the violent overthrow of everything everywhere. Anarchists. 
Well, it turns out that "antifa" is short for anti-fascists. My reading of Captain America comics suggests that he was antifa. As was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And Winston Churchill. And noted archaeologist Indiana Jones. I wonder just exactly why a former Navy Seal wouldn't want to associate himself with these folks. Maybe it's because they showed up at a protest in Berkeley earlier this year, causing one hundred thousand dollars in damage as they prevented former Breitbart darling Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus. And they wear masks. And they break things. Antifa is bad. Remember who else fought the fascists? Communists. That's what they are, you know. Not oppressed Americans fearing for their own lives and country. The antifa are the enemy.
Wait a second. Isn't the enemy of my enemy my friend? I guess it depends a little on which side you start that particular equation. 
Opponents of antifa like to point out the associations to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Black Lives Matter. Obvious threats to our way of life. Or obvious threatened groups, especially in the face of a rising white supremacist movement. Are they anti-free speech? Are they anti-hate speech? The hardest thing about being against something is being able to describe what things you stand for. Heather Hayer didn't bother to make all these distinctions. She wanted the Nazis out of her town. She wasn't asking to be hit by a car. She was asking for the Nazis to go back to the losers column of world history.