KERNS: Antifa Has Shown Why It Should Be Designated A Domestic Terror Group
JEN KERNS
DAILYCALLER.COM
July 01, 2019
The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines domestic terrorism as violence perpetrated by groups with “extremist ideologies of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”
Antifa meets that definition. The group consists of American citizens radicalized by left-wing ideology who carry out threats of violence. It’s high time to classify Antifa as a domestic terror organization.
Over the weekend, the group exploded in rage once again in Portland, Oregon. Antifa members injured several people, including an elderly man. Journalist Andy Ngo, who was covering the event, went to the hospital for a head injury and brain bleeding.
To date, federal officials have not classified Antifa a domestic terror group despite endless photographs, eyewitness accounts and video evidence supporting the designation.
During a protest of conservative speaker Ben Shapiro last year on the University of California’s Berkeley campus, Antifa members reportedly destroyed campus property, set fire to trash cans, beat up college Republicans and forced students to shelter in place. (Campus police stood by doing nothing.) The school settled the case, paying organizers nearly $100,000.
It’s difficult to understand why the group hasn’t received a terror designation.
President Trump has said that the gang MS-13 could be called a domestic terror organization for their activity in the country to harm citizens and traffic drugs. In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, “We’re not going to allow them to take over a block, or a corner of our communities, and terrorize people with this violence.”
Antifa, unlike MS-13, does have a stated political philosophy, and directs its violence specifically at Republicans.
In 2001, the left-wing environmental group Earth Liberation Front was designated a domestic terror organization. The group claimed credit for setting fire to new condominiums in San Diego in 2003, because it opposed new construction. They scrawled the initials “ELF” on the walls before they set fire to the units.
The left-wing terror group also torched SUVs at car dealerships in Southern California and burned down what they called “McMansions,” or large homes, in states including Washington. Unlike Antifa’s actions in Portland, no one was actually injured in ELF’s fires.
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