What is Antifa?

By V.J.

THIS weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia neo-Nazi groups protesting the removal of a statue of Robert Lee, a Confederate general, clashed with a coalition of counter-protestors comprising liberals, activists and “Antifa” groups. The last of these is perhaps the least understood. Who are the Antifa and where do they come from?

The word Antifa has its roots in Anti-Fascist Action, a name taken up by European political movements in the 1930s. These groups, especially in Germany, were a failed attempt by the left to unite against the threats of fascism and nazism. The end of the second world war and the chaos of occupied Germany briefly revived them as organised alliances of socialists and communists who went after prominent Nazis and engaged in political activism, before being shut down by occupying powers. Antifa resurfaced in the late 1980s in Europe, particularly in East Germany, as loose networks of radical activists came together in reaction to neo-Nazi and right-wing skinhead movements. The decade also marked the Antifa’s entrance onto the American stage in the form of the Anti-Racist Action, a network which originated in 1987 with the Baldies, a multi-racial crew in Minneapolis, leading to the creation of other groups across the country to fight neo-Nazis. Where the first iteration of Antifa groups based their actions on rhetoric and political activism, the later groups organised to fight on the streets.