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As members of the loose-knit anarchist group known as ‘Antifa’ continue to destroy monuments, tear down statutes, and create mayhem in cities like Portland and Seattle, the United Nations on Friday felt the need to come to the group’s defense.
“UN #HumanRights experts express profound concern over a recent statement by the US Attorney-General describing #Antifa and other anti-fascist activists as domestic terrorists, saying it undermines the rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly in the country,” said a post from the UN’s official Twitter account.
https://twitter.com/UNGeneva/status/1274007783864627201
The UN is likely responding to a pledge by President Donald Trump late last month that he will be designating the umbrella Antifa group a domestic terrorism organization.
“The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical left-wing groups who are terrorizing the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting businesses and burning down buildings…my administration will stop mob violence and we’ll stop it cold,” the president said during a speech at Cape Canaveral.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1267129644228247552
In reality, the designation is a long time coming.
Federal officials began warning about Antifa’s domestic terrorism in early 2016, as violence at Trump rallies became the norm. Politico reported:
Federal authorities have been warning state and local officials since early 2016 that leftist extremists known as “antifa” had become increasingly confrontational and dangerous, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security formally classified their activities as “domestic terrorist violence,” according to interviews and confidential law enforcement documents…
In late November 2017, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that the bureau was investigating Antifa as a domestic terrorist group.
“We do have a very active domestic terrorism program,” Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee.
“And while we’re not investigating Antifa as Antifa — that’s an ideology and we don’t investigate ideologies — we are investigating a number of what we would call anarchist-extremist investigations where we have properly predicated subjects of people who are motivated to commit violent criminal activity on kind of an Antifa ideology,” he added.
A year later, former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik said during an interview with Breitbart Radio that the FBI should most definitely classify Antifa as a group that engages in “domestic terrorism,” noting that its members are engaging in activity similar to what Left-wing anarchist groups did during the civil rights movement.
“Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we had to deal with the Weather Underground, the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the Sam Melville–Jonathan Jackson Unit. There were a number of these anti-American leftist communist socialist groups that were doing exactly what Antifa is doing today, and those groups were doing more, which is what I’m afraid of,” Kerik said.
“I’m afraid this will escalate to much more severe violence. Back then, there were bombings [and] assassinations of police officers. It really got out of hand until the FBI classified these groups as domestic terror groups and started to go after them as such,” he added, prophetically.
“If the FBI and [Justice Department] got into [Antifa’s] background, started locking them up [and] interviewing them, somebody’s going to flip, and somebody’s going to tell you where they come from, where the money’s coming from, who’s funding the operation, who’s telling them to go out and do these acts of violence, threats, and intimidation,” he added.
As rioting stemming from the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police began in May and stretched into June, Attorney General William Barr announced that the FBI and other federal agencies that likely includes DHS had obtained evidence that Antifa and similar groups were behind much of the violence.
AG BARR: “We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity. We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides..” pic.twitter.com/c0NKFU3mdY
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 4, 2020
“We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity,” Barr noted in a press conference June 4. “We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.”
As to the UN’s tweet, it was widely panned on social media.
So – are you all wearing your brown shirt and jackboots today? It’s clear you too have become a terrorists arm of ANTIFA
— Tony Shaffer (@T_S_P_O_O_K_Y) June 19, 2020
I hope the UN is a relic of history in 10 years mocked for how it helped uplift the worst human rights abusers and tried to act as an ally to communists, socialists and anarchists. The UN is not our friend.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 20, 2020
Meanwhile if a conservative makes a joke that hurts liberals’ feelings, they get banned from social media and fired from their job. Their freedom of expression doesn’t count. Only the Left have rights.
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) June 19, 2020
Think GS pays for Antifa out of his own pocket?
Taxpayers a paying for it all! pic.twitter.com/Y8NFcwWd2R
— JUSTICE TIME (@JUSTICETIME7) June 19, 2020
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Jon is a staff writer for BizPac Review with 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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