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First Presidential Debate 2020 'Trump vs Biden': What is Antifa? POTUS got into familiar turf while attacking Left

As moderator Chris Wallace raised the issue of race riots that have wreaked havoc in many cities, Trump brought back every point he has used to blame Biden in recent months

President Donald Trump made it a point that he would not let his Leftist critics off the hook easily at the first presidential debate with Democratic opponent Joe Biden in Cleveland on Tuesday, September 29. As moderator Chris Wallace raised the issue of race riots that have wreaked havoc in several American cities in the recent months in the wake of the brutal death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, it looked like the president got into a familiar turf to attack Biden. 

This was not surprising. The conservative president has always believed that a conspiracy is unfolding through the protests demanding racial justice and that Left-wing anarchist movement ‘Antifa’ or ‘anti-Fascist’ is reaping benefits from the unrest. He has also vowed time and again to announce Antifa as a terror outfit to put it on the federal list like al-Qaeda and Islamic State, adding more fuel to the controversy.

As the debate over the race protests intensified at the Case Western Reserve University, Trump made his ideological inclinations obvious. While he sidestepped a question on White supremacists and declined to condemn them, he slammed Antifa and Left saying the problem in hand is a Left-wing problem, not a right-wing one. Biden then said that Antifa is an idea and not an organization.

What is Antifa?

Antifa, a far-Left extremist movement is not a unified organization but a loose ideological label used to define a group of Left-wing radicals who believe in street-level force to stop the rise of what they perceive as fascist tendencies. It is a sort of anarchist alternative to the police without any national command structure. 
Individuals affiliated to Antifa are often seen wearing all-Black clothes and for the right-wing supporters, they look threatening enough, hence creating an opportunity for them to make a counter-narrative describing them as violent troublemakers. The claim that Antifa is the reason behind the recent violence has also not found support from the FBI or judiciary. 

The ideas of Antifa can be traced to the fascists who were in Europe in the inter-war period. The movement gained prominence among the people as a Leftist counter to the alt-right. As the Trump era started in America and ideological polarization became wider, Antifa's protest also became stronger. It played a role in protests against the Republican’s inauguration and the counter-protests against the White nationalists in Charlottesville. While Antifa served as a counterweight against the alt-right, sometimes they were also held accountable for attacking media persons. 

International history of Antifa:

To be precise, Antifa’s history dates back to the 1930s and mainly two nations saw its beginning -- Germany and the United Kingdom though the stories of its inception were different in the two nations. While in Germany, the local communist party formed an organization in 1932 that opposed the rise of fascism -- Antifaschistische Aktion or Antifa in short. The group challenged the Nazis but could not survive after the rise of Adolf Hitler.

In the UK, on the other hand, the British Union of Fascists (BUF) — a political movement with electoral support but not as powerful as the Nazis — tried to conduct a march through London’s heavily Jewish East End. It was in 1936. It was then when several Jews and Left-wing activists attacked the fascists and their police escorts. The BUF forces retreated, leaving the Leftists celebrating victory in what’s now called “the Battle of Cable Street”. Antifa again made itself prominent in those two countries in the 1980s as a counterforce to the Neo-Nazis.

In the US, Antifa became a more familiar name as the right-alt rose and eventually, Trump came to power in 2017. More recently, Antifa as a prominent ideological platform in the US drew the ire of a poll-bound Trump and his allies like Attorney General William Barr as protests spread across the US in the wake of the fatal attacks on some Black individuals. Even Democratic sympathizer George Soros, a billionaire investor, and philanthropist, came under suspicion of helping the Antifa protesters. 

Antifa is more than just street fighters against the far-right activists. They also engage in works like community organization, traditional activism, flyer campaigns on behalf of those who are fighting anti-racist and anti-White nationalists. Even though it is not clear enough as to who the Antifa activists actually consider a “fascist”, their over activism in the times of Trump have added to the right-wing’s fear that they could see the US turning into the direction of the authoritarian Left and the rivalry has got bitter thereafter.