Years ago, I called Antifa the Keyser Söze of the left, after the character in “The Usual Suspects.” In the film, the character Virgil explains how Söze stayed in the shadows to be portrayed as a myth: “becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night.” The strategy was too simple: “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”
Democratic leaders have long fostered the myth around Antifa, the largest and most violent group on the political left. For years, they have denied the existence of the group even as members were charged with crimes (including terrorism). Now, the French authorities have found that the nonexistent group is the largest of three “ideologically distinct groups” responsible for the violence in France. It appears that either the entire French security system is delusional or the trick is up for the American left.
I have testified before Congress about Antifa, run columns on the organization for over a decade, and written a book discussing Antifa. Yet, Democratic members continued to insist that there is no such group, while other leading Democrats have praised Antifa for instilling fear in MAGA.
It was a curious claim even then, when other Democratic leaders were actively pandering to the violent group.
Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison — now the Minnesota attorney general — proclaimed that Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.
However, Democratic leaders and pundits have repeated the mantra that there is no such group despite political violence on the left spreading across the country.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) dared anyone to name a single member of Antifa despite the charging of Antifa members with various serious crimes.
Former House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) was widely ridiculed for denying the existence of Antifa.
Others on the left have joined Goldman in this absurd claim. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel devoted part of his monologue to assuring viewers that Antifa is no more than a mythical “chupacabra.” “You understand there is no Antifa,” he said. “This is an entirely made-up organization.”
The denials continued even as FBI Director Christopher Wray debunked deniers like Goldman. “Antifa is a real thing.” European countries have banned Antifa site due to their criminal conduct while Antifa candidates have been elected to office as members of the group.
Now, French authorities identified Antifa as the largest of three “ideologically distinct groups” responsible for the violence in France. It appears that Keyser Söze is in the open, but Democrats maintain the FBI, Justice Department, and various countries are simply delusional.
The problem is when the myth becomes reality. Left-wing pundits and politicians are caught in this denial web where they have to maintain the absurd idea that Antifa is just an idea.
Some of us have been writing about Antifa for years after watching them intimidate and threaten faculty and students on campuses. One such student came from my campus and proclaimed that Antifa was winning after his arrest for property destruction.
When another radical was arrested after taking an axe to a congressional office, he self-identified as a member of Antifa.
Before Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, implanted an IED device outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery, he put up stickers reading “support your local Antifa.”
Numerous Antifa members have been arrested, including some who claimed to be journalists.
Many protesters belong to Antifa groups that have names like “Rose City Antifa” and offshoots like Love and Rage and Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. Antifa members have been elected to the French and European parliaments.
Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” called by some the “Antifa bible,” explains that the group is united in its opposition to free speech. “Most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists,” he writes. “From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
Yet, Democratic leaders seemed to be adopting the 1967 ‘Guide for the Married Man’ when caught with Antifa allies or associations:
Who gives a damn whether Antifa has a headquarters, a president, or a membership roster? Why is that even the test? A movement can have a shared ideology, identifiable participants, recurring tactics, and a pattern of behavior without somebody at the top issuing orders.
The French intelligence services apparently have no trouble recognizing and identifying these people. Yet we have those that keep returning to the absence of a central organization as though that somehow settles the question.
Nobody needs an organizational chart to recognize a movement. And nobody needs one to investigate, arrest, and prosecute people who commit crimes. Beliefs are protected. Criminal conduct isn’t. That’s the distinction that matters.
What concern is it of yours what happens in France?
And Abigail Spanberger is a moderate democrat. If even Christopher Wray could recognize Antifa then that means there was a 3 ring circus of Antifa acrobats performing outside the FBI building and one of them, back uniform, mask, and all fell on him. It was that obvious.
These people act just like the old Baader Meinhof Gang (Red Army Faction) except Antifa is better organized but has not yet to resorted to kidnapping and knocking over banks. Murders or assassinations not yet apparent.
The funny thing is ANTIFA was never a “group” or “organization”. It’s an ideology. That’s why nobody in the Trump administration can identify who leads it or where is it headquartered.
Sounds familir – Islam.
It is always fascinating to watch commentators spin a complex sociological reality into a Hollywood thriller, but your ongoing obsession with framing Antifa as some sort of corporate entity—complete with a shadowy, top-down Keyser Söze leadership—reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern political movements actually function.
You lean heavily on FBI Director Christopher Wray’s quote that “Antifa is a real thing” to validate your decade-long narrative. Yet, you conveniently omit the very next sentence of his testimony, where he explicitly stated that Antifa is an ideology and a movement, not a centralized group or organization. Leaving out the core of law enforcement’s assessment is a curious choice for a legal scholar, though entirely necessary if you want your argument to hold any water. When people point out that Antifa is “an idea,” they aren’t denying that individuals commit acts of property destruction; they are correcting the cartoonish right-wing fantasy that there is a central headquarters mailing out membership cards and marching orders.
Your attempt to use French intelligence reports as a “gotcha” for the American left is equally clumsy. European anti-fascist networks have entirely separate historical contexts, and French authorities classify them as a decentralized ideological milieu, not a unified corporation. Furthermore, claiming that “Antifa members” have been elected to European parliaments is a deliberate stretch; these individuals are members of legally recognized, mainstream far-left political parties who happen to share anti-fascist views. No one is running on a “Keyser Söze” ticket.
If you want to be taken seriously as an expert who testifies before Congress, you might want to stop relying on 1967 comedy tropes and start engaging with the actual structural reality of decentralized movements. The only “trick” being pulled here is trying to convince readers that a fractured web of autonomous local actors is a disciplined, monolith army.
Come on Professor, tryin to tie the French rioting to the ANTIFA movement in the U.S. is laughable.
The French are famous for protesting violently on things they legitimately see as a failure of government. They were protesting high cost of living and high gas prices. At least the French are expressing their disapproval in a very…French way.
This is absurd even for Truley. Is he saying that Antifa is some shadow international organization that also magically has no leadership and no actual groups?
Antifa is the largest Fascist organization in the world today. Denying its existence or minimizing their impact only adds the fertilizer that helps it grow, like minimizing the impact of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
Almost. MAGA is a larger fascist group.
Antifa are the fascists. Until you understand that you don’t understand anything about what is happening.