Respect the Troops!

No, I don’t mean the troops that bombed hospitals in Afghanistan, or the torturers in Abu Ghraib. I’m talkin’ Antifa. Time after time, those brave boots-on-ground lefties have met face to face with fascists, and stomped them into the ground. After George Floyd’s murder, Antifa took to the streets to bolster the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, and proved that once again, the way forward is through comrades, not coppers.

The way forward has been made into a winding path by the regressive right, and the newest meander comes in the form of a Trump tweet. On May 31st, 2020, he tweeted:

“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.”

       ANTIFA isn’t actually an organisation. It’s just a name. The name’s first recorded use was in Germany, in 1932, as an abbreviation of Antifaschistische Aktion. Ever since, the word ANTIFA has become an umbrella term for anyone who wants to bash the fash. Since there’s no centralised leadership, ANTIFA is more of an ideology than an organisation, and if Trump bans an ideology, he violates the American First Amendment. “Free Speech” enthusiasts such as Ben Shapiro and Alex Jones have been silent on the issue, because to them, the First Amendment should be used to misgender trans folk and say the n-word, not to hold a fascist state accountable for its actions.

The next problem with Trump’s new declaration, is that terrorism is defined as:

"The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."

The riots stemmed from an 'unlawful use of violence… against civilians' by the police. The national guard were then deployed, and they marched through neighbourhoods shooting paint canisters and rubber pellets at people on their porches. Sounds an awful lot like 'unlawful intimidation' if you ask me. The terrorists here are the pigs, not the pig-wranglers. In fact, the police are borderline war criminals. And I mean 'borderline' in the most literal sense, because if they were to cross the 'borderline' and head into Mexico, or Canada, it would be a war crime under the Geneva Convention to use tear gas.

The justification by the police for using tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber rounds is that they are classified as 'less than lethal' deterrents. What a load of bollocks. All three of these methods can, and have killed people. In fact, the least dangerous of the three (pepper spray) was the reason for Jamel Floyd's death just a few days ago.

         Luckily for America, Trump looks like he'll be replaced soon, by Joe Biden. Running his campaign on Obama nostalgia and the 'return to normalcy', Biden pledges to go back to the good old days, and do stuff like… deploy the National Guard to Ferguson.

"Hey, wait a second" I hear you say, "isn't that exactly what Trump is doing right now?"

Well, yes, but fear not, Grandpa Joe only plans to 'shoot them [protesters] in the legs.'

See! It's not proper terrorism! It's just… diet terrorism… the US's response to Kendall Jenner's full-fat peace Pepsi. America would have to keep up it's yearly global terrorism quota though, so you can expect the continuation of drone strikes in Iraq (at a rate 10 times higher than George Bush!).

Gloomy, right? Well, there is some sort of silver lining to all of this. If ANTIFA are classified as terrorists, it shows that their power scares the status quo.

"When the Swoletariat flex their guns, the establishment shit their pants."

      -- Karl Marx

ANTIFA members meet face to face, and then fist to face, with Neo Nazis in Portland, 2018.

(Jim Urquhart / REUTERS, Adobe Stock, obtained through 30-day trial)

Luca Newman