Antifa

h/t DS

From Brussels to California, illiberalism is thriving

In early 2018, I attended a reading at an independent bookstore in the heart of bourgeois Brooklyn. It was to launch the memoir of a Mexican-American former Border Patrol agent who had become disillusioned and quit. To the surprise of most of those present, a group of aggressive protesters also showed up, dead set on preventing it from happening. Their objection was to the author’s prior employment in a law enforcement agency that had become central to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

As the criminal trial of two So Cal Antifa members goes into its third week, the public is learning about how one of the notorious Antifa groups organizes and carries out violence against targets.

Jeremy Jonathan White, 41, and Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., 27, both of Los Angeles, are accused of carrying out violent attacks on supporters of former President Donald Trump in a felony conspiracy—the first time Antifa suspects have been charged with such a serious felony accusation anywhere in the US. Nine of their co-defendant comrades have already been convicted in plea deals, including Luis Francisco Mora, 32, who took a last-minute plea deal at the start of the trial.

A judge in California threw out charges against two far-right political agitators, saying the federal government engaged in “selective prosecution” by charging right-wing rioters but not the far-left agitators they fought against, and who did the exact same thing.

Police in Georgia, together with federal agencies, are conducting a crackdown on activists involved in a continuing campaign against a controversial police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” that has included acts of arson and sabotage against equipment being used on the project.

This week alone saw Atlanta-area raids by law enforcement that took a woman out of her house with no shirt, left a naked photo of another woman on display after ransacking a room and dragged a man by his hair – while arresting none of them.

The man was part of a group who attacked random people for “looking like” neo-Nazis.

A German left-wing extremist has been sentenced to three years in prison in Hungary, while two of his Antifa accomplices, an Italian and a German woman will be summoned to a Budapest court in May for taking part in violent attacks last year. The case has caused a diplomatic spat, with Italy complaining about the conditions of the prison where the Italian woman is being held, and demanding her extradition by Hungary.

A brutal attack on a man in the city of Chemnitz, Germany, has been blamed on far-left Antifa militants by members of the populist Alternative For Germany (AfD), as German counter-terrorism police investigate the incident that left the victim without several fingers.

The attack took place this week in the Stadtpark just after 3:00 p.m., according to a report from Radio Chemnitz.

The family of Michael Reinoehl, an anti-fascist activist killed by police in 2020 while wanted for fatally shooting an Oregon man during a pro-Trump rally, have filed a lawsuit alleging his civil rights were violated when officers “sprayed more than 40 bullets” outside the apartment complex where he died.

A case has developed in Hungary that has come to involve a left-wing member of parliament, the notorious German-based violent far-left extremist “Hammer Gang” and the bizarre suicide of a Hungarian far-left extremist in a small town outside of Budapest.

Antifa activist András Egyed was found dead at an abandoned Russian military base in the town of Biatorbágy on May 18th after allegedly performing a bizarre “ritual” in which he set fire to a baby doll before hanging himself just a few metres away.