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Former ‘Antifa’ Speaks Out Against ‘Antifa’

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*EXCLUSIVE* Former Antifa Speaks Out Against Antifa

I’ve decided to submit this article anonymously to protect against any potential retaliation.

I like to start off by saying that, although I now disavow Antifa, I will always be Anti-Fascist, against racism and against hatred.

In order to understand Antifa and how they operate and “recruit”, I will start by telling how I became involved with Antifa.

My story beings in the Fall of 2005. I was 15-years-old, a Sophomore in High School and recently had gotten into the underground Punk and Hardcore scene.

It was Friday and my friends and I were pumped about an Oi/Punk/Hardcore show that was taking place that evening in the city.  This was only my 4th or 5th show that I had been to, but they were always a good time to be had by all…. until this night.

I was expecting an energetic night filled with punk music and typical teenage shenanigans: sneaking a 40oz in the bathroom with my friends, trying to talk to girls, and feeling like a big shot because the club let you smoke even if you weren’t 18.

Punk shows were awesome to me because they were ours. My best friend was Korean and it was cool to have a place where no one cared about race and they didn’t judge you for having blue hair and shit and you weren’t suffocated by preppies and jocks that we had to deal with in the suburbs.

The night was going perfect, everything felt right, it was one of those magical nights where everyone was being cool and the bands were kicking ass.

All of the sudden, however, my life was about to abruptly change forever…

I heard a commotion towards the front of the club with people yelling, screaming and fighting.

My friends and I moved towards the ruckus and I saw a crazy brawl happening. The band that was playing stopped their set, jumped off the stage and forcefully ran past us and started throwing down with the aggressors.

I was absolutely terrified. Being a scrawny 15-year-old punk kid I ran to the back of the club to get away from the mayhem.

So what was behind all of this chaos?

9 people. 8 men and 1 woman. They were Neo-Nazi skinheads and they came for a battle.

They beat the hell out of the doorman/bouncer to get in and immediately started brawling hard with anyone who tried to stop them . The story I got later was that they were actually there to brawl with the Band who were playing that night.

The most petrifying thing to me was that it took an entire club of people to stop them, with the Trad skins doing most of the heavy lifting. (Trad Skins are traditional skin heads who are against Nazi skinheads and were basically the only reason the nazi-skinheads would eventually flee that night.)

The show was, obviously, cut short and I had to call my mom to come get us early. (Yeah, none of us drove yet)

As I was walking out of the club I was stepping over pools of blood. A 17 year old girl and a 20 year old guy were stabbed (they both survived), one of the Trad skins entire forehead was cut open by a beer bottle and countless people were bloodied up from the fray.

I felt traumatized and alone. There were only 2 cop cars that showed up (who did nothing to pursue the attackers). There were more ambulances in the parking lot than police. The news didn’t do any stories about it, I didn’t hear any mention of it in the following days, it’s like no one really cared about us.  The authorities didn’t want anything to do with our petty underworld affairs.

When my mom got there, the ambulances were still there treating people and I remember her being absolutely mortified. (She never liked the idea of me going to punk shows and she thought the ambulances were there because of a mosh pit… bless her).

I told her it was a fight, nothing serious, to try to reassure her that it wasn’t anything to worry about, but consequently I was forbade to go to any more punk shows.

In the following weeks I stayed pretty much in isolation. I felt constantly afraid and sick by what had happened at the club that night.  I felt weak and pathetic. I felt like a coward for running to the back of the club in fear.  My fear would eventually turn into anger, and my anger would eventually turn into irrational rage.

I finally decided to start going back to shows again despite my mother’s command not to ever go to one again.

The next show I went to was a little different from the Oi/Punk and Hardcore shows I was going to before. I liked mostly hardcore punk but I did like a few crusty/anarcho punk/grindcore bands too (but never had been to an anarcho-crust-punk show before.)

This show was at a College and they were doing some sort of anarchist book fair with the tour, so I felt like it would be safe there (and it was).

This is when I came into contact with Antifa, who had a distro set up with Anti Fascist Action literature and what not.

I was drawn to Antifa because of what I experienced at the club a couple months before that. I felt empowered by a group that aimed to actively address the neo-nazi presence at our shows and take them head on, so I immediately “signed up”.

There is no actual membership to Antifa, you don’t pay dues, you don’t fill out paperwork or anything like that. You just subscribe to the idea of being against Fascism, work together with your “comrades” and you’re in.

I felt like I had a second family with my Antifa brothers and sisters. I felt great to be a part of the resistance… but over time, I noticed something didn’t seem right about them.

My first quibble with Antifa came when I made the statement that I believed in free-markets. I was young, critical of Capitalism and big business, but I still felt that free enterprise was superior to a communist system.

I was quickly and aggressively silenced for having those ideas by the self-styled ‘leaders’ of the organization.  There were no official leaders of Antifa, but older and more experienced “veteran members” would often assume that role.

It was explained to me that Capitalism was a patriarchal system that required an infrastructure built on racism, sexism and white power. They claimed capitalism, nor free markets (even in a Libertarian sense) were possible without Anglo-Saxon, imperial dominance over minorities and working class exploitation.

They were convincing, articulated and intelligent, so I accepted what they told me was accurate and I dismissed my stance on free markets.

My second ideological altercation came when I denounced black on white prejudice as being the same as white on black racism. I voiced for true equality and the dismantling of all prejudice against any group.

I was addressed in an almost violent manner and told that the only reason I felt that way was because I was clinging on to a cultural bias that favored white superiority. I was told that racism required a system of power and that because blacks were marginalized that it was impossible for them to exert any power over whites and therefore lacked the ability to be racist themselves.

Coming from a predominately white, wealthy suburban neighborhood, I felt like this was likely the case and I submitted to them and retracted my statements and apologized.  I didn’t want to be racist or viewed as such so I listened to everything they told me.

I started to suspect that I was being manipulated. I was watching how they were breaking me down and getting me to conform to their ways, like a cult, but I persisted and my passion towards anti-fascism allowed me to endure and continue my alleigance with the fascist resistance.

After about two years of being into the Anti Fascist movement and essentially adopting their anti-establishment sub-culture, I became a different person from what I was back at the show when I was 15.

I went Freegan (which is like veganism, but you can eat meat if it’s out of a dumpster or was a kick-down), I started traveling, hopping freight trains and living in abandoned buildings with other squatters.

We got our beer money from panhandling in college towns, our food from kick downs or dumpster diving and basically lived as free as we could without bowing down to the “system”.

We rarely were involved in any actual criminal activity. Robbing people was not allowed and highly discouraged and stealing was only permissible when done so from a corporation. But mostly we played it cool and just did our thing.

I ended up staying in Philly for a while. The hardcore and straight edge scene and the anti-fascist skinheads, SHARPS (Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice) did a solid job of keeping out the neo-nazis, so it was like a mecca for the underground scene and shows were safe again.

Things were going great for a while, until I went to a show one night that featured a plethora of grindcore, anarchist punk and crust bands and I became disheartened by Antifa once again.

The power was in our hands in those days and in seemed like they lived up to the old adage “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

A guy was taken out of the show and hospitalized by antifascists. The two main perpetrators were females who  beat him up with a monkey wrench and shattered his face up pretty bad.

I tried to get to the bottom of what had transpired but the story seemed mixed up. First they said he was a Nazi, then they said he was a Rapist, and then retracted those claims and nonchalantly said “He was just creepy”.

Apparently the guy was just drunk and trying to hit on the girls and they justified beating him half to death because “he was just creepy”.

I became disillusioned and sought solitude once again. I began to heavily question why no one there was speaking out against the attack. Everyone seemed complacent because the attack was carried out by one of us, even though it was an unnecessary use of force.

Over the next few months I became more and more dislocated from the antifascists because of unjustified violence.

They would beat up someone they thought was a nazi, then justify their mistake by saying “whatever, he was rich”.

It got to the point where they could justify violence against anyone with these loose associations to fascism.

“Oh, it’s cool that we beat him up, he’s friends with someone who denied the holocaust. Oh, it’s cool that we kicked that guy’s ass because he said something sexist. Oh, that guy deserved us stomping him into the ground because he had a ‘Skrewdriver’ song on his windows media player playlist.”

It was insanity and I was beginning to wake up and break their spell over me. And I wasn’t the only one. Many of the Trad Skins, who were more conservative, started distancing themselves from the ultra-left wing antifascists.  The focused unity we once had was falling apart.

The last straw, the straw that broke the camels back, for me, was when I reluctantly decided to give them another chance. I went to a meet up with a large number of antifas to discuss an upcoming neo-nazi rally that we wanted to protest.

In this meeting, that took place in an abandoned warehouse downtown, people were seriously putting ideas on the table that involved shooting bus tires out that would be transporting the neo-nazis to the rally, effectively making the bus crash, and then savagely beating up anyone, including the driver (because he was enabling them), that was on the bus.

They never used any guns, but I knew at that point that I was involved in gang warfare and it was time to get out before it was too late.

I got my life together and never looked back.

For years I stayed silent about Antifa, because in reality most of them were good kids like I was who just got too deep into ideology, idealism and this whole anarcho-punk sub-culture.

The movement hooks you in because you want to stand up against fascism but most of the kids don’t realize they’re joining a militant communist organization with cult-like, rigid rules.

What happened in UC Berkeley sparked me to write this expose`. I don’t particularly care for Milo Yiannapolous but I can tell you with certainty, being someone who had encountered actual neo-nazis in my life on several occasions, that this guy is not a Nazi and they know that.

Antifa was just using their ‘loose association’ ideology in order to justify attacks against people with conservative ideas, because they fear the man’s ability to gain strength against them.

One thing that I noticed that conservative news outlets often conceptualize inaccurately is that Antifa are merely emotional liberals who are dissatisfied with Trump’s victory.

It’s important to understand that this is not the case.  Antifa are not liberals by any stretch of the imagination. They are very far-left and do not align with liberal ideology. Most of the veteran Antifas I knew were in full support of Asian, Middle-Asian, African and European guerrilla revolutionaries that were fighting in communist uprisings. Namely the support of the Communist Party of India, known as Maoists, to which they gave their unconditional support to.

Antifa are left-wing extremists, not your run-of-the-mill liberal “social justice warrior” type. (even though they seem similar). This makes Antifa very dangerous and should be considered a real threat; an equal if not greater threat than National Socialist and white nationalist groups.

My advice to young people who are thinking about joining up with hate groups or extremist groups would be to seek balance in your life. Seek compassion and kindheartedness. Extremism is a dangerous objective no matter which side of the field you’re on. Always keep your own identity, think for yourself and be rational. Be an individual. You can have your ideas and your passions but don’t let them consume you the way I let them consume me. Chaos and violence only lead to more chaos and violence and much consideration must be implemented to understand when it is absolutely necessary to use force. It’s almost always better to not use force. The pen is mightier than the sword and the individual can often be stronger than the group. We’re all human and we all need to stop the craziness and try to function like loving and caring human beings.

Stay away from Antifa, they’re just another hate group cloaked as freedom fighters.

Peace, love and best wishes. Thank you for reading.

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31 replies »

  1. nice subjective report . i realized this shit is the same in every subculture out there. Its like your parents told you; go to school and get a job.

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    • Nah, going to school and getting a job is bullshit. For proof of that statement, just look at any idiot parents that gave such advice. Seeing that this report is anonymous, who knows what’s true in it and most ex-members of anything often have a chip on their shoulder so I take anything they say with a grain of salt. Having said that, I’m not too hot on most subcultures either, but I don’t see who that somehow means going along with the mainstream culture is somehow desirable and something that should be done

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  2. Wow this really rings true. I was involved in an antifa crew and a lot of the things you’re saying are very similar to my experiences. They’re not all bad guys, but it is totally like a cult, and those never end well for anybody. I will detail it a bit: I became involved with them in my early 20s (they were all older and of various backgrounds, and very few of them were “university” types contrary to how the more conservative sites usually show) through a close friend whos whole family was involved overseas. At the time with no sense of direction I basically just said “fucking up Nazis? I’m in!” (I had been quite left of center for years already, but I never limited my thinking, unlike them)

    With me, the ideological clash came first when I expressed belief that the 9/11 attacks MAY have been an “inside job”, they aggressively shut me up saying that “that’s a right wing extremist conspiracy theory” and what not, but not really having a point. Regardless of whether or not they were an inside job, I wouldn’t have considered the topic “racist” or “off limits”, but apparently they did! Later they followed and intimidated some guy at a union rally because he came with an anti-flouride and chem-trail sign (what that had to do with the union rally, I have no clue and I suspect he was mentally ill anyway for other reasons, but my “comrades” didnt need to be so harsh!) Then they justified their irrational tendency to take statements the government that they hate says and not question them (such as the NIST report on 9/11 that was full of trash!) by once again making accusations of “anti semitism” and racism if you ask certain questions. Basically an Orwellian form of self-censorship. My second “Ideological clash” was very similar to one of yours, and it was to say that a black person who expresses the wish to kill all whites in 21st century Canada, like the leader of BLM Toronto did, is just as bad as any Nazi. As you can already guess, it damn near came to blows. I said “Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela never said anything like that, they wanted peace between the races, and they will always be remembered as heroes but the leader of BLM Yusra Ali preaches genocide and will only ever be remembered as a bitter hater.” Anyways, i can confirm you are right about everything about the organization itself, its not a real organization on paper, you just get in after you do some dirt or just legal stuff even to support the current activity thats on the table. However It can be quite militaristic, and since the struggle in my city was primarily against really bad dudes, and some of these “antifas” are still my associates, I would never rat, but there are things that take place that seem like they’re out of a movie or at very least, surreal. I would say that at least half of them had spilled blood for the cause at some point, though. The Quebec chapter was supposedy involved in a full scale gang war, & some folks left from here to head there, but I had nothing to do with them. All this being said, I still hate Neo-Nazis, I still aren’t racist, & I’d never snitch on what I was involved in or even saw (what’s done is done, I havent EVER snitched on anyone for any reason and I sure as hell won’t about them either) but I can’t be actively involved in “antifa” “actions” anymore.

    I was eventually dismayed to find that what Antifa preaches is “Stay in your predetermined-by-skin-colour societal role, people who merely DISAGREE with us are legitimate targets, “#yesallwhitepeople” are racist deep down even white antifa (a slap in the face if you ask me!) censor your own thoughts, believe everything the government tells you but they’re evil (and yet somehow the looming spectre of WORLD GOVERNMENT, the ultimate fascism (globalism) isn’t real or a threat to human liberty?!) And they support the un-supportable (So Stalin, Mao, and a bunch of other dick-taters were solid dudes, but Alex Jones is literally Hitler? give me a break)

    Basically, I want peace among the races and worker’s rights, just like them, and I might even go down to May Day in Winnipeg this year if it isn’t overrun by SJWs, but I won’t attack people for just disagreeing, & I also value using my brain to come to conclusions rather than believing any “doctrine” & I have also become worried about the totalitarian, brownshirt mentality they have taken on. And when you examine things with your brain, a lot of the accusations of sexism, racism, “Islamophobia” &.c. are completely unfounded and only serve to divide, rather than unite. I have also realized that even though the State is oppressive to an extent, it is also the State that protects us from “unelected politicians” like they have in the EU, and an eventual world government. This means that a militant anti-State group is doing the work of the globalists in the long run, and I can’t take part in that!

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    • Thanks for telling your story here. The run ins I’ve had with antifa confirm a lot of this too. You’ve described the secular/political version of religious extremism. My significant other grew up in an actual religious cult, and she sees parallels between the antifa movement and the cult she escaped. The “all white people are racist” concept is antifa’s version of original sin. And, just like with cults, they often target their own people and accuse them of impure thoughts. They even have what we might call a ritual for cleansing themselves of their “original sin”, whereby they admit all their racist thoughts and reconfirm their commitment to anti-racism. I wish I could find the essay where this process is described, but it is very telling.

      I also grew up around a lot of street gangs, and the clashes between antifa and neo-nazis are white people’s version of nortenos vs surenos or bloods vs crips, in my opinion. Just like when I was a teen, I’d rather stay away from all of that bullshit; but sometimes trouble finds you just because of the people you’re surrounded by.

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  3. That last paragraph where he’s giving advice? That’s pretty much the advice you need to follow your whole life, not just deciding whether or not to join the retarded Antifa movement.

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  6. Who are the Shot Callers behind the Antifa movement ? None of this sounds like a spontaneous gathering of like minded mush for brains zealots.

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  8. That’s a well written article, it echoes a lot of the concern I have. It’s been years since I’ve been to shows but the bulk of the audience is always impressionable kids (like I was).

    Respect my friend.

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  9. Antifa are the new Nazi punks. The Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are very nationalist. White, black, and everyone in between, if you love America you are my family.

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  10. you know how hard it is to be a libertarian slightly right leaning person and still being accepted in the punk community? iv’e been beat

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  11. Punks and hard core morons are the mentally retarded section among the heavy music community. Go straight to Heavy Metal and be a real man! Fuck antifa soy boys to fag hell where they are going.

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  12. LMAO y’all white nationalist/white nationalist-adjacent “anarchists” are a trip. It’s hilarious seeing what you guys write because it’s so obvious that y’all are having to agonize real hard over your phrasing; as it turns out it’s pretty hard to advocate for right-wing reactionary nationalism while still trying to maintain an “anarchist” veneer. XD

    I’m not even super pro-Antifa because it’s mostly white petit-bourgeois anarchist (I won’t use scare quotes here because even though I disagree with them, they’re actually anarchists at least, unlike y’all) adventurist kids with no real plan for building a lasting revolutionary movement against white-supremacist capitalism-imperialism, but I AM a communist and i’ll tell ya what: we aren’t the “snowflake” strawman like your pathetically-insecure right-wing media personalities likes to paint us as, and if we ever manage to seize state power or even establish regional bases of dual power, reactionary nationalists like y’all will be facing severe revolutionary discipline, regardless of what you call yourselves. If you look like a duck, waddle like a duck, quack like a duck, and/or fly with other ducks, you’re gonna get shot like one. XD If y’all think Antifa punching Nazis and other reactionaries is bad wait till we have the power to be able to start rounding them/y’all up and putting them/y’all in camps XD

    Hope y’all enjoy the cobalt mines, babes; you’ll be replacing the Congolese child labor the next time we’re in power <3 XD

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    • The problem with your perspective is that commie revolutions always, always end up eating their own. Therefore, you are just as likely to end up in the gulag as your supposed “reactionary” opponents, a prospect that is made even more likely by your obvious lack of talent and intelligence. It is doubtful someone such as yourself would have anything to offer an authentic communist state. Most likely in your ideal commie state you will be arrested for criminal parasitism and sent to a labor camp.

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    • I apologize, but things like “LMFAO”, “y’all”, “XD”, and “babes” make you sound like a 12 year old. The “y’all” would be fine on its own, but the XD XD XD every other fucking sentence shows how hard you’re trying to act like a cocky little hardass. Have you ever been “rounded up” before? For what? I’ve seen plenty of folks like you before, and you all start crying when I rip your piercings out. Grow up and read what the word “fascism” actually means.

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    • …HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

      No. You’d be the first example made in the fallacy of blind loyalty.

      Criticizing anarchists, yet you’re a communist. Literally the antithesis to anarchism. And please, dont claim “aNaRcO-cOmMunIsM”. It’s an oxymoron.
      You’ll never be in power. Hell, you’ll never survive the attempt to seize it, statist commie scum

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    • Reply to mr. “Fuck You” (above):

      First of all, nobody, absolutely nobody, takes you people seriously when you call others Nazis anymore, since you consider anyone to the right of Marx to be a Nazi so that you and your “comrades” can justify violence against them. If you can’t see how that particular mindset might lead to tyranny, then I guess it’s no wonder you became a Communist.

      And you commie intersectionalists are most definitely the snowflakes you are portrayed as by the right (we don’t mean that you are harmless… don’t worry, we are well aware of your potential for cowardly mob violence!)

      We call you snowflakes because you “melt” about everything. For instance, you just expressed the wish that you could throw people who left Antifa into gulags / work camps / “cobalt mines”, because they changed their opinions and spoke out against it. (“How DARE someone question Intersectionality, only Nazis do that!”)

      We don’t fear you or your threats of “revolutionary discipline”. Your side is the side that needs safe spaces and trigger warnings… your side is scared of gun ownership… hell, half of you don’t even know what gender you are most of the time, so quit trying to act hard.

      As you’ve done with your post here, it seems like whenever Communists / Intersectionalists open their mouths, they confirm that their ideology is indeed every bit as totalitarian as the right says it is. You said it yourself, if “your side” ever did seize power, they would engage in a campaign of terror and violence (or as you neo-Maoists like to say, a Culture Revolution.)

      Maybe Augusto Pinochet wasn’t as bad as I used to think… after all, he sure knew how to handle folks like you!
      CAN’T PUT ME IN A GULAG IF YOU’RE TOO BUSY FALLING OUT OF A HELICOPTER!

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  13. Thanks for sharing your experience Keith. I was watching video clips of clashes between antifa & some alt right groups. I find antifa behaviour so disturbing. They are so full of anger & just screaming out nastiness. As a non-white female having experienced racism & sexism I don’t think groups like proud boys are extreme. They seem rational & wanting to reason. But antifa come across so crazy hateful. Those antifa girls look like they want to tear into someone’s flesh. Freaks me out!! Thanks for writing this article.

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  15. Children of divorced mothers who though parents “should always be their kid’s best friend”. When they say they “hate patriarchy” what they’re really saying is: they hate their own fathers who left their feminist mothers and never came back.

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  16. This is how Socialism works. they go after your young mind and exploit your fears. My parents left Cuba just after Castro and crew took over. They tell you the Government will do everything better and in the end your starving to death. Our country has had it problems but with work you can overcome and make it better. God Bless you are doing the write thing for putting your story out there

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