Antifa essentially serves as the shock troops, to use a term coined by V. I. Lenin to describe CHEKA, the private militia of the Bolsheviks, for the Democratic Party.

I thought it idiotic that people fightingfor their lives should have separate parties; my attitude always was, ’Why can’t wedrop all this political nonsense and get on with the war?’ This of course was thecorrect ’anti-Fascist’ attitude which had been carefully disseminated by the Englishnewspapers, largely in order to prevent people from grasping the real nature of thestruggle.

Although the Nazis portrayed themselves as a workers' party, they were predominantly middle-class citizens. The party was also strongest in rural protestant regions. Farmers, small businessmen, artisans & civil servants were the backbone of the Nazi party. They feared the loss of their incomes & status, were angry at big business & organized labour, and dreaded a communist revolution. Factors that made them vulnerable to the crude conspiracy theories promoted by the nazis.

Why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system? - 3rd Leaflet of the White Rose

Some victims are valued more in the eyes of the American media than others.

You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.

At the moment, the threat of the far right is understood by the American public and actively countered by government, academia, media, and civil society. No comparable resolve or mass organization exists to counter the far left. Why? One explanation is the cultural dominance of the left. The political homogeneity in popular culture, academe, and urban centers of influence (e.g., New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, etc.) has produced a populace with severe blind spots.

The tragic irony of modern anti-fascism is that the more successful it is, the more its raison d'etre is called into question. Its greatest successes lie in hypothetical limbo: How many murderous fascist movements have been nipped in the bud over the past 70 years by antifa groups before their violence could metastasize? We will never know--and that's a very good thing indeed.

I’m angry at them, but I still see their humanity and don’t wish them ill. I actually feel sympathy for those pulled and brainwashed into antifa’s twisted ideology. They are often exploited and used by a movement that explicitly rejects the value of individuals in favor of the cause.

Antifa...does not propose any affirmative ideology. Rather, it is a negative reactionary movement. In a void, anarchism would still attempt to organize society. But Antifa cannot exist without “fascists” to oppose. It therefore claims to see fascism everywhere, even where it does not exist. Ultimately, Antifa is a dumbed-down branch of radical politics.