Now, Portland, Mayor Ted Wheeler who previously blamed former President Donald Trump and the federal government for violence is calling on citizens to stand up to the \u201cself-described anarchist mob.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0I am not sure why Wheeler added \u201cself-described\u201d but his belated recognition of the threat is still welcomed.\u00a0He notably did not specifically condemn Antifa, including the homegrown and notoriously violent Rose City Antifa (RCA).<\/strong><\/p>\n Wheeler called for the city\u2019s residents to\u00a0assist authorities<\/a>\u00a0in their efforts to \u201cunmask\u201d members of the \u201cself-described anarchist mob\u201d who continue to riot and loot in the city.\u00a0<\/strong>Portland is in a state of emergency and riots have continued for years. Indeed, Democratic leaders in the city appear to have finally worked through all of the \u201cstages of grieving\u201d identified by psychiatrist Elizabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross:\u00a0denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n They began with denial<\/strong>\u00a0and transference in blaming federal authorities and Trump for the violence.<\/p>\n They then joined protesters in angry denunciations of the federal government is seeking an alliance.<\/p>\n They then bargained with the groups.<\/strong>\u00a0(They did not go as far as cities like Seattle in allowing actual \u201cautonomous zones\u201d last summer, but avoided confrontations and limited police responses). Wheeler himself was criticized for failing to act against the rioting but insisted that he was trying to find a\u00a0middle road of \u201ccompromise\u201d<\/a>\u00a0with the groups. The riots, of course, continued and intensified.<\/p>\n After a period of depression when the rioting continued after the Biden election, they have finally made it to acceptance.<\/strong><\/p>\n That progression however is not evident with other national and even state Democratic leaders.<\/strong>\u00a0Democratic leaders continue to avoid criticizing Antifa and some like Nadler deny their very existence. This level of fear and denial is precisely what Antifa has struggled to create. As I have written, it has long been\u00a0the \u201cKeyser S\u00f6ze\u201d of the anti-free speech movement<\/a>, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association.\u00a0 Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa\u2019s work or violence. He told one committee last year Wray stated \u201cAnd we have quite a number \u2014 and \u201cAntifa is a real thing. It\u2019s not a fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Democratic leaders not only recognize Antifa but support it.\u00a0<\/strong>Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would \u201cstrike fear in the heart\u201d of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa as riots raged in his city last summer.<\/p>\n Notably, one of the witnesses from the Senate hearing last year was conservative journalist\u00a0Andy Ng\u00f4, who was previously attacked by Antifa members in Portland. He wrote a book about the group but stores like Portland\u2019s\u00a0famed shop Powell\u2019s Books\u00a0have banned it from its shelves. When musician Winston Marshall congratulated\u00a0Ng\u00f4\u00a0on his book, he was\u00a0condemned and later issued a cringing public apology<\/a>. \u00a0Ng\u00f4 recently\u00a0had to leave the country<\/a>\u00a0due to the attacks and death threats from Antifa and other groups. One does not have to agree with Ng\u00f4 to support his right to speak or oppose the efforts to block people from being able to buy or read his book.\u00a0 Yet, the \u201cdeplatforming\u201d campaign against Ng\u00f4, his book, and anyone who praises him is a signature of Antifa.<\/p>\n Wheeler\u2019s success in \u201cgetting to acceptance\u201d was not easy. He was repeatedly targeted himself by protesters at home and at restaurants.\u00a0Finally, as riots continue for a second year, Wheeler is willing to rally the public against \u201cself-described anarchists\u201d while avoiding the forbidden reference to the real \u201cA word\u201d: Antifa.<\/strong><\/p>\n Wheeler\u2019s fear of confronting the Rose City Antifa is conspicuous and pathetic.\u00a0<\/strong>As I noted in my Senate testimony, the RCA is arguably the oldest reference to \u201cAntifa\u201d in the United States. In 2013, various groups that were part of ARA, including RCA, formed a new coordinating organization referred to as the \u201cTorch Network.\u201d This lack of structure not only appealed to the anarchist elements in the movement but served the practical benefit of evading law enforcement and lawsuits.<\/p>\n The RCA and other aligned groups have little patience for free speech. It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the \u201cbible\u201d of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray\u2019s\u00a0Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook<\/em><\/a>. Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech:\u00a0\u201cAt the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, \u2018I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Indeed, Bray admits that \u201cmost Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists\u2026 \u00a0From that standpoint, \u2018free speech\u2019 as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.\u201d It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting \u201cwhite supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.\u201d Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard.<\/p>\n The signature of the group is the same orthodoxy and militancy that characterizes groups that they oppose. Like its counterparts in right-wing groups like Proud Boys, Antifa has a long and well-documented history of such violence. Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a \u201cnonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, when George Washington University student and self-professed Antifa member Jason Charter was charged as the alleged \u201cringleader\u201d of efforts to take down statues in Washington, D.C., Charter declared\u00a0the \u201cmovement is winning.\u201d He is right. It is winning because politicians, the media, and academics have refused to recognize it for what it is: a violent, anti-free speech movement.\u00a0<\/strong>Wheeler\u2019s indirect criticism is tiny blip in a sea of indifference or denials from other leaders. That is all that Antifa needs to win. Silence.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/ted-wheeler-in-suit-700x420.jpg?itok=IIgofFRm\")
<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/portland-fire-during-riot-1200x800.jpg?itok=fYtKmgud\")
<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/portland-police-5-1200x800.jpg?itok=PE2Icmwo\")
<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n