As soon as Antifa is back on the public’s radar for committing more violence, the media show up, right on cue to defend the radical left-wing anarchists. This time the sympathy piece was in the Washington Post “perspectives” section, where Kim Kelly, “labor” columnist for Teen Vogue, pleaded Thursday, “Stop blaming everything bad on anarchists.” The subhead of the opinion piece was even more nauseating: “They’re at the protests because being an anarchist means dreaming of a kinder, more equitable society.”
As you could expect from the title, this was little more than a propaganda piece painting anarchists as gentle do-gooders. Kelly starts off by claiming that President Trump, and some in the media are “profoundly ignorant” of what anarchist ideology is. She glosses over the group’s violent methods, saying that their “dissent” is being criminalized. She also suggested that the White House was lying when it tweeted that pallets of bricks were showing up in cities across the country, even though this has been widely reported by people outside the White House:
We’re rapidly approaching a point in which dissent is further criminalized, the justified rage and pain fueling these protests is further delegitimized, and anyone who engages in any form of protest outside the preapproved liberal template becomes a target for surveillance, or worse. On June 3, with zero evidence backing its claim, the White House Twitter account trumpeted: “Antifa and professional anarchists are invading our communities, staging bricks and weapons to instigate violence. These are acts of domestic terror.” At least one of the supposed weapons caches appears to have been part of a security barricade in front of a Jewish community center.
Kelly goes on to explain the group’s Marxist goals for America, before presenting Antifa as good Samaritans, taking care of their communities. In fact, anarchists are “about love” and just want a “utopian romance” (yuck):
Anarchists are by definition anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and directly opposed to all other forms of bigotry and oppression.
In practice, to be an anarchist is to dream of a kinder, more equitable society, and to do one’s best to get us closer to making that dream a reality. For every minute of protest footage showing anarchists out in the streets, there are untold hours spent attending endless meetings (anarchists love meetings), cooking and delivering food and supplies to those who need it, researching far-right groups, planning demonstrations, providing child care and other support to comrades, and taking part in other communally minded projects. It may sound hokey, but anarchism is about love as much as it is rage; there is a certain utopian romance to it.
Kelly downplays the group’s violence as simply “not the point.” She also dismisses the notion that these groups are well-funded by Democrats to be a fake narrative and that actually they are born from donations from the “poor and working class.”
She ends her love letter to terrorists by urging Americans to “embrace the true spirit of anarchy” because it “has many lessons to offer about caring for our communities and all of those in need” and that will “save” the country.
All of this obfuscation and misinformation is a shame, because anarchism has many lessons to offer about caring for our communities and all of those in need…..As others survey the smoldering ruins of the American Dream and beg politicians to take mercy on the most vulnerable, it’s worth reminding people that life doesn’t have to be this way. The government has shown that it won’t save us. We know that the rich won’t save us. But if we embrace the true spirit of anarchy, maybe, just maybe, we can save ourselves.
In 2019, this same writer defended an Antifa terror attack, firebombing an ICE building in Tacoma, Washington as “righteous sabotage.” That tweet is still on her Twitter profile. So not only does this woman claim anarchists aren't violent while she justifies their violence elsewhere, these media outlets that print her opinion pieces are clearly fine with publishing someone who supports left-wing terrorism.
