As Trump rails against ‘far-left’ fascism, new database shows leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists. --- American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database. […] Daily interpersonal violence and state violence pose a much greater threat to Americans than any kind of extremist terror attack. More than 100,000 people have been killed in gun homicides in the United States in the past decade, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US police officers shoot nearly 1,000 Americans to death each year. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be shot by the police as white Americans, according to analysis by the Washington Post and the Guardian.

Anti-fascists keep showing up, because ignoring hate doesn’t make it go away. --- When the police form a line to separate one side from the other at these events, they always stand with their backs to the alt-right and their weapons facing the anti-fascist counterprotesters. Dispersal orders and crowd-control weapons like tear gas and stun grenades (“flashbangs”) go only one way, often deployed against the anti-fascists to allow Patriot Prayer to leave the area. Nonviolent protesters have been struck and seriously injured by flashbangs fired directly into the crowd by the police. So why do we keep showing up to protest Patriot Prayer and their white supremacist friends? Why did we come together last Saturday to protest the KKK? Critics often tell us, “Stop giving them the attention they’re looking for!” We keep showing up, because ignoring hate doesn’t make it go away; it only allows it to spread further. If we permit white supremacists to march through our city, they’ll grow bolder. If we don’t show up each time and prove that we outnumber them, their numbers will swell. Imagine the recruiting power of an artfully edited video of white supremacists marching unchallenged through the streets of a major US city like Washington. On August 17, 2019, Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, and other extremists came back to Portland. Anti-fascist protesters recognized that videos of clashes have been used as right-wing propaganda, and so the anti-fascist group PopMob organized the Spectacle, an event designed to shut that down. PopMob encouraged Portlanders to wear whimsical costumes to an anti-fascist outdoor dance party adjacent to the far-right rally. That resulted in the confrontation of about 300 far-right demonstrators with roughly 1,500 unicorns, cats, witches, and bananas (the Banana Bloc, of course), joined by a contingent of protesters in a black bloc forming a front line to protect us. It was a very Portland protest, and it was also very effective. The far right called it quits after 30 minutes, retreated to their rental buses, and went home. This past Saturday, the KKK wanted to test Portland, and once again we organized and claimed victory. Portland leftist organizations including PopMob, Rose City Antifa, Portland DSA, Jobs with Justice, Banana Bloc, the Direct Action Alliance, and others have formed a community to face down right-wing extremists. When we counterprotest white supremacists in Portland, we’re working to cut off white nationalists’ recruitment and radicalization tools as early as possible. If you are opposed to fascism, you are an anti-fascist, and our fight is your fight. As a favorite chant at these anti-fascist rallies goes, “We are many! They are few!” We need to prove that nationwide.

Inside the antifa movement's struggle to continue its long, colorful legacy of cracking white supremacist heads without alienating, well, just about everyone. --- A report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that from 1990 to 2012, far-right extremists were responsible for 670 fatalities, 3,053 injuries and 4,420 violent attacks in the United States. No such data exist for antifa, but in the three decades of antifa’s organized existence in America, only one known fatality caused by a member of an antifa group has been recorded, when in 1993 a multiracial skin shot a Nazi skin during a fight at a gas station in Portland and was convicted of manslaughter.

We might pass over the fact that, other than to oppose the threat of violent white nationalists, masked antifa terrorists have shown up in America a total of zero times ever. We will try to ignore the fact that since 2014, white-pride fuckwits have killed 43 people in what can only be described as a murderous ultraracist frenzy, antifa again holding steady at zero. We will never forget the 2016 stabbings of antifascists by neo-Nazis in Sacramento—but Dan Donovan already has, botching the date in his fact sheet and misrepresenting the fact that only one side did the stabbing, with antifascists still at zero, stabbing-wise. We will gloss over the easily documented fact that alt-right losers love wearing masks, perhaps when they are openly advocating violence online, certainly when they congregate to do violence, or just when sitting around feeling frisky.