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Antifa protesters couldn’t find any fascists at Unite the Right — and harassed the press instead

By Avi Selk August 13 at 9:08 PM [link:avi.selk@washingtonpost.com|Email the author]

Antifascists, according to their own doctrine, fight fascism. Sounds simple enough. ... Granted, members of the loosely organized Antifa movement define “fascism” vaguely — to include not just Nazis and neo-Nazis, but also white supremacists, white nationalists and the broader population of racists. ... As for the fighting, Antifa takes that part of the doctrine literally. Claiming that even a small public gathering of fascists is a threat to freedom, the movement condones physical violence against them. Its anonymous, black-clad members routinely crash far-right demonstrations to brawl.

{Who are the Antifa?}

So — you might expect that when Antifa can’t find any fascists, it has nothing to fight. That seemed to be the situation this weekend, when a long-planned rally for far-right extremists fizzled into a paltry gathering of a few dozen white supremacists, unapproachable and nearly invisible behind a police blockade as they met without incident in a Washington D.C. park. ... And yet Antifa still managed to fight — not fascists this time, but reporters.
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When a Washington Post reporter tried to interview the antifascists, they refused to speak. When he followed them up the street with his cellphone camera, one of them shoved a black umbrella into his lens and several shouted: “No photos!” ... “This can harm us,” one of the protesters said, just before someone swatted the reporter’s iPhone out of his hand and threw it into the middle of the street. ... The reporter and camera were fine, but the incident was hardly isolated. Throughout the day, journalists covering the rally shared stories of cameras being yanked and reporters accosted by members of the same movement that claims it is protecting free society.

At the same event, NPR reporter Tim Mak watched Antifa protesters lob fireworks and bottles at the police separating them from the white supremacists. ... Then he ducked as someone whipped an egg at his head.

Dodged an egg thrown at my head from inside the Antifa crowd as NPR's Brian Mann narrated

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Mak noted that Antifa’s showing was dwarfed by thousands of other people who peacefully protested the white supremacists. “I was not marked as press,” he wrote, “and have no reason to believe it was thrown at me because I am a reporter.” ... But other videos show Antifa members accosting reporters specifically because they’re reporters, in scenes reminiscent of Donald Trump campaign rallies where the press was often treated as enemy.

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Peter Jamison contributed to this report.

Avi Selk is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. He previously worked for the Dallas Morning News. Follow https://twitter.com/aviselk