COLUMN: Stop Antifa groups

Last week saw yet another violent protest — this time on the streets of Berkeley. People who identified with Antifa, a controversial and sometimes violent self-proclaimed anti-fascist group, took to the streets, vandalizing businesses, beating people and even pepper spraying one woman as she gave a live interview.

In short, domestic terrorists successfully restricted free speech at the home of the free speech movement. However, this is a problem that is unfortunately not restricted to one university. Antifa is a nationwide political group that commits acts of terrorism, seeking to undermine free expression in this country.

Antifa and groups of a similar mindset deserve a much more robust police response.

Anyone who takes issue with this characterization of Antifa need only to scroll through any chapter of the group’s Twitter feed to see the explicit endorsement of violence against those whose ideas they dislike.

As the most recent offender, Berkeley's chapter provides plenty of examples. The group retweeted someone enthusiastically suggesting the speaker invited to campus cancel his talk, since “after today, its gonna be a war zone.” The group retweets many videos of people being assaulted by members, advertising their particular brand of terrorism.

All of this is indicative of a tremendous problem. Terrorists like those in Antifa are so certain they will not face justice that they are comfortable hijacking protests whenever their anarchist itch needs scratching and then showing off later on the internet.

Many people are confused as to why police don’t directly intervene during the early stages of violent protest.

A common chant of these fanatics is “Whose streets? Our streets!” Unfortunately, they are correct.

Police need to take a much stronger stance against this nonsense. When a protest becomes a riot, police need to contain it and arrest all perpetrators. Bystanders and those who were there to exercise their right to protest must be given time to clear the area, after which the destruction must be stopped by any means necessary.

Tolerating this only further emboldens these groups to spill blood.

And beyond the police, this Antifa mindset springs out of a deeper malaise that has set in culturally. If last month’s cause célèbre on the merits of assaulting Nazis is any indication, it seems fewer and fewer adults are willing to make Voltaire’s famous distinction, “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Those on the right seem fearful of guilt by defense, a close cousin of guilt by association, wherein if I defend someone’s rights, particularly of speech, the misuse of those rights is somehow prescribed to me.

Even more bleak than this is the phantom of hate speech created by the left, where words as diverse as the name of the current president to actual hate are deemed violence that must be repressed. Of course, defining deviation from political orthodoxy as violence is exactly the sort of mindset that spawns violent actors like Antifa, righteously fighting the specter of words that might hurt feelings.

Riots should not be reported as “protests,” as the news wants to do. If this madness is to end, we must demand our culture take a more robust stance against the violent Antifa rioting, recapturing the values Voltaire understood so deeply.