At a bizarre gathering in the White House on Wednesday, President Donald Trump and many of his top aides assembled a group of far-right activists and influencers to discuss the alleged horrors of antifa and what the administration will do about it. And they are going big.
Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged that the government will be “breaking down the organization brick by brick” to “destroy the organization from top to bottom.” FBI Director Kash Patel explained that the administration is taking “a whole-of-government approach” to antifa, deploying resources from multiple agencies. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wanted everyone to understand the “network of antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as [Tren de Aragua], as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. They are just as dangerous.”
Here’s the reality: “Antifa” is not a network, or a collective, or a syndicate. It has no headquarters, it holds no assets, and it has no members. It publishes no pamphlets, records no podcasts and sells no branded merch. It has no policy agenda or plan for a national takeover.
It is the most extensive government propaganda campaign since the George W. Bush administration’s effort to win support for a war on Iraq.
It is essentially an idea, one that begins in a place all Americans should support, but unfortunately don’t: opposition to fascism. Then there are a tiny number of (mostly young) people who take antifa to a different place — people who like to go to public gatherings of far-right groups and get into street fights. If a video of someone punching a white nationalist comes up on your social media feed, the one doing the punching probably calls themself antifa.
Yet it seems that in the imaginations of the president and his supporters, there must be a vast conspiracy behind antifa, one that involves huge sums of money and an intricate bureaucracy managing its many tendrils. That’s why the White House confab was filled with talk of the usual liberal suspects: billionaire George Soros, the Tides Foundation, the Democratic Socialists of America — any or all of them simply must be funding people in hoodies. Only a billion-dollar organization could mount a complex political scheme like getting into a shoving match with a Proud Boy. The administration has to follow the money — which apparently the Treasury Department is doing right now.
We know antifa’s arsenal is fearsome; as the White House proclaimed in a news release this week, “For years, an antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property.” At Wednesday’s meeting, Trump painted an even bleaker picture: “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore.” All evidence indicates that, in fact, Portland remains a city with stores.
As easy as it is to mock the president and his staff, they are attempting something quite serious: to convince the public that war must be waged against this imaginary enemy. It is the most extensive government propaganda campaign since the George W. Bush administration’s effort to win support for a war on Iraq.
The difference between that propaganda campaign and this one is that back then there were some true facts propping up the lies. There really was a country called Iraq, which really was led by a man named Saddam Hussein. He didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, but he was a brutal despot.








