[Feng Yaren, special correspondent of Global Times in the United States, Yang Yi, special correspondent of Global Times]The editor says:After the shooting of prominent US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, some politicians, including President Trump and others, regarded the impact of the “radical left” as leading to the incident, vowing to attack such organizations. On September 17, Trump announced plans to list the leftist movement called “Antifa” as the “major terrorist organization”. Previously, US Vice President Wences also criticized the “unshared” organization, the Open Social Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Why did these organizations provoke Republican dissatisfaction?
"Antifa": Anti-fascist organization? A "radical left wing disaster"?
According to the US Political News Network, Trump said on September 17 that he plans to designate the leftist movement called Antifa (Antifa, an abbreviation of the English word "anti-fascist") as a "major terrorist organization" and called the movement a "pathological, dangerous, radical leftist disaster".
When introducing "Antifa", Agence France-Presse said that this is the general name of "left-wing radical organizations" in the United States. Qatar's Al Jazeera does not use the word "radical", saying only that the movement is made up of groups opposing right-wing ideology. Ray, the former director of the FBI, once stressed that "Antifa" is "a movement or ideology", not an organization. Many media also pointed out that the "Antifa" movement did not have a clear leader, organizational structure and member list.
According to The New York Times and other US media reports, members of "Antifa" oppose racism and xenophobia. Levin, an American scholar who studies hatred and extremism, said that the members of the movement are all kinds, some belong to the non-violent leftist, while others advocate the use of violence. It is reported that some members of "Antifa" wore black masks in previous protests and treated police and journalists with aggressive behavior.
Bray, a scholar at the University of Liguria, New Jersey, and author of Antifa: Antifascist Manual, said that although the Weather Dictionary showed that the term “antifa” first appeared in 1946 and was borrowed from a German phrase representing anti-Naziism, after Trump was first elected President of the United States in 2016, more people in the country began to join the campaign to counter the threat they perceived from the so-called alternative right wing. Indian New Delhi TV said “Antifa” members believed themselves to be part of the Western protest tradition, a tradition that can be traced back to the pre-World War II opposition to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.
Members of Antifa had a fierce confrontation with white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville in 2017. Over the past few years, members of the movement have become increasingly active in protests and rallies in the United States, especially those with far-right involvement.
Agence France-Presse said that since his first term, Trump has blamed "Antifa" for various actions he doesn't like. "Political News Network" pointed out that after the killing of Floyd, a black man, in 2020, large-scale protests broke out across the United States. Trump threatened to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization at that time, but did not elaborate on how he would achieve this goal. McCord, a former senior official of the US Department of Justice, told Al Jazeera that there is no mechanism in the country to designate domestic organizations as terrorist organizations. Some lawyers previously explained to the media that according to American law, two conditions need to be met to list an organization as a terrorist organization, including that the organization is an entity organization and has ties with foreign countries, but "Antifa" is not an organization. Bergson, an American scholar who studies criminal justice, said that in some cases, "Antifa" may be called a "terrorist organization", but if it is labeled with this label, it means that some white supremacy organizations and environmental organizations should also be labeled with this label.
“Being part of inciting violence against conservatives”
On Sept. 17, Trump said he would also "strongly recommend" a thorough investigation of those who fund the "Antifa" in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. This proposal echoes the previous statement made by US Vice President Vance. According to the British "Guardian" and other media reports, after Kirk's attack, Vance directly named two institutions when he said that the White House would crack down on "radical left-wing" organizations, saying that the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation run by george soros should be cancelled from tax exemption status. Vance said a number of nonprofits, including the two foundations, funded the left-leaning news magazine The Nation, and an article published by the magazine was used to "defend Kirk's attack and be part of incitement to violence against conservatives." The Nation says it has never received funding from the Open Society Foundation and has not received a donation from the Ford Foundation in recent years. A spokesperson for Vance noted that the Ford Foundation gave $100,000 to The Nation in 2019.
Founded in 1936 by Ford, the only son of Ford, the American automobile giant, the Ford Foundation was widely donated. Wans previously criticized the foundation as a campaign for the Senate for “pretending to be a charity organization, in fact a tumor of American society.” A report in 2022 in the National Review may explain why some conservatives look at organizations such as Ford as a blind eye. The magazine said that Ford, Open Society and other foundations determine what leftists in the United States can think, discuss or support. Most leftist media, think tanks and other organizations in the United States rely on donations from these foundations, and these “conservatives linked by common class bias and economic interests” use their financial influence to impose their views on donor groups through the operation of a large number of non-governmental organizations. In 2024,
According to media reports such as "Voice of Germany", Trump recently accused Soros's father and son of funding violent protests across the United States, demanding prosecution against them. Alexander Soros, the current head of the Open Social Foundation, has publicly stated that to challenge Trump and Musk, who led the U.S. "government efficiency ministry", to actively participate in the U.S. political construction. Internationally, the Open Social Foundation has long been accused of using so-called aid and poverty alleviation programmes to initiate "color revolution" in other countries. The foundation has been resisted by many countries such as Russia, Romania and Hungary.
The White House also pointed to an organization called “indivisible” when referring to combating the “radical left,” AP said. The organization began in 2016 after Trump was first elected president of the United States, with a document written by American Lewin and his wife Greenberg. The document called on the left to follow the “Tea Party” model by pressuring congressmen through grassroots voters to block Trump’s agenda. Now the “indivisible” organization is expanding in scale, with millions of members, it can quickly organize protests and other activities. It has been that Musk previously led the U.S. government’s “Department of Efficiency”, when several Tesla car distribution stores had pre-demonstrated activities, and protests have also lit Tesla cars, while “indivisible” has been directed to provide funding to
"Amplifying one aspect of a crisis and pretending that the other does not exist will only lead to a spiral of crisis"
After Trump announced plans to classify Antifa as a “terrorist organization,” Republican federal senator Cassidy of Louisiana praised the decision, but many feared it was an extension of the White House retaliatory campaign and an erosion of freedom of expression.The Associated Press assessed that while U.S. government officials insisted their actions were focused on preventing violence, any move to weaken leftist groups could change the political landscape before the mid-year elections next year.
American conservatives blamed Kirk's death on the "radical left wing", but some experts pointed out that the United States is facing not only the political violence caused by the "radical left wing", but also the crisis caused by right-wing extremists. Viola, a professor at CUNY's John Jay School of Criminal Justice and author of "You've Unleashed a Storm," emphasizes that "amplifying one aspect of a crisis and pretending the other isn't there will only lead to a crisis spiraling," according to the Associated Press.
In recent years, U.S. right-wing extremist violence has been more deadly than left-wing violence. According to research, right-wing extremist violence has killed around 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic extremist deaths since 2001, typical examples include: the 2015 shooting at the Church of Charleston, South Carolina. In the case, white supremacist Rufus killed nine blacks; the 2018 Jewish church shooting in Pittsburgh, U.S., 11 of whom were murdered.
In contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those linked to anarchist or environmental movements, resulted in less than 5% of the total death toll. Related incidents include: arson and sabotage activities by the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front in the 1990s and early 2000s, which targeted primarily property rather than people; In 2016, five Dallas police officers were killed by a heavily armed sniper who targeted white police officers.
“The right-wing political spectrum may not be the most useful way to look at the current U.S. division.”
"It usually begins with shock and bipartisan expressions of regret. Then, almost simultaneously, comes the debate: Which faction is he from?" In a report on Kirk's death, The New Yorker magazine describes how the domestic reaction usually occurs in the wake of political assassinations.
However, the message left by Robinson, the suspect in Kirk's case, remains a mess. His path to radicalisation remains unclear, according to the Guardian. Many experts stressed that the motives of more and more shooting murderers in the United States, especially young gunmen, do not completely conform to the traditional left-right spectrum, but are influenced by the fragmented and highly networked state of modern politics. Ignoring the complex process of radicalization and simply categorizing the attackers may make it difficult to find the real motivation that leads people to commit extreme atrocities. The BBC also quoted experts as saying that the left and right political spectrum may not be the most useful way to look at the current American division. "It's best to look at what makes society difficult to govern well. It requires a desire to lower the heat (after something happens)," said Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
According to the BBC, after Kirk's death, the political camp in the United States has retreated to opposing narratives, with neither left nor left seeming particularly keen to prioritize domestic reconciliation or trauma healing. After the Kirk case, the governor of Utah called on Americans to reduce the political heat of the matter, but few people thought the United States would do so, at least not in the short term. The BBC mentioned that there are many examples of domestic disunity after tragedies in American history. Although the reason is simple, it is difficult to change. That is, the American political life mechanism rewards those people and policies that stimulate the situation to heat up, rather than those who ease the situation. People and platforms that ease tensions.
There are opinions that the United States has also experienced periods of political violence or political darkness before, but the country has not been stagnant, and now it will be.BBC believes that the current political tension in the United States seems to be similar to some of the situations before, but not exactly the same, "history will not repeat, but often rhythm."