By Robert Steven Ingebo

Recently, certain far-left activist groups have begun using violence to destroy property and shut down events they have deemed politically incorrect. These groups only accept people who espouse their own orthodoxy and use violence in an attempt to suppress the free speech of anyone holding a differing viewpoint.

Baltimore, Maryland: April 28, 2015

Downtown Baltimore became a war zone after a night of riots, fires and tragedy. Activists set downtown Baltimore on fire. Buildings and cars across the city were engulfed in flames. At least a dozen businesses were looted or damaged, and approximately 15 officers were wounded, six of them seriously.

Ferguson, Missouri: Aug. 10, 2015

A protest was held marking the anniversary of the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Brown, who was black and unarmed, was fatally shot by white Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Because the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t convene a grand jury and prosecute Wilson, the shooting resulted in the creation of the national Black Lives Matter movement. Violence occurred at the protest when a gunman approached police officers who were in an unmarked car and opened fire. The officers returned fire from inside the vehicle, then pursued the man on foot. The police chief said the man fired at the officers a second time. All four officers fired back, resulting in the gunman sustaining severe injuries requiring his immediate hospitalization.

University of California, Berkeley: February 2017

A violent protest on the UC Berkeley campus caused a scheduled appearance by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to be canceled and caused approximately $100,000 in damage to the university.

Portland, Oregon: April 29, 2017

Portland celebrates an annual Rose Festival. Since 2007, the festival has included a parade down 82nd Avenue. Since 2013, the Republican Party of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, has taken part. Before the day of the parade, organizers received an anonymous email that instructed them to cancel the GOP group’s registration — or else. Upon receiving the anonymous email, the business association announced that it would cancel the parade altogether. On the day of the canceled parade, skirmishes broke out in downtown Portland as hundreds of Trump supporters, who were rallying for free speech, were forced to defend themselves against a group of counter-demonstrators far bigger in size. Police in riot gear made 14 arrests and used pepper spray and flash-bang grenades to break up the crowds.

Charlottesville, Virginia: Aug. 14, 2017

The “Unite the Right” protest — a symbolic gathering meant to emulate similar marches of Hitler youth and other ultra-right nationalist organizations of the past century ― started around 8:45 p.m. on Friday evening when 250 predominantly young, white males holding unlit torches stood across Nameless Field, a large expanse of grass behind Memorial Gymnasium at the University of Virginia. Once assembled, the protestors lit their torches and began marching at a brisk pace, eventually converging on a statue of Thomas Jefferson. There they met counter-protestors, a group of about 30 University of Virginia students, who had locked arms around the base of the statue to face down the hundreds of torchbearers. Within moments, the groups began shoving and punching each other.

Both groups sprayed chemical irritants. Many marchers threw their torches toward the statue and the students. Both sides suffered injuries. The next day, the rally was scheduled to go from noon to 5 p.m., but the park quickly became filled with rally-goers and counter-protesters, starting around 8:30 a.m. In downtown Charlottesville, most stores and restaurants closed for the day, knowing that the protests would make it impossible for them to do business. A few minutes before 11 a.m., a group of white nationalists carrying large shields and long wooden clubs approached the park on Market Street. About two dozen counter-protesters formed a line across the street, blocking their path. The marchers charged through the line, swinging sticks, punching and spraying chemicals. The counter-protesters fought back, also swinging sticks, punching and spraying chemicals. Others threw balloons filled with paint or ink at the white nationalists.

As the violence worsened, law enforcement ordered the protestors to disperse. Within minutes of the dispersal order, the right-wing groups began leaving the park. At 1:14 p.m., the Charlottesville city Twitter account tweeted: “CPD & VSP respond to 3-vehicle crash at Water & 4th Streets. Several pedestrians struck. Multiple injuries.” Matthew Korbon quickly dispelled the notion that it was a routine traffic accident when he said that the car crash was “absolutely intentional” as he watched victims being loaded into ambulances. He was an eyewitness to the tragedy, standing on the sidewalk when James Alex Fields Jr. roared his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of pedestrians. Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville, was killed and 19 others were injured.

Then, another report appeared on Twitter: A helicopter had crashed in Albemarle County, just a few miles from downtown Charlottesville. Around 7 p.m. officials stated that one of the state police helicopters monitoring the rally had crashed. Two state troopers, Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Berke M.M. Bates, died in the crash. Less than 24 hours after the protest began, three people had lost their lives and many people had sustained serious injuries.

St. Louis, Missouri: Sept. 15-23, 2017

On Friday afternoon, protests and violent clashes erupted in downtown St. Louis after ex-Police Officer Jason Stockley was found not guilty in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith, a young African-American drug dealer. Within hours, protestors smashed the windshield of a police vehicle and threw water bottles, rocks and bricks at police officers. The demonstrators threw rocks at the mayor’s home and 11 officers were injured. Dozens of small businesses were vandalized during the rioting. At least 33 people were arrested. The violence continued on Saturday night when a group of protesters threw bricks, rocks and projectiles filled with paint at police as officers tried to disperse the crowds. Nine people were arrested. On Sunday night, more than 120 people were arrested as protesters attacked police, broke windows and flipped over trash cans. Amid the skirmishes that ensued, some protesters broke concrete flower pots and used the broken pieces as projectiles. Some businesses also suffered damage. On Monday night, dozens gathered at the St. Louis City Justice Center for an impassioned protest. A woman with a megaphone said, “When black lives are under attack, what do we do?” The crowd responded, shouting, “Stand up, fight back!” Criminals responded to this incitement of violence by assaulting law enforcement officers and throwing chemicals and rocks at them.

There are two major, left-wing activist groups perpetrating the majority of violence at these protests.

Black Lives Matter

This is how BLM describe itself on its website:

“#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder.

"Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our dehumanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.

"When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state.  We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.”

The Black Lives Matter movement draws its strength from the premise that when perceived police victimization of black people results in unlawful arrests or murder, the result will be civil unrest and violence. Violence against the police is justified, it says, because it is the only way the citizens living in those communities can impose a check on the power of racist law enforcement officers.

Antifa

“Antifa” is short for “anti-fascist” or “Anti-Fascist Action,” a name used by European political movements in the 1930s.

Antifa is a militant political movement of independent anti-fascist groups. The main feature of antifa is its opposition to perceived fascism by the use of force. It is ironic that antifa uses violence to force people into agreeing with its way of thinking. Doesn’t that make it a fascist group in its own right?

Antifa groups are known for their violent protest tactics, including property damage and physical violence perpetrated upon individuals. They are anti-government and anti-capitalist, predominantly far-left and radical-left, including anarchists, communists and socialists. It is interesting to note that they are not Democrats. They focus on perpetrating violence against far-right and white supremacist groups in order to shut down free speech rather than promoting the corrupt liberal agenda of political correctness and identity politics.

Antifa’s growth has exploded since Donald Trump has been elected president. According to NYC Antifa, the group’s Twitter following nearly quadrupled in the first three weeks of January 2017 alone.

Trump’s rise has also bred sympathy for antifa among some in the Democratic Party. Liberals who used to condemn antifa are now telling it, “You’ve been right all along.”

Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists and anti-capitalists, its activists place little faith in the state, which it considers complicit in fascism and racism. The Democrats might want to keep that in mind before they encourage this activist group, because antifa could condemn the Democratic Party just as easily as it condemns President Trump and the Republican Party because the Democrats’ welfare state is based upon capitalism, which antifa vehemently rejects.

Antifa pressures venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. It pressures employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. When people who antifa decides are racists and fascists assemble, antifa’s members attempt to break up their rallies by committing acts of violence.

Unfortunately, such tactics have elicited substantial support from the left-wing media. When a masked antifa activist was filmed assaulting Richard B. Spencer, an American white supremacist, on Inauguration Day, a piece in "The Nation" described his punch as an act of “kinetic beauty.”

Slate ran an article approving a piano ballad that glorified the assault. Viral versions of the video set to different songs appeared on Twitter. Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted, “I don’t care how many different songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I’ll laugh at every one.”

The violence is not only directed at avowed racists like Spencer. In June of 2016, antifa members and other demonstrators punched and threw eggs at people exiting a Trump rally in San Jose, California. An article in "It’s Going Down,“ an antifa-aligned news outlet, celebrated the "righteous beatings.”

The antifascists of antifa justify these violent acts by saying that they’re defensive in nature. Antifa members claim that hate speech leads to violence against victimized minorities and someone has to defend them, because the police certainly won’t.

But Trump supporters see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble and speak out against political correctness. The Trump followers are correct in their condemnation of antifa because the activist group’s violent attacks are a direct assault on their First Amendment rights as American citizens.

Antifa believes it is pursuing the opposite of authoritarianism. Many of its activists oppose the very notion of a centralized state. But in the name of protecting the vulnerable, anti-fascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assemble and which may not, and they define what is hate speech and what is not. Is this not also a form of fascism?

The fact that members of the Democratic Party are supporting Black Lives Matter and antifa delegitimizes their party because using violence to enforce political correctness threatens everything the Democrats used to believe in, including the right to free speech and even democracy itself.

Robert Steven Ingebo is president of FRI Corporation.