Last month, the No Kings 2.0 protests across the United States gained national attention for their crowd size and opposition against President Donald J. Trump. For months, Democratic figures have pointed out both immoral and illegal actions the President has taken in his second term involving ICE, his tariff policy, and recently the military strikes on Venezuelan boats. These actions, and many more have many Americans outraged, leading a total of seven million Americans to protest across the country. The Trump administration’s stance on civilian protest, however, was far from normal.

   The President and House Speaker Mike Johnson are publicly declaring that the peaceful civil protests last month were arranged by a group of radical leftists called Antifa, without describing anything specific about the motive for the organization. Instead, Antifa was used as a label to describe the No Kings protests as a “hate America rally” rather than being scrutinized and exclusively investigated like other groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. In essence, the Trump administration is trying to group the civilian-led No Kings organization with a perceptibly hostile group. Before a proper judgement can be made on that matter though, let’s take a deeper look at what Antifa is and work to understand what they are before any judgement is passed.

   The name Antifa stands for “anti-fascist.” As the name entails, people within Antifa oppose totalitarian and fascist ideologies, as well as a few defining components that these regimes often possess. The general ideas that people in Antifa oppose are racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and white supremacy. This opposition to these qualities does not solely exist because Antifa members are looking out for different groups. Antifa members believe and realize that these qualities, and divisive, discriminatory rhetoric that follows is the foundation of horrific governments. The Nazis, for example, used religious discrimination and racism to target Jews and xenophobia to target Soviet citizens. The Antifa ideology seeks to stop facism in its tracks by calling out and dissolving these qualities that are used as building blocks for such regimes.

   A common mistake in the media regarding Antifa is the fact that it is treated like a formal organization, which is far from the truth. Anti-fascist ideology exists throughout the United States in every state, often through small activist groups. Most members of Antifa do not wear uniforms or follow any leader, but are everyday people that make themselves known when the building blocks of fascism appear. In 2020 when George Floyd was killed, Antifa became prominent and stood against the racism that led to his death. Antifa became prominent at that time with both non-violent and violent activist groups making headlines. Understandably, Antifa has gained a bad reputation for the illegal actions committed by violent groups under the ideology. However, this does not mean all of Antifa is to blame. Antifa, being composed of many different groups of people, lacks centralization, leadership, and funding. Well-known organizations in more urbanized areas may receive financial support from locals and have a local organizer who sets their own principles to lead their group. This does not mean that they cooperate and have a centralized plan or leadership.

   The one thing all Antifa groups have in common is the fact that these groups use direct confrontation to call attention to or disrupt the spread of hate speech, believing that it is not a form of free speech that should be tolerated. Beyond the simple fact that direct confrontation is used and believers in the Antifa ideology tend to be left-leaning, Antifa remains to be a foundational ideal for people aligning to leftist ideals that don’t always align with the Democratic Party. The common cause to prevent authoritarian regimes from springing to life within the U.S. is what generally unites the left, but it is only a mere idea shared among many groups of people.

   The Trump Administration, determined to demonize Antifa every chance they get, recalls the events of the more violent groups of people. GOP officials have turned the simple name into a stigma because they often bring up property damage from the Black Lives Matter riots triggered by the death of George Floyd. The sister term, “the Radical Left” was also adopted to tie any left leaning individual to violence in an attempt to further sway people away from the Democratic Party and other left leaning organizations. The No Kings protests were not an exception, with House Speaker Mike Johnson addressing the movement as the “Antifa crowd, the pro-Hamas crowd, and the Marxist crowd.” All of the descriptors he used represent the beliefs of a significantly small minority of people that fall under the umbrella of Antifa. He hoped to use labeling to create fear among the American people. He continued to berate the movement in the following message: “It’s not about the people, it’s about the message. It’s about the ideology,” said Johnson. “It is a dangerous ideology, and it is anti-American. It goes against everything that we stand for.” No Kings 2.0 came around on October 18th and demonstrated peacefully throughout the entire country, proving Mike Johnson and the Trump Administration wrong. However, the President had still delivered the nation’s official position on the matter.
   Prior to the No Kings 2.0 protest, the President delivered his official position on Antifa. Despite national security officials and studies showing that far right extremists like the Jan. 6 rioters pose a greater threat to public safety, he defines Antifa on whitehouse.gov as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” His definition is misleading because Antifa only seeks to end oppression, not the function of law, policing, or governance. This rhetoric serves to villainize his opponents and mislead people into thinking Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization, which he later officially declared the movement as being.

   The President and his government continue to misrepresent and incorrectly label ideas and movements as something that they are not to only further sow division in the American public. The President’s job is to serve the United States and its people, not to split the country apart because he happens to have an unpopular moment. The best thing that we can do to reverse the damage labeling has done is to speak to one another in an attempt to understand and disconfirm the rhetoric floating around in the media. One of the greatest tools fascists use is propaganda to trick people into hating other groups. That is why Antifa exists. People believing in Antifa mostly defer to peaceful demonstration because they believe the best way that we all can grow as a nation is when we use our First Amendment rights to build community. Isn’t this “anti-American” ideal the most patriotic objective we’ve pursued throughout our history?