Situation Report: Antifa goes back to school

As political disagreements over the content of public-school classrooms is heating up, the issue is attracting the attention of Antifa, an anarcho-communist movement devoted to violently targeting political opponents whom they label as fascists.

A Florida-based chapter of an Antifa group known as The Youth Liberation Front  called for a “national mobilization” against Florida’s H.B. 1557. The recently passed legislation is a parental rights bill which seeks to prohibit age-inappropriate sexual education curriculum.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned the group not to engage in criminal acts when protesting the bill.

In Texas, the student coordinator at the University of North Texas was forced to hide in a janitor’s closet, after Antifa-aligned protestors disrupted an event bringing Republican State House candidate Jeff Younger to campus. Younger is an outspoken advocate against the gender transition of minor children. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently ruled that the gender transition of minor children would be classified as child abuse under Texas law. University of North Texas had previously been in the news after Antifa activists targeted a pro-life campus group’s prayer event late last year.

At Georgia Tech, an event headlined by conservative commentator Matt Walsh was threatened by the group Atlanta Antifascists, a chapter of the Torch Antifa network, the largest Antifa network in the United States. Walsh’s event was held to criticize the NCAA, related to the ongoing controversy over University of Pennsylvania’s transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

This is not the first time that Antifa has focused its attention on debates surrounding schools and college campuses. Riots and attacks against campus speakers played a major role in raising the profile of the Antifa, well before its involvement in 2020 Summer rioting in support of the BLM movement.

Antifa threats in and around schools should be taken seriously. On March 6^th, 2021, the same day that the Youth Liberation Front organized an international day of action, vehicles and property belonging to the Portland Public Schools were targeted for arson, possibly in response to a local YLF chapter’s call to “burn the schools.”

In January of 2019, Charles Landeros, a former army veteran who participated in an anti-fascist armed community defense group was shot and killed by a school resource officer after attempting to draw a firearm during a dispute.  While Landeros’ case appears to have been personally motivated, local extremists responded to his shooting by planting an explosive outside the Eugene, Oregon Police Department.

Antifa’s renewed interests in schools and college campuses has less to do with the specific topics being discussed, than Antifa’s principal mission of denying its opponents the ability to engage in effective political action or advocacy.

Opposition to sexually explicit curriculum, Critical Race Theory, and transgender athletes in women’s sporting events have all been major topics relevant to Republican political grassroot organizing in recent months. It is likely that a series of incidents involving Loudoun County, Virginia public schools played an outsized role in the 2021 gubernatorial election. Given that these issues are also likely to be a major topic in upcoming 2022 congressional mid-term elections, and it is unsurprising that they have became major target for Antifa.

It is also worth noting the role played by the Biden Department of Justice and the FBI’s decision to describe grassroots school board protestors as potential “domestic terrorists,” claims which have been aggressively amplified by the media. This move, criticized by Congressional Republicans and completely unjustified, has allowed Antifa to declare normal grassroots civic activism around schools are “fascist” and therefore as deserving to be targeted for disruption and attack. There is a certain irony in the Justice department’s insistence on targeting normal political behavior under the rubric of “domestic extremism” having the result of encouraging extremism and violence.