Weeks after a white supremacist murdered a peaceful counter-protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, public condemnation of far-right violence has shifted to condemnation of anti-fascist protesters, or antifa. To critics, antifa is a menace: a threat to free speech, because its activists block white supremacist gatherings and no-platform speakers like Milo Yiannopolous; and a threat to public safety, because antifa activists aren’t reluctant to damage property or throw a punch. White supremacists, not antifa activists, have committed fatal hate crimes in the Trump era. In the past decade, left-wingers have been responsible for a mere 2 percent of murders committed by political extremists, while right-wingers have been responsible for 74 percent. Yet Donald Trump blamed “many sides,” antifa, and the “alt-left” for Charlottesville’s tragedy.

Trump isn’t alone. On Sept. 1, Politico reported that the Department of Homeland Security had formally classified antifa’s counter-protests as “domestic terrorist violence.” The state of California is reportedly considering classifying the group as a street gang. And a number of liberals have joined in: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi condemned the group in an August statement, and Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic, argued that antifa’s tactics made it authoritarianism’s “unlikeliest ally.”

But what is antifa? Is it really a threat to public safety and free speech, or is it, as supporters argue, a defensive effort to protect vulnerable communities? In his new book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Dartmouth historian Mark Bray presents a guide to understanding the history and ideology of this controversial political group. Anti-fascism, Bray writes, is ideologically diverse; antifa activists can be Marxists, or socialists, or anarchists, or some other left-wing philosophical amalgam. “Antifa should not be understood as a single-issue movement,” Bray explains. Antifa activists do share one overarching principle, however: “Antifa act out of collective self-defense,” Bray asserts.

Since publishing Antifa, Bray himself has become a target of antifa’s critics. Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon repudiated Bray, stating, “As an institution, we condemn anything but civil discourse in the exchange of opinions and ideas.” In this interview, Bray talks to the New Republic about antifa, its goals, and what critics get wrong about the group. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.



You say that antifa can’t be properly understood as a pure negation of fascism. Can you expand on that?

When we talk about anti-fascism we need to see it as a tradition of pan-left politics that is not reducible simply to opposition to fascism. It is also informed by commonly shared anti-capitalist and revolutionary outlooks. In that way, an anti-fascist is not simply anyone who opposes fascism. Anti-fascism is a specific strand or tendency that opposes fascism from a pan-radical position.