Are the violent antifa thugs a fringe movement or an increasingly important part of an emerging left-wing coalition? I want to say “fringe movement.”

However, the New York Times reports that antifa is growing as a left-wing faction. And Mark Lance, a professor of (I kid you not) justice and peace at Georgetown University, says “I’m seeing more concrete productive discussion between anti-fascists and others on the Left these days than ever before in my life.” Lance predicts that antifa “will become integrated into an emerging coalition that includes Sanders supporters, democratic socialists, dreamers, the Movement for Black Lives, environmentalists, [and] Native American organizers.”

I can’t tell you that the professor of justice and peace is wrong. I think he’s right when it comes to Black Lives Matter.

The New York Times mostly indulges the fiction that the antifa thugs are merely engaged in protecting cities, towns, and college campuses from hordes of fascists, though it admits that in some cases they have taken on “ordinary supporters of President Trump.” The antifas, of course, see no distinction between fascist hordes and ordinary Trump supporters.

Nor do they see a distinction between someone attending a speech by an extreme right-winger and someone engaged in violence against the left. As one prominent antifa thug said of those on the other side of the political spectrum, “their existence itself is violent and dangerous, so I don’t think using force or violence to oppose them is unethical.”

Stalin couldn’t have put it better.

We can only hope that the New York Times and the professor of peace and justice are wrong. We can only hope that Stalinists will not be integrated into the emerging left-wing coalition of Sanders supporters, democratic socialists, environmentalists, etc.