The group that put Charlie Kirk’s group on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan forward of his assassination final week additionally has a protracted historical past of carrying water for the violent Antifa motion that President Donald Trump has focused for investigation.
Tyler Robinson, 22, who faces homicide prices within the assassination of Kirk, had reportedly adopted leftist political positions and endorsed the transgender motion, in line with authorities. His bullet casings reportedly included anti-fascist messaging resonant of Antifa.
Trump introduced Wednesday night time that he could be designating Antifa a terrorist group.
Antifa agitators model their opponents as akin to Nazis, figuring out themselves as “anti-fascist.” These agitators reportedly embed themselves in additional mainstream protests, break free to interact in violence, and infrequently return to the protection of the group later. Whereas the motion is essentially disconnected, it generally types organizations like Rose Metropolis Antifa in Portland.
Antifa agitators have engaged in violence for years, most notably within the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. The riots that grew out of these protests precipitated an estimated $2 billion in harm, measured by insurance coverage payouts, and took the lives of 26 Americans, notably together with black folks like 77-year-old retired St. Louis Police Captain David Dorn.
The SPLC
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a public curiosity legislation agency that gained its fame by suing Ku Klux Klan chapters out of business and presents itself as America’s premiere “hate” watchdog, has steadfastly refused to place any Antifa group on its “hate map.” In the meantime, the SPLC places mainstream conservative and Christian teams on the map, calling them a part of the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.”
A terrorist used the map to focus on the conservative Christian Household Analysis Council in 2012, and the person who opened hearth at a Congressional Baseball Sport observe in 2017 had “favored” the SPLC on Fb. The SPLC condemned these assaults.
This summer season, the SPLC added Kirk’s Turning Point USA to the “hate map.” It stays unclear whether or not this will have impressed Robinson, and the SPLC condemned the assassination, however it has not eliminated Turning Level from the map.
The SPLC has refused so as to add Antifa, Black Lives Matter, or vandals focusing on church buildings and pro-life being pregnant facilities to the “hate map.”
One Condemnation Of Antifa
Richard Cohen, who resigned as SPLC president amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, did provide a rare explicit condemnation of Antifa violence in 2017.
“We oppose these teams and what they’re making an attempt to do,” Cohen stated.
“We expect they’re contributing to the issue we’re seeing,” he added. “We expect it’s prone to result in different types of retaliation. In Berkeley, antifa confirmed up and shut down speeches. The following time the white supremacists introduced the Oath Keepers with them, they introduced their very own army.”
But he stated SPLC wouldn’t label Antifa a “hate group” as a result of it doesn’t discriminate folks on the idea of race, sexual orientation, or different courses protected by antidiscrimination legal guidelines.
“There may be types of hate on the market that you could be take into account hateful, however it’s not the kind of hate we observe,” Cohen stated.
Carrying Water For Antifa
In 2023, nevertheless, the SPLC added “antigovernment extremist teams” to the “hate map,” together with parental rights organizations equivalent to Moms for Liberty. Antifa stays absent.
In June 2020, the SPLC attacked then-President Trump for asserting his intention to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization. It warned that “those that determine with” the Antifa label “symbolize a big spectrum of the political left” and that “far-right extremists use related techniques” to the Trump administration in condemning Antifa.
The SPLC condemned Trump’s transfer as “unprecedented and alarming” and minimized Antifa violence as “skirmishes and property crimes,” including that “the specter of deadly violence pales compared to that posed by far-right extremists.”
In 2023, authorities arrested an SPLC lawyer, charging him with home terrorism for his alleged function in an Antifa riot involving Molotov cocktails. The lawyer is certainly one of 61 defendants, who’re represented by many attorneys. That case stays ongoing, and prosecutors anticipate a ruling from the judge quickly.
Megan Squire, whom Wired profiled as “antifa’s secret weapon in opposition to far-right extremists” in 2018, reportedly labored carefully with the SPLC, feeding the group knowledge on white nationalist and different teams. She stated she doesn’t take into account herself antifa however is “sympathetic to antifa’s objective of silencing racist extremists.” She handed alongside data “to those that may put it to real-world use. Who may weaponize it.”
Squire joined the SPLC full-time in 2022 earlier than leaving the group in March 2025, in line with her verified LinkedIn profile.
Neither Squire nor the SPLC responded to requests for remark about relationships with Antifa.
Whereas the connection between Antifa rioters and the SPLC stays unclear, its historical past suggests an investigation could show fruitful.
Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.
