The Antifa Myth
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2020
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To hear the president tell it, you would think that antifa activists are blanketing the country -- bringing their campaign of vandalism and looting and lawlessness to your town. These fears are sown and circulated through digital whisper networks that can be hard for outsiders to penetrate. But the online rumors are having real-life consequences.
Guest: Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News correspondent. Read her latest.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week in Washington, reporters spent a lot of time trying to convince Republican lawmakers |
| 0:10.0 | to respond to a presidential tweet. |
| 0:12.0 | In his latest controversial tweet, President Trump has claimed that the protester injured by |
| 0:17.0 | Buffalo police officers late last week could be linked to Antifa. |
| 0:27.6 | Trump had accused a 75-year-old man knocked over by police in Buffalo of being a member of Antifa. |
| 0:30.0 | And I should say this claim is baseless. |
| 0:33.0 | And this protester, he's still in the hospital. |
| 0:37.7 | Monica, anything more from Republicans or the campaign regarding the president's tweet? |
| 0:42.6 | No, Chris, and I think that's what's most striking here is the silence. |
| 0:49.2 | I mean, Trump said he wanted to declare Antifa a terrorist organization a few weeks back, right? |
| 0:50.9 | Yeah, good luck with that. |
| 0:53.7 | Brandy Zedrosny is an NBC news correspondent. |
| 0:57.8 | She covers online culture, spends a lot of time in the darker corners of the internet. |
| 1:02.8 | She says it would be pretty hard to declare Antifa a terrorist organization. |
| 1:05.3 | They're not very organized, for one. |
| 1:10.2 | The Antifa, or anti-fascists, they're mostly connected by their tactics. |
| 1:12.6 | They embrace vandalism, looting. |
| 1:14.5 | They want to fight. |
| 1:19.3 | And it's rooted in this idea that, you know, the Nazis would have never come to power in Germany if people had literally fought them in the streets in the 20s. |
| 1:22.6 | So Antifa's not new, but Trump is bringing it up now. |
| 1:27.0 | And Brandy thinks that's worth paying attention to. |
| 1:30.4 | Antiva has been one of President Trump and the far-rights sort of boogeyman for a while. |
... |
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