Protecting Antifa against the madness of King Donald — a radical idea

Before we discuss the massive No Kings demonstrations across the US and the ongoing attacks by the Trump administration on Antifa, and before I propose a radical idea, I volunteer a tale from my university years and what it could inspire.

Years ago, I was a student working numerous part-time jobs to pay my bills and cover my university tuition. Accordingly, I was always searching for legal ways to supplement the rather meagre income I gained from working as a night guard, a waiter, or as a night shift factory hand making steel containers from big sheets of metal. That factory work was dirty, difficult and dangerous, and while less dangerous, night guarding had its own challenges.

One day, buying groceries, I walked past the pet food shelves and had a revelation for a pathway towards a possible life of leisure. There is the old comedy routine where the straight man shoots questions at his dog. He says: “What is on the top of a house?” The dog obediently barks, “Roof, roof.” Then, next question, “What is sandpaper like?” The dog barks again, “Rough, rough.” Humour in an innocent age.

Then came the lightbulb moment. What if I could market a dog food I called: “Rowff! It’s the only food dogs ask for by name.” (Okay, this might only work in English, since dogs in other languages seem to bark differently. To the Japanese, those clever Shiba Inus growl, “Wan, wan.” If they are in Albania, their sound is, “Ham, ham,” and in Polish, “Hau, hau.” But “Rowff!” sounds good in English. It would fly off the shelves and there is a virtually endless market.

Being young and naive, I spoke with the father of a friend who was a patent/trademark/copyright attorney, thinking he could advise me how to protect my idea so I could license it to a pet food company. But his advice was that without an actual product, there was no way I could protect my brainstorm. And so, it was back to night jobs and daytime classes and virtually no sleep.

But a year later, in a grocery store, I saw Ralston Purina’s new product: “Meow Mix — Cats Ask for it By Name.” The maker is a giant food conglomerate with billions of dollars in sales and profits. I started to calculate what might have happened if we had gained even a tiny percentage of the sales to feed millions of dogs — if I could prove Ralston Purina was infringing on my copyright and trademark. The lesson? Always get a second opinion.

This leads us to today’s topic — the massive “No Kings” rallies and “Antifa’s” reputation, but by way of a further turn towards thinking about Donald Trump. He and his family are pocketing millions selling branded schlock to his followers, such as those red Maga sports caps, the gold coloured sports shoes, and the Trump Bibles signed by “the author”. Now there are his family’s cryptocurrency hustles as well. His followers gobble up these offerings while the Family Trump rakes in the cash in what seems like a smorgasbord of family schemes.

A presidential proclamation

Meanwhile, over in the White House’s Oval Office, on 22 September, the Trump administration, on the back of a personal animus towards the Antifa movement, announced that Antifa — whatever it is — has now been officially labelled as a domestic terrorist organisation. The presidential proclamation reads:

“Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.  

“Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members.  Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech.  This organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation is domestic terrorism. 

“Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a ‘domestic terrorist organization’.  All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations…”.

But there are some obvious problems with this announcement. First, there is no specific legal category officially explaining how a group or organisation can be designated as a “domestic terrorist organisation”. Second, Antifa does not appear to be a single body, as opposed to a broader social movement with no central administrative or organisational core or organogram, as opposed to a movement whose adherents largely share common goals and ideas. Third, the specifically defined criminal actions in the announcement do not easily line up to any drastic actions carried out by the groups labelling themselves “Antifa” across the US.

Mass rallies

Last week, in a kind of parallel effort to derail and undermine the No Kings movement just before that body had brought together seven million Americans in mass rallies across the nation, leading Republican Party officials charged that the No Kings rallies were actually “Hate America” mob actions.

Jennifer Rubin, writing in The Contrarian, noted, “[House Speaker Mike] Johnson’s obnoxious McCarthy-like attack on peaceful demonstrators was not isolated. ‘They have a “Hate America” rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall,’ he said. ‘It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the, you know, the Antifa people, they’re all coming out.’ Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) also got in on the nonsense, declaring, ‘This is about one thing and one thing alone — to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold a hate America [italics by the author] rally in DC next week’.”

If it were possible, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt struck an even meaner tone about the upcoming demonstrations, and then the president’s office issued an animated clip on social media, showing Trump, crown on his head, flying a jet fighter over a major city, and dispensing what could only be interpreted as faeces onto the heads of demonstrators.

This was the president as an aberrant 10-year-old with a toilet bowl fetish.

Meanwhile, this writer polled friends across the US, most of them former commissioned government officers who had been trusted government employees for decades. Besides attending the demonstrations, some explained they had been busy in the run-up to the marches by putting their artistic talents to work in making signs for the demonstrations.

In this entire national effort, there were no reports of street confrontations, bottles and rocks thrown, government buildings torched, mounted police charges or tear gas launches against the insurrectionists. There was a mere handful of arrests. In fact, the coordinating body, No Kings, said explicitly on its website that the marches and rallies must be strictly non-violent, a pledge subscribed to by dozens of co-sponsoring organisations as well.

In many of those demonstrations, besides the usual banners, signs band US flags, some people were wearing inflated costumes in the shape of chickens (symbolising the president’s reputation as a Taco — “Trump always chickens out”), bananas (to protest the country’s decline into a near-banana republic), or alligators (symbolic of the dreaded immigrant detention facility near the Everglades in Florida, nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz).

Let’s take the problematic aspects of the presidential proclamation one at a time, starting with the question of whether this declaration has any legal basis.

Second is whether Antifa is even an organisation in the generally accepted meaning of the word in the way it is used either in official documents and laws or popular usage.

And then there is the question that there is no formal organisation or structured institution of Antifa, as opposed to multiple autonomous groups springing up across the nation, self-identifying as Antifa, but without the formal institutional connections or structures we think of an organisation. In effect, almost any group can label itself as “Antifa” if they so chose, and no one can actually say otherwise by revoking their membership in a non-existent structure.

‘Domestic terrorism’ defined

According to an analysis issued two years earlier by the Congressional Research Service:

“The federal government defines domestic terrorism (DT) as ideologically driven crimes committed by individuals in the United States that are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy or conduct of a government. Federal definitions of DT are found in the USA PATRIOT Act (18 U.S.C. §2331), the Homeland Security Act (6 U.S.C. §101), and Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations (§0.85). 

“Aside from the statutory and regulatory definitions of DT, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has historically emphasized particular qualities inherent to the actors who engage in DT. According to the FBI, domestic terrorists are Americans who commit violence to achieve their goals that stem from domestic, extremist ideological influence, and lack foreign direction or influence….

“…Domestic terrorists (and the crimes they commit) are labeled as such because their actions are directed against the civilian population and/or U.S. government within the boundaries of the United States. Like foreign terrorism, domestic terrorism involves ideologically driven criminal acts aimed at influencing the government or coercing the population.

“Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with DT, which sometimes makes it difficult (and occasionally controversial) to formally characterize someone as a domestic terrorist. [Highlighted by the author.] Further, domestic terrorists may adhere to the ideologies of certain extremist movements or belong to hate or extremist groups, but unlike the formal process involved in designating foreign terrorist organizations, DT movements and groups are not officially labeled as such by the federal government, thereby making it difficult to categorize the threat presented by any group or movement as a DT threat.…

“…How the government defines and combats DT and extremism is complicated for many reasons. Believing in or expressing extremist ideals and/or vocalizing support for DT incidents are not violations of federal law. If an individual in the United States espouses extremist beliefs, such as anarchy or the superiority of the white race, that behavior is generally protected speech under the First Amendment. Expressions of these beliefs sometimes precede DT incidents, and in hindsight some may question why these incidents could not be prevented. 

“Crossing the line from First Amendment-protected activity, such as a peaceful protest, to DT-related violence can happen quickly; however, there is often little law enforcement can do in response to extremist but protected speech.

“Despite the statutory definition of DT in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, no federal criminal provision expressly prohibits “domestic terrorism.” While DT is defined in federal statute, the term domestic terrorist is not used to officially label any group (as it is with foreign terrorist organizations). [Highlighted by the author.] However, federal law enforcement has referred (in some instances such as congressional testimony) to individuals as domestic terrorists and their crimes as DT….”

What is Antifa?

The second problematic aspect is whether Antifa is even an organisation in the generally accepted meaning of the word.

Of course there have been any number of marches, protests, public statements, and articles discussing the idea of Antifa-led efforts. And a search on the internet reveals numerous stories about the ideas underpinning the Antifa movement, but there seems to be no website, ie, no antifa.org, no antifa.net, no antifa.com... Interested readers can read volumes such as “Antifa: the anti-fascist handbook” by Mark Bray, or debate the precise meaning of the term “antifa” as in a contraction for the idea of being an anti-fascist — and it is a term now used by its adherents and its foes.

But in general, people who identify as Antifa are known less for what they support than for what they oppose: fascism, extreme nationalism, far-right ideologies, white supremacy, authoritarianism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia.

Two generations earlier, the US’s anti-Vietnam war protests largely grew organically, despite the loosely organised structure named the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. In the absence of the internet or fax machines, which hadn’t been invented, organisers made use of phone calls and interminable meetings.

But go back further into history and the Committees of Correspondence — groups of leading citizens of the pre-independence 13 colonies — were people who engaged in informal exchanges of letters and essays among themselves about the growing need to separate from the mother country. This correspondence helped build support for the revolution against Britain, despite the lack of a formal organisation.

The lesson to be learned is that trying to pin down a movement based on ideas and momentum can rarely be brought to a halt by injunctions, summonses or even arrests (unless one lives in contemporary Russia). There are obvious successful parallels from South Africa’s own history, as well as the ultimately unsuccessful Arab Spring of the previous decade.

The proposal

And so here is our proposal, drawn from history — and my sad experience with the idea of a pet food name. While No Kings has an established web presence, a large roster of cooperating organisations and a track record of sponsoring non-violent protest marches and demonstrations, it has rarely been the subject of vicious Trump administration ridicule, slander or libellous attacks. The same cannot be said, however, of Antifa. The ideas there are subjected to attacks by officials up to the president himself in public remarks and documents.

But what if the term “Antifa” became a registered trademark and its name and ideas were copyrighted (beyond the copyright protection for Bray’s book)? If Antifa were protected in that way, the holder of such rights could more easily pursue officials for libel or slander when they demean its ideas and anyone professing a belief in them. This could tie up Trump administration officials in all manner of court proceedings — forcing them to defend the veracity of their statements.

Given this thought, I want to hear from a really clever patent/trademark/copyright attorney or two so the term can be registered. And then an effort can get started to defend ideas of opposing Trumpian ideology and attacks on the US ideals of free speech and assembly. If we are really skilful, we could license the production of sports caps, T-shirts, bumper stickers and the like, building up a fund to pursue officials every time they defame such ideals.

For now, I await a call from an attorney or two so we can get started. Anybody ready to help? DM