ADL: 'Anti-Antifa Images' Are 'Hate Symbols'

According to the ADL, opposing Antifa makes you a white supremacist. pic.twitter.com/JHKVYhzki4

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 27, 2019

Although white supremacist animus is often thought of as being directed against religious, racial and ethnic minorities, a significant portion of their hateful rhetoric is directed against the political left, including both the mainstream and far left. For example, a common alt right meme offers “free helicopter rides” to people on the left, a reference to the tactic used by right-wing dictatorships in Argentina and Chile of throwing left-wing critics of the regime from helicopters.

White supremacist anti-left (or sinistrophobic) symbology especially targets far left and anarchist activists who have dedicated themselves to actively opposing and exposing white supremacists. In the 1990s and 2000s, for example, white supremacists created images that targeted anti-racist skinheads known as SHARPS (for “Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice”), such as placing a red circle and diagonal bar, or a gun sight, on top of an image of a Trojan helmet (a common SHARP symbol).

More recently, white supremacists have created similar imagery directed against antifa (short for anti-fascist), the loosely-organized left-wing and anarchist anti-racist movement. White supremacists have coined the term “anti-antifa” for themselves. Some anti-antifa symbology simply re-imagines earlier anti-SHARP imagery, such as overlaying a red circle and diagonal bar on top of a common antifa symbols such as side-by-side red or red and black flags (derived from the logo of the 1930s German anti-fascist group Antifaschistische Aktion) or three downward-facing arrows (originating with German and Austrian Social Democrats opposing Nazism in the 1930s).

Other anti-antifa symbology perverts common antifa slogans and logos, such as changing “Good Night White Pride” to “Good Night Left Side.” Often anti-antifa symbology implicitly or explicitly promotes violence against left-wing activists.