They did the same with “Communists” in Joe McCarthy’s day. They tried it with the term “Occupy” but it never caught on. As Bob Dylan put it, over a half century ago, “The riot squad is restless, it needs some place to go.”

The troublemakers and criminals (looters, anarchists, etc) that take advantage of every protest movement have been used by the establishment to discredit the very act of protest. The criminal element that tags along and tries to exploit the chaos must be resisted, of course, but what actually happens is that the protest itself is dismissed as criminal instead. “Anarchists” (and maybe even false flag white supremacist provocateurs) are the excuse the authorities need to put the hammer down. “Leftist extremists” supposedly love to destroy lives and property, but when rightist radicals lynch blacks, blow up government buildings or bomb churches they are “just an insignificant fringe movement”.

“Antifa” also has the advantage it sounds vaguely Islamic, as in “Intifada”. A little racism and religious bigotry always comes in handy at times like this.

It is good to try and understand what is really going on, but we must also resist the temptation to over-intellectualize things. Sometimes we must just rely on our sense of outrage. And no one has ever accused the fascists of over-intellectualizing anything.

“Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?”

-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

Twitter has restricted a tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for violating its policies against glorifying violence, following a similar action taken against President Donald Trump last week.

In a tweet published Monday, Gaetz wrote, “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” The post was retweeted over 12,000 times before Twitter took action against it. Hours after it was posted, Twitter determined that it violated its policies against glorifying violence. In doing so, the tweet is hidden from Gaetz’s profile and users must click a “view” button before seeing. Likes, retweets, and replies are all disabled from the tweet in an effort to limit its reach.

“We have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @mattgaetz. The Tweet is in violation of our glorification of violence policy,” a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge.