What Antifa Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Matters

Speakers: Dr. Colin Clarke (The Soufan Center & International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague); Dr. Michael Kenney (University of Pittsburgh)

Date: 10 March 2021

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a speaker session, presented by Dr. Michael Kenney (University of Pittsburgh) and Dr. Colin Clarke (The Soufan Center & International Centre for Counter-Terrorism–The Hague), as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series.

Dr. Clarke began the presentation by emphasizing data’s importance when examining politically sensitive issues. He highlighted data from a 2020 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report, which showed that left-wing extremist organizations, such as ANTIFA, were responsible for 20% of domestic terror attacks in the US. These left-wing extremists were defined as groups that use violence to protest capitalism, imperialism, or colonialism, or in defense of black nationalism, environmentalism, communism, socialism, or a decentralized government that borders on anarchy. Dr. Clarke then argued that while acts of domestic terrorism from left-wing extremist organizations are few compared to their right-wing counterparts, there have been several instances that have received national attention. Two of the instances that Dr. Clarke named are William Van Spronsen’s possible  “suicide by cop” in 2019 and Michael Reinoehl’s shooting of a member of the far-right group “Patriot Prayer” in 2020. Both Spronsen and Reinoehl were self-proclaimed members of ANTIFA.

Dr. Kenney continued by arguing that ANTIFA is not a monolithic organization. Instead, ANTIFA is comprised of a network of local organizations—some of which self-identify as being part of ANTIFA—that support a form of left-wing ideology. Dr. Kenney did mention that there is an ANTIFA Torch Network, which loosely helps to organize groups across the country. However, he believes that affinity groups—which he defined as a group of friends who try to achieve a common political, social, or cultural goal—is a more accurate description of ANTIFA. Nonetheless, because ANTIFA is a loose system of local organizations, Dr. Kenney is skeptical that the group has a large official membership or the ability to orchestrate large scale protests.

Dr. Kenney also argued that because ANTIFA is decentralized, most of its sub-groups’ belief systems vary, and they are often concerned with different political issues. Two frequent similarities among groups that identify as being part of ANTIFA, however, are participating in hacking events and assigning the label of fascist to any individual who is right of center. Dr. Kenney also stated that the majority of ANTIFA members hold a mixture of libertarian and anarchist beliefs. 

Dr. Clarke concluded by arguing that the data from the CSIS report that he referenced earlier in the brief does not indicate that ANTIFA is a major domestic threat, and he posited that the disinformation surrounding the January 6^th riot at the Capitol building may have led to the increase in fear and threat perception of ANTIFA in the US.

Speaker Session Recording

Download Briefing Materials

To view our speakers’ relevant article, please see https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/what-antifa-is-what-it-isnt-and-why-it-matters/

Colin P. Clarke is a Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center. He is the Director of Policy and Research at The Soufan Group, where his research focuses on domestic and transnational terrorism, international security, and geopolitics. Prior to joining The Soufan Group, Clarke was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he spent a decade researching terrorism, insurgency, and criminal networks. At RAND, Clarke led studies on ISIS financing, the future of terrorism and transnational crime, and lessons learned from all insurgencies since the end of the World War II.

Clarke is also an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) – The Hague, a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), an Associate Fellow at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), and a member of the “Network of Experts” at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Clarke serves as part of the research advisory council at the RESOLVE Network and is a member of the advisory board at the International Counter-Terrorism Review (ICTR). He serves on the editorial board of three of the leading scholarly journals in the field of terrorism studies, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Perspectives on Terrorism.

Clarke has testified before Congress on numerous occasions as an expert witness on a range of terrorism-related issues, appears frequently in the media to discuss national security-related matters, and has published several books on terrorism, including his most recent, After the Caliphate: The Islamic State and the Future Terrorist Diaspora.

Clarke has briefed his research at a range of national and international security forums, including the U.S. Army War College, US Air Force Special Operations School, Society for Terrorism Research International Conference, the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and the Counter ISIS Financing Group (CIFG), which is part of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. In 2011, he spent several months as an analyst with Combined Joint Interagency Task Force-Shafafiyat at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, working for General H.R. McMaster, the former U.S. National Security Advisor, where he was responsible for analyzing criminal patronage networks in Afghanistan and how these networks fueled the insurgency.

Clarke has a Ph.D. in international security policy from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA).

Dr. Michael Kenney Having published numerous academic journal articles on terrorism, Islamist militancy, and global crime, Kenney now serves on the Editorial Board of Terrorism and Political Violence, a leading journal in the field. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Institute of Justice, he’s conducted field research around the world in places like Brazil, Colombia, Israel, Morocco, and Spain.

TEACHING AND RESEARCH AREAS
Kenney’s research is focused on these key areas:
• Terrorism and counter-terrorism
• Islamist militancy
• Social network analysis
• Drug control policy
• International relations
• Organization theory
• Qualitative research methods

SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND FUNDED RESEARCH
• The Islamic State in Britain: Radicalization and Resilience in an Activist Network. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• “Cyber-Terrorism in a Post-Stuxnet World,” Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs 59, no. 1 (Winter 2015), pp. 111-128.
• Office of Naval Research, U.S. Department of the Navy, “Competitive Adaptation in Terrorist Networks,” 2009-2012, $3.1 million.
• From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.

AWARDS AND HONORS
• Nominee, U.S. Attorney General’s Award for “Outstanding Contributions to Community Parternship for Public Safety,” 2018.

OTHER ACADEMIC POSITIONS
• Wesley W. Posvar Chair in International Security Studies
• Director, Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies
• Affiliate scholar, University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security