Orwell’s world: Telling the truth about Antifa is a revolutionary act

Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” A brave journalist reporting on Antifa proves Orwell was right.

AntifaIf you ever question whether the American media has morphed into Pravda — a tightly controlled outlet for socialist propaganda — you need to check out a Facebook post from Frank Somerville (which I’ve embedded below). Somerville, if you’re wondering, is a very well-respected San Francisco Bay Area TV journalist.

Somerville’s post is an interesting one at two levels. First, it’s interesting because he reports honestly about the hatred and violence that characterized Antifa’s latest riot in Berkeley.

Second — and this is the important part — it’s interesting because he feels compelled to explain the pressure he felt not to do this accurate, honest reporting, including pressure from his wife, who fears for his safety (whether professional or personal is not clear).

As you read the following words, keep in mind that Somerville is not a journalist in Putin’s Russia or in Iran or in the Gaza strip. He is a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area who has to screw up his courage and take a stand to report . . . the facts:

M wife told me I’m going to get crucified by posting this. I told her I didn’t care. This is what happened. This is what I saw. This is what I experienced. This is the truth. Period. If people dont want to heat the truth thats not my problem. I have No agenda. Im just saying that this is what happened to me today, think about it. And make your own decision.

Here’s Somerville’s entire post:

Having read the post, please keep in mind that, in order to frame Trump as an evil supporter of white supremacism after Charlotteville, the media had to assert that Antifa is just another honest, freedom-fighting organization, taking a stand against evil. Take, for example, the Washington Post, which is trying hard to find a niche for itself that’s even lower than the bottom liner for a bird cage. After first explaining that there is no real connection between Antifa groups, whether one looks at ties to the post or links today, Mark Bray then proceeds to explain that today’s Antifa is just like the people who fought Hitler:

Though antifa are often treated as a new force in American politics since the rise of Trump, the anti-fascist tradition stretches back a century. The first antifascists fought Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts in the Italian countryside, exchanged fire with Adolf Hitler’s Brownshirts in the taverns and alleyways of Munich and defended Madrid from Francisco Franco’s insurgent nationalist army. Beyond Europe, anti-fascism became a model of resistance for the Chinese against Japanese imperialism during World War II and resistance to Latin American dictatorships.

[snip]

Responding to small fascist groups may seem trivial to some, but the rise of Hitler and Mussolini show that resistance is not a light switch that can simply be flipped on in a crisis. Once the Nazi and fascist parties gained control of government, it was too late to pull the emergency brake.

[snip]

It should not have taken the murder of Heather Heyer for so many of us, especially white people, to take seriously the threat of white power that has plagued communities of color for generations. The history of anti-fascist demands that we take seriously the violence of white supremacists. The days of “just ignoring them” are over.

See? They’re just misunderstood heroes! Well, not really.

What’s missing from the WaPos’s hagiographic home to Antifa is the fact that, in the 1930s, the anti-fascists fighting Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler were communists. This was not a case of the good guys fighting back against the bad guys. This was a case of two sets of utterly evil people fighting for dominance. In Western Europe, the evil fascist socialists won; in Eastern Europe, the evil communist socialists won. None of these were good people.

Let me repeat again — none of these are good people. But for a journalist in today’s America to state that fact out loud is a revolutionary act. Bravo, Mr. Somerville.

Photo credit: Antifa in Berkeley, August 27, 2017, photo by Frank Somerville.