House Republicans on Thursday tangled with FBI Director Christopher Wray after he said Antifa is “kind of a movement” or ideology but “not an organization.”
Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee that self-identified Antifa, or “anti-facist,” activists were involved in violent unrest following the May killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police, but that the FBI does not consider Antifa a group per se.
Republican Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey told Wray they disagreed.
“That seems to me to be downplaying it,” Crenshaw told Wray.
“This is an ideology that organizes locally, it coordinates regionally and nationally, it wears a standardized uniform, it collects funds to buy high-powered lasers to blind federal officers, builds homemade explosive devices, feeds their rioters since they clearly aren’t working and then bails out those who’ve been arrested,” Crenshaw countered.
“This is an ideology that has trained its members, makes shield wall phalanxes to attack federal officers, formed an autonomous zone in an American city and besieged a federal courthouse in another. So, I mean, it just seems to be more than an ideology.”
Van Drew told Wray, “There’s something out there that deserves a very thorough investigation,” scoffing at the idea of Antifa being a “loosely knit group of people.”
“In my mind, there is Antifa, there is a group — a group or individuals that control Antifa and have some authority over it. And it is to some degree, without question, organized,” Van Drew said.
The former Democrat, who switched parties last year, said, “If we have an organization that is able to communicate among different counties, different states, different areas, different cities — is able to organize when Black Lives Matter also organizes at the same time, advertises for people to help them and they will pay them, feed them … and takes care of them, that to me would be more than just the loosely knit group of people.”
Wray also rejected a common Democratic claim that Antifa doesn’t even exist. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, for example, said in July that Antifa was “a myth.”
“Antifa is a real thing,” Wray said. “It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology, maybe one way of thinking of it. And we have quite a number … of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists. And some of those individuals self-identify with Antifa.”
President Trump tweeted in May that the US government “will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” but that hasn’t happened.
Attorney General William Barr testified in July that “Antifa is heavily represented in the recent riots” following Floyd’s death.
“Antifa can be best thought of, I think, as an umbrella term for what is essentially a movement comprised of loosely organized groups around the country,” Barr told the House Judiciary Committee.
“In some areas of the country there are a number of groups and there are sort of centers of activity. The groups, as I say, are loosely organized, but they are definitely organized. But since they have an anarchic temperament, they don’t get along very well with each other. So I’m not suggesting it’s a national organization … they tend to get organized for an event.”