How Bad Is It?: Why an Antifascism Scholar Fled the Country

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: "How Bad Is It?: Why an Antifascism Scholar Fled the Country"
Date: October 30, 2025
Hosts: Tyler Foggatt (TF), Andrew Marantz (AM)
Guests: Mark Bray (MB), Yesenia Barragan (YB)

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Overview

This episode of The Political Scene examines escalating threats to academic freedom in the U.S., focusing on the recent experiences of antifascism scholars Mark Bray and Yesenia Barragan. Both fled to Spain after a wave of online harassment and death threats—a situation intensifying in the wake of recent political violence, the Trump administration's executive order targeting Antifa as a terrorist group, and coordinated campaigns by right-wing groups like Turning Point USA. The episode explores the personal, academic, and political dimensions of their decision, connecting it to historical and contemporary debates on fascism, free speech, activism, and the nature of political violence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Did It Come to This?

• (04:01–06:56)

• Triggering Event:
  Mark Bray recounts a relatively calm five years post-publication of his book, The Antifascist Handbook (2017), until the recent killing of conservative figure Charlie Kirk. Even before facts emerged, the Trump administration blamed leftists, using the moment to justify executive action against Antifa.

  “It was really after the killing of Charlie Kirk last month that everything started. ... Jack Posobiec called me a domestic terrorist professor on X. The day after, I received the first death threat…” (MB, 04:01)

• Escalation:
  After being doxxed (personal information posted online), increasing threats led to emergency security measures and ultimately, the difficult decision to leave the country.

  “...someone posted our home address online with information about my family. And it just felt like one thing after another was mounting...” (MB, 05:17)

• Personal Impact:
  Yesenia describes the panic of receiving the threats, the logistics of leaving, and efforts to shield their children from trauma.

  “I immediately said, leave the house, just take the kids and just pick me up and we’ll figure it out. That was a really horrible day.” (YB, 06:19)

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2. Dangers to Academic Freedom

• (08:39–10:11)

• Support from Rutgers:
  Both guests emphasize university support—from faculty, administration, and student bodies—but also frame this as a broader assault on academic freedom and critical scholarship.

  “...this is just a very clear attack on academic freedom. Mark wrote a book eight years ago, and he’s getting attacked for that book. It’s that simple.” (YB, 09:32)

• The Scope of the Threat:
  The threats and pressure are not merely personal; they reflect a wider trend targeting scholars in areas like gender, race, climate change, and social justice.

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3. The Role of the Professor Watch List

• (11:49–14:47)

• Origins of Harassment:
  Mark Bray details how being placed by Turning Point USA on an online “professor watch list” led to waves of harassment, not only recently but also at the time of his book’s release.

  “...there’s been an effort for at least a decade by Turning Point USA and similar kinds of groups to reshape the university in their image. ...Hand-wringing about cancel culture...this is having far more of an effect of shutting down different opinions...” (MB, 13:27)

• Intended Consequences:
  Bray argues the “ostensibly” informative list is knowingly a mechanism for intimidation, with clear and documented negative outcomes.

  “This list does result in the kinds of threats that Turning Point has recently tried to distance itself from.” (MB, 15:52)

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4. Exile, State vs. Nonstate Threats, and Language

• (17:06–18:47)

• Voluntary or Forced Exile:
  The guests push back against terms like “voluntary self-exile,” highlighting the involuntary, fear-driven nature of their decision.

  “I don't like the phrase voluntarily self-exile...I think that we fled the country. I didn't feel safe living in the United States, which sounds absolutely bonkers.” (YB, 17:06)

• Gray Areas:
  It’s not classic state repression, but the merger of state rhetoric/actions (executive orders) and mob/online pressure creates a climate of fear akin to historical episodes of intellectual flight.

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5. Antifascism, Free Speech, and the Limits of Liberalism

• (24:02–42:40)

• Bray’s Book and Its Arguments:
  AM reads a passage situating the book as a partisan “call to arms” and probing its challenge to “liberal norms of free speech.” Bray underscores the historical gap he aimed to fill and rejects equivalence between all forms of speech.

  “I think that Americans assume that the whole world has this American liberal interpretation of speech...Different countries have laws against hate speech...the results of certain kinds of speech that dehumanize other people.” (MB, 25:51)

• What is “the far right” and “social revolutionism”?

  “Most [antifa adherents] are radicals or revolutionaries—socialist, communist, anarchist... militant antifascism rejects turning to the police or the courts...there is a kind of challenge to the sovereignty of the state embedded within...militant anti fascism.” (MB, 28:34)

• Debates Over Tactics and Violence:
  The line between activist speech, self-defense, and violent direct action is discussed. Bray insists the actual empirical record of “antifa violence” is thin compared to rightwing attacks—and that violence for self-defense against fascism is not equivalent to fascist violence.

  “...when you are under attack from these movements, self-defense is necessary...the violence of those defending themselves is not on the same ethical or moral or historical category as the violence of those people who are trying to kill them.” (MB, 42:40)

• Doxxing and Retribution:
  The ethics of doxxing as a political tool are examined. Bray distinguishes between exposing hidden Nazis and targeted harassment of academics.

  “My views are better than theirs... anti-racism is better than racism, feminism is better than sexism...when a Nazi doxes a professor...that is infinitely worse and not the same thing as an anti fascist doxing a Nazi..." (MB, 39:06)

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6. The Trump Administration’s Antifa Order & Broader Chilling Effects

• (43:55–59:23)

• Caricature and Overreach:
  The executive order is described as terrifyingly broad, defining “terrorism” in a way that could criminalize huge swaths of dissent—anyone “anti-family,” “anti-Christian,” or extreme on race, gender, or migration.

  “...if you take those words seriously, they could just go after almost anyone and call them a terrorist...hostility toward traditional views of family...most of which would apply to almost everyone I know.” (AM, 57:24)

• Discussion of Boogeyman Politics:
  Both hosts agree that while Antifa’s organizational reality may be ambiguous, it functions for the right as a convenient scapegoat and justification to expand state power over ideological enemies.

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7. Academic Exile: Exception or Precedent?

• (49:24–55:45)

• Is This the Start of a Wave?
  The hosts debate whether this is a harbinger of mass academic flight or a high-profile, isolated case.

  “Academic freedom, broadly speaking, seems more imperiled than it’s been in a generation.” (AM, 49:24)

• The Limits of “Both Sides” Liberalism:
  The episode grapples with whether it’s sustainable to “find a way to live around people whose views you find odious,” given both the realities of power and the attraction of hard-edged illiberal arguments from left and right.

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8. Final Takeaways: Political Violence and Resistance

• (45:27–48:32, 60:00–61:15)

• Bray’s Hope and Caution:
  Despite pessimism, Bray calls for protest and resistance, noting fascism is not yet consolidated and action could change the country’s trajectory.

  “We don’t have fascism in a full sense. ...If the line continues at this trajectory, sure, we end up at fascism, but we don’t know what will happen. The future’s unwritten, and our resistance and our action can make the line go down.” (MB, 46:30)

• Host Reflections:
  The hosts confront the uncomfortable reality that illiberal arguments—whether liberal tolerance is sufficient, or if preemptive, partisan “calls to arms” are justified—have once again become central political questions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Mark Bray on Escalation and Fear:

  “The day after, I received the first death threat saying that someone was going to kill me in front of my students.” (MB, 04:01)

• Yesenia Barragan on Family Crisis:

  “I immediately said, leave the house, just take the kids...That was a really horrible day.” (YB, 06:19)

• On the Professor Watch List:

  “Despite all of the hand wringing about Cancel culture, this is having far more of an effect of shutting down different opinions than that which is usually attacked by the right.” (MB, 13:27)

• On Doxxing and Power:

  "Because my views are better than theirs. ...When a Nazi doxxes a professor...that is infinitely worse and not the same thing as an anti fascist doxing a Nazi so that his university knows he's a Nazi..." (MB, 39:06)

• On the Political Trajectory:

  “If the line continues at this trajectory, sure, we end up at fascism, but we don’t know what will happen. The future’s unwritten, and our resistance and our action can make the line go down.” (MB, 46:30)

• On the Executive Order and Antifa as Boogeyman:

  “If you take those words seriously, they could just go after almost anyone and call them a terrorist. ...hostility toward traditional views of family, like, I don’t know. I don’t like Leave It To Beaver’s view of what a family should be—am I a terrorist?" (AM, 57:24)

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Episode Timeline of Key Segments

• 04:01 – Mark Bray recounts terror campaign and decision to flee
• 09:32 – Discussion on university and faculty support, academic freedom
• 11:49 – Examination of Turning Point USA’s professor watch list
• 17:06 – “Exile” vs. “voluntary self-departure” and the sense of threat
• 24:02 – Delving into Bray’s book and critiques of liberalism
• 32:50 – Addressing violence, both "antifa" and far right
• 39:06 – Debates over doxxing, speech, and ethical distinctions
• 45:27 – Reflection on political trajectory and hope for resistance
• 49:24 – Host analysis on whether this is a precedent for further academic exile
• 57:24 – The executive order’s dangerous breadth and chilling effect

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Tone and Language

• The episode combines analytic, historical, and deeply personal storytelling.
• Bray and Barragan are forthright, sometimes impassioned; they balance the gravity of their situation with commitment to their work and concern for their children's safety.
• The hosts maintain a reflective, thoughtful tone, grappling openly with the ethical and political dilemmas.

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Takeaways

• The convergence of state action and mob harassment is creating unprecedented risks for scholars and activists.
• Ongoing debates over the limits of free speech, academic freedom, and how societies respond to fascism are not academic—they have urgent, personal stakes.
• The episode closes on caution but also a note of activism and hope: the future is still unwritten, and action matters.

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This summary provides a comprehensive guide to the episode’s critical arcs and arguments, valuable for anyone interested in free speech, political violence, academic freedom, and the current American political crisis.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, political Scene listeners, we're planning a special episode in early November and we need your help with it.

[B]

The 2026 midterms are only a year away. They couldn't be more important. And we want your questions.

[A]

What races are you following and who are the candidates you're most curious or excited about? And what big issues are you thinking about? Why big money is it the economy, redistricting, the courts, protest movements? Get specific and we'll do our best to answer them.

[B]

The lines they say are open. Send us a voice memo or drop us a line@the mailyorker.com put midterms in the subject line and please tape yourself. We can't wait to hear from you. Literally. That's themailewyorker.com subject line, Midterms and thanks.

[C]

Hey, Andrew.

[A]

Hey, Tyler. How's it going?

[C]

Pretty good. Welcome back to the Political Scene from the New Yorker and to our special series, How Bad Is It? Where Andrew and I sit down for a monthly checkup on the health of our democracy. So this week we want to talk about Antifa, especially in the context of Trump's recent executive order classifying the group as a domestic terrorist association.

[D]

It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left wing terror threat in our country, radicals associated with the domestic terror group Antifa that you've heard a lot about lately, and I've heard a lot about them for 10 years.

[C]

There's no legal process to designate a group a domestic terrorist association, but it seems like the intent of the administration here is pretty clear.

[D]

Under the Trump administration, we're going after antifa criminals and all who fund and support their campaigns are in serious trouble. And we have a lot of records already. A lot of surprises, a lot of bad surprises. It's people that you would never think.

[A]

So we're talking this week with Mark Bray and Yesenia Barragan, who are both professors from Rutgers, both historians who recently fled the country to Spain after receiving death threats.

[C]

Mark is the author of the Anti Fascist Handbook, a book from 2017, and he has taught courses on anti fascism and terrorism, most recently at Rutgers.

[A]

Mark a while ago was placed on a professor watch list by the conservative activist group Turning Point usa, and he has been accused of being a member and even a financier of the group Antifa.

[C]

And just to be clear, these are things that Mark has denied. I mean, he refers to himself as an academic first and foremost, and he is an activist and he is open about that, too, but he doesn't actually consider himself to be a member of Antifa. He says that he is an anti fascist activist in the sense that he is against fascism. But this wave of attention and the death threats that Mark and Yesenia have been experiencing did lead them to flee the country for Spain earlier this month.

[A]

Yeah. So we wanted to talk to both of them about what led to this decision. How did they decide to leave and how does that tie into maybe a broader trend of both state action against ideas and scholarship and non state action against political enemies.

[C]

And we also wanted to speak with Mark about his research on historical anti fascism and what it tells him about the period that we might be living through now. So let's go ahead and get into that conversation. This is the Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt and I'm a senior editor at the New Yorker.

[A]

I'm Andrew Morantz. I'm a staff writer at the New Yorker. I know you guys have a lot going on which we want to ask you about. So Mark and Yesenia, thank you so much for being here.

[E]

Yeah, thanks for having us.

[C]

Yeah. Welcome to the Political Scene. I figured we could just start by having you guys tell us what has been happening to you. I mean, you fled the country for Spain. What led to that decision?

[E]

Yeah, well, you know, I wrote the book Auntie for the antifascist handbook in 2017. It generated quite a bit of controversy and media and threats back then. But basically, for the last five, six years, there's been nothing Antifa has been out of the news. I've moved on to research other topics, teach at Rutgers. It was really after the killing of Charlie Kirk last month that everything started. I think even before President Trump had any idea who had killed him, he started blaming the left. And so I see the executive order declaring antifa terrorist organization to be an effort to demonize the left and demonize protest. And several days later, Jack Pabosiak, the Pizzagate far right influencer, called me a domestic terrorist professor on X. The day after I received the first death threat, saying that someone was going to kill me in front of my students. So I decided to move my classes online and was in conversation with the administration at Rutgers about making things safe for me, moving the locations in my classrooms. The following week, the local chapter of Turning Point USA on the campus of Rutgers started a very tiny at the time petition to have me fired because of my research. This was picked up by Fox News, which published an article which very much it seems to have inspired a further wave of death threats, including a threat that had My home address. Days later, someone posted our home address online with information about my family. And it just felt like one thing after another was mounting with the level of threats, the level of danger. Certainly we live in a country with a lot of guns and we saw what happened to Charlie Kirk last month. So that was really the sequence of events in broadest terms that led up to this. And you know, I had had concerns about the political situation in the US prior to all of this and that of course informed my interpretation.

[A]

Well, so how did you guys have this conversation as a family? Right, you, you get these threats or was it one threat in particular that you brought up and said, should we take action because of this or how did you.

[C]

Yeah, like the home address being, you know, mentioned. It was clear that they could find you.

[B]

Right. Yeah, I was actually. This is Jenny speaking. I was actually in Chicago for family reasons and you know, the dystopian reality of Chicago right now was very much felt like I was, you know, walking around with my passport in case I was going to get snatched by ice. So anyway, actually when I. My plane landed from Chicago, Mark texted me that he received an email with our home address. And I immediately said, leave the house, just take the kids and just pick me up and we'll figure it out. Yeah, that was a really horrible day.

[A]

Oh, so it was right away after you got the email that you texted her and then you left the house that day?

[E]

So it was. I was watching Yankees Blue Jays Game 1, the baseball series on the couch, my kids are playing. I got the email with my address. Yesenia was about to land. We're going to pick her up at Newark Airport. We were going to leave the house to get her anyway, so. But right when I got that, we just, we got going a little early, we left the house, went to pick her up and. And then things just sort of were on this non stop treadmill of trying to figure out, reacting to this danger, figuring out next steps. You know, we discussed the possibility of renting somewhat place to stay in our very same town, or the town over whatever, keep the kids in the school. The other part of it is that I'm a historian of Spain. Two years ago, we lived for a year in Spain. Our kids went to school here. And so part of the decision was we felt like it would actually, as paradoxical as it sounds, be less of a disruption for them to be for us to say, hey, Mommy and daddy have to do another research year, rather than being in their same town, but not in their home, which I Think would have been like, oh, why can't we just go home? If we're across an ocean, they know why we can't go home.

[A]

And how do you explain it to the kids?

[B]

They're younger children. We try to shield them. We haven't told them exactly what's happening. Largely, we just don't want them to be scared, particularly. Our eldest is more able to understand the world around him politically and socially. And so we just don't want him to have nightmares at night. Although those have started since, you know, the federal. Federal agents, you know, detained and interrogated us at the airport. That being said, you know, we just haven't spoken to them about it.

[E]

Yeah, we've just left it as a research trip for work.

[C]

Would you be able to speak a little bit more about the support you've received from Rutgers? I mean, this is obviously a time where universities are under a lot of pressure from the administration and from conservative groups to kind of weed out activism. And so I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit more about. I mean, you mentioned earlier that they've been helpful, but just kind of more about what their. Their stance has been on this whole thing.

[E]

Yeah, well, we received a lot of support from. We're both in the History department, from the chair of the History Department, and from our dean. Really positive support from the Rutgers Faculty Union, the AAU PAFT and their leadership. They were resolutions also passed in the Faculty Council and Faculty Senate. Rutgers Student Assembly, Rucker student Assembly, pastor, resolution, Chancellor, Chancellor reached out. There had been sort of executive Dean.

[B]

It we've gotten. I've been just so moved, honestly, by the kind of support we've gotten because this is just a very clear attack on academic freedom. Mark wrote a book eight years ago, and he's getting attacked for that book. It's that simple. One thing that we've talked about with our colleagues at Rutgers is this is obviously the specific situations about Mark, but it's not really about Mark. It's about all of us. It's about folks working on questions of gender or sexuality or race. In my case, slavery. Climate change can go on and on, and so it's so much bigger.

[A]

You were on your way to pick Yesenia up at Newark Airport. Just so I understand. Did you then stay in and around Newark Airport from then until you left the country, or what's the timeline there?

[B]

We're not going to disclose the specifics of that. I feel like I wouldn't feel comfortable.

[E]

Yeah, we arranged accommodations with friends prior to going to the airport. Then the day we planned on leaving, we had the mysterious circumstance of having our family's reservation canceled right at the gate. Not the entire flight, just our family's reservation. The United Workers couldn't really figure out what was going on. They made a bunch of phone calls. There were a lot of muffled conversations. And then they said basically somehow someone at the last moment had canceled it, which I didn't even know was possible. I didn't know that one could do that.

[A]

Yeah. Did they know it was possible? Had they seen that before?

[E]

Well, what they said, I mean, I don't know how much to put stock in this, but they basically said sometimes there's a scam that people can do where they wait until the last second to cancel their reservation on their phone, but they have the physical boarding pass so that they can get a free flight. That is very much not what we were doing. It was around the same time that several of the high profile far right folks who were harassing me online were meeting at the White House with Donald Trump. And that feels like more than a coincidence, but I don't actually have any evidence as to what happened. Certainly some journalists have told me that they've attempted to reach out to different agencies while not getting any response. I actually have a meeting set up with the New Jersey ACLU to discuss it, but things have been so nuts that we haven't really been able to look into it further.

[A]

So on this TP USA professor watch list, I mean, I'm sort of trying to figure out what to make of the fact that a lot of this sort of crackdown on dissent from the Trump administration was happening in the wake of Charlie Kirk's killing and kind of in a way was being justified by Charlie Kirk's killing. And yet the organization that he started, turning Points USA has had, among other initiatives, this professor watch list for many years preceding this. I guess one way that you guys could speak to that is when did you first become aware that you were on the watch list? First of all, I think only Mark was and not Yesenia, which not me.

[B]

No.

[A]

Were you offended by not being included on the.

[B]

Oh, honestly, I'm a quite boring person.

[E]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

Obviously I'm not.

[E]

You're wonderful. But your has not drawn any threat.

[B]

I anticipation in Latin America. And you know, I, I've been an activist for a really long time, but I'm not offended in the least. Obviously I'm, you know, Mark has been on the list for a really long time and that's been very concerning because there are very real consequences and repercussions from being on that list.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, just to give some context about this list, like, you know, if you look at Columbia, for example, you have, you know, Kathy Boudin, who is in the Weather Underground. You also have Hillary Clinton and James Comey on the professor watch list. You know, so it's not specifically targeting, you know, radical activists. So I guess just for listeners to understand what the professor watch list is and how it intersected with your lives prior to this, how would you contextualize it?

[E]

Well, you know, I think that there's been an effort for at least a decade by Turning Point USA and similar kinds of groups to reshape the university in their image. And I think with Trump's second presidency, that that initiative has gone into hyperdrive. But, you know, at the heart of it is this paradox of, in the name of free speech, trying to silence and destroy other opinions on the university campus. So despite all of the hand wringing about Cancel culture, this is having far more of an effect of shutting down different opinions than that which is usually attacked by the right. That having been said, I think I've been on the list more or less since I published Antifa in 2017. I know quite a few other colleagues who have been on it as well, many of whom have received very serious threats and harassment as a result of it. I did receive quite a bit of harassment. I mean, it's not possible to say the extent of which is directly resulting from that list or not back in 2017, 2018. But then I was, as far as I could tell, really in the clear for five or six years before this really, I would say, popped up out of nowhere. But of course, the political context that inspired these events is very clear.

[B]

But it's a manufactured crisis.

[E]

But it's a manufactured crisis. Right? That's what I'm trying to get at. And thank you for pointing it out. That is, that with Charlie Kirk's killing, there was a concerted effort to say this is ideologically motivated. This speaks to a larger problem in our society, which I don't. I mean, it does speak to problems, but not the problems that I think Trump is identifying.

[C]

And I guess, just to clarify, like, what is. I mean, this is something that Andrew, like, you might even be able to speak to as well, just because you spent so much time covering this. But, like, what is the point of the watch list on paper? Because my understanding is that Turning Point has denied, you know, responsibility for encouraging violence and death threats against your family. But what Is the point of putting this list together then? Like do they say that it's essentially just alerting people to left wing ideologues on campus so that the, you know, the administration can think about whether to give these schools funding or is it like to let students know that they shouldn't take these classes? Like what, what is the point of the list if not the point that they are denying?

[E]

I mean, I haven't read their own description of why they have it. My guess, it's at least somewhat ambiguous and probably ranges somewhere between doing a public service, as they might describe it, for students to know who their professors are to on the other end, essentially encouraging universities to terminate the people on the list, I imagine is that their rationale would be somewhere in that range. Now what is very well documented by any journalists who have covered it is that this list does result in the kinds of threats that Turning Point has recently tried to distance itself from. This has been public knowledge for a number of years. And one would think that if they were sincere about not wanting these threats to continue that they would go about pursuing their goals in a different way. But they've not done that. And so to me trying to distance themselves from it years later in this relatively more media covered crisis is disingenuous.

[A]

So given that you're both historians, right, as you're going through this whole ordeal, you're getting stopped at the airport, you're, I don't even know how you would put it, sort of voluntarily self exiling or ending up in sort of academic exile. I don't know if you have a phrase that you would put to it.

[B]

I don't like the phrase voluntarily self exile. I think it, you know, and I'm not, this is not a critique of you, but I think that there are very problematic right wing ships and language about self deportation voluntary. So I'm going to you know, just kind of flag that as I'm not thrilled with kind of characterizing it as that. I think that we fled the country. I didn't feel safe living in the United States, which sounds absolutely bonkers. Like I would never have thought this. I don't know, even last year I was terrified of just my children playing outside. Like there wait, there might be a kind of, you know, lone wolf maga, you know, shooter, shooter hiding in the woods near my house. And so you know, for me we, yeah, I would consider it a kind of, a kind of. And I mean this literally, a kind of exile.

[E]

Yeah, on a broader spectrum that of course it's not the same as someone fleeing the Gestapo or Pinochet's Chile. Right. The state was not explicitly out to get us. Neither of us have been charged with any crimes because you've committed no crimes. But certainly the. The political circumstance made it so that we definitely could not stay in our home. And especially as time went along, as our flight was canceled, as I was stopped and interrogated by federal agents, despite we were stopped initially, I, and then, and then Yesenia as well, were stopped and interrogated and searched by federal agents, despite being charged with no crimes on the way out. Certainly felt like this escalating broader political climate that made us relieved to get out of the country.

[C]

I mean, you say that you weren't charged with anything, but at the same time, I mean, there was this presidential memorandum, and, you know, Trump is talking about Antifa as a terrorist organization. So I guess, was there a fear that if you were to stay, I mean, assuming that there were, let's say that you had received no death threats, but this memorandum comes out, would you have been worried about, you know, being targeted by the government in a more explicit way and sort of, what can we assume is going to happen to other people who were seen to be associated with Antifa in the wake of this memorandum?

[E]

Right. And before directly answering the question, I'll just point out to listeners who are maybe new to this story that I am not now, nor have I ever been part of an antifa group. I consider myself an anti fascist insofar as I oppose fascism. But I'm being targeted here for a book I wrote now. Yeah, I mean, I have been concerned even prior to the threats. We have had conversations about, if these things escalate, where will we go? So I did have concerns, but without the threats, you wouldn't have left. And it is also worth mentioning that a few days ago, there were conversations in Trump's inner circles about declaring Antifa a foreign terrorist organization, which I'm not sure if that's practicable, but if that were to happen, could conceivably actually make the goals that he had with the domestic designation real in a way that even if I were to be charged with something and I beat it, could embroil me in a year of legal fees and so forth. And so, yeah, we do have a number of concerns. Yeah.

[A]

And I mean, we will get, I hope, to all the sort of debates over free speech and what this all means in the context of that work, just to say very clearly, this is definitely a penalty for academic speech, that nobody should ever have to face. And this kind of whatever terminology we land on for having to flee the country, this is something that nobody should ever have to go through. The question, though, is if there is this vigilante violence being directed at the left and people feel so afraid that they have to flee, what then should we say to the people on the right who are afraid that they may be the next Charlie Kirk? And why are those two things maybe are those equivalent in your mind or not equivalent?

[E]

Well, I mean, it is worth pointing out that Tyler Robinson, despite being called antifa aligned, does not seem to have any politics that could be clearly categorized in one box or another and was influenced more by video game and online culture and so forth. Yeah, no one should be shot for speaking. So I think that simple as that, that should be the baseline. There are interesting conversations around what has been called cancel culture and what kinds of, you know, taboo societies put on different forms of speech and expression. And I'd be happy to talk about that, but neither I nor people I associate with are calling for shooting speakers. That's not part of this.

[C]

How unique does your situation feel to you? Like, obviously you guys have a lot of friends in the academic community, I assume friends, you know, specifically in the anti fascism academic community. And are you seeing scholar friends who are in similar situations or who are having similar conversations right now about leaving? Or do you think that. Yeah, I guess I'm just curious, like, how widespread this is and how much of an ongoing topic it is among other academics.

[B]

Yeah, like, so I'm a Latin American historian and people are having, I think, in various, you know, some more serious than others, but I think, I mean, I've seen people having these conversations.

[E]

Well, yeah, I mean, as Latin American historians, there's all sorts of related conversations. There's the conversations of people who simply teach in states like Florida or Texas, where what they're teaching is, to varying degrees no longer allowed, who are desperately trying to find jobs elsewhere. There are people who have been getting threats for all sorts of things, and that's been going on for years. I think that what makes my case slightly different is just this one word, antifa, that's in the title of my book. Even other scholars who have researched anti fascism, some of them have gotten threats, but like, I think some of them have not because it's just, you know, you talked about, how does this compare to history? This sometimes feels like a stupid version of old history insofar as, like, there is no red menace, there is no Soviet Union, there is no global communist movement. There is no even enormous self described anti fascist movement. The antifa groups that exist are not enormous or numerous. And it's just such a made up spectacle. And I'm the person who wrote the book with this one word in it. And so therefore our situation ended up being a very, a more extreme variation than what was the sort of a general rule among people who are researching things that they're getting threats for.

[C]

Well, thank you both so much for your time. You know, we're going to take a quick break and then when we return, we want to talk to Mark more specifically about the research in his book and how it relates to this current moment. So, yeah, thank you so much for joining us, Yesenia. This is the political Scene from the New Yorker. We'll be back in a minute.

[A]

So because we are talking about this whole sequence of events that was set off by a book you wrote, we thought we would actually sort of talk about the book. And yeah, just get into some of the arguments in the book and particularly around this moment and the Trump administration's efforts to tamp down on political speech, yours and others where your sort of academic framework fits in with that. So like I know you were saying a lot of the charges against you, it sounds like the far right activists have only read the introduction to the book and you were saying you can tell as a professor when someone's only read the introduction. We read the whole book and you are making actually a case kind of, in some ways, I wouldn't say against liberalism, but about the sort of weaknesses of liberalism as a framework to historically stand up against fascism. So this part has been quoted before. I'll just start with this. This is from the introduction. This book takes seriously the trans historical terror of fascism. It is an unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of antifascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the resurgent far right. And then later in the page, you may not walk away from this book a convinced anti fascist, but at least you will understand that antifascism is a legitimate political tradition growing out of a century of global struggle. So how does that, and again, understanding that nobody should be threatened or driven out of their country for their political speech, but this is political speech, it seems to me that is going against the prevailing mode of thought about, as I say, liberal norms of free speech. So how do you situate that argument in the context of what you're going through right now?

[E]

Yeah, well, so I am an activist. I've been involved in a number of different social movements over the years, Perhaps most notably Occupy Wall street in New York City in 2011. I have very strong ideas about how I think the world could be a better place. I'd like to see it become a better place. The one movement that I've never actually played any activist role in is the anti fascist movement. And so the genesis of this book was that I did an interview about the history and ideas of anti Fascism on NPR in 2017. A publisher heard the interview, namely Dennis Johnson from Melville House, and asked me to write a book on it. And so the intention from the book, as I think that those sentences that you read capture are that I think that for activists, regardless of their specific flavor or stripe of activism, to be able to resist, they have to have a sense of the broad range of ideas and practices that have come before them, whether or not they decide to agree with them or adopt them in one form or another. And there was a huge gap in the historical literature about militant anti fascism, which has actually been significantly filled since then, which makes me happy. So what I'm trying to convey is I came at this as an activist, as a historian, filling a gap, informing people, not saying that there's only one way to organize, not saying that this is necessarily what makes sense for everyone to do, but that. That we need to know and understand both as intelligent participants in our society and as activists. You know, Fox News, I think it was made a big deal out of the call to arms phrase. I'm not. I'm not calling for anyone to be shot. It's a phrase that suggests that I do sincerely think now, as I did back then, that we need to organize against fascism. As far as the role of speech and liberalism, you know, I think that Americans assume that the whole world has this American liberal interpretation of speech, just in the interest of a counterpoint. Continental European perspectives on speech are different. Different countries have laws against hate speech or organizing a Nazi or fascist party. And so while I don't entirely agree with that, the way I talk about it in a campus context, which is most pertinent to my job, is that a kind of procedural way of thinking about free speech is everyone gets to say whatever they want whenever they want. But I think that that overlooks the results of certain kinds of speech that dehumanize other people.

[C]

So in the book, you also write that antifascism is in a liberal politic of social revolutionism applied to fighting the far right, not just literal fascists. So what is social revolutionism and who would you consider to be a member of the far right?

[E]

Yeah, sure. So there are all sorts of people that participate in antifa groups, but most of them are radicals or revolutionaries of some sort or another, socialist, communist, anarchists or other sort of versions of those things. And so in that sense, there are people that happen to be frequently revolutionaries. But also the fact that militant antifascism rejects turning to the police or the courts or the state, or having faith in the supposed free market of ideas, means that there is a kind of challenge to the sovereignty of the state embedded within the politics of militant anti fascism. Insofar as it says we, the anti fascists, the people that are part of these groups, will take up solving this problem and therefore kind of challenge one little piece of state sovereignty. So that's what that means. Now, as far as who is the far right, who are fascists and so forth, that's a difficult question in part because historically fascism has rejected rational consistency. This becomes particularly tricky after World War II when many fascists and like minded people stop calling themselves Nazis or fascists because it's become taboo. Have, particularly from the 70s onward. You can see this in a lot of Western European countries, developed different forms of right wing politics that aim to be more appealing to the general electorate. You can see like the transition with the Resemblement Nationale in France, which used to be was really founded by pretty explicit fascists decades ago, but have adjusted their rhetoric and style to be much more of a palatable parliamentary option. But in short, I think that there are still important reference in thinking about fascism for far right politics today around opposition to democracy, promotion of violence as an end in and of itself. Conspiratorial thinking around antisemitism is still rather prevalent, strong sexism. I think that the US today, maybe one of the handful of the most central points, is this rejection of feminism, rejection of transgender and what they would call gender ideology, and an attempt to return to some sort of natural masculinity, even though of course it's all kind of a historical imagination. So in that sense, you know, part of the debate back in 2017, which is, I think it's interesting that it's really hasn't come up in the interviews I've done now is like this question of if militant antifascists are organizing against a group that Maybe is like hit 75 or 80% of things, you would put on a fascist checklist, is it still legitimate for them to organize against them? Obviously that's for them to decide, but the points that they make which I've conveyed in the book based on my interviews, is that because these things mutate so much, you have to situate it in that context.

[A]

I mean, we should get into what antifa is or isn't, because, you know, I think obviously when you have the Trump administration calling everything a terror group and saying, I mean, that presidential memorandum I think says anyone who's anti family or anti Christian, that speech might be considered a predicate to terrorism. Right. So it's very easy to see it all as just kind of a caricature, because they're kind of making it a caricature. That said, I mean, I do want to just take seriously this line between civil discourse and other tactics, including potentially violent tactics that have come up. I mean, as I say, we have read the book, but I mean, even just on the back cover of the book, you have Murray, the sort of pseudonym for an antifa organizer, saying, you fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don't have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists. You don't have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives, so you don't have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns, so you don't have to fight them with tanks. So I'm not saying that you are saying this, this is you quoting someone. But I guess, does it seem ridiculous then to worry about violence coming from Antifa, given that violent means of protests are being explicitly discussed here?

[E]

Well, I mean, I think we can take an empirical view here and let's look at the US over the last 10 years or so, since this has become something in the news, right. During the same time, there have been far more deadly far right attacks. But of course, that's a kind of a whataboutism, which is not the point that I'm making, but I think is worth mentioning the conflicts that we've seen. Like, let's look at Charlottesville. There have been some high profile conflicts between antifa groups and their allies and far right elements in Berkeley, in Portland, I think in Washington State. And what has really come out of that these are conflicts that have involved punches, that have involved pepper spray. The one person in all of that that was killed was killed by a fascist, Heather Heyer in Charlottesville. And then despite the fact that Trump tried to claim that the social upheaval of 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protest was all because of Antifa, really, even by law enforcement admission, was no truth in any of that. And they've been really out of the spotlight for six years. So I think that it would be a slightly different conversation if there had been all of these events happening over the last year or two. But the fact that there haven't, and that this executive order was concocted right after Charlie Kirk was killed, and which again is a kind of horrific expansion of an already nebulous term, and that that was applied to examples like Tyler Robinson who killed Charlie Kirk, to Luigi, who again had elements of left and right in his politics and killed the CEO, shows to me that it, whatever there is to be concerned about with violence is not actually what this is about. It's just a boogeyman.

[A]

Well, yes, and I take your point about, you know, the Trump administration always being able overplay whatever hand and make it as over the top as possible. I guess, just to give a sort of steel man version of the argument. I mean, to take your sort of what you called a what about is an example, you know, if we were to take someone who was advocating for a far right position, who was saying, well, I'm not saying that you should run people over with your car. I'm just saying that I'm making an unabashedly partisan call to arms to stick up for Confederate statues and for white nationalism and, you know, just arguing that this is a reasonable, historically informed response to do militant white nationalism. Yeah. Well, then what would you think if you were the president of Rutgers? Or what would you think if you were? I mean, how should we think about whether that kind of avowedly illiberal rhetoric should be allowed within polite society, within the university?

[E]

Yeah, well, so that's where, to me, I think part of the conversation needs to be what we say and why we say it, what we do and why we do it has to have reference to the values and politics informing it to the repercussions that come out of it. And so if you want to take the most violent historical examples of fascism and put them up against the most violent historical examples of anti fascism, what you end up with is World War II. And I think most listeners know which side of World War II they would be on. But I think that, you know, we have to situate it within the values and politics of what's going on. And I think that's what sometimes gets lost in a kind of abstract liberalism that aims to play referee and see only actions without their political or historical reference. And I just refuse to do that.

[C]

I want to talk more about doxxing because this is something that you write about at length in your book. You know, Sort of talking about how it is something that has played a central role both in fascist playbooks and in anti fascist playbooks. In the book you talk about Ramis Preston, I think that's his name, a Danish anti fascist filmmaker who's been on both sides of the doxxing issue. And first of all, I think it's interesting that he talks about his own experiences being doxed. And he says that, you know, it's important not to be afraid and to show that the face of antifascism is not a black hooded, masked person, but the politics of real human beings who have feelings and are humans in every way. And so I guess, like, how does hearing someone like him talk about doxxing kind of, I guess, like have. Has your experience being doxxed made you think about it a little bit differently? Like, I mean, you spent some time kind of writing about how doxxing can be seen as a legitimate tool to use against political opponents. And so how do you sort of reconcile that with your own experience of being doxxed and how terrible it's been?

[E]

Well, let's just unpack a little bit more of the kind of context of how this is often being used by antifascists. And anti fascist doxing often targets far right figures who are anonymous and who run, for example, like Stormfront message boards or are the leaders of like neo Nazi terror cells and are completely below ground. And so in that sense, the doxxing is a way of saying, hey, there's a real person that's doing this. He has a job or he's a student at a university and the community around him need to know that they're living next to a person doing this. Now granted, there would be plenty of far right people who would say, oh, well, you know, Mark Bray's community should know that this professor who wrote the antifa handbook is living amongst them, but recognize that those aren't the same kinds of claims. And so I think a big part of doxing for anti fascists is saying, hey, if you're going to write these things, then you should be able to be publicly accountable for them. I have not hidden from anything that I've written. I've done the opposite. Those are completely different efforts. And so I don't begrudge the question at all, but those contexts matter a great deal.

[A]

Well, can you say more about why they're completely different? I mean, as part of the case, you're making for a kind of illiberal or post liberal way of viewing the world or a revolutionist way of viewing the world. Seems like often these questions come down to who has power, who has political power, who has the upper hand. So if making it costly to have far right views, how is that not then equivalent to your political enemies making it more costly for you to have your views?

[E]

Well, because my views are better than theirs. And I know that that sounds like I am running afoul of the illiberal playbook, and I am, I will quote, unquote, die on the hill of anti Racism is better than racism, feminism is better than sexism. I could go on and on, but in that sense, I have no problem saying that when a Nazi doxes a professor because they didn't like the book they wrote about feminism, that that is infinitely worse and not the same thing as an anti fascist doxing a Nazi so that his university knows that he's a Nazi, so that his community knows that he's a Nazi. The politics matter a great deal.

[A]

You make this point several times in the book that you don't do the kind of formalism of or the kind of equivalence of all views being equal, regardless of their content. You know, this is from near the end of the book. Everyday. Antifascism applies an anti fascist outlook to any kind of interaction with fascists every day or otherwise. It refuses to accept the dangerous notion that homophobia is just someone's opinion to which they are entitled. It refuses to accept opposition to the basic proposal that Black Lives Matter is a simple political disagreement. An antifascist outlook has no tolerance for, quote, intolerance. It will not agree to disagree. And so, I mean, this is a version of an argument you make throughout the book. And I guess just to put a kind of fine point on it, like, is there some sense in which by giving up your claim to kind of liberal formalism, you then have to give up your appeal to things like protections from academic freedom. Right. If you're going to, you know, try to blow apart the kind of First Amendment framework for its downsides, is it in some sense then hypocritical to kind of appeal to it for your own protection?

[E]

Well, I'm not actually criticizing or calling for a change to the First Amendment. I'm not calling for any kind of changes in the laws. And so none of that, none of my argumentation around speech pertains to that. What I am calling for is essentially akin to what actually many universities claimed to be doing up until this era of Trump, which is to say we can have just about any kind of discourse except that which aims to dehumanize members of our community. And that's like actually like the norm of how to see speech in continental Europe, for example. So I, I don't, I don't view it as a huge departure from how things are, but I recognize that like speech at its most racist is, is bad. And I, and I, I'm not calling for anyone to be shot because of that, but I do think that it should be taboo to be racist or taboo to be transphobic. And I aim in my personal everyday experience to try and promote the opposite values. And I'm not going to just look the other way if someone is, is promoting dehumanization of my peers.

[A]

Well, there's another way to draw that line. There's, there's, you know, we should promote all speech as long as it doesn't dehumanize anyone, which obviously people have all kinds of dis. How to define that or draw that line. And then there's also the view of Dartmouth where you used to teach, where the president there said, we condemn anything but civil discourse. The endorsement of violence in any form is contrary to Dartmouth values. So that's another way to draw that line, which is if you're calling for any kind of tolerance for violence, that's over the line. So what do you think about drawing the line there?

[E]

Yeah, so basically the interview subjects that I spoke to in the book look at a past 100 years of fascism and more than a hundred years of colonialism and white supremacy and say that like, you know, when you are under attack from these movements, self defense is necessary. And we've seen even in recent decades that far right groups that target immigrants or queer and trans people have necessitated self defense groups among marginalized people. And so like, the violence of those people defending themselves is not on the same ethical or moral or historical category as the violence of those people who are trying to kill them.

[C]

You talk about self defense in the face of fascism and you know, you're giving examples of, you know, white supremacists and violent racists. But you have said, I think in the past that MAGA is a fascist movement. And so, I mean, does it follow then that any follower of MAGA should be subject to, you know, the kind of antifa activism or self defense tactics that the sources you speak to in the book endorse? Or I mean, what do you make of the fact that like I guess technically 50% of the country is Maga? And I mean, do you really see all of them as being fascist or like just the ones who you know, are kind of the most diehards.

[E]

Well, I think probably Trump's base is less than 50%, but that's a little bit. So I'm not saying that the way that militant anti fascists do things is the way that people should necessarily do things in all times and places. And also, let's look at a little bit of the historical context of where militant anti fascism came from. When it consolidated itself as a specific tendency after World War II, it was in the context of opposing small and medium sized far right groups that were on the margins of politics in countries like the UK or France or Italy. And in that sense, it was largely subcultural, rarely a mass movement. And so in that sense, it's a kind of a formula for opposing the far right in certain circumstances, which today are definitely not the circumstances. Right. Today you have a far right political force in the White House. Obviously there are some very marginal and small fascists and Nazi groups that don't like Trump or whatever, but that's a little beside the point. So in that sense, it's not the historical context that these ideas came up from. When I wrote the book in 2017, there seemed to be more of a historical parallel. Even though Trump was in the White House, it's unclear that he knew that he would win. He didn't come up with the same kind of plan as Project 2025. He had more traditional conservative politicians in his administration like Pence, who ultimately thwarted January 6th. So I wasn't saying, oh, everyone should do this, even back in 2017, but it's even less the context today than it was back then.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, that leads me exactly into where I wanted to go to close us out, which is the context now. I mean, again, just, you know, I appreciate you going through the ideas in your book. This is something that we can still do because we still have enough freedom of speech to at least talk to each other from different countries. And so I think it's worth using it and just about the historical context and where we are on that timeline, you know, you could say that this quote about, you know, we fight them with knives so we don't have to fight them with guns. We fight them with guns so we don't have to fight them with tanks. There's a way of reading that that says it's almost too late in the sequence for some of these antifa tactics to work. If your read is that MAGA is a fascist movement, MAGA has taken over and they're now sitting in the seat of power, you could read that historically as saying, at least for now, the fight is kind of over. So, I mean, what would you say to someone who says, the fascists have won, they're driving out their enemies, and, you know, what would you tell them they can do about that now?

[E]

Well, I mean, first of all, I have said, and I do believe that MAGA is a fascist movement. I do think that if there were a big, big beautiful button sitting in front of Donald Trump, that would get rid of all dissent. He would press the button. Right? But that having been said, we don't have fascism in a full sense. We still have a Democratic Party on the no Kings Day. People did protest. So not all is lost in that regard. I mean, even if it were, though, right? I mean, historical fascist regimes lost. But no. So, no, I'm not trying to be pessimistic. I do think people should get out there and protest and resist in their communities and their societies. I would love to see a general strike. I'd love to see just broad civil disobedience, direct action and non participation in the regime. I don't know what will come of this. I had students before I left the country ask me, oh, Professor Bray, are we in fascism? Where are we going? The kind of analogy I would make is, I would imagine kind of like a graph with a line ascending from the bottom left up to the top right and say, okay, we only have this much data, we only have these many points. It's on a trajectory heading up to the right. If the line continues at this trajectory, sure, we end up at fascism, but we don't know what will happen. The future's unwritten, and our resistance and our action can make the line go down. So I don't know what will end up with it. Certainly some people read my take on MAGA being a fascist movement and my concern about the direction of authoritarianism as being a bit alarmist. I disagree, but I would love to be proven wrong. And I really do want to see people out in the streets taking action. I don't think that there's ever only one form of action or one form of resistance. And my only takeaway is that I think anti fascism writ large as an opposition to fascism with a set of values that also promotes a vision for a better world and a vision for justice on an interpersonal level is necessary. And that's what I'd like to see. And I hope to return to the country next year feeling a lot more optimistic about where things are going.

[A]

Well, we also hope you can return. I think it bears repeating that no one should have to be marginalized or put in fear in this way for their ideas. And we appreciate you going through all this, and we look forward to hearing how the rest of your year goes.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you so much, Mark.

[E]

Yeah, been a pleasure.

[C]

We'll have more of the political scene from the New Yorker in just a moment. All right, Andrew, so after talking to Mark in Yesenia, I guess I'm wondering, you know, the eternal question, how bad is it? Is this the beginning of a wave of academics who are being pushed out of the country, exiled voluntarily, involuntarily for their speech?

[A]

Yeah, I think it's very worrisome whenever people can't make arguments or speak freely without worrying about having to leave the country to be safe. That's obviously worrisome for all the obvious reasons. I think academic freedom, broadly speaking, seems more imperiled than it's been in a generation. So, yeah, all those things are very, very worrisome. I think what makes this case particularly thorny and challenging. Right. Is that Mark is not pretending to be a shrinking violet. Right. He's not saying, like, I have no idea where this came from. And, you know, he's making these very provocative arguments. Again, you should not be punished for your provocative arguments. And I think we should get into just how broad these anti dissent, anti speech crackdowns are by the government. But as he himself says, he was not picked up by the state and forced to leave. He decided to leave. So I think we're in a kind of early formation of this. I don't know if there will be a wave of 50 more professors who flee the country or if this is kind of an isolated case or it's just hard to tell.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, not only was he not picked up by the state and forced to leave, but I wonder if we're kind of conflating a few different things here. I mean, obviously this is all happening in the context of the Trump administration's crackdown on academic freedom activism in general. And of course, there was executive order establishing ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization. But the thing that actually drove them out was this Turning Point USA watch list and the fact that they were receiving death threats as a result of having been on that watch list. And so that, I mean, there's obviously a. The administration has not tried to distance itself from TP USA at all. I mean, it seems like it's easy to kind of think of them as the same thing, given Trump's close relationship to Charlie Kirk.

[A]

Yeah. And that they were having this antifa task force with, you know, Jack Posobec on, like, I think, the same day that he was leaving the country. I mean, I can see why he feels like a target. And so I think it's just a challenge to the sort of classic instinct to be content neutral. There's often this sort of formalistic instinct to just say people should not be punished for their speech, kind of without even referring to what the content of the speech is. And I think Mark's book and the way he talks about his book forces us to pay attention to what the content is. I mean, his argument hinges on my provocative legitimizing of violence is more inherently valuable than my opponents when they do the same.

[E]

Right.

[A]

And so it doesn't allow us to be content neutral. And the Trump administration clearly has no interest in being content neutral. So it kind of lays bare the way I think radicals, left and right radicals have always thought about this, which is a kind of Schmidian competition for power. It's not about these nice little formal systems. It's not about these nice John Stuart Mill debate club tactics. It's about power and who has it. And I think it's pretty clear that Mark Bray's enemies are in power, and he felt very threatened by that. So I have sympathy for the critique that this kind of framework about how free speech should work in theory, in a vacuum that that's not attentive to the sort of messiness and jaggedness of how these things play out in life. The thing, though, once you depart from the kind of classic liberal norms and you start invoking a new set of rules or trying to kind of carve out, make up your own set of rules that are not the Enlightenment rules, what he himself calls an illiberal form of revolutionary politics, then you are not gonna get agreement about where these lines are. Right. So I think what he would say is, my ideas are better than a white supremacist's ideas.

[C]

You did say that.

[A]

So I should be allowed to teach my ideas, and they should not be allowed to teach their ideas. Fine, you can have that argument. But then when you're talking about doxxing, when you're talking about making it untenable or unsafe for somebody to live in their community without their neighbors turning against them. Right. The closer you come to, like, actual, either violence or the threat of violence, the more I start to be unsure about where do we stop before we get to actual violence? You know what I mean? Like, it's one thing to say, I should be given tenure and a white supremacist shouldn't. I get that argument, but then is it like the white supremacist should be doxxed, but I shouldn't? That's where I start to go, you know, not just that it's a slippery slope or whatever, but just like, how are people supposed to decide how to live around each other? I don't think you have to be a total content neutral, complacent, both sides person to be troubled by the idea that like, you do have to find a way to live around people whose views you find odious. Right. I mean, that's just a practical reality.

[C]

I don't know how you live without doing that. I think some of us have to do it less than others based on where we live. But.

[A]

Right. So I mean, his basic claim in the book is sort of polite liberal debate society ways of stopping fascism have not always worked. And that's true. I think it's also true. And he reckons with this in the book, that going out in the streets and engaging in hand to hand combat doesn't always stop fascists either. And so if we're now in a timeline when we've had the kind of Trump 1.0 round of battles that he was writing about in this book, the people having, you know, trying to get Milo Yiannopoulos not to speak at UC Berkeley and stuff, and where we've ended up, where all that has kind of shaken out is Trump 2.0, where the force of the state is being brought to bear on criminalizing all these forms of speech. Is that not an indictment of like, is that not another example where the antifa street brawling didn't stop the thing that it was trying to stop? Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So Then where does that leave us? I mean, I totally take his critique that like liberal politeste didn't stop it, but I don't think the street brawling tactics stopped it either.

[C]

I do think that this conversation would be entirely different if the exclusive reason or like the primary reason why Mark and Yesenia left the United States was because of the executive order from Trump. You know, this thing that establishing that antifa is a domestic terrorist organization and he had been targeted for that, you know, versions of that, where it's like people are facing charges, maybe they're actually antifa. Maybe they are, you know, activists slash historians who write about antifa. Although that's also kind of a blurry line.

[A]

I mean, he brought up, he brought up the term boogeyman. And I think that is A good way to put it. I mean, we can sort of debate all day whether it. Some people say Antifa doesn't exist. Some people say it's this centralized thing with all this, you know, sort of infrastructure. I think pretty clearly the truth lies somewhere in between those. But I think the boogeyman point is a good one, which is like, I don't think anyone sincerely believes that the greatest threat to the average American's security is a thing called Antifa. So there clearly is a scapegoating thing going on here. And it's terrifying when the full force of the biggest military and biggest government in the world is turning its attention on these street punks and academics and I don't know who else. I mean, we'll see. But the plain language of that presidential memorandum is terrifying. I mean, it just literally, it directs federal agencies to investigate, disrupt and dismantle all illegal operations conducted by Antifa. Or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa defines it as a militarist anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government. I mean, this is kind of classic sort of strongman scapegoating rhetoric. And then it lists ideological indicators that these government agencies should clamp down on, like anti Americanism, anti capitalism, anti anti Christianity, or extremism on race, gender or migration, or hostility toward traditional views of family, religion and morality. So if you take those words seriously, they could kind of just go after almost anyone and call them a terrorist. Like, I don't know that they will do that, but they are giving themselves permission, if you take this language seriously, to. I mean, what is extremism on race, gender or migration? What is hostility toward traditional views of family? Like. Like, I can think of a million things that that could mean, most of which would apply to almost everyone I know. Right? Like hostility toward traditional views of family. Like, I don't know. I don't, like, Leave it to Beaver's view of what a family should be. Am I a terrorist? Are you going to come after me? So I totally think this is being used as a boogeyman, as a kind of tip of the spear thing.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I guess. Like anywhere in that definition, does it ever specify violence? Or is it really just in. Or is it all about ideas?

[A]

It says an enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government using illegal means, including violence and terrorism. So it includes violence, but not exclusively.

[C]

And it includes terrorism and it includes the overthrow of the United States government.

[A]

Right. So again, like, so like, you can.

[C]

Be anti family, but as Long as you're not trying to use that as your agenda for overthrowing the government.

[A]

Right. Cause otherwise, this is written in a way that can treat anyone as a terrorist at any time.

[C]

Yeah. Which is obviously not good. I mean, it's interesting because on one hand, it's incredibly vague, and the vagueness is what makes it scary. And on the other, we also have conversations on this podcast all the time about this terrible epidemic of political violence that we're in on both the left and the right. And I guess I wonder if what we're seeing is if this were a different administration, you could see this as an attempt to stop political violence, at least coming from the side that they're more worried about. But it doesn't actually seem like it's going specifically after political violence. It's this other thing.

[A]

Well, this. This thing is way broader than that. But I also think this is part of what's so interesting about talking to someone like Mark Bray specifically and about his book specifically, is that I think it would be much easier for. For us at this moment if he were making a less radical argument. If he were saying, oh, no, I decry all kinds of violence, and violence is never acceptable. And he's not saying that. He's not really backing down from that. He's saying, some speech is better than other speech. We have to stamp out some forms of fascist speech because they inherently lead to violence. And also, when we use some forms of violence to stamp out fascist speech, that may be okay or at least legitimate or worth historical consideration, that's a much more challenging argument. Now, obviously, as we've said a million times, radical arguments are not things that you should be thrown out of the country for or that should be criminalized. But it makes it a little harder for us to end on a Kumbaya note of, like, let's all come together and agree there should be no more violence. Because radicals like this are often making the challenging point that, no, there's already violence baked into the status quo. There's already violence baked into the system, and I don't have to accept it. I will continue resisting it.

[C]

Thank you so much, Andrew. As always, this has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Tyler Foggitt. This episode was Produced by John LeMay with mixing by Mike Kutchman and engineering by James Yost. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Connie Ness, head of Global Audio. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll be back next Wednesday.

[E]

From prx.