A congressional hearing meant to brief lawmakers on the greatest global threats to the United States quickly evolved into a question session about the existence of antifa, a far-left militant faction, as House members on the Homeland Security committee seemed flummoxed and in disagreement about the nature of the movement.
Lawmakers focused their questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray on whether antifa is real, a conspiracy theory, who leads it, and how the government should respond, even though the witnesses focusing their opening remarks on foreign, not domestic, threats.
“Chairman Nadler has said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that basically antifa is a fantasy made up by the radical right or Fox News or something to that effect,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko, an Arizona Republican. “Would you agree with that? Is antifa a total fantasy, or is it real?”
Wray said antifa is a “real thing,” though it was not a group or an organization, but rather a “movement or an ideology.”
“With antifa, you’re saying it’s more of an ideology than an organized group, which a lot of people, you know, on the other side feel is some organized group,” Rep. Donald Payne, a New Jersey Democrat, asked Wray and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller. “When I hear this, ‘Antifa is there,’ or ‘Antifa is doing this,’ I’m still trying to figure out who and what antifa is. Can you enlighten me?”
“Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction, but it’s not an organization or a structure,” said Wray, confirming that his agency has opened investigations this year into people who “ascribe to antifa.”
“We understand it to be more of a movement, or maybe you could call it an ideology,” he said.
“When we hear officials saying antifa is the greatest threat on the Left, are they being correct?” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, asked.
“We don’t really think of threats in terms of Left and Right at the FBI,” said Wray. “We’re focused on the violence, not the ideology. Our domestic violent extremists include everything from racially motivated violent extremists … all the way to anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists, and that includes people ranging from anarchist violent extremists — people who subscribe to antifa or other ideologies, as well as militia types and those kinds of things.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, broke the trend of questions and posed a follow-up statement to Wray, taking aim at how organized and structured antifa events are in light of the FBI leader’s statement that the word was only symbolic of a belief system, not representative of a group of people.
“That seems to me to be downplaying it,” said Crenshaw. “And this is an ideology that organizes locally. It coordinates regionally and nationally. It wears a standardized uniform. … This is an ideology that has trained its members, makes shield wall phalanxes to attack federal officers. It formed an autonomous zone in an American city and besieged a federal courthouse in another.”
“It just seems to be more than an ideology. Do you have a way to define what you mean by ‘it’s not a group?'” Crenshaw asked.
Wray said his earlier descriptions of antifa were not meant to “minimize the seriousness of the violence and criminality that is going on across the country,” but again did not describe antifa as a formal collection of people.
Rep. Jefferson Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, was not satisfied with the information.
“In my mind, there is antifa. There’s a group or individuals that control antifa and have some authority over it, and it is to some degree without a question, organized,” said Van Drew. “Would you agree with that?”
Wray confirmed that the Justice Department agency has seen antifa identifiers “coalesce regionally” in “small groups or nodes.” Van Drew requested an investigation into it.
Others, including Democratic Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Cedric Richmond of Virginia, asked about similar groups of people and how the FBI has categorized them.
“I’m interested — QAnon activity has resulted in arrests of persons planning to carry out violent acts based on the nonsense spouted in web forums and social media that form the core of QAnon beliefs. How do you characterize that organization?” Jackson Lee asked.
Wray’s answer was comparable to his antifa description: “Less of an organization and more of a sort of complex set of conspiracy theories.”
“Black Lives Matter is a principle, and it’s also an organization,” said Richmond. “Do you all identify Black Lives Matter as an extremist organization?”
“We have not identified the organization in any way,” said Wray. “Unlike on the international terrorism side, the foreign terrorism side, there is no mechanism under U.S. law for us to.”
