As college students across the country head back to school, some of them may have the opportunity to join a new protest group created by supporters of the so-called “Resistance.”
David Palumbo-Liu and Bill Mullen, professors at Stanford University and Purdue University respectively, have assembled the “Campus Antifascist Network.”
The group’s invitation letter pledges to help interested parties “organize a local antifascist chapter on your campus that can help support, educate, and defend faculty, students and staff, and share information on fascist organizing in the U.S., planned fascist activities and organized antifascist responses.”
Many colleges have already formed their own chapters of the Campus Antifascist Network, including the University of Connecticut, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh.
The organizers of the “Campus Antifascist Network” or CAFN created a syllabus, designed to serve as “a toolkit for organizing reading groups, study groups and anti-fascist political collectives.” The 10-page syllabus makes it clear that founding members believe that Donald Trump’s election has resulted in a resurgence of fascism in the United States.
The syllabus contains a variety of articles and books penned by leftist thought leaders, beginning with Leon Trotsky’s “What is Fascism and How to Fight It.” The syllabus also contains links to several articles from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has developed a reputation for labeling right-of-center organizations including the Family Research Council as “hate groups.” CAFN appears sympathetic to the long list of left-wing grievances against capitalism and the “ideologies of oppression and exploitation upon which neoliberalism relies.”
The Department of Homeland Security has labeled Antifa a domestic terror group in the wake of the group’s instigation of violence at a right-wing rally in Berkeley last week. Professor Palumbo-Liu told Inside Higher Ed that his group will “advocate self-defense and defense in various forms of those who are being threatened by fascists, but not violence.”
CAFN issued a statement of solidarity with the left-wing groups who participated in the Charlottesville protest that took place last month. The organizers of CAFN credit the Charlottesville protests with the growth of their movement from 40 to 400 members.
Many left-wing individuals and groups have come out in favor of CAFN, including the Duke Graduate Student Union and the University of California Student Workers. The creation of the “Campus Antifascist Network” proves beyond a reasonable doubt the success of the “long march through the institutions” launched by the radical left in the 1960s.
