The Daily Beast
20-year-old MAGA politician war against Antifa makes a terrible comeback
Photo illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos via Facebook Chaos. Incompetence. Lack of respect for authority. These are the things a Montana lawmaker is accusing anti-fascists of in a new resolution intended to label the movement a ‘domestic terrorist organization’. But the measure is struggling to get off the ground, and the 20-year-old MAGA lawmaker urged by the acolyte-turning state seems to be the reason. Days after rioters broke into the U.S. capital from the right, Rep. Braxton Mitchell, a state, tabled a resolution aimed at the opposite side of the political spectrum: “antifa,” the loosely left-wing anti-fascist movement. Remember that ‘antifa’ is not a centralized group, and that the government of the United States does not call such a “domestic terror”. The bill is the latest attempt to impose fines on the left, even as national security experts plead with lawmakers to look for new attacks from the far right. Unlike previous anti-fascism bills, however, this one’s biggest obstacle may be its own sponsor. GOOP Representative Somehow Blames Mail Slowdown on Antifa and Black Lives Matter After Mitchell, a first-year lawmaker, told a controversial meeting in Montana House about Most of the bill’s Republican associates on February 16 names drawn from the criterion. “He behaved badly. “He got a little out of control in the committee and I think most of the co-sponsors moved in then,” one of the 32 former co-sponsors, Republican Rep. Larry Brewster, told The Daily Beast. “I suspect the co-sponsors pulled to condemn him.” Unlike some of his older counterparts in the Montana home, Mitchell comes from a hard-right youth movement. In 2018, he organized pro-gun marches as opposed to some of his classmates’ “March for Our Lives” demonstrations. He joined Turning Point USA, a well-funded student club, and later became an ambassador for the group. After Donald Trump contested his election loss in 2020, Mitchell used Twitter to bolster a call for members of Congress to reject voters from the disputed states. He also tweeted a photo and video of far-right paramilitary group The Proud Boys during the pro-Trump ‘Million MAGA March’, a November 14 demonstration. ” Proud Boys’ is outside The Willard in DC and sings the national anthem. , ”He tweeted. “#MillionMAGAMarch #ProudBoys * This tweet is not an endorsement *” During Mitchell’s campaign, screenshots spread of him allegedly tweeting an anti-gay failure. However, Mitchell had earlier told the Hungry Horse News that the screenshots were photoshop. Reached for comment, Mitchell linked to the parent story and told The Daily Beast that “I do not want to comment on the resolution.” His Twitter account disappeared around the time of his reaction. The bill was burning even before it was introduced. The text is virtually identical to that of a bill that died in the water introduced in 2019 by Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Bill Cassidy in the U.S. Senate. That older bill, which also designated ‘antifa’ as a domestic terrorist organization, did not provide a definition of the non-group, other than to claim that anti-fascists’ opposed the democratic ideals of peaceful assembly and free expression represent. for all ”and“ believe that freedom of speech equals violence. Michael Loadenthal, executive director of Georgetown University’s Association for Peace and Justice Studies, said the Cruz-Cassidy bill and the Mitchell bill were part of a worrying trend. over the past few years, we have seen a significant noticeable increase in the bills that try to criminalize anti-fascism, Loadenthal told The Daily Beast. Trump has repeatedly called for denouncing anti-fascists as terrorists, and has unjustified conspiracy theories about the movement. Following the Capitol attacks, many Trump supporters blamed antifa for the burglary. Loadenthal said Mitchell’s bill “fits in very well with the rebellious attempt to shift debt and liability from Jan. 6 to Jan. 6.” as a “domestic terror” organization, no such legal framework yet exists at the national level, Loadenthal noted. “We have no local terrorism law in this country. “There is no crime of domestic terrorism at the federal level,” he said. “We have no ability to add anti-fascists to the list of domestic terrorist organizations, because there is no list of domestic terrorist organizations.” Instead, experts like Loadenthal say, such legislation could serve as a way to silence dissent or the intimidation of the left. The Cruz-Cassidy bill attributes a handful of incidents in California and Oregon to antifa or, broadly, ‘leftist activists’. Mitchell’s bill, which borrowed the same text, does not mention any incidents involving Montana. Even former white supremacists operating near Mitchell’s home district say his proposal misses the point. In 2011, Scott Ernest became a co-leader of Kalispell Pioneer Little Europe. (PLE), a single settlement for whites, 30 minutes from Mitchell’s district. The position brought him into conflict with anti-fascists, whom he now describes as less dangerous than the white supremacists he worked with. “There’s just no comparison,” he told The Daily Beast. Although Ernest was involved in the selection of PLE recruits, and when he moderated the white supremacist message board Stormfront, he began to have doubts about the movement when members raised the massacre of young Norwegian leftists – some of them children – by the whites. Anders Breivik starts to defend. “People said to me, ‘They are communists, they are antifa, so they deserve it.’ “It was the first time I questioned it,” he said. Ernest, meanwhile, left the movement and founded an organization dedicated to the withdrawal of people from white supremacist ideologies. The Kalispell PLE has now been shut down. When Mitchell presented his bill to the committee, some of his colleagues raised similar objections. Rep. Democrat Ed Stafman spotted a report by the Department of Homeland Security in October 2020, highlighting white supremacists as the “most stubborn and deadliest threat in the homeland.” Then she spread an Antifa conspiracy. “The 28-page report makes no mention of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization,” Stafman told Mitchell, noting Montana’s often-documented white supremacist problem. ‘I think your district is close to Whitefish, where neo-Nazis launched a terrorist campaign against the Jews there in 2018, leading to a $ 14 million court ruling, but only when Whitefish Jews had to endure numerous threats in their lives . ‘ asks Mitchell if he has consulted with law enforcement about the bill – he has not. Another questioned why Mitchell claimed in his opening speech that the bill was twofold, when no Democrats signed it. “I made a joke about the bill,” Mitchell replied. Not even his Republican peers laughed. “Representative, we do not necessarily think this is a joke,” the Republican chairman of the committee replied. “This is a House bill that is being brought before our committee on behalf of the people of Montana.” So far, 32 of the Republican counterparts – most of the original 53 co-sponsors of the bill – have drawn their sponsorship to the bill as the Associated. Press report. Some people may have tilted Mitchell’s behavior, as Brewster, the Republican representative, suggested. Others have told the AP that they will consider the bill if it is extended to include other groups, although Mitchell seems determined that the legislation only addresses ‘antifa’. “This bill is specific to one group and the intention is to keep it that way,” he said in committee when the chairman asked if he would be open to expanding the bill. “What you are saying is that you are not prepared to provide for amendments,” the chairman said. Mr. Chairman, if I could – ” No, you can not. And when another representative asked why Mitchell’s bill did not include a single incident in Montana, Mitchell replied that ‘the intention is to send a message that we as a state will not tolerate such a group entering our state or being involved in such conduct in our state … Yes, the bill calls for violations from other areas, but yes, ”Ernest, the former white supremacist, told The Daily Beast. that anti-fascists helped him leave the movement – and that Montana is already home to many of them. They just do not do what people like Mitchell say they are. “All the people I met there are residents of Montana,” Ernest said. ‘They are a) not a threat, and b) they are already there. They have been there for a long time. Read more at The Daily Beast. Do you have a tip? Send it here to The Daily Beast Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily membership of the beast: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.