Antifa's plot for an anti-government insurgency has been in the works since the start of the presidential election cycle began last November, intelligence uncovered.
The justice for George Floyd demonstrations were the catalyst for unleashing its plans in an election year, according to a U.S. law enforcement official speaking on the condition of anonymity and private security experts, The Washington Times reported.
"Antifa's actions represent a hard break with the long tradition of a peaceful political process in the United States," former National Security Council staff member Rich Higgins told the Times. "Their Marxist ideology seeks not only to influence elections in the short term, but to destroy the use of elections as the determining factor in political legitimacy."
A program of widespread civil unrest is a hallmark of domestic terror groups, regardless of the circumstances that give it a vehicle – and the piggybacking of local gangs – to be put it goals into action, per the report.
"President [Donald] Trump's election and revitalization of America are a threat to antifa's nihilist goals," former Defense Intelligence Agency official and counterinsurgency expert Joe Myers told the Times. "They are fomenting this violence to create havoc, despair, and to target the Trump campaign for defeat in 2020."
Antifa has loosely been described as an "anti-fascist" movement, but its demonstrations in its black-clad outfits and masks are generally designed to sow division, discord, and chaos in American politics.
Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who held his knee to the neck of the unarmed detainee for around eight minutes, leading to his death, according to medical examiners.
President Trump has pointed to the antifa movement in the most violent, disruptive, and destructive riots often happening beyond the hours of local curfews in the dark of night.
"In recent days, our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, antifa, and others," Trump said in his anti-riot speech Monday in the White House Rose Garden – with police flash bangs going off in the background.
The White House National Security Council is investigating the coordinated plots and gathering intelligence from riots and looting through American cities in the past week. It is now calling on the FBI for more information.
"The president and the attorney general want to know from [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray what the FBI has been doing to track and dismantle and surveil and prosecute antifa," White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told the Times. "And if that hasn't been happening, we want to know what the plan is going forward."
The official U.S. designation of antifa as a domestic terror organization gives more latitude for surveilance and investigation.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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