Meet The 'Alt-Left': Trump Lumps Vastly Different Political Groups Together

SEATTLE, WA – In downtown Seattle Sunday, a throng of several hundred marched from Denny Park toward Westlake Park. It was a diverse crowd ranging from anti-fascists wearing black masks to small children to local politicians, like City Councilman Mike O’Brien. They were marching in opposition to an alt-right group, Patriot Prayer, holding a “free speech” rally at Westlake.

At one point, as the main group headed west on Lenora Street, a group of anti-fascists broke off from the crowd and sprinted south down an alley. The anti-fascists were trying to break through a group of police that was preventing the marchers from getting to Westlake. Police in riot gear met the anti-fascists at the end of the alley. It’s not clear who acted first, but the police unleashed streams of pepper spray as the anti-fascists tried to break through the police line.

Rebuffed, the antifascists retreated up the alley and rejoined the larger march. There would be similar confrontations involving pepper spray, arrests and blast balls throughout the day. The anti-fascists would never get to confront the alt-right group, however.

Similar scenes have been playing out for years in Seattle since at least the 1999 WTO riots. We are used to anti-capitalists smashing Wells Fargo windows and seeing police in riot gear fighting against them. But this week, in the wake of Charlottesville, President Donald Trump on Tuesday popularized a new concept: the so-called alt-left.

That term, alt-left, alleges that there’s a contingent on the left that’s just as bad as the alt-right. By using the prefix “alt,” Trump drew an equals symbol between the overt racists seen in Charlottesville and the people on the left who specifically fight against fascism and racism. By that definition, the alt-left includes Antifa, but also your Aunt Karen who knitted a pink pussy hat and went to her local Women’s March, and Heather Heyer.

Trump’s “alt-left” language isn’t a surprise, because conservative media for years has been calling Black Lives Matter a domestic terror group. Anti-fascists, usually called just Antifa, are a target, too. The group demonstrating in Westlake on Sunday, Patriot Prayer, has literally done battle with Antifa in Portland and Berkeley, California, and to a lesser extent in Seattle on May Day.

Some conservatives see absolute equivalency between the two groups.

“Antifa and [Black Lives Matter] are exactly as vile and racist as the kkk/neo-nazis and the alt-right. They're two sides of the same coin and closer in ideology to each other than anything else,” wrote Bruce Sauer in a Facebook comment about a story Patch published earlier this week about right-wing groups.

To better define the so-called alt-left, we spoke to two “hardcore” members of this new group. One is a new (as of Trump’s election) activist who founded an Indivisible chapter in Issaquah to pressure U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert. The other is a member of the General Defense Committee of Seattle’s International Workers of the World chapter – one of those guys who wears a black mask and is willing to literally fight fascists.

What’s an anti-fascist?

Juan Caguax, 29, is a social worker living in Seattle. He’s been a leftist activist for about 10 years and never heard the term “alt-left” until Trump’s press conference on Tuesday. The term is ridiculous, he says.

“To me it sounds like someone that understands the prefix ‘alt’ has acquired a negative connotation and they're trying to cover up for Nazis and fascists by pinning this negative prefix on the left to say, ‘Hey both sides are the same,’” Caguax says.

But it is easy for the right to hate Caguax and his cohorts. He’s a member of the local Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) General Defense Committee (GDC), which means he protects IWW members or other vulnerable people. Yes, the GDC will show up to protests in black masks and get tear-gassed, and they would very likely take the opportunity to punch someone like Richard Spencer.

But the GDC does much more. It helps picket during labor strikes; it also does writing campaigns for labor causes. It also has a food security operation that provides food to anyone who needs it.

What separates the GDC from the rest of the left, however, is its rejection of capitalism. However much the politics of antifascists might overlap with even mainstream Democrats, an antifascist will never support a Democrat.

“I sincerely doubt you would see someone who calls themselves an antifascist approving of any politician,” Caguax said.

What’s missing, Caguax says, is the Democrats’ criticism of capitalism. Capitalism, the far left believes, is the enemy of the people because it values profit over labor; it’s a system that creates damaging inequity for workers and for the planet. Democrats embrace capitalism as the savior of the working class.

When talking about Antifa, two common criticisms are the masks they wear and that they go looking to start fights. On Sunday, anti-fascist protesters stood in front of a line of police near the intersection of Pine and Second Avenue and antagonized them by spraying silly string and throwing glitter. They were rearing to confront Patriot Prayer, even if they knew the police would never let it happen. But Caguax does not remember it that way.

“At no one point [on Sunday] did anyone attack a police officer or grab anything; at no point did anyone brandish weapons; but the police still felt it necessary to attack us with military-grade tear gas to the point where they hurt one of our friends,” Caguax said. “I 100 percent do not feel I'm inciting violence. It seems like [any Antifa] presence immediately makes the cops aggressive.”

There’s also the fact that an anti-fascist IWW member was shot on the University of Washington campus in January at an anti-Milo Yiannopoulos demonstration. That was likely the first and most grave incident of right-to-left political violence of Trump’s first term.

Lastly, Caguax says that modern-day Antifa is part of a long tradition of radical leftism. For example: In 1921 in Matewan, West Virginia, thousands of coal miners fought police during a labor strike, and hundreds (on both sides) died. As recently as 2003, two Catholic Workers poured human blood on the Pentagon as a protest against the Iraq War. Those are considered extreme political acts, but both were in the name of causes most can agree are good: fair wages and ending war.

Don’t look for anti-fascists to let up. Charlottesville emboldened the extremist right and the forces on the left opposing them.

“[Charlottesville] made it clear to us how far people in the alt right – and let’s call them what they are, they're fascists – how far those groups are willing to go. It made it clear for us the fight that antifascists have been fighting since the second world war, that's something that's still present,” he said.

Democrats on the left

If Antifa is squaring off along the front lines, who’s behind them? It’s people like Chris Petzold. She founded an Indivisible group in the Sammamish-Issaquah area shortly after the 2016 presidential election. If you don’t know Indivisible, it’s essentially the liberal answer to the Tea Party.

Aside from donating to campaigns, Petzold has never been a political activist. On Jan. 18, she led a protest of about 40 people into U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert’s Issaquah office — risking arrest because Reichert’s office is in a private building.

“We're just citizens who care; we went to talk to our congressman,” Petzold remembers of that day. “But now we stay out on the sidewalk.”

Petzold is part of a large group of liberals who are absolutely opposed to Trump but do not necessarily agree with the tactics of Antifa. These are people on the left who will attend the Women’s March or a Black Lives Matter march but who are not looking for a literal fight.

“I don't feel closely aligned with [Antifa]. I don't really want to participate in things where people are causing chaos and they have weapons,” Petzold said. “What we’re about is 100 percent peaceful.”

For example, Petzold’s Indivisible group (and there are many Indivisible groups, from Bonney Lake to Seattle) plans to pressure Reichert to disavow Trump over his Charlottesville comments. The group has done its best to shame Reichert, including holding “empty-chair” town hall meetings, and getting U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Seattle, to hold a town hall meeting for Reichert (Reichert has so far refused to hold an in-person town hall, although he has done them on Facebook and via phone).

Petzold and Caguax might never see eye-to-eye on political tactics, although they have some overlapping goals. Petzold might not critique capitalism to Caguax’s liking, and Caguax might be too violent for Petzold’s liking. But both were at the protest on Sunday in Seattle: Caguax was there with a mask covering his face (to protect his identity from white supremacists) and Petzold nearby without one.

But to Trump — and many conservatives — both are just part of the alt-left.

Image via Neal McNamara/Patch