Nov. 4 Rallies Draw Wild Rumors About Anti-Fascists

SEATTLE, WA - Yes, antifascist protesters are planning to participate in a demonstration in downtown Seattle Friday. A number of left-wing rallies are planned nationwide for Nov. 4, including Seattle's "Stand Up To Trump, Fight White Supremacy" rally.

But some far-right websites are reporting that "antifa super-soldiers" are going to rise up on Nov. 4 and start a new civil war. Those words are from a sardonic tweet by Tom Bloke. Bloke jokingly claimed to be the "leader" of antifa, and some right wing blogs believed it. Rumors about Saturday's rallies have gotten so strange, the fact-checking site Snopes weighed in.

Lucian Wintrich, who writes for the blog Gateway Pundit, published a story Monday with the headline, "ANTIFA Leader: “November 4th […] millions of antifa supersoldiers will behead all white parents.”

So what's going on? Here's what we know about the demonstration planned for Saturday: the antifascist group Insurrectionary Youth Action (IYA) appears to the main antifascist participant. The event begins at noon at Seattle City Hall along 4th Avenue downtown. IYA says the Revolutionary Communist Party has put out a the nationwide call to start a new Occupy Wall Street-like movement on Saturday.

Now, here's where it gets a little murky: IYA says it's not demonstrating on Saturday to support the RCP.

"We at Insurrectionary Youth Action (IYA), a new group of insurrectionists based out of the Pacific Northwest area, would like to make a call to action for other affinity groups and anarchist organizations to take part in the upcoming Nov 4th events," the group wrote in a blog post. "Not out of solidarity with the RCP mind you, but as an autonomous force of our own that can influence the event and instigate radical action against the current regime."

Anti-fascist groups in the Seattle area have participated in a number of local demonstrations in 2017, some of which have turned violent.

On Inauguration Day, an anti-fascist demonstrator was shot and seriously injured during a demonstration at a Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of Washington. Elizabeth Hokoana has pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault in the shooting (her husband, Mark, has pleaded not guilty to third-degree assault for using pepper spray).

On May Day, a right-wing group from the Portland area, Patriot Prayer, held a demonstration at Westlake Park in Seattle. The group clashed with antifascists, although May Day 2017 in Seattle was much calmer than in past years.

Patriot Prayer has continued to antagonize Seattle, however. The group participated in an "anti-sharia" rally at Seattle City Hall in June. That rally ended in a confrontation between right-wing demonstrators and anti-fascists at Occidental Square.

On Aug. 12, purported white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. allegedly drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring scores more. The next day, Patriot Prayer held a "Freedom Rally" at Westlake, which anti-fascists tried to disrupt. Seattle police kept the two groups separate, at times deploying pepper spray and flash grenades at the antifascists.

At this point, there's no indication Patriot Prayer will appear Saturday in Seattle. The group's next rally happens Nov. 11 in Berkeley, Calif.

So, to recap: there are no antifascist super-soldiers, but expect a rally and possibly a march in downtown Seattle Saturday.

Images via Neal McNamara/Patch.com