In kenosha and as we have seen in portland . Pres. Trump i would say almost everything i see is from the left wing, not the right wing. I am willing to do anything. I want to see peace. Mr. Biden say it. Pres. Trump what would you like me to call them . Proud boys stand back and stand by. Kathleen belew, you have literally what the book on White Supremacy and have written the book. When you heard that moment what was your reaction . Kathleen very concerning for a number of reasons. I have long since as many analysts have given up trying to understand the president s motivations. Even if he takes the most generous interpretation of trump comments, perhaps he said proud boys, perhaps you meant to say stand down, there is a large and complex White Power Movement in our country that heard the president s words as are called to military preparedness. This is a movement interested in violence against civilians, our democracy and its institutions, and even if the president did not mean to call them to arms, that is effectively what he has done. I am not sure she can unring the bell. Joe biden supplied the name proud boys to him but for people who had never heard of them before. Give us a snapshot. Kathleen sure. The proud boys are a group in a larger landscape of white power and Militia Movement activism. That is broadly french right fringe right activism interested in resisting federal government power, advocating for Second Amendment rights and gun possession, gun ownership rights, and also involve people who are outright white supremacist, meaning people who not only believe in the superiority of white people over other people but who are prepared and eager to take a violent action to ensure the continuation of white supremacist power. The proud boys explicitly disavow White Supremacy and, in fact, there are people of color who belong to the group. How should we process those pieces of information . Kathleen it is helpful to think of overlapping venn diagrams. There are two ways the proud boys are related to a broader landscape of white activism. The first is that they are effectively organized around several issues that although they include activists of color and say they are not white supremacist, they are interested in a bunch of ideas congruent with violent white power activism. This includes what the proud boys themselves call western chauvinism, the idea of meeting western cultures are superior to other cultures. They are antiislam, antifeminist, violent in many iterations and they work as Strike Forces for moments of white power activism. For instance, they were present in the charlottesville rally in virginia in 2017. They have shut up as a defective security personnel elsewhere. They are shoulder to shoulder with white power activist. In general, what do i do currents of these groups, what country do they envision and how do they realistically see getting there . Kathleen that question asked us to go back and look at the history of this movement, and i would like to emphasize we are decades if not generations into this activism. The White Power Movement brought together klansmen, neonazis, skinheads, radical protesters and in some parts of the Militia Movement in the 1980s and 1990s, and has been at war with the federal government since the 1980s. They have advocated things like ethno state, the forced genocide of people of color, the subsequent genocide of people of color and the use of chemical and biological weapons to eradicate the entire world. The nation edit White Nationalism is not necessarily the United States. The nation and White Nationalism is often imagined as the aryan nation and has nothing to do with the u. S. But as a Transnational Group of white people. The department of Homeland Security has issued a threat assessment report that shows not only are these groups, white power extremists and Militia Movement groups the largest threat in the United States. They now outstrip not only what the president calls antifa and the left but they also far outstrip the threat of radical islamist terror in the United States. Trumps fbi and dhs has said this is the main problem in relation to terrorist violence that our nation needs to address. How are statistics on the size of groups as this reliably gathered since nobody is answering surveys about membership and the like . How do we really know . Kathleen here is one thing to keep in mind. Since the early 1980s this movement has been using a strategy called leaderless resistance. This will sound familiar to listeners i think because it is effectively the same thing we cellstyledle th terrorism in the post9 11 moments. The idea is one or a few white power activists would work toward a common set of goals but without communication with other cells and communication with central leadership. That strategy did a number of important things. It made it very difficult for us to describe and document the White Power Movement violence as it happened, because we instead see a lot of stories about lone wolves, when in fact we are seeing movement motivated violence, but it also means there is not a great correlation between relative group size and violent activity. In other words, if you are trying to recruit 2000 people to march down main street, that is a different recruitment effort than if you are trying to get six people to detonate a bomb. There is not a neat relationship between relative size of these groups and the frequency of violence that they carry out. Instead, what experts are interested in looking at is the momentum of activism and activity. We can see it through smaller acts of violence the tent to lead up to bigger mass casualty attacks. Lets go back to the president s admonition to stand by. Even if he misspoke in that instance, and at the town hall meeting key explicitly disavowed White Supremacy movements when pressed by the debate moderator, but you say groups heard what they wanted to do here there. What they wanted to hear there. What happened as a result of stand by . Ose words, kathleen we saw on social media at some of these groups incorporated that slogan stand back, standby as part of a badge. These groups do not need a large signal great we are talking about a paramilitary Unit Movement that is already standing at readiness to take action. The thing experts are concerned about is both the subtext of the president s comments that indicate he is somehow condoning any violence that might occur in a future Movement Moment when moment when they are called on to act and also the hint of nonprosecution. This is a movement that has not needed over signaling to amped up its activity in the past. This movement as screamed like a screened like a failed prosecution effort to launch campaigns to promote additional violence. We are talking about the movement responsible for the bombing of Oklahoma City in 1995. That action is the largest deliberate mass casualty event on the mainland well between pearl harbor and 911 but we do not think of it as the work of a movement, even though Historical Archive show without a doubt it was that. Part of what we have to think about is white we as a society have not face this as a terrorist threat and what we might need to change in the way we think about these stories to change that conversation. With the election looming, you have actually been very busy over the past couple of weeks after the debate and subsequent threat against the governor of michigan and virginia. I am wondering about what in fact you and others who follow these movements are concerned about regarding election day . In other words, stand by for what . What are the scenarios if President Trump wins and loses . Kathleen my concern based on the history of this movement and the ideology of the people drawn to this kind of activism, i think if there is a Biden Victory there is a real threat that these activists will not see it as if there election and a Fair Election and will continue to seek out opportunities to carry out acts of violence, and as a reminder, they are interested not just in intimidation, although they have done that for a century or more as part of the kkk. These are activists who are interested in infrastructure attacks, mass poisoning, mass casualty attacks. Some of them have talked about attacking Nuclear Power plants in order to set off nuclear disasters. These are people interested in major scale violence, not only poll intimidation, and the other historical parallel that is concerning is if trump were to be reelected and to call these groups into some kind of validity, then we are talking about an extralegal strike squad that has historical parallels to totalitarian regimes in latin america and elsewhere. In either case, i do not think there is a scenario where this group of people will simply put their guns down and go home. I think these people are very , very angry and frustrated and are tapping into very widely held frustration about society as a whole related to the pandemic and the quarantine, economic turmoil, major Racial Justice protests and changes to our democracy that i think are impacting a lot of people. But these activists take that set of frustrations and seek violent outcomes. In recent weeks there has also been a great deal in the public sphere of debate about Second Amendment constitutional guarantees for militias. What is your response to that argument is brought up . Kathleen historians do not tear a clear line from the militias of early america to the groups that are present militias claiming legitimacy and the current moment. The reason is if you look at the history of militias, laid out in the Second Amendment as a well regulated militias and have a very specific role in the early history of our nation, those groups are all incorporated into National Guard and other state run units in the early 20th century. Those groups are all incorporated, so the entirety of legal and legitimate militia activity is run through National Guard and other official channels. All of the private activity as people who study this have found is illegal to some capacity in every state. There is no state that allows a private militia to do order making more policing of its citizens. Some states also have additional laws prohibiting things like parading with firearms in public or a mapping and training of private armies and the reason for those laws have to do with the prior client activity in klan activity in those places. That is all before these militia groups have even carried out an action like attempting to kidnap a sitting governor, which is of course illegal in several ways on top of that. The important thing here is we would not want to be sidetracked by the use of the word militia, which specialists and Law Enforcement use to describe one stripe of this broader movement. I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to be taken up with the question of the word when what we really need to be doing is looking carefully at the movement as a whole and thinking about had to confront it. We are talking about a movement posing a direct threat to our free elections, our democracy and to many of the promises of the american nation. While we are talking about history, and you touched on this point, what is it about 40 years ago, what gave rise to our movement this movement in our society . What was changing back into people coalesce around these ideas . Kathleen the thing that brought this Movement Together and these are activist that are quite diverse. These are activists that are quite diverse. This is a group with a klansman, and skinheads, radical tax resistors, people in white supremacist religions. They are all areas of the nation. This includes men, women, and children, religious leaders, people with advanced degrees and high school dropouts, civilians, veterans, activeduty troops. The thing that allows that big swell of people to come together was a common story about the aftermath of the vietnam war. This feeling of being betrayed by the state and a sense of imminent apocalyptic threat to the white race. So they understood the sense of state betrayal as interlinked with a bunch of issues i think people probably usually think of as tacitly conservative, but conservative,c but this movement opposed immigration, abortion, lgbtq rights and more not because of their conservative belief system but because these activists saw all of those things as a right threat to the white birthright and experienced a soft moment of demographic change people have been talking about what america would no longer be majority white. They see that tantamount to racial apocalypse. These activists are really working with a feeling that the government has betrayed them and a tangible state of emergency that really pushes them toward violent action through the 1980s and 1990s and has been a platform for social networking and organizing over several decades at this point. Demographers estimate that 2042 is the date, just 22 years hence, when white americans will become the minority in this country. What i am hearing you say is that this election is really not the focus, that donald trump is not the focus, but that date which will continue to loom large to endurance best this election is the challenge for them. Kathleen i think that is a lot of what they experience as a threat, right . This movement is also very opportunistic and will capitalize on all of the other tensions in our society as it is able to, but that state of emergency, it is hard to overstate the feeling of emergency and that pressing moment of what they really feel is the racial apocalypse. The other thing to keep in mind when we think about the comparison between white power activism on the one hand and what some people have tried to establish as a leftist comparative example, i think it is very important to keep in mind the comparative casualty amount and depth and breadth of organization. What we see in the White Power Movement is generations of complex social network activity, many groups all reaches of the country bound together by deep social relationships. We are talking about activists who provide childcare to each other, pick each other up to the airport go to church , and White Current churches, get marital counsel from each other. A deeply integrated web of people and this prepares them to lunch violent activity which is completely unmatched by the left. You talked about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing as the most prominent example of what the White Power Movement. Many people thought it was lone wolf Timothy Mcveigh. I am wondering when Something Like this catastrophic actually happens, Timothy Mcveigh was successful in his operation, what does that do to other adherents . Kathleen Timothy Mcveigh we know was immediately inspirational to a bunch of other people. Leadership activity did not drop off after the Oklahoma City bombing, which is what would happen if people were horrified of that event. Activity spiked after the bombing. We also know that activists in the present moment are doing things like hanging pictures of Timothy Mcveigh in their rooms. We know they are talking about him as a saint and martyr of the movement. She is somebody he is somebody else up as an example he is somebody who is held up as an example of terrorism and people are seeking that out in a very deliberate way. I want to play a clip of recent testimony to congress by fbi director Christopher Wray talking about the size and scope and threat of the movement. Lets listen to him. [video clip] within the domestic terrorism bucket, racially motivated violent extremism is i think the biggest bucket within that larger group, and within the racially motivated extremist bucket, people ascribing to some kind of white supremacist type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that. I would also add to that that racially motivated violent extremists over recent years and have been responsible for the most lethal activity in the u. S. This year, the lethal attacks, domestic terrorism lethal attacks have all fit into the category of antigovernment, antiauthority, which covers everything from anarchist violent extremists to militia types. Since that testimony we learned about the plot against Governor Whitmer. Theshould people understand scope and size of dot plot against two sitting governors . Kathleen the most important thing people can do when you think about news about the White Power Movement and militia groups is to do the very hard work, and i understand this is an almost impossible thing to ask in this moment where we see this barrage of news stories and information all the time, but we have to do the work of putting the stories together. Because if you read the Governor Whitmer story on its own, it is just a few people with one plot. It can seem farfetched. They were apprehended. An fbi agent was able to circumvent their plans that ended up that is the best outcome we can hope for even though it was a serious plot and i would call peoples attention to the extensive discussion of explosives and the phrase removing her for trial, which elsewhere in the Movement Means a trial by hanging as a treasonous official. The work is in connecting that event to the larger landscape of what is happening, not because it is very simple to see, it is easy to falsely imagine the whitmer story is different from the boogaloo story, the proud boys story, but there are many places where we see this activity bubbling higher and higher. We see people like fbi director wray and the dhs whistleblower and whistleblower Elizabeth Newman sounding the alarm about how serious of a threat this is and we have to do the work of connecting these events. We often get stories about the christchurch attack about is violence, the charles does Charleston Shooting as antiblack violence, the pittsburgh shooting as antisemitic violence. And they are all of those things but they are also white power violence. All of those gunmen share in ideology, a set of slogans and in many cases shared ties. That is what the fbi and dhs are trying to combat and that is what they are telling our president is the threat. This is not about comparing two sides with equal threat on both sides. This is about a movement on the right that is intent on the overthrow of the United States. It is catastrophically violent, it is interested in a mess in mass casualty attacks and you do not have to listen to me as it is oriented of we should listen to the dhs and fbi. We should also listen to deradicalizers trying to get out of these groups, and are utterly overwhelmed by the volume and we have to Pay Attention to the history of these movements and a long list of anticivilian violence they have already attempted to understand the threat. Speaking of social media, congress and regulators are focusing their attention on the culpability of social media giants and helping to spread this information. What do you see as their role and what they can credibly do to help prevent this . Kathleen that is a great question. I am not a specialist on the tech companies. And the current day information flow. But i will say that this movement has been online get a a sense since 1983, 1984 when it used could work access early computer Message Boards to spread not only ideology but also things like personal ads and social materials. These are not people who are new to social network activism. These are pioneers of social network activism. That should tell us it is not all about facebook or twitter. It is exponentially made possible by facebook and twitter. But they will find other spaces when we close down these what we spaces. Spaces. What we need is a comprehensive sort of platform policies and actions, because this is a very opportunistic movement and it will go to whatever corner of the internet is not regulated. Have you been able to draw access forces sources of funding . Kathleen my book is about the period from the vietnam war to the Oklahoma City bombing. There is a bunch of funding coming in at from the occasional very rich person who puts in private money to everyday things like family donations to things like milliondollar robberies of armored cars and department stores. All of that money is very in the earlier phase, we see that money is distributed across the country instead of hoarded this is why we know this is a in any one place. In any one place. This is why we know this is a widespread social movement. It is a combination of funding sources, and one way we might be able to combat what is happening is to track the movement of money. Having raised the alarm, what remedies are there for Civil Society . Kathleen the biggest thing in my opinion as a historian is that all of this is coming from the fact that we as a nation i have never really fazed our own faced our own history of racial inequality. Unlike nations with integrated systems of racial inequality and history similar to the United States, we have never had a true reconciliation commission. We have had very little by the way of memorial efforts. The national africanamerican museum on the mall is a start, but we clearly have unanswered and divisive opinions in this nation about what race is and what function issued have in our culture. That is a conversation that has to happen. Or practically, i think what we have to realize about the White Power Movement is that it has been with us for this long not because of any one sector of societys failing. It has happened because what historians call a set of problems that we need solutions not only through legislation and surveillance resources, we need legislation, surveillance resources, the tech company to we need ordinary people to do the work of connecting these stories together. And we need to shine a very bright light on this. This is a movement that has tried for decades to disappear as a social movement through leaderless resistance and other strategies. One of the best tools at our disposal is to Pay Attention. Your book is bring the war home, the White Power Movement an. You feelg this, do a sense of personal danger . I have to say that people paying attention to the story is worth all of it. It is a hard line of thinking, and i appreciate you and the audience taking the time to think about things that are very difficult to face about where we find ourselves. But i really believe that this story getting out there could make a difference, and i thank you for doing that with me. Thank you for spending time on q a. We appreciate it. Kathleen thank you. We are unpacking the debate between President Trump and joe biden about the relative threats of the White Supremacist Movement on the altright, and the nt for movein on the left and the Antifa Movement on the left. Next up, we will hear from jillian kay melchior, who has written about antifa. Lets hear from the comments from the two men in the president ial debate. Pres. Trump somebody has got to do something about antifa and the left. Mr. Biden as the fbi director said, the threat from White Supremacists antifa is an idea, not an organization. That is what the fbi director said. Chris we are done, sir. We are moving on. Mr. Biden everybody in the administration who tells you the truth, you say it is a bad idea. Pres. Trump nt if it is a dangerous, radical movement. Dangerous,s a radical movement. After that a change you wrote for the wall street journal editorial page about antifa, coming to the conclusion that both men are right. What is your thinking . Jillian biden is right that this is an ideology, less of a group. Trump is also right that it is dangerous, as a radical movement. And that they are willing to engage in and to endorse violence. Lets understand terminology. Antifa stands for antifascists. What is the fascism that they see in american cited that they oppose . Jillian you cannot even really call it a group, it is an ideology. But the idea is that they have to confront racism, have to confront bigotry, sexism, homophobia wherever they see it. Are never quite clearly defined. So some people are using more traditional definitions of it. Kinds mean conservatives and republicans. It is this expansive sort of definition about what constitutes fascism. Because this is a leaderless seenent, no one has really what that means. Sometimes critics of antifa also use the term and artists. Are the terms interchangeably . They overlap. You have many anarchists who say they are part of antifa. He also have people who are not anarchists, who identify as antifascists. We have to keep in mind that this is a group, if you want to say it, but there is no formal membership. There is no hierarchy, no structure. It is not something you can sign up for membership in. It is more like a political affiliation or movement. They are able to organized online, but there is no topdown structure here. If it is hard to define and there is no structure, how do Public Officials ever estimate the size of the Antifa Movement . Jillian i dont think you can. Antifa,many of them are there is some overlap between the nt for movement, the anarchist movement, and black lives matter between the Antifa Movement, black lives matter. To countt is difficult them because pretty much the only way you can do it is to say do you identify as antifa or not . Is not like there is a place online. You did interview some antifa adherence for your peace. How did you find them . Jillian i will back up a little bit. This is not a new movement. Antifa. Re in this is a movement that has been around since the 1980s and came up out of punk. But there are a couple of i have reached out to them, including one of them who has self identified as antifa. This is back in 2017. When we were started to see a lot of clashes between antifa adherence and groups like the patriot player in seattle, in berkeley, in portland, clashing in the streets. The other thing is because this is a group with a hierarchy, a lot of the organization is done spontaneously, and through twitter. So as a movement was beginning to grow in 2016, 2017, 2018, i followed quite a few of the twitter accounts and contacted them that way. I will just say, some of my facebook friends have identified as antifa. It is a pretty broad base. Conversations and the people that you follow. Can you give any sense of the demographics of the adherence of the adherents . Jillian it is primarily a white movement, young, and leftleaning. With the expansive idea of them do notot of actually want censorship. What they would rather do is use would like to go in find people that they perceived to be fascist, expose them online, predicate some social confidence, whether it is losing their jobs, losing their becoming a friends, datable, and the third component of this is not everybody who identifies as antifa engages in violence. But pretty universally they refuse to that they view violence as an essential part of the movement, a legitimate response to fascism. Is something called anticipatory selfdefense. The idea that if you believe that fascism and sup in violence, it is better to the problem with that is anticipatory selfdefense looks a lot like going on a violent offense. In a system where you have rule of law, where you have the right to vote, where you have a political system that is accountable to the people, the use of violence is obviously wrong. In watching some of the clashes that have happened in american cities, particularly in seattle and portland over the past several months, you describe it as a toxic view of adherence through the clinical spectrum. Is it clear who is responsible for the violence when it does break out . Jillian i think that is typical of what lawenforcement faces. There has been violence. There are protesters there. We have seen pretty extreme violence. The one that sticks me is the repeated use of commercial fireworks, and i didnt really understand what that was, but by spoke to someone at a fireworks stand. These are sparklers, not the firecrackers that you buy and light off. These are the kinds of fireworks that are used during the fourth of july. They are pretty high grade explosives, and they are really dangerous. You have seen these deployed again and again against Law Enforcement. A probleme police see when they try to contain the problem because it is leaderless. It is not centralized. There is not one person calling the shots. People means that when there is a tendency for the most extreme where the most violent groups. Night the tone for the and there is no leader to bring them back and, theres no moderating or restraining force here. The second thing that this means is unlike past movements, where you can go after the leader, where you can go after the financial structure, it is much more difficult to target movement that is decentralized. Firecracker,a throwing sticks or stones, but in a space you will have hundreds more. I think that really poses the challenge to Law Enforcement that they have not faced yet. You mentioned mention financial structure. How is the Antifa Movement or various cells or local organizations how are they funded . I asked quite a few of them this. There is a theory going on that george soros funds this. I switched it i reached out to his organization and they denied. When i asked antifa about it, they found it completely laughable. It is into capitalist. The idea that they would take money from the billionaire come a lot of them just said no way. They would find that immoral. There is some funding, but what you see is not like antifa funding in particular. It is kind of a it is across the sector of farleft groups, and it tends to be gofundme groups. To a Legal Defense fund. Some of the money might go to antifa, some of it might go to black lives matter. Some of it may go to protesters who identify as neither, but who have a history of organizing and demonstrating. The thing to keep in mind is when you talk about funding, a lot of these things are not that expensive. There is a story that went viral about a uhaul showing up at a protest, dropping off a lot of supplies. To the protesters i talked said that even if you were to do that, rent a uhaul, take supplies, at most that would cost a couple hundred bucks. It is crowd funded. People are printing off flyers, organizing online. It is just not that expensive. Susan one of the other aspects of the protest that has been written about is the coordinated wearing of black during protests. What is the idea behind that as they move to protest . Jillian it is something you have seen in the last two decades. The idea is that if you are going to show up and protest, especially if there is a high likelihood of vandalism or violence, you want some form of anonymity, as protection against Law Enforcement. So a lot of antifa protesters embraced this tactic. They will show up wearing all black. They will often show up with face coverings, and it makes it difficult for Law Enforcement to identify who specifically is responsible for violent acts. At some times you will see somebody starting a fire, destroying a business, engaged in looting. The police will come in and try to make an arrest him and you will see a bunch of people who are identically dressed with their faces covered trying to interrupt that arrest come and it makes it easier for them to fade back into the crowd and become unidentified. That is another challenge that lawenforcement faces. Susan how are tactic like that shared . Jillian social media. It is really fascinating. A lot of these protesters will get online and learn from each other. Another really interesting phenomenon, i think the protest movement i cover the protest movement in hong kong as well, and you see protesters paying attention to what works in other countries during other protest movements and adopting those tactics. To see the use of umbrellas block surveillance cameras. Susan i wanted to go back to the nonviolent tactics and how you define the term for people who are not internet savvy. You mentioned one of the tactics is doc singh. What is that . Doxing is that she will expose their Information Online their home address, their employer. Antifa uses it as a way to ramp up the pressure on these people. It will often drive campaigns where it will for instance pick a tweet it finds objectionable, and they say call this persons employer, with the explicit goal of the employment or social consequence. Susan what defenses do people who have been targeted have against things like this . Jillian they dont have a lot, to be honest. This is a movement that is closely linked with the cancel culture, and i do think you have seen cases where people have been targeted potentially to say that they are not fascist or who have been misidentified. Unfortunately, there is not much they can do about that because this is a decentralized movement. There is nobody can appeal it to if it was a case of mistaken identity. Also, it is not illegal. Susan back in june you wrote about antifa activity in philadelphia in particular. I want to read a paragraph that you wrote. Not all of philadelphias antifascist and anarchist engage in violence and vandalism. Many support a diversity of tactics. Some run food banks and organizations offering Legal Support and mutual aid. Agitate forrch and the disinvitation of public speakers they consider fascist. Many shun electoral politics, but their ideas, including that capitalism is destructive and presence should be done away with, have been cut increasingly mainstream on the left. First of all, what was happening in philadelphia that drew your attention . Jillian philadelphia is a city with a pretty large radical left or farleft presence, and that has included in recent years more and more people who identify as antifa. That was interesting to me as a journalist. The second thing, i have seen a case of a Property Developer who his properties have been vandalized a ton of times. His family has been threatened, his employees have been threatened. It came to a peak when somebody lit on his developments on fire and caused a significant amount of damage. So what he told me is that he had gone to the police time after time, trying to get this investigated, trying to get somebody prosecuted for this pattern of harassment, and intimidation against him, and that he was having no luck getting anywhere. I was curious about why that was , and i investigated that in my story. Susan we talked about some of writenactivists, and you about them in that paragraph. And also some of the nonviolent will you used were used. You also say that many shun electoral politics. Is the philosophy used anywhere in our current politics . Jillian that is a good question, and it is one that i raised to them. I think this goes to the sort of an archivist theme or strain undercutting this entire movement. They certainly dont like donald trump, certainly dont like republicans. But a lot of them also really object to the Democratic Party. About philadelphia in particular, when i was covering the Democratic National anvention in 2016, there is significant farleft or anarchist presence that was really mad at hillary clinton, viewing the Democratic Party as corrupt, that believe it has turned it back on people of color and i think there is a general and widespread rejection of the u. S. Political system as a whole. Transitionwant a from republican politics to democratic politics. That would not solve the problem they are trying to solve. They are seeking a comprehensive overhaul of the system. Susan there is a however, that is the idea that their ideas are becoming increasingly mainstream on the left. What do you see happening in the progressive part of the Democratic Party that is enforcing these ideas that is reinforcing it . Jillian i think there is a tendency on the left that has grown to question whether america was ever great. There is also a greater tendency to see politics that you disagree with as illegitimate and to confront capitalism, to use that as a problem. Those are the three things that i think antifa that is a critique of the political system that has gone mainstream in a bigger way. I think people would have been surprised four years ago if a movement that to utterly defund the police can become mainstream, that that is where we are. I also think you are starting to see a lot of the rhetoric pioneered by anarchists, by the far, by antifa, by the more radical components of the culture become mainstream. You are also seeing an expansion of canceling people on twitter. That is something that very much has its roots in this radical leftist tradition. Susan what are the trends that you see happening in American Society at large that is encouraging the growth of movements of this sort . Whenan i would argue that the stayathome orders, i think when people are separated, dont have a chance to sit down and engage in conversation, it turns you toward more extreme ideas. The lack of engagement person to person where you have to sit down and have a conversation with someone that you like who has different ideas, and you are without that, youre going to move to a more radical position. I think that is one component of the trend. I also think that a lot of people believe that democrats and republicans it has not worked for them, and that there is corruption and widespread problems within the u. S. Political system. That is what i hear when i talk to people who are more open to embracing antifa or have gotten the step of identifying as antifa. Susan regarding specifically the idea of defunding the police, you have written that the protests occur around police stations. Societyhey envision a without any sort of Law Enforcement, or a way to punish reallywho are destructive in society . That is something i have asked and have not really gotten a good answer to. A lot of people who want to defund the Police Believe you can have some sort of community policing. They want to invest more in mental health, communities, childcare. I dont think they have a good answer for what you do, for instance, if there is a murderer or a rapist or somebody who is committing a violent crime. I do actually think that is a weak spot in the defund the police movement. Getting back to the idea of why courthouses, why Police Precincts have been targeted, they view it as legitimate targets because they want to take down the system. They disagree with the system. I think this is something really important to Pay Attention to in a cultural moment because the United States relies on its own rule of law. We rely on our court system. We rely on juries to administer justice. This is an alternative form of justice that is advancing that is extralegal, and i think in places like portland and seattle, we have seen how quickly that devolves into uncontrollable mob rule. Susan i want to go back to your reference in china and hong kong and the protesters, and maybe engage a little bit in a philosophical conversation. This country was founded on protests against establish order, and we have enshrined the right to protest in the first amendment. When you think about these questions of people protesting elements of our society, where is the line drawn . Jillian i think there is a big difference between what has happened in hong kong and what is happening in the United States. This is a difference the Chinese Communist party regularly tries to blur. They point out that hong kong protesting devolved into violence and vandalism, and the protests in u. S. Devolved into violence and vandalism. There is an alternative way of political events that you do not have in hong kong and in china. That is your right to vote, rule of law. You have the protection in the courts, a system that enshrines human rights at the center of it. You are able to have a political point. What we have seen happening in peaceful sure is that protests are squashed violently by the states. In hong kong we have seen the enactment of the National Security law that criminalizes all forms of defense, where the men where the national punishment is when you have a recourse, a political voice beyond violence, beyond vandalism, it becomes really dangerous and in property to endorse political violence. I think that is the difference. Susan i wanted to play a clip from fbi director Christopher Wray as he testified on capitol hill about antifa. Because your piece concludes with when protests devolve into violence or property destruction, and society has to respond, what the challenges are. A real thing, not a fiction. We have seen organized tactical activity at both the local and regional levels. Se have seen antifa adherent coalescing in what i would describe as small groups. We have a number of predicated investigations into some anarchist violence extremists who operate through these nodes and self identify with anarchist extremism, including antifa, and we will not hesitate to aggressively investigate that kind of activity. Susan bringing it back to the definitions at the beginning, we conclude here that not all antifa adherent ares anarchists. So when crimes are committed and it devolves into anarchy, what are the challenges for Law Enforcement at the federal and state and local levels . Cannot target a Leaderless Movement by going to the person at the top or going after the financial structure. What we have seen with Law Enforcement is they are trying to go after individuals who commit illegal acts. So the person who let the firework off, the person who burned down the building. But the challenge here is that because this is decentralized, you get one person out of the equation but there are hundreds more willing to come in. That is something Law Enforcement doesnt have a good answer for. Susan we have a big election facing us in a short period of time. Do you see one outcome or another with the election of donald trump or joe biden having influence on the Antifa Movement . Speak to antifa protesters, there is a lot of skepticism about other donald trump will step down, and there was also i think a reluctance to believe that any donald trump when could be a legitimate win. Areink a lot of them gearing up for protesting, and a towardthem are geared violent protest. There is the potential for this, is onelly if there candidate who appears to be in front at the beginning and several weeks later when the ballots are counted i get i guess if there is ambiguity about the election, there is the high potential for confrontation , including violent ones. From your perch on the editorial page of the wall street journal, do you continue to follow antifa and the altright . What interests you most . Jillian i think with movements like this, there is a tendency on the left and the right to create it is important to cover these movements because they shape american politics. They are in some ways interesting things. But i also think the interest of having a public discourse, it is important to sit down with people and hear them out, to understand their critique of the political system and the solutions they are offering and engaging with these ideas. One thing im really concerned about is the confrontations that particularly involve the use of political violence, that there is not a real debate going on. My goal is to understand what these people are thinking and to write about it in an intelligent way. Susan you can find jillian kay melchiors work on the wall street journal page. Thank you for being on the cspan q a program. We are delighted to meet you, and thank you for your time. Jillian thank you. Announcer all q a programs are available on our website or on the podcast at cspan. Org. Watching you are Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you by your television provider. Announcer coming up on washington journal, a preview of the planned senate vote on the confirmation of judge Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, with National Turn it National Journal senate reporter. Maryellen klaas, and then michael binder. Journal is next. With eight days to go until election day 2020, congas begins with a stalemate over Economic Relief and a response to the coronavirus pandemic and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the support. The senate has a rare weekend session to move forward on the nomination and democrats are holding the senate in session through tonight, into this morning. You can see live pictures of the senate floor right now