The Antifa Spectacle
Never believe that {fascists} are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The {fascists} have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
On Wednesday, October 8th, 2025, Donald Trump convened a roundtable not with journalists, but with propaganda assets posing as such. A ritual of ideological purification. The event was a meticulously staged gala for an ascendant fascism, a spectacle designed to transmute right-wing paranoia into the iron logic of state repression. Broadcast from the seat of executive power, this gathering marked a definitive escalation, representing the moment when the state’s repressive apparatus formally embraced the fabricated narratives of its most zealous foot soldiers. It was a spectacle straight from the historical playbook where the state confers legitimacy upon the gangsterism it intends to unleash. What we witnessed was the fusion of authoritarian statecraft with a volunteer corps of disinformation agents, united in their mission to criminalize dissent.
The thesis is simple and stark. Trump and his allies are constructing a legal and political infrastructure for crushing opposition, and this roundtable served as its public consecration. The so-called “independent journalists” were not there to report, but to perform. They functioned as a Greek chorus of curated grievance, lending the raw material of personal anecdote to a pre-written script of a fascist coup. Their role was to provide the human texture for a state-sanctioned lie, namely that a decentralized, anti-authoritarian political current constitutes a monolithic terrorist threat equivalent to a foreign enemy. This lie is so potent that it has sown confusion even among those who oppose fascism, leading many to inadvertently aid the state by denying the very existence of a real, historical practice of militant resistance. This is not a debate over policy. It is the tactical groundwork for a war against any and all movements that challenge capital, the state, and the hierarchies they protect.
The roundtable did not occur in a vacuum. It was the political theater designed to accompany a bureaucratic edict that the recent executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, thus justifying Trump’s coming declaration of martial law. In a nation whose laws provide no formal mechanism for such a designation, this act was pure invention, a decree conjured from the ether of executive will. The order itself is a legal fiction, but one with material teeth. As Testa’s history of Anti-Fascism makes clear, fascists have always relied on the complicity of the liberal state to wage war on their opponents. From the Italian Squadristi to the German Freikorps, extra-legal violence flourished precisely because the liberal state looked the other way or actively enabled it. This executive order serves the same function. To grant the federal state a quasi-legal pretext to surveil, investigate, and prosecute individuals not for criminal acts, but for their perceived ideological affiliations. Its purpose is to deny political space to the opposition.
Into this newly cleared terrain of repression stepped Trump’s handpicked sycophants, armed with freshly manufactured narratives from the front lines of their imagined civil war. The day before the roundtable, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem made a theatrical visit to Portland, a city long cast as the epicenter of “antifa terror.” She met with Oregon’s liberal governor and Portland’s mayor, only to immediately accuse them at the White House of “covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.” Noem went further, claiming that ICE officers told her Portland police were seen “cheering on” rioters who chanted “kill ICE agents.” This is the textbook fascist strategy of deliberate conflation; the liberal opposition of city governance is painted as being in league with the designated terrorist enemy. Such fabrications are not mere political attacks. They are the foundational justifications for invoking the Insurrection Act and declaring martial law, arguing that local authorities are complicit in rebellion and cannot be trusted to maintain order.
This performance of a city in chaos, aided and abetted by its own leaders, sets the stage for federal occupation. Into this newly cleared terrain of repression stepped Trump’s handpicked sycophants to project an image of brave truth-tellers under siege. Right-wing trolls like Andy Ngo, whose career is built on selectively edited videos that frame anti-fascists as terrorists, were given a presidential platform. The narrative was hermetically sealed. Each speaker reinforced the same core message, which was that a hyper-organized, lavishly funded, and murderously violent antifa network is waging war on America. Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, provided the official state endorsement, grotesquely comparing a diffuse political tendency to MS-13, Hamas, and Hezbollah. This is not political hyperbole. It is the deliberate reclassification of domestic political opponents as foreign combatants, a necessary precondition for stripping them of civil liberties and subjecting them to the full force of state violence. The rhetoric of the roundtable was a masterclass in authoritarian messaging, built on four pillars of deceit.
First was the construction of antifa as a monolithic enemy. This is the classic fabrication of a monolithic “Red Peril,” a tactic used by Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts to justify their war on the working class. Fascists have always required a singular, terrifying enemy to legitimize a coordinated state assault. Anti-fascism, a political tradition and a tactic, is deliberately misrepresented as a centrally commanded organization. This phantom command structure is a grotesque inversion of the truth. The reality is a decentralized, often clandestine network of autonomous cells dedicated to direct physical confrontation. This network then becomes the fictional target against which the state can direct its arsenal of surveillance, infiltration, prosecution, and eventually mass murder.
Second was the weaponization of selective anecdotes and fear framing. The “journalists” offered harrowing personal testimonies, presented as emblematic rather than anecdotal. This tactic bypasses rational analysis in favor of raw emotion. It operates within what Deleuze called a “control society”, where communication is corrupted and thoroughly permeated by power. Their function is not to create understanding but to enforce control by generating fear. Trump then masterfully inverted the power dynamic, declaring, “we will be far more threatening to them.” In this formulation, the state, with its monopoly on organized violence, casts itself as the beleaguered victim, and its planned repression becomes a righteous act of self-defense.
Third was the strategic deployment of funding claims as a tool of collective punishment. The roundtable was rife with dark insinuations about the “people that fund them,” with Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel vowing to destroy their financial mechanisms. This is the modern equivalent of burning down the offices of socialist newspapers or smashing union headquarters. The goal is to sever the arteries of support that sustain social movements, including foundations, non-profits, legal defense funds, community bail organizations, and even individual donors. It is a declaration of war on the infrastructure of dissent and community solidarity.
Finally, they invoked the language of “order” to justify blatant repression. The roundtable participants repeatedly condemned acts like flag burning, a form of political expression explicitly protected under the First Amendment, as “incitement to violence.” As Michael Parenti argued, the cry for “law and order” is rarely a call for justice; it is a call to reinforce existing class and property relations. When the state redefines protected speech as a criminal act, it is not upholding the law. It is remaking the law in its own authoritarian image.
This spectacle was a collaborative performance. Trump served as the orchestrator, setting the tone of menace and performing dominance. He grants permission for the state’s violence, creating a political climate where brutality is encouraged.
The “independent journalists” functioned as the propaganda disease vectors. They are agents of the control society, laundering far-right talking points into a format that mimics objective reporting. Their work consists of decontextualization, creating a closed loop of self-referential “evidence” designed to prevent what Deleuze called “minority becoming,” which is the creative process by which people elude dominant models and invent new ways of being. They are not reporters; they are assets generating content for a pre-determined conclusion.
Finally, the institutional enablers like Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem translated the propaganda into the language of policy. Their role affirms antifa’s core warning, that we cannot rely on the state or the law to protect society from fascism. Bondi and Noem are the state apparatus aligning itself with the fascist project, signaling to the FBI, DOJ, and Homeland Security that the gloves are off. They are the transmission belt between raw demagoguery and the cold, administrative violence of the state.
The legal and constitutional threats articulated in this roundtable are profound. The creation of an enemies list by executive decree is a hallmark of authoritarian rule. It replaces due process with political persecution. The repeated threats to prosecute donors represent a turn toward collective punishment. The casual suggestion to suspend habeas corpus signals a willingness to discard the most basic tenets of constitutional order. Once the state normalizes the repression of a “bad” ideology, no ideology is safe.
A threat of this magnitude cannot be met with appeals to civility, yet a profound confusion, particularly among liberals, hamstrings an effective response. In an attempt to counter Trump’s narrative, many well-meaning voices insist that Antifa is a fiction, a boogeyman invented by the right. This strategic denial, intended to defend civil liberties by arguing there is no organization to ban, inadvertently erases a real and necessary history of militant resistance. It reflects a deep-seated liberal faith in institutional processes and a discomfort with the physical reality of class struggle. This position fails to grasp a fundamental truth that fascists understand intuitively. That truth is that fascism is not a debate club. It is a project of seizing power through organized violence, and it can only be stopped by a force willing to physically prevent it from taking the streets.
In reality, Antifa is neither a fiction nor a centralized organization. It is a political tradition and a tactic rooted in a decentralized network of autonomous cells, a model inherited directly from the anarchist-influenced Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) groups of the last thirty years. For decades, these affinity groups have operated in relative obscurity, engaging in the unglamorous work of direct confrontation. Their purpose has never been to win elections or lobby politicians; it has been to physically deny fascists a platform. This often meant minor street fights, disrupting neo-Nazi meetings, and tearing down white supremacist propaganda, in short, “punching Nazis” to ensure they could not organize in public with impunity. This underground movement was a necessary, if sometimes crude, form of community self-defense practiced by a dedicated few.
In the social media age, where Trump’s rhetoric has made fascism a popular mass movement, this decades-old model of decentralized resistance has become the primary antagonist to the state’s project. The fascist understands power in a way the liberal often does not. As a reactionary revolutionary force, it knows its momentum depends on its ability to dominate public space through terror and intimidation. Consequently, it recognizes its most direct threat not in electoral opposition or media criticism, but in a countervailing force that meets it on its own terms. Trump’s obsession with Antifa is not a delusion; it is a calculated recognition that this network, built for small-scale street violence, is the material embodiment of the one thing that can stop a fascist ground game, which is organized, physical opposition.
Recognizing this dynamic, the state’s deliberate fabrication versus the material reality of decentralized resistance, illuminates the necessary path forward. A threat of this magnitude cannot be met with appeals to civility or the strategic abandonment of our most effective tactics. Our response must be as direct, material, and organized as the repression it confronts.
First, we must expose the illusion. The myth of a monolithic, terrorist antifa must be relentlessly debunked, drawing on the long, decentralized history Testa outlines.
Second, we must defend the legitimacy of confrontation. We must defend the right to assembly, the practice of mutual aid, and the necessity of civil disobedience. But we must also go further and unapologetically reclaim the tactic of physical street confrontation as a legitimate and essential form of community self-defense. This means we cannot abandon Antifa tactics; we must defend and expand them, understanding that denying fascists a platform to organize is not a violation of speech but a precondition for the safety and liberation of our communities.
Third, and most critically, we must organize counter-power. The state’s strategy is to isolate and atomize us. Our response must be “physical resistance, political organization, and propaganda.” This means strengthening the material forms of community defense like tenant councils, shop-floor committees, and neighborhood assemblies that serve as the infrastructure of solidarity from which immediate, confrontational defense can be launched and sustained. Our task is to create “vacuoles of noncommunication,” autonomous zones of thought and action that elude the state’s continuous control.
Finally, we must undermine the propaganda apparatus. This involves direct challenges to the platforms that host disinformation, but more importantly, it means building our own media and hijacking speech to tell our own stories. The White House roundtable was a declaration. It signaled the formal transition of authoritarian propaganda into overt state strategy, a historical pattern playing out in the new context of the control society. The individuals at that table were not journalists; they were accomplices in the construction of a police state, providing the ideological pretext for the violence to come.
Our task is not merely to interpret this grotesque spectacle, but to dismantle it. This is not a matter of winning a debate or exposing a lie; it is about breaking a feedback loop where state violence and fascist propaganda fuel one another in a spiral of repression. The battle is for the material conditions of a life free from domination. This fight cannot be won by appealing to the civility of a liberal state that has already chosen its side or by denying the existence of the very forces that oppose it. The antidote to their narrative of terror is not a better argument, but the undeniable, material practice of solidarity that refuses to cede an inch of ground.
This solidarity is forged in the streets, in our neighborhoods, and on the shop floor. It finds its voice in the echo of a century-old command to beat the fascists wherever we meet them, denying them the space to organize their project of death. Liberation is not a distant utopia to be hoped for, but a daily praxis to be built in the tenant councils, the mutual aid networks, and the physical defense of our communities. As Deleuze reminds us, “We need both creativity and a people.” The state has shown its hand. Now we must show ours.