Leftist-anarchist website Its Going Down.org provides “a report from Pittsburgh anarchists” describing their “full disruption and confrontation” of attendees of a Donald Trump rally held last week in the Pennsylvania town of Oakland.
Their message for Trump supporters is stark, clear and disturbing; you are a target of violence.
Calling the Trump campaign one “direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Barack Obama’s presidency, and what they see as an existential threat to white supremacy” the article states in no uncertain terms that: “Support of Donald Trump and by extension these aims is enough to justify oneself as a target of anti-racist violence.”
The Pittsburgh anarchists explain who they are and what their plan was to disrupt a townhall and rally held with Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity:
Actions against Trump’s Oakland event were called for by various student activist groups on the University of Pittsburgh campus as well as by WHAT’S UP?!, a local anti-racism group. ANSWER, a front group for the Pittsburgh chapter of Party for Socialism and Liberation, issued a call for a rally and march to Trump’s main campaign event in downtown.
Anarchists and autonomous anti-fascists knew from the very beginning that our goal was full disruption and confrontation with both Trump and his supporters. We felt that established organizations such as WHAT’S UP?! and ANSWER would both work to disrupt this goal in favor of their own visions of what a successful anti-racist action should look like. We chose to organize our own contingent so as to maximize our autonomy and control of our actions and desires.
Video of the attacks on Trump supporters shows that the groups succeeded in achieving their goals.
Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV called the clashes “almost riot like.”
The anarchist website explains how it sees the Trump campaign and why it considers any Trump supporter a fair target. We print this last section of the full article unedited so Breitbart readers can see the context of the group’s open call for “collective force.”
As you read this, bear in mind that Pittsburgh is about a two hour drive from Cleveland, Ohio, the host city of the 2016 Republican National Convention in July.
We see the rise of Donald Trump as a major aspect of the Right’s direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Barack Obama’s presidency, and what they see as an existential threat to white supremacy in this country. This reaction from the right wing has taken other forms, as we have seen with the armed Bundy Ranch standoff, the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the non-fatal shooting of demonstrators during an anti-police violence demonstration in Minneapolis by white nationalists.
According to The Atlantic, aside from the demographic markers of lower class membership, whiteness, and low education attainment, the main factor tying Trump’s base together is support for authoritarianism and white supremacy. The main policy points of Trump’s campaign have been rooted in the widespread criminalization, detention, and expulsion of Muslims, Arabs, latin@s, blacks, and other non-whites from the United States.
Support of Donald Trump and by extension these aims is enough to justify oneself as a target of anti-racist violence.
It is our belief that recent events have marked a shift in the political struggle of this country. More and more of the populace has fled mainstream political forces for “outsiders” seen as on the fringe, such as Trump and Bernie Sanders. We see a demarcation developing between the Left and the Right – between those who support corporate control of resources, the expulsion of non-Whites, and increased police militarization for urban pacification, and those who support individual autonomy, collective ownership of resources, and racial and socioeconomic justice. The inherent bilateral structure of the American political party system leaves us with bastardized social and political movements – the “Left” must abandon its Marxist tendencies to fit into a Democratic narrative, while the “Right” must attempt to fit its authoritarian Judeo-Christian white supremacist ideology into the Republican establishment.
As we saw inside Trump’s campaign event in Chicago, on the streets of Minneapolis, and in downtown Pittsburgh the other night, militant physical conflict between these two forces – between those who wish to maintain white supremacy, and those who wish to see its abolition, has come into the open and forefront of American political discourse. We see an opportunity here to forcefully attack both the dominant American political structures while at the same time fighting back the far-Right tendencies that we see with Donald Trump’s rise to political fame.
It is our hope that the threat posed by the white supremacist Right, as well as the exploitation of the opportunities that we speak of, can help our movements to more clearly place ourselves in the struggle for liberation. Militant self-defense from authoritarianism can help grant us the individual and collective autonomy necessary for any liberatory revolt to occur. We see this as a time for libertarian anti-capitalists to learn to take seriously the threat posed by the new Right and to take the steps necessary to forcefully fight the structures of white supremacy. This is not a time for the introspection and critical self-reflection of the popular anti-racist praxis, but a time for mutual self-defense and collective force against the American white supremacist system of apartheid.
The time has come to Burn the American Plantation.
– Your comrades from the hills and valleys of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Trump is scheduled to speak tonight at 7pm in Harrisburg at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.
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