Neil Munro at Breibart has published a controversial take on Antifa.  He sees these radicals as close cousins to those in the MAGA movement.  Before discounting Munro as out of hand, hear him out.

His thesis in no way diminishes the difference between Antifa and MAGA.  The two are diametrically opposites in a number of critical areas.  Antifa radicals are immature, violent, anarchistic, and "woke" in all the ways that count in today's culture.  The MAGA folks, on the other hand, tend to be patriotic, religious, law-abiding, and politically incorrect.  Antifa is celebrated in the media, while MAGA is constantly derided as chauvinistic and racist.  MAGA is composed of serious, middle-class working people, while the Antifa radicals come from affluent families and are like spoiled children throwing a collective temper tantrum.  Like the Tea Party, MAGA is a true grassroots movement.  Antifa, however, is directed from above by sinister anti-American forces who manipulate the Antifa street army.

So what is the commonality between Antifa and MAGA that Neil Munro sees? 

Basically, it's that both are victims of globalism.  It is an often told story how globalism has severely hurt the working middle class.  This was done by what is called  "labor arbitrage."  That's the insidious process whereby big corporations transferred thousands of American factories to China and Mexico while at the same time importing millions of immigrants and illegal aliens.  This squeezed the middle class from both ends — their jobs were exported while at the same time a new, compliant workforce was being brought in to compete with them for lower wages.  

It's the same story for Antifa but with a different coloring.  Antifa radicals tend to be college graduates.  As Munro writes, "[c]olleges are producing many graduates who've absorbed a worldview that trains them for 'metropolitan elite' job types that turn out to be far scarcer than the graduated competing for them."  This leads Antifa people to be frustrated.  They're treading water with poor prospects for the future.  They can't afford to start a family, buy a home, or come close to attaining the lifestyle their parents have.  Plus they're saddled with student loan debt that will have many of them in servitude for decades.  

Antifa radicals are raging at "the system" they think lied to and betrayed them.  Directing their anger at the universities, the media, and big business would be more in line with the root cause of their grievances.  That they focus instead on the wrong targets and are steeped with a dislike, if not hatred, for America is due to the brainwashing they received in the public schools and then in the colleges and universities.  It is also why they can't yet see the connection between their plight and immigration.  There are about 1.3 million visa workers in the U.S. who have taken jobs that rightfully belong to Americans, and that's over and above the millions of immigrants and illegal aliens allowed into the country.  Add to that the disastrous trade arrangements that the elite have previously forced on the U.S., it is little wonder that the Antifa generation live in economic insecurity and uncertainty. 

But what would happen if the scales fell from the eyes of the Antifa people, and they shook off the propaganda they have been fed and came to see how they are being used?  For the answer, Munro cites Mary Harrington, who says:

From the point of view of effecting political change, then, the tragedy of the [Antifa and MAGA groups] is that they should waste their energy quarreling among themselves.  [They] represent different subsets of an ever-swelling precariat, watching in real time as the last of the twentieth century social contract goes up in smoke.  Right now they largely see the enemy as one another.  Should that change, though, we could see our faltering political settlement shaken to its core.

This is true, and it shows the divide-and-conquer tactic of those financing Antifa and the brain trust behind the movement.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr (cropped).