Terrorist or freedom fighter, the classification of groups that employ political violence are hotly contested, one group could be on a terrorist database in one state but considered a civil rights group in another. In the eyes of all terrorist organisations, they are not terrorists but activists striving for their conception of justice; they are martyrs fighting for their vision of happiness and security. Rose City ANTIFA (RCA) members throw themselves into fire and steel in Portland in the name of their ideals; this essay discusses the justification of RCA’s ideas of global justice and how they mobilise them to recruit followers and sympathy for their organisations; this is achieved through comparing definitions of terrorism with RCA’s actions, and comparing their ethos with themes of cosmopolitan justice.

Terrorism’s wide definition

Defining terrorism is difficult due to its broad nature, to give a universalist conception of terrorism is to limit the perspective of civil rights groups and marginalise civil rights movements that are paramilitary in nature such as the American Revolutionary War. Whereas specific definitions are kept out of reach by changing contexts and wide assumptions, arguably the prevailing condition of terrorist acts is fear (Cooper, 2001). Fear is generated by terrorist attacks with the purpose of destroying a collective support for leaders or policies that the agents of violence oppose (Carr, 2007); yet, the generation of fear is a common tactic in warfare (Ganor, 2002), what makes terrorism abhorred by international society? First, terrorism as an objective action is shunned as it deliberately targets non-combatants: Azzam distinguished terrorist acts from his ideas of jihad in his fatwa rejecting the targeting of civilians directed towards Al-Qaeda (Gunaratna, 2002, 22). Second, terrorism ignores institutions of international society such as war and rule of law: Ganor (2002) distinguished guerrilla fighters and terrorists as guerrillas respected institutions of war by establishing themselves in areas and remaining combatants until the end of conflict; whereas, terrorists ignore institutions of war by shifting between non-combatant and combatant to adapt to situations and ignoring the civil protections of non-combatants in war through their ignorance of law in attacks (Carr, 2007). The base conditions that define a terrorist act is violence with the goal of inciting terror to achieve a stated or implicit political, religious, or ideological goal (Aven and Guikema, 2015), this definition implies terrorism is an act, and that terrorists are individuals that commit to terrorism.

Rose City ANTIFA

Before the comparison can begin, RCA needs to be introduced: RCA is a left-wing extremist group founded in 2007 (Michel, 2017) to oppose right-wing politics through direct action operations of physical violence and mental abuse towards its subscribers, state or civilian; and use of arson and sabotage to hinder them in any way (Bray, 2017). They created the Torch Network in 2013 (Copsey, 2018) to connect, and spread awareness of ANTIFA groups in the US and are currently the most senior ANTIFA organisation in the nation; but, they are not a group that purely exist to oppose right-wing politics, RCA specifically espouses socialism with a militant approach, it strives for a classless society without divisions of gender, wealth, and states and achieve this through mobilisation of society to their values (Bray, 2017).

Recent civil rights movements in the U.S. have provided a wealth of information on RCA’s actions, the distinguishing of RCA’s actions from terrorism and popular protest is difficult to achieve due to the ambiguity of their members; but, it is consistent with historical examples of left-wing terrorism. RCA’s tactics are self-described as “Art and Struggle” (Copsey, 2018): the demonisation of rightism in posters, artworks, social media, and street art; and use of sabotage and violence against perceived right-wing entities. RCA regularly brandishes anti-right art in popular protests (Beauchamp, 2020) and publishes them on their Tumblr account (Antifa International, 2020). In addition to these protests, RCA also engages in organised violence using popular protest as an ambiguous cover, utilising improvised explosive devices and weapons in chaotic riots against public servants and counter-protestors (jseattle, 2020), training their members to deliver grievous bodily harm in clandestine manners (Washington Times, 2020) and sabotage operations as seen with the destruction of government records in Multnomah, Oregon (FBI, 2020) by black-clad individuals: the uniform of RCA (RCA, 2020).

It is important to note that RCA targets civilians as well as state institutions and public servants as they publicly harass anyone who displays right-wing beliefs as seen with the harassment of American-Vietnamese journalist Andy Ngo (Beauchamp, Z. 2020) and the request of right wing individual’s home addresses and car licence plates (RCA, 2020) to plan their harassment. These tactics are largely consistent with other left-wing terrorist organisations such as the Australian Liberation Army (Campion, 2020) which also relied on arson and bombings within and outside protest movements. While the tactics of RCA may have correlations with other terrorist groups, what truly makes them terrorists is fear. RCA justifies their terrorism through their stance on utilitarianism (Gray, 2008): whereas Mill believed that no one’s inherent rights and freedoms should be infringed on one’s path to happiness. RCA views individuals as giving up inherent rights and freedoms when they adopt right wing beliefs. RCA utilises fear to silence right-wing entities or coerce them to accept leftist values (Bray, 2017) through violent attacks and popular protests.

The public viciousness of RCA serves a dual purpose: to threaten rightists; and publicise their organisation. This phenomenon is similar to Al-Qaeda’s recruitment tactics of high visibility of attacks and perpetuation of its practices through the textual discussion of the organisation to draw in those interested in its values (Schoeneborn and Scherer, 2012). RCA recruits through formation of autonomous cells with their approval through distributing articles on forming them and insulating them from intelligence agencies (Anonymous, 2001) through the Torch Network (Torch, 2020). RCA also directly recruits individuals: RCA welcomes applications and accepts members based on their past activist history and sharing of RCA articles and beliefs on their social media (RCA, 2020). The acts of RCA serve to draw in individuals to investigate the organisation and expose them to their beliefs, their conditions of recruitment look for committed people that proselytise their beliefs and spread their ideas of global justice.

Global Justice

The acts of RCA are justified by justice: the ideas of who deserves what and why, and a commitment to address moral inequalities (Coacci, 2020). RCA’s conception of justice is expanded to global bounds as they believe all humans have a right to liberty, but those whom infringe on others liberty lose this right to liberty (Bray, 2017), they also reject states as vehicles of justice (Torch, 2020) and rely on grass roots groups worldwide to address inequality. These conceptions of justice are consistent with cosmopolitan justice due to their implications.

RCA’s monotheistic approach to justice through directing its operations towards any who oppose them indicate a singular, universalist conception of justice: that happiness and security is achieved through classless societies (Beitz, 2004). This implication is consistent with cosmopolitan ideas of justice: justice as an agreed upon conception must be applied globally (Coacci, 2020). Specifically, RCA’s beliefs correlate with Rawlsian definitions of justice: that justice is the fair distribution of fundamental benefits and burdens throughout global society, and these benefits and burdens do not need legal recognition to be respected (Coacci, 2020). The intolerance of RCA is an address to the limits of Rawlsian global justice: that without a global community possessing a common social and cultural life, no singular conception of justice can be achieved (Goodhart, 2002).

RCA’s ideas of global justice may stem from Rawlsian cosmopolitanism, but their methodology is firmly rooted in Pogge’s ideas to implement cosmopolitan justice. Pogge espoused the dispersal of sovereignty to communities than states (Pogge, 1992) as statist conceptions of justice ensure the protection of state than individual sovereignty (Coacci, 2020). The Poggeian belief that human rights should be enforced by fellow compatriots also strongly reflects the fear tactics RCA employs against the right-wing (Pogge, 1992): as RCA sees themselves as people defending liberties of the marginalised and seeks to prevent further oppression through militant action against the oppressors (RCA, 2020).

Ironically, despite using popular protests, the key justification of RCA to resort to terrorism than solely relying on methods that respect the rule of law is because RCA sees state justice superstructures as “tools of the fascists” (Torch, 2020). The socialist beliefs of RCA are largely incompatible with ideas of state sovereignty as they view courts and laws as controlled by the right wing to limit the influence of their organisation (Bray, 2017); thus, they view “Art and Struggle” to be their only valid way of initiating grass-roots change but also rely on institutions of representative democracy such as popular protest.

RCA uses these ideas of global justice to recruit followers through espousing their ideas of a classless society. RCA’s idea of a classless society is achieved through the dismantling of traditional divisions of race, gender, and states. They see divisions between gender as an opportunity for marginalisation and believes states as tools of oppression by the right-wing (Bray, 2017). They publicise their beliefs and rely on people reaching out to them to gain potential followers, aspirants meet with an RCA member who interviews them to determine their suitability of ideology and utility to the organisation (Richardson, 2020). But if RCA is a militant group that disavows statist institutions, why do they simply not press gang individuals akin to the child soldiers of Kony? This is because RCA utilises ideas of global justice, simply because they truly believe in the ideas and principles they promote, in their various guides on constructing an ANTIFA cell, they encourage ANTIFA groups to communicate with marginalised communities and defend their interests (Torch, 2020). Thus, potential recruits of RCA are drawn from a desire to protect the disenfranchised and punish the oppressors; these recruits agree with RCA’s approach to justice and apply to join the organisation.

Conclusion

RCA is a terrorist group that utilises moral cosmopolitanism to justify their direct action and psyops operations against right-wing entities; through organised violence such as arson, sabotage, and harassment of individuals; and distribution of articles advertising their beliefs and demonising their opposition, RCA uses physical and mental violence to generate fear in state authorities and civilians to weaken support for policies and individuals that they disapprove of. They justify these actions through their beliefs in Rawlsian cosmopolitanism: that justice is the fair distribution of rights and burdens throughout global society but promote it through Poggeian methodology of eschewing statist institutions of justice such as courts and laws for community approaches where compatriots instead of states protect and enforce rights and liberties.

The publicised harassment and violence spread through news media and social media is used to attract followers by generating textual discussion of the group and attracting followers that are committed to their mission and agree with their conceptions of global justice. RCA utilises ideas of global justice to recruit followers and create new cells through promotion of their cosmopolitan ideas of justice and its protection through their articles, social media, artwork, and protests throughout Portland. Terrorists all utilise ideas of global justice to attract followers and justify their actions but using RCA as a case study is a valuable example of how the line between civil rights organisations and terrorist organisations is blurred and crossed when relying on an inherently terrorist methodology.

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