The Guardian Celebrates Same Antifa Group That Firebombed An ICE Facility Days Prior
Luke Rohlfing
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In a Monday article published by far-left extremist Kim Kelly, The Guardian profiled the far-left militant group Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club in a glowing article about their recent involvement “defending” a trans-pride march.
The article, titled ‘If others have rifles, we’ll have rifles’: why US leftist groups are taking up arms, Kelly shadows the group, stating that their aim is to “fight white supremacy and build community defense in America’s Pacific north-west.” But she all but ignores the recent terrorist actions of one of their members, Willem Van Spronsen, who firebombed an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington, before being shot dead by law enforcement, simply including one mention of the attack, which she downplays.
That isn’t surprising considering that Kelly has supported the terrorist actions of Van Spronsen in the past, calling it “an act of righteous sabotage” in a July 14th Tweet.
Some of the reporting around Willem Van Spronsen’s last stand has been inaccurate & biased in favor of ICE. He targeted *the parking lot* where the vehicles used to deport prisoners are kept, not the prison building itself. Make no mistake: this was an act of righteous sabotage. pic.twitter.com/KRVA0ShhbR
— Kim Kelly (@GrimKim) July 14, 2019
Not only that, but Kelly includes a black flag, popularly considered an Antifa symbol in her Twitter bio. She also advertises the fact that she founded “Black Flags Over Brooklyn,” a self-proclaimed Antifa music festival.
So it is no surprise that Kelly, who shockingly writes for Teen Vogue, is willing to paint a far-left extremist group as reasonable.
Throughout Kelly’s entire article, she takes members of the extremist group at their word, without any fact-checking from outside sources. At one point, she allows a group member going simply by the name “Fozz” to downplay the group’s extremism without any push-back:
“Part of the reason we don’t cover our faces is that we don’t want to present as though we are a militia,” Fozz, a longtime member, explained. “We are not. We want to build relationships with people in our community, we want to appear approachable.”
Despite their attempt to seem reasonable, research done by anti-extremism watchdog Far-Left Watch paints a much different story.
In 2017, Far-Left Watch exposed Redneck Revolt, an off-shoot of John Brown Gun Club, which for all intents and purposes are basically the same group, for offering training manuals on “kidnapping”, “executions”, and “terrorism.”
As reported by Far-Left Watch:
“Redneck Revolt’s organizing principles mirror much of what you would see on any other far left organizing platform. They begin with their very reasonable, very easy to support, opposition to “white supremacy”. They then dive into class theory, anti-capitalist, and anti-wealth rhetoric that could have been copied directly from The Communist Manifesto. And finally, they wrap up with open calls for “militant resistance” and “revolution”.
Since their inception, Redneck Revolt has been very busy recruiting at gun shows and community events, advocating for class war, contributing to the far left anarchist website It’s Going Down, and conducting armed anti-Trump demonstrations.
But what’s most alarming are the resources they provide on their website. They promote several PDFs that endorse “armed struggle” and even offer a 36 page “Mini-Manual Of The Urban Guerrilla” (bottom right of resource page) which pictures left-wing militants using RPGs and outlines tactics for guerrilla warfare including sections on “sabotage”, “kidnapping”, “executions”, “armed propaganda”, and “terrorism”.”
So it isn’t all that surprising that a group that offered resources on “sabotage” and “terrorism” would have a member follow through on their training.
Kelly isn’t the only “reporter” at The Guardian who supports the actions of Antifa. As Dr. Eoin Lenihan, an online extremism researcher points out in a Quillette article, Jason Wilson of The Guardian not only sympathizes with Antifa, but often uses his platform at the publication to promote them:
“But Wilson is not simply a pro-Antifa activist who also happens to write for the Guardian: He actively leverages his role as a regular Guardian writer to promote Antifa, whitewash its violence, and signal-boost its leaders (whom he presents as “experts”)—often under the guise of neutral news reporting.”
It is clear that The Guardian has an Antifa problem. The question is whether they are going to do anything about it.
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