Can someone retrace why and how the term "Antifa" suddenly rose to prominence after Charlottesville? Leftextremists called themselves Antifa for decades here in germany but it was never really a thing in the US. And then, suddenly, everyone is Antifa and they are some big, new threat worth talking about? The US does not have a problem with left-wing extremism. Giving the few people using protests as an excuse to destroy stuff the term "Antifa" as if they are a huge, organized left-extremist terror group hellbent on overthrowing the state is ludicrous.
Am I completely wrong suspecting that it probably comes from some alt-right-forum or talk show or radio host finding a "new", scary term to describe counter-protesters and using it via the mass media to scare the general public? Like...there were people destroying property during the Women's March. Never heard a single mainstream media outlet using the term "Antifa" to describe them.
Sort of. 'Antifa' have been the go-to boogeyman of the alt-right for a while now, a means of self-legimisation by providing an active 'threat', because they are quite aware of the power that violence has to the image of an ideology. Hell, there's been reports of these people
dressing up as Antifa in order to fuel that image.
And trust me, this image of (American) Antifa as highly violent and a threat to (prior to Charlottesville) peaceful right wing protesters has its purchase. I've a friend in Singapore who, by way of another friend of his with a much more active interest in US politics, gained a lot of his understanding of the concept through that lens. Then I told him about the Trump supporter who
actually shot someone at a University protest, and he has since re-evaluated that stance.