Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips visited George Mason University with former Antifa member, Gabe Nadales, to see if students believed the far-left group should be labeled a terrorist organization.
This all comes after Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) and Bill Cassidy (R-La) brought about a resolution to do just that — designate Antifa a “domestic terrorist group.”
“The definition of terrorism is using violence or threats of violence to achieve political means,” Phillips started. “Do you think Antifa falls under that?”
Most students answers may surprise you.
“I think if they’re starting fights and things at Trump’s rallies, then I think so,” a student responded. “Because people get hurt, people get killed. Those rallies can get very dangerous. So if they’re going there with the purpose to incite violence, I think that’s definitely a terrorist organization.”
“Any violence for a political reason is by definition terrorism,” another stated.
“Yeah it does, doesn’t it?” one student pondered. “That’s bad. That’s really bad.”
The students interviewed seem to lean to the left, but they still saw Antifa as a group that had gone too far with their threatening tactics.
“Do you think groups like Antifa reflect negatively on the left as a whole?” the Campus Reform reporter asked.
“Oh, yeah definitely,” a student said. “They make us look more violent.”
“I just think violence isn’t gonna get anybody to listen from either party,” another explained. “I don’t think it’s gonna solve anything.”
Some students doubted Antifa’s propensity to violence — as a whole — but Nadales spoke from his previous experiences with the group and put the dubious claims to rest.
“So you think most of the people in it were violent?” a student asked the former Antifa member.
“I think there’s a tendency to be violent,” he responded. “There’s a lot of people. While not everybody engaged in violence, I think there was an attitude that said ‘this is okay.’”
Take a look at the video from Campus Reform below: