The Acceptability of Violence: A Contemporary Analysis of Antifa Using Classical Theory

• In Event: 2323 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 4. Interrogating Social Action and Political Leadership I

Abstract

This paper will examine how three founding scholars – Karl Marx, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and W.E.B. Du Bois – would evaluate and respond to the rise of Antifa groups in the United States. The activists of Antifa are everyday people – your mailperson, grocery clerk, teacher, or bus driver – who have taken a stand against injustice and identified what they are going to do to prevent its growth. We, too, as sociologists, must grapple with how we should use our knowledge and skills to fight injustice. This paper seeks to reclaim the legacy of the scholar-activist in sociology, by employing the classical theories of three founding sociologists – Karl Mark, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and W.E.B. Du Bois – to analyze a real contemporary issue. If we, as sociologists, or Americans, or people, are not fascists, we are Antifa. This paper explores what that means and how three classical scholar-activists would have responded.

Author

• Heather-Ann Layth, Mississippi State University