Because I am a Platinum Circle member of the organization, I was treated to a socially distanced, masked tour of ANTIFA (ahn-TEE-fah) World Headquarters in Downtown Portland. I was instructed to be at the front of the building at dawn. It was a morning filled with new information, some surprises and a few wake-up moments.
First, my Lyft driver had to make her way through the fires, carnage and the black-clad thugs that dominate the downtown area, but then we spotted the building at the end of the street, shining with the light of truth via special baby pink spotlights.
I had expected ANTIFA World HQ to be more academic, maybe in an old office building now in need of repair, or possibly, owing to the ANTIFA methodology, an abandoned steam plant near the river. I was not blindfolded and driven to a different spot. No, I arrived at a newish building constructed with a nod to communist-era East German Brutalism.
Once I was checked-in and past the rigorous security check point (and received a rather thorough pat down), I found myself in a four-story atrium that my official escort, D’Citalopram, let me know was called “The Hall of the Fallen”. The vast space had pleasingly placed paint splattered Confederate monuments including a provocative grouping of Klu Klux Klan members that have served in Congress. I found this curious. I would have expected memorials to great fighters of fascism from the past century, but you know how negative ANTIFA can be.
The atrium houses three information desks, two orientation theatres and a gift shop. The second and third floors hold a vegan cafeteria and a nap lounge.
D’Citalopram and I were each accompanied by a Slovenian model down an escalator where I toured the soup kitchen preparing the evening’s bags of soup. We passed a large meeting room where a How to Destroy Federal Property workshop was just breaking lunch. Meeting Room 2 announced an afternoon workshop titled Back to Basic Black on an easel that also let me know that the morning session was called How to Plaster Posters on Your Uterine Walls.
From the fourth floor we took a private elevator to the penthouse where I had a meet-and-greet with the ANTIFA CEO. From her office I took in magnificent views of Mt. Hood, the Willamette River, The Columbia River, the Pacific Ocean, the southern islands of Japan, and panoramic views of Western Russia.
Back where I started in the atrium, an impromptu goodbye by all the available ANTIFA staff took me by surprise with their heartfelt rendition of All The Single Ladies; plus I was presented with ANTIFA swag: a black giftbag with an ANTIFA black mask, gas mask and hoody, a hand calligraphed, framed ANTIFA oath, a DVD of the Nuremberg Trails, and a handy pocket glossary of coded White Nationalist hand signals.
It was a morning I shall never forget. I am grateful to my connections with ANTIFA for the chance to see the inner-workings of this threatening terrorist organization.
