President Trump has accused antifa of inciting violence while some mayors and governors say there are signs that white supremacists are to blame.
Amid the rush to assign blame for the widespread violence and vandalism breaking out in American cities, accusations that extremists or other outside agitators were behind the destruction continued to ricochet online and on the airwaves on Sunday.
Numerous political leaders, starting with President Trump, have leveled accusations at various groups, asserting that some radical agenda is at play in transforming once peaceful protests over the death of a black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis police custody.
“We have reason to believe that bad actors continue to infiltrate the rightful protests of George Floyd’s murder, which is why we are extending the curfew by one day,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota tweeted on Sunday, after previously suggesting that white supremacists or people from outside the state fomented the unrest.
None of those pointing the finger presented much evidence to support the accusations, however, and some officials conceded the lack of solid information behind such claims.
“The truth is, nobody really knows,” Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general and a former Democratic congressman from Minneapolis, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“There’s been a lot of videotape taken by demonstrators of people who are very suspicious, who really did start breaking windows,” Mr. Ellison said. “There have been other photographs of cars with no license plates. Very suspicious behavior.”
It would all have to be investigated, he said.
People associated with both the extreme right and left are being accused of igniting the conflagration. The Trump administration blamed what it called the radical left, naming antifa, a contraction of the word “anti-fascist” that has come to be associated with a diffuse movement of left-wing protesters who engage in more aggressive techniques like vandalism.
Others said white supremacists and far-right groups were responsible, pointing to online statements by adherents that the upheaval would hasten the collapse of a multiethnic, multicultural United States.
“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday, although it was unclear on what legal authority he could make that call.
The president has periodically criticized antifa, but it was not clear that Mr. Trump’s declaration would have any real meaning beyond his characteristic attempts to stir up culture war controversy, attract attention and please his base.
Antifa is not an organization, and it does not have a leader, membership roles or any defined, centralized structure. It is a vaguely defined movement of people who share common protest tactics and targets.
More important, even if antifa were a real organization, the laws that permit the federal government to deem entities terrorists and impose sanctions on them are limited to foreign groups.
