Seattle’s CHAZ Is Straight From The European Antifa Playbook

Antifa’s newly created Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle is straight from the playbook of their European counterparts who have established anti-police no-go squatter areas in European cities for decades. The tactic of declaring an area “autonomous” and outside of police and government authority is relatively new to the United States hard-left, but has a deep history among Antifa extremists in Europe and has led to pitched battles and scenes of massive violence when police have tried to enforce government authority in Antifa strongholds. While the original Antifa movement was a paramilitary wing of the German Communist Party in the 1930s, the current Antifa began in the “autonomous scene” of West Germany in the 1980s and went hand in hand with anarchists occupying various buildings, many of which remain occupied, with national laws unenforced, to this day... Similar attempts have been made in Berlin to remove Antifa from Riga 94, located on Rigaer Strasse. Police have often faced ultra-violence from Antifa during attempts at either making arrests or evicting members of the group. Riots have often accompanied eviction attempts as well. The biggest operation to remove Antifa from Riga 94 took place in June 2016 when British company Lafone Investment, which owns the building, attempted to remove Antifa in order to repurpose part of the building into accommodation for asylum seekers. Many Antifa extremists were initially evicted from the building and took to the streets for several nights afterwards to riot. Antifa extremists attacked police, banks, smashed many storefronts, and set cars on fire across Berlin in response. Antifa extremists remain illegally occupying Riga 94 despite the numerous attempts by law enforcement to remove them, with the area being used as a base last November to attack police, which left 19 officers injured. Sabotage and the setting of potentially fatal booby traps have also been used as a tactic by Antifa to prevent evictions. In 2017, Antifa members in the far-left extremist shop squat Friedel 54 connected the door handles of the building directly to the electricity mains in order to electrocute officers serving the warrant. The tactic failed as police turned off electricity to the block prior to entering. Germany is, of course, not the only country where Antifa have illegally occupied buildings to create autonomous communes and safe spaces for extremist activities. In France, an alleged headquarters was discovered by police in the Paris suburb of Bagnolet where Antifa members were actively manufacturing bombs, and several were caught with Molotov cocktails.