Zoë Schiffer: Our first story this week is about Mark Bray. He is a professor at Rutgers University and he wrote a book almost a decade ago about antifa, and he's currently trying to flee the United States for Europe. This comes after an online campaign against him led by far-right influencers eventually escalated into death threats. On Sunday, this professor informed his students that he would be moving to Europe with his partner and his young children. Okay, Leah, you've obviously been following this really, really closely. What happened next?
Leah Feiger: Well, Mark and his family got to the airport, they scanned their passports, they got their boarding passes, checked in their bags, went through security, did everything. Got to their gate and United Airlines told them that between checking in, checking their bags, doing all of this, and getting to their gate, someone had actually canceled their reservation.
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my gosh.
Leah Feiger: It's not clear what happened. Mark is of the belief that there is something nefarious at foot. He's currently trying to get out. We reached out to United Airlines for comment, they don't have anything for us. The Trump administration hasn't commented. DHS claims that Customs and Border Patrol and TSA are not across this. But this is understandably a really, really scary moment for anyone that is even perceived to be speaking out against the Trump administration.
Zoë Schiffer: Okay, I feel like we need to back up here because obviously, the Trump administration in his second term is very focused on antifa. But can you give me a little back story on why this has escalated so sharply just recently?
Leah Feiger: Yeah, absolutely. This has been growing for quite some time. How many unfortunate rambling speeches have we heard from President Donald J. Trump about how antifa and leftist political violence was going to destroy the country? To be clear, that's not factual. Antifa isn't actually some organized group, this is an ideology of antifascist activists around the country. The very essence of being antifascist is not organized in this way. This all really kicked off on September 22nd when Trump issued his antifa executive order where he designated anyone involved in this and affiliated and supporting basically is a domestic terrorist. DHS has repeated this widely as well. And we're now in a situation where far-right influencers, Fox News every single day is like, "antifa did this, antifa did this, antifa did this." Listeners are probably familiar with antifa following the George Floyd 2020 protests when a lot if right-wingers claimed that antifa was taking over Portland and they were the reasons for all this. But it's been a couple of years since it's been super back on the main stage, so it's really just been the last few weeks.