Clearing up the Antifa Manual mystery

“If you are reading this, it’s because someone close to our movement trusted you with it. Please do not distribute to anyone who may attempt to harm or denigrate what we are doing.”

So opens the secret Antifa Manual, the document that recently caused a stir on Press Opinion pages.

For the record, ladies and gentlemen: It’s a hoax. It’s made up. The manual is not misinformation — it’s disinformation, an attempt to deceive and enrage, and it’s been kicking around the internet since at least 2017.

Anyone attesting to having seen or read this “Antifa Manual” has simply been bamboozled. Better to be gullible than guilty of knowingly passing along false information, right?

Locally, an honorable veteran attested in a letter to the editor to having seen the manual. The writer was confirming that Antifa had infiltrated Coeur d’Alene two summers ago, when militia members and other armed citizens stepped forward to, in their words, protect the community from possible death and destruction at the hands of Antifa and Black Lives Matter members.

The letter writer was asked for proof by other letter writers. Press historian/columnist Syd Albright was among those who defended the initial writer. Albright also researched the subject further and confirmed that what the veteran had seen was a fake.

Albright shared the following comment with The Press editor, noting that he was not defending the manual but instead was defending the man’s reputation:

“I love the character of our community, but I'm dismayed that so many LTEs are so ready to publicly humiliate others instead of sticking to debating the issues,” Syd wrote. “They sadly dismiss your call to civility.”

Here’s a link from the Anti-Defamation League explaining the fake Antifa Manual: https://www.adl.org/disinformation-antifa-manual

You can find out more about the fake Antifa manual here: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/antifa-manual-online/

And for anyone interested in understanding how Antifa members see themselves — along with insights into the pros and cons of actually forming an Antifa group — check this out:

https://itsgoingdown.org/forming-an-antifa-group-a-manual/

As for Syd’s admonition to keep civil tongues in our mouths and through our keyboard-pecking fingertips, the goal on these pages is to disagree agreeably.

In our experience, rarely do average citizens attempt to deceive (the same can't be said for some local and state political characters). More often, letter writers pass along misinformation because they want to believe it. They don’t weigh it first with a healthy degree of skepticism.

Stephen Covey wisely observed, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” Here’s hoping each of us can get closer to 20-20 vision in this age of disinformation.