Quite Similar Means and Ends

Many people assume political ideology is a clear line which is neatly contained within two distinct extremes. The far left which contains oppressive Communism and its mirrored counterpart tyrannous right-wing Fascism. However, I would contend partisan ideology is not a line and but a circle. Proceed too distantly in either direction you arrive to nearly the same place. While left and right wing political moderation exists at the top of the circle the extreme left and right eventually meet at the bottom. Unjust right and left wing governments and groups undertake similar methods to achieve control. Censorship, disinformation, social isolation, and shaming any who object to acquire political status. The deceptions used in the last century by formerly Communist Russia and Fascist Germany were noticeably similar. Using the state to demonize minority groups and hunt them down was a method favored by each regime when it served their goals.

North Korea’s Communist ruler and the ultra conservative theocratic leader of Afghanistan may offer vastly different ideologies but use the same coercion. Dictator Kim Jong Un has created a surveillance state of malnourished citizens that are forced into permanent government controlled labor. He executes anyone deemed a threat to his power and this practice included members of his immediate family. The population of North Korea is censored, propagandized, and trapped firmly in the steely grasp of its ruler and his party. Yet this is nearly the exact situation in another nation which has a supposedly different ideology.

Just right of North Korea’s left wing extremism on the bottom of the circle of ideology is the oppressive religious leadership of Afghanistan. Supreme leader Hibatullah Ahkundzada’s regime denies basic rights to women, jails or murders gay people, and marginalizes other faiths. Those not converting to the state religion become targets for violence and edicts based on religious supremacy crush dissenters. While the specific tools of such tyrants may vary, both North Korea and Afghanistan’s leader seek to control its entire populations behavior, speech, and thought. The political doctrines are different but the brutal enforcement used by such regimes is the same. Several non partisan human rights groups have classified both countries as totalitarian states.

The political roots of a regime or group may differ but there is a uniformity of insidious methods each undertakes to gain power. Believers might value extremist ideology but it is merely a vehicle for its leading members to acquire influence and dominate those around them. While neither actual Communism or Fascism has ever controlled the United States government, America has similar past and present extremist groups. Violent extremism has been a tool of the fringe left and right of United States politics for quite some time.

Former Klansman and US DEMOCRATIC Senator Robert Byrd

The Ku Klux Klan was among the largest and most violent ideological groups in modern history. Nevertheless, its membership and expansion required support from both dominant American political parties for over a century. Several congressional leaders from the Republican and Democratic Party were members of the varying types of the KKK. Democratic Senator Robert Byrd was the longest elected senator in American history, a former Klan member, and sat in congress until the Obama administration. Each party has over time sought to publicly bury prior associations and distance themselves from this detestable group. Yet history is not as forgiving.

Historical studies note the KKK had three separate and distinct versions which existed in the course of more than a century. The First Klan was assembled amid eighteen sixty-five after the Civil War to resist legal changes and Reconstruction. This version was largely contained to southern states and the United States Federal Judicial Center states it “embarked upon one of the worst campaigns of domestic terrorism in American history. The group employed vicious assaults, rape, and murder to trample on the political rights of African Americans and attempt to oust the state’s Reconstruction government.”i. A significant amount of people ceaselessly broke the law in the name of extreme ideology. “Asserting they had no recourse but to wrest back political control by force, white men of all social classes joined the Ku Klux Klan in large numbers” seeking to ensure “that Democrats would defeat” the current Republican “Radical ticket” in all future elections.

US CIVIL WAR General and President Ulysses S. Grant

The “reign of terror” in South Carolina eventually required American President Ulysses S. Grant to dispatch federal troops. Grant designated the prior areas in a “state of rebellion” and suspended legal protections to further empower federal troops. Due process was ignored to quickly allow the capture and incarceration of Klan members. Such tactics led to six hundred arrests by the year’s end. Violent ideological associations rarely consider their actions provide reasons for a government to ignore their rights and destroy them. The Republican government in South Carolina did win two additional elections under the watch of federal troops but illegal opposition began again once they were removed. This resulted in Confederate veteran and Democratic party candidate Wade Hampton winning the election of eighteen seventy six. “The absence of troops guarding the statehouse allowed Democrats to take control of the building, establishing openly white supremacist rule and effectively finishing the Republican Party in South Carolina.” The group’s power faded several years later following federal prosecutions and Reconstruction’s failure.

The Second Klan was revived in the shadows of World War I by extreme right wing anti-immigrant, pro-war, and religious groups. This variety of the KKK hated a significantly larger part of the American public with the addition of Jewish and Catholic Americans to its enemies list. They further despised legal immigrants, left wing activists, and most labor groups. This restructured version presented itself as a fraternal order and spread propaganda via paid recruiters, books, newsletters, and films. This reincarnation of the Klan used rallies, fairs, and supposed local family events to spread its network of influence. The group presented itself being a patriotic union and framed its opposition as threats to racial purity and un-American. This variety of extremists has been described as moral authoritarians for using criminal means to persecute its enemies under a mask of morality. Yet this practice of constant intimidation to quell opposing views is a common feature of the most zealous groups.

Klan leaders formed a national following using oaths of loyalty, extensive funding mechanisms, and business style recruiting paperwork. Local “klaverns” reported to state and national leaders which allowed for centralized control.ii By the nineteen twenties, this syndicate claimed to possess millions of members.iii Yet media reports about masked vigilantes violating the rights of others exposed them in the press. Broad public opposition to such tactics forced them to largely shift back to political means of recruitment. This first exposure was among the earliest causes that led to the organization’s eventual fall. Internal corruption, failed promises of government control, and prominent leaders being convicted of violent crimes undermined their moral posturing. The Great Depression further deprived these ideologues of most funding and dwindling member rosters slowly consumed the organization. While it was officially dissolved amongst the nineteen forties, the political sickness did not cease but went underground.

A Third Klan reportedly was functional in mere years after the last one. This iteration abandoned the propaganda attempts of the Second but undertook the murderous illegality of the first version. At this point, the entire organization had underwent a complete political transformation. The illegal secret society founded by Democrats to oppress minority citizens faded away until right wing religious zealots revived it. Expanding upon the same hateful rhetoric of the past it sought to become a profitable business venture under a mask of patriotism and morality. After that failure, a smaller but even more extreme militant faction would emerge to form its most brazenly violent form. While this final KKK version reportedly had less than ten thousand members, it was not centralized, and consisted of several factions with cells of members spread across the nation. Essentially, it was an umbrella group with different factions both cooperating and competing for greater funding and influence.

The Third Klan conducted a decades long wave of murders targeting black Americans. They additionally murdered and intimidated Catholic, Jewish, and most other dissenting white citizens as well. The group bombed churches, intimidated minority voters and politicians, and killed innocent citizens attempting to utilize their legal rights. The Civil Rights Movement’s increasing success rapidly increased social pressure to deal with the final Klan. Mounting crimes and chaos would eventually unify a significant portion of the federal government in efforts to destroy the group.

NAtional Guard Troops Arresting KLan Members and Rioting Extremists in Mississippi AMID 1962

During the Kennedy administration, right wing Klan factions were determined to prevent the desegregation of American schools. Rioting local mobs amongst nineteen sixty-two, that included Klan members, were determined to prevent the University of Mississippi from desegregating. President John F. Kennedy deployed more than five thousand National Guard and military troops to disperse and arrest them.iv With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, new prosecutions followed, and two months later Federal Bureau of Investigation employed a secret program to continue dismantling them. J. Edgar Hoover expanded the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Program, COINTELPRO, begun years earlier “to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Worker’s Party, and the Black Panther Party.”

The program was used to surveil, infiltrate, and sow discord amongst members of any group it deemed a threat. The FBI used such means for over a decade to diminish and cripple much of the KKK network. Nevertheless, Hoover’s tactics were utterly illegal. This again demonstrates if a violent group is not legally controlled officials will use illegal means to do so. The FBI leader reportedly gave agents a mandate by stating “You will do whatever it takes to defeat the Klan.”v Using disruption, infiltration, and prosecution, the Bureau and Department of Justice eventually rendered the Third Klan into several pieces. Yet divisive political groups and violence remained.

American society has again become oversaturated with divisive politics that guide far too many in their decision making. Group membership concerns a great deal more people than it should. Status grubbing politicians weaponize ideology by calling their political opponents enemies to be defeated. It does not matter what political party accomplishes the goals a majority of Americans desire, getting things done legally matters. Opportunistic political activists ceaselessly attempt to politicize any person or topic they have an opinion about. Many old and new media outlets have overwhelmed much of the public with the manipulative framing of wedge issues and promoting group think. The ideological rot has even in some cases devoured the rational thinking of those reporting it.

A cult like observance of political grievance is the center of many such people’s ideology, no matter left or right. Yet this is not a mentally healthy environment for any person. Life should not revolve around politics and activism because they are not important factors in leading a worthwhile life. Future generations shall not care who you support if they transform society into a malformed bog of political hate. One concerning example of deepening extremism are those calling for more political violence and celebrating its occurrence. Detractors are not merely irrational or unethical but fascists and authoritarians. Immediately comparing anyone you disagree with to the most evil regimes in history is not a rational argument. If everyone must be named a Fascist or Communist that you disagree with, the common factor is you. Such disregard for any ideas outside extreme doctrine increases the chances some will feel justified in using violence.

KDP Propaganda Portraying Nazis and Socialist PARTY MEMBERS AS Similar POlitical Threats

Now I would offer another modern group of ideological militants using political violence. The First Antifa was a paramilitary German Communist Party (KPD) group named Antifaschitstische Aktion or antifascist action.vi It was established during the early nineteen thirties to oppose fascism but prior to this, the German Communist Party had also sought to hamper moderate groups like the Socialist Democratic Party. They labeled them fascists akin to the Nazis despite they clearly were not. The KPD sought to replace the German Weimar Republic with “the establishment of a Socialist soviet dictatorship modeled on that of the USSR.”vii They also worked with Nazi groups in Prussia to destabilize other elected governments in collaboration with the Soviet Communist Party.

The First Antifa did not seek alliances with moderate groups but attempted to grow its power by attacking other parties. The KPD failed to forge a political coalition with moderates until the Nazis had gained too much control. A wave of brutal murders, fascist secret police actions, and their failure to accept moderate allies before it was too late, led to the First Antifa’s destruction. Yet its ideological use of violence did not vanish but spread to varying groups that went underground. This is a similar trait shared with another extremist group I have mentioned earlier. While some groups continued to support the doctrine of the First Antifa beyond the end of WWII, none ever took the official mantle and name for themselves.

The Second Antifa, is a decentralized extreme left wing umbrella group that has been active in the US for over two decades. “The movement is leaderless and comprised by a diverse, broad range of small groups working toward similar objectives...Antifa groups choose to go where fascism goes in an effort to quash hateful rhetoric and activity. They believe that hate speech is not free speech and therefore the rights of free speech do not apply.”viii The attempt to illegally silence American citizens based on political doctrine is the definition of censorship. This distinctly moral authoritarian streak mirrors those present in extremist groups both Communist and Fascist.

Christopher Wray, a former director of the FBI “warned” among two thousand and seventeen that his organization was inspecting “a number of what we would call anarchist extremist investigations, where we have...subjects who are motivated to commit violent criminal activity on a kind of an Antifa ideology.”ix Yet it not just an ideology, it is a political coalition which includes different groups and violent partisans. A July two thousand and twenty-five attack on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas further justified officials seeking to dismantle Antifa related groups. The ambush was according to the Department of Justice launched by a cell of Antifa members. Masked armed individuals dressed in black vandalized vehicles and security cameras in the parking lot. When a local police officer tried to engage one, another member of Antifa opened fire. The group “was heavily armed with over 50 firearms” and used “an encrypted messaging app to coordinate their movements.”x

The American State Department classified the German Antifa OST group a foreign terrorist organization during November of two thousand and twenty five.xi President Donald Trump issued an executive order twelve days later stating US based Antifa groups were domestic terrorists. They undertook a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government...it uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide”. Reported tactics include “armed standoffs...organized riots, violent assaults” on law enforcement, in addition to “threats against political figures and activists.”xii Distinct similarities exist between modern Antifa violence and that used by its Communist predecessor.

Nevertheless, it also shares some tactics with its supposed ideological opponents. Antifa uses propaganda similar to the Klan but with inverted beliefs. It calls most detractors Fascists, the Third Klan called them Communists. Antifa claims to champion minorities and decries white citizens are colonizers, the Second Klan championed white protestants and labeled minorities the infiltrating force. Both groups have attempted to frame all use of violence by them as necessary and violence against them as oppression. While Antifa has not yet caused as many deaths or more than a century of violence which the Klan did, they seem intent on doing their best imitation. When riots occurred in some cities of the United States five years ago, some Antifa members gladly participated. Thousands of private businesses and hundreds of public buildings were incinerated, destroyed, or shut down by sustained illegal attacks.

AN OverRUN Police Station inside the CHOP ZONE

Some may not recall the CHOP zone in Seattle during the riots of two thousand and twenty. That was a place in which occupying rioters were allowed by the ideology of local officials to overrun a part of the city. Among them, declared Antifa members, were proud to firebomb buildings and undertake months of violent crimes. They replaced law enforcement with mob rule for time in a few areas. This led to multiple deaths, sexual assaults, dozens of arsons, and left those Americans within helpless to the demands of their occupiers. Those who attempt to claim that Antifa’s role was not destructive may wish to explain why the city paid out legal damages for years. A two thousand and twenty-one congressional report about these activities estimated over a billion dollars in damage had occurred nationwide.xiii

Why does the value of human life, safety of women, and destroying property seem to not matter when ideology seizes control? What greater tyranny can be possible than forcibly invading people’s neighborhoods and denying their rights based on politics? While Antifa members were not the only group of lawless rioters in that instance, they were a quite active one and continue to be. People who believe their political ideology supersedes legal constitutional protections are a threat to every citizen. The law is supposed to be applied equally to any group that defies it, no matter its name.

The right to freely dissent within the limits of the law is a foundational concept enshrined within free speech. However, legal resistance is not causing death, destruction, and seceding from the United States. Another group tried that as well, they were called Confederates. Violent political attacks do not just affect merely those targeted but create a chilling effect to stifle the entire public’s constitutional rights. Such acts further inspire ruling officials to undertake ever more sweeping reforms to crush those using criminal means. The problem is not just left or right extremism, but all political extremism. Political alignment does not necessarily mean groups are very different and history supports they can be quite alike.
Sincerely,
C.A.A. Savastano

References
i. Jake Kobrick, The South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trails of 1871-1872, United States Federal Judicial Center, fjc.gov
ii. Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940, VCU Libraries, Virginia Commonwealth University, labs.library.vcu.edu
iii. Famous Cases and Criminals, Field Office Histories, KKK Series, Part 2, United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, fbi.gov
iv. Claude Sitton, October 2, 1962, “3,000 Troops Put Down Mississippi Rioting And Seize 200 as Negro Attends Classes; Ex-Gen. Walker is Held for Insurrection”, New York Times, nytimes.com
v. Ibid., Part 3, fbi.gov
vi. Tyler Biscontini, 2024, Anti-fascism, EBSCO Information Services, ebsco.com
vii. Parliament, The Weimar Republic (1918-1933), Deutscher Bundenstag (Federal Parliament of Germany), bundenstag.de
viii. Cait Caffrey, 2025, Antifa, EBSCO, ebesco.com
ix. Lisa N. Sacco, June 9, 2020, Are Antifa Members Domestic Terrorists? Background on Antifa and Federal Classification of Their Actions, United States Congressional Research Service, congress.gov
x. Matthew Davisson, October 16, 2025, “DOJ says a ‘North Texas Antifa Cell’ attacked a Texas ICE facility on July 4, two men now indicted with a terrorism offense, CBS News, cbsnews.com
xi. Designations of Antifa Ost and Three Other Violent Antifa Groups, November 13, 2025, Office of the Spokesperson, Unites States Department of State, state.gov
xii. Exec. Order, 90 FR 54223, FR Doc. 2025-18709, Office of the Federal Register, United States National Archives and Records Administration, federalregister.gov
xiii.United States Congressional Record. Volume 167 - 117th Congress (2021-2023): What Constitutes An Insurrection (2021, May 18), p. H2429, congress.gov

Related Articles
Enduring Political Pestilence
Manifest Malice
The Menace of Malice