ENVER — Normally, the whole point of a protest is to garner attention. But for antifa, shutting down the free press is crucial to its crusade that is supposedly against fascism.
The group began to take fault with this journalist filming the protest, which occurred on a public street in the heart of downtown. Leonne warned me that my phone would get smashed.
“This is not a threat,” Leonne explicated. “But I am warning you what will happen.”
Another member did indeed shove my phone in my hands as I recorded, and shortly thereafter, a violent scuffle broke out within the mob, during which another person’s phone was smashed on the ground, after a summit attendee was summarily met face-to-face with an antifa member who tried to break his phone. As I tried to film the brawl, various members of the group targeted me with green and white lasers intended to burn my retinas and break my phone camera. It was then that Leonne issued a direct threat: If we did not leave, they would break my phone.
Those white and green lights self-identified members of Antifa are flashing at me? They’re intended to break my phone’s camera and blind me by burning my retinas. I do have a mild headache, but I stayed mostly safe by leaving after men told me they would break my phone or else pic.twitter.com/NhKbHHlck2
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) June 19, 2021
Antifa does not like the Democratic Party. Flyers handed around the protest identified a number of the gatherers as literal communists, and plenty of the evening’s chants railed against President Joe Biden without a mere mention of his predecessor. (There was a Donald Trump pinata, however, hung by a rope from a tree.)