Dem Minn AG Keith Ellison claims 'nobody knows' what Antifa is after he promoted their handbook in 2018

Democrat Attorney General over the state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, claimed that "nobody knows" what Antifa is when he was on MSNBC for a media hit. He posted himself holding the book, "Antifa, The Anti-Fascist Handbook," in 2018. 

The book, by Mark Bray, who recently fled the country after President Donald Trump declared Antifa to be a domestic terror group, was posted in a picture by Ellison in 2018, according to reports at the time.

While he appeared on MSNBC, Ellison was discussing Antifa when he said, "If there really is no Antifa as an institution organization, then anybody who's associated with Antifa-like ideas, you know, can be persecuted. All you have to do is say, 'Prove you're not Antifa.' Well, how can you prove a negative, and suddenly they're just going to be able to use that to justify suppressing speech, arresting people, deploying ICE, deploying the National Guard, deploying the military.

"So the fact is that nobody even knows what it is. The first person I ever heard use the word Antifa was Donald J Trump when he was going on about how there were good people on both sides of Charlottesville, that's the first time I ever heard anyone use the term. So now it's amorphous thing. And if nobody's really Antifa, then everybody could be."

According to the Washington Examiner, half the funds that the book Ellison was holding in 2018 written by Bray are “funneled to the funding arm of Antifa International, which financially supports hundreds of affiliates around the world, including accredited antifa chapters in America, such as Atlanta Antifascists and the Central Oregon Anti-Fascist Action.”

Additionally, in 2020, Keith Ellison's son, Jeremiah Ellison, publicly declared that he supported Antifa. “I hereby, officially, declare my support for ANTIFA," the AG's son said at the time.

The left-wing group, now declared a domestic terrorist organization by the Trump administration, has members who have been responsible for a number of violent attacks. These have included assaults of journalists, firebombing of pro-life pregnancy centers, and the bombing of a Michael Knowles event in Pennsylvania.