The Untold Story of Syria's Antifa Platoon

I first met Karim Franceschi in November 2016, in the hills of northeastern Syria, at a remote compound everyone called the Academy. It was a former oil facility that had been turned into a training camp for the volunteers from the U.S. and Europe who were coming to battle the Islamic State with the Kurds. A lot of the fighters were soldier-of-fortune types, veterans of the French Foreign Legion or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at least half were militant leftists like Franceschi, an avowed communist who wore a Mao pin on the lapel of his camouflage uniform. He had been one of the first to arrive, in October 2014, and by the time we met, he had seen more combat than any other Westerner around.

Wearing Masks at Protests Didn’t Start With the Far Left

Over the past year of clashes between “alt-right” and left-wing protesters and an escalating debate over violence as the means to an end, the word “masked” has become an epithet of sorts to describe protesters on the left.

Last month in famously liberal Berkeley, California, where right-wingers have been planning rallies that seem intended to stir up raucous counterprotests—and which have drawn hundreds of masked opponents—city leaders passed an ordinance allowing the city manager to set ground rules as to what kinds of items cannot be worn or carried into protest areas. Masks and other face coverings have been banned at every local demonstration since.