CNN Host Praises Antifa Violence: ‘Yes, People Get Hurt’

On CNN’s “United Shades of America,” host W. Kamau Bell compared the violent left-wing extremist group Antifa to a beloved children’s music star, sanitized their violence, and admitted that innocent “people get hurt” — but implied it’s worth it.

The show ended by claiming that white supremacists killed former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X.

Bell devoted a segment of his most recent show to the radical leftist group Antifa, whose violent nature has been a matter of record for years.

“In 2020, many white Americans dealt with complicated feelings about the police for the first time,” Bell asserted. “The right-wing saw that, and they [sic] did what they do: They pulled a bait-and-switch, and returned to an old boogeyman: Antifa.”

To short-circuit that racial reckoning, Bell claimed, conservatives preyed on their audience’s ignorance and support for traditional occupations like the police.

“Images of people clad in black fighting in the streets was an easy idea to sell to people who say things like, ‘Blue Lives Matter,” said Bell. “Ain’t nobody blue,” he added.

Bell then sanitized the aims and intentions of the frequently riotous, international movement.

“‘Antifa’ is short for anti-fascist,” he said, echoing fellow CNN personality Don Lemon.

“If you’re unsure how you feel about that, picture a table: On one side of the table is Hitler and Mussolini, and on the other side is the popular [children’s] performer Raffi.”

“Which side of the table you sitting on?” he asked. “I’m with Raffi.”

Bell then met with two members of Portland’s Antifa movement, saying snarkily, “Oh, Tucker’s gonna be so mad.”

In 2017, Fox News host Tucker Carlson played footage of Bell egging on an Antifa crowd and accused him of “peddling hate” and “stoking violent extremism as a side gig.”

Perhaps referring to Joe Biden, Bell told the two Antifa members that “a lot of people on the Left have done a lot of work to say, ‘Antifa is not a group; it’s an ideology’ — and then, you guys actually are a group.”

After presenting the two disguised members of the group — one male, one female — as charming and sensitive, Bell conceded that Antifa has a long history of unleashing violence and injury in its wake.

“Look, this fighting for democracy and against fascism thing has always been a messy business. And, yes, people get hurt, property gets damaged, and things get confusing,” Bell said.

Portland protesters like the two featured on Bell’s show have caused $2.3 million in damage to the city’s buildings alone, according to Newsweek.

But, Bell said, Martin Luther King Jr. died violently.

In addition to hand-to-hand combat, Bell’s guests said that Antifa doxxes people saying what they consider to be “violent, racist, disgusting things” while “hoping they get fired, or have to find a new job,” or get shunned by their in-laws.

Bell capped off the segment by claiming that Malcolm X was one of America’s “black icons assassinated by white supremacy.”

Bell was apparently referring to a supposed deathbed “confession” by former NYPD cop Raymond Wood. A letter allegedly written by Wood and revealed posthumously this February by his cousin, Reggie Wood, claimed that the NYPD worked with the FBI to entrap and arrest two of Malcolm X’s security guards, to set him up for assassination. But one of the two guards no longer guarded Malcolm X at the time of the arrest, and the other guarded only the leader’s empty house. The letter has Wood refer to himself by the wrong job title; Wood’s daughter says the signature is a forgery; and “historians don’t believe it,” according to The Washington Post.

In reality, three members of the Nation of Islam — Thomas Hagan (Mujahid Abdul Halim), Norman 3X Butler (Muhammad Abdul Aziz), and Thomas Johnson (Khalil Islam) — gunned down Malcolm X on February 21, 1965, for rejecting the sect’s more hardcore racist teachings.

But then, blame-shifting and gaslighting about left-wing violence seemed to be the point of Bell’s show.

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