Eoin Lenihan writes for the Federalist about one particularly bad influence on the Biden administration’s homeland security policy.
Last week, the Media Research Center (MRC) published a report gleaned from Freedom of Information Act requests that shows how the Biden administration has weaponized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to target political opponents. DHS provided $352,109 in grant funding to the University of Dayton’s PREVENTS-OH counter-extremism project. The grant application was based in part on the work of openly anarchist Antifa-affiliated Michael Loadenthal, a postdoctoral researcher at the university who, by his own admission, is a far-left violent extremist.
In 2021, Loadenthal spoke at a “White Nationalism Workshop” and an “Extremism, Rhetoric and Democratic Precarity” roundtable at the University’s “Social Practice of Human Rights Conference.” During the white nationalism workshop, Loadenthal introduced himself by stating that he is militant Antifa; he then continued his talk by teaching audience members how to securely dox people to their employers. He detailed how he uses a VPN, burner phones, encrypted communications, and “sock puppet” accounts to dox people.
Throughout the talk he framed his work in explicitly “antifascist” terms, explaining how he employs “antifascist intelligence” to dox individuals online and in real life. He detailed what “antifascists” do with that information: “We contact employers, landlords, commanding officers, school officials, family, clergy, and we pressure service providers [PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon, Amazon etc.] … and people will kick people off.” When asked during the question-and-answer section how people can help his work, he stated. “Donate money … We have defense funds because we get into trouble. A lot of the things we’re doing are illegal … a lot of it involves breaking the law.”
Loadenthal’s talk is a naked attempt to launder Antifa tactics of online harassment, doxxing, deplatforming, and illegal activity to make them sound academic.
