Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison appeared on MSNBC on Saturday to downplay Antifa as nothing more than an “amorphous” idea without any real institutional structure, despite his own previous posts of support for the militant extremists.
Ellison’s comments come amid growing scrutiny of his own past flirtations with the militant far-left group, including an infamous 2018 tweet where he proudly posed with a copy of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” a book authored by Rutgers professor Mark Bray, who has now fled the United States.
During his MSNBC appearance, Ellison argued, “Because if there really is no Antifa as an institutional organization, then anybody who’s associated with Antifa-like ideas, you know, can be persecuted… The fact that there is no—nobody even knows what it is.”
The Minnesota AG claimed the first time he heard the term “Antifa” was from Trump himself during the Charlottesville controversy, dismissing the group as a vague concept that could be weaponized to suppress speech, deploy military forces, or arrest dissenters.
Conservatives and other logical people, however, point out that Antifa operates with clear hallmarks of an organized entity: flags, uniforms, local chapters, meeting places, email sign-ups, and member directives, a far cry from the intangible “idea” Ellison describes.
Minnesota AG Keith Ellison says that Antifa does NOT exist as an Organization.
Antifa has a flag, uniforms, official colors, local chapters, meeting places, email sign ups and member directives.
Keith Ellison is lying.
— Ian Jaeger (@IanJaeger29) October 11, 2025
Ellison’s attempt to whitewash Antifa’s reality is particularly hypocritical given his history.
For example, Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, publicly declared his support for Antifa in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests, tweeting, “I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA.”
In January 2018, as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ellison posted a photo on X of himself smiling while holding Bray’s handbook at a bookstore, captioning it: “At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.”
Bray’s book expressly defends militant “anti-fascism,” including the use of violence.
The professor also pledged 50% of the proceeds to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund, which he described as supporting “the legal or medical costs of people facing charges for organizing pertaining to anti-fascism or anti-racism.”
Ellison’s post, of course, drew immediate backlash from conservatives, who accused him of endorsing a group known for violent tactics against perceived political enemies, including riots, assaults, and property destruction.
Following Trump’s executive order last month, which labels Antifa a domestic terrorist organization for its role in spreading political violence and suppressing free speech, the Rutgers professor who wrote the handbook became the target of a petition to have him fired by the university’s Turning Point USA chapter.
The petition, hosted on Change.org, accuses Bray of being an “Antifa financier” and an “outspoken, well-known antifa member,” stating that his presence at Rutgers endangers students and promotes terrorist behavior.
The organization, whose founder, Charlie Kirk, was executed last month at a college speaking event, stated in the petition:
“With the current trend of left-wing terrorism, having a prominent leader of the antifa movement on campus is a threat to conservative students on campus. Dr. Bray has regularly referred to mainstream conservative figures such as Bill O’reilly as fascist while he calls for militant actions to be taken against these individuals. This is the kind of rhetoric that resulted in Charlie Kirk being assassinated last month.”
Bray claimed that the backlash was so severe that he was facing death threats, prompting him to flee to Spain.