What are the most notable instances of Antifa-related violence in the United States?

1. Charlottesville, August 2017 — the spark that became shorthand for street fighting

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville culminated in violent street clashes between white supremacists and counter‑protesters, with accounts describing counter‑protesters using clubs and dyed liquids against white supremacists and a wave of arrests tied to the broader melee that followed the march and vehicular attack; researchers have debated whether those actions meet definitions of terrorism, concluding the violence bore many features of politically motivated violence but lacked demonstrable elements like coherent intent required by some terrorism databases ^{[3] [1]}.

2. Portland, 2019–2020 — sustained confrontations with federal forces and a fatal shooting

Portland became a focal point for repeated night‑time clashes that involved masked counter‑protesters, attacks on federal facilities, and pitched battles with police across months in 2020, and it was also the scene in which Michael Reinoehl, a self‑described anti‑fascist, fatally shot a member of the far‑right group Patriot Prayer during unrest—an event that fed national debate over whether antifa activity had escalated to lethal violence ^{[2] [5]}.

3. The George Floyd protests and the question of organized antifa violence

During the nationwide protests after George Floyd’s murder, Attorney General William Barr and others blamed “antifa‑like” tactics for unrest, and law enforcement in several cities reported alleged antifa involvement in episodes of looting and attacks; independent assessments and law‑enforcement reviews, however, found that criminal opportunists accounted for the majority of looting and that social media amplified false claims of coordinated antifa plans in numerous towns ^{[3] [4]}.

4. Notable isolated actors and city incidents: Van Spronsen, Newark, Berkeley and Seattle

A handful of individual attacks have been publicly connected to people who identified with anti‑fascist ideas—Willem Van Spronsen’s 2019 attack on a facility associated with immigration enforcement drew attention as an example of an individual taking violent action purportedly on antifa grounds, law enforcement in Newark investigated alleged antifa involvement around a looted Target, Berkeley has seen repeated 2017 clashes between masked counter‑protesters and right‑wing demonstrators, and Seattle’s East Precinct confrontations in 2020 included thrown projectiles and fireworks that pressured police lines—each incident illustrates localized violence rather than evidence of a unified nationwide campaign ^{[4] [6] [3]}.

5. Scale, lethality and the contested narrative

Quantitative reviews and academic databases show a stark asymmetry: multiple studies and trackers report that far‑right extremist actors have been responsible for most U.S. political homicide in recent decades, with only a vanishing number—if any—of homicides credibly attributed to antifa adherents; at the same time federal officials have at times labeled antifa as a domestic terrorism threat and some prosecutions (including later high‑profile federal cases) have alleged organized plots—an unresolved tension between isolated violent acts, contested prosecutions, and broader political narrative framing ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

6. What the record actually supports and what it does not

The evidence in public reporting supports that antifa‑identified individuals and black‑bloc tactics have been involved in repeated street clashes, targeted attacks on perceived fascist or government targets, and at least one high‑profile fatal shooting; it does not, however, demonstrate a monolithic nationwide antifa organization orchestrating most protest violence, and multiple sources warn against loose labeling that conflates criminality, spontaneous clashes, and organized extremist plots without clear evidentiary links ^{[10] [1] [4]}.