People gathered in downtown Asheville on October 8 to protest against Israel’s role in the conflict against Palestine, including Claire Clark — a trans woman who is involved in various activism groups in the area.
Clark condemned Israel’s leadership and its “apartheid regime,” saying others have told her she needs to take the side of the “occupation.”
“Them telling [me] I should support the occupation, I should support the settlers, I should support the apartheid regime, and I should oppose the resistance of Palestinians. And why? Because of the allegedly LGBTQ-friendly policies of the Zionist government and the supposed enmity of Muslims and the Palestinian people,” Clark said.
Clark called those assumptions a “bold-faced lie,” claiming the real enemy of queer and trans-identifying persons is a lot closer to home.
“I have no friends in the Zionist regime. I have no friends among the settlers. I have no friends in the White House, the halls of Congress, the chambers of the Supreme Court or the corporate boardrooms where exploitation is turned into profit through the malign sorcery of capitalism. And there is not one enemy of mine among the Palestinian people fighting for their freedom,” she explained. “My enemies, the enemies of the LGBTQ people, are right here in these United States.”
The comments from Clark gained attention on right-wing news sources, including The Post Millennial, which identified Clark as a “trans-identified Antifa militant.” The article also calls Clark a member of “trantifa,” which the author describes as “Antifa’s transgender militant arm.”
Antifa isn’t an organization with leadership hierarchies — it’s defined as “a decentralized, leaderless movement composed of loose collections of groups, networks and individuals” who hold anti-fascist sentiments.
There are, however, far-left organizations with anti-fascist viewpoints in existence, including Redneck Revolt (a socialist group that supports rights for both Muslims and the LGBTQ+ community (reportedly three chapters in North Carolina) and the John Brown Gun Club (the Charlotte chapter posted on Twitter recently that it “helped defend Monroe Pride,” assumedly Union County Pride).
In Clark’s case, she is a part of the Party for Socialism and Liberation which believes “the only solution to the deepening crisis of capitalism is the socialist transformation of society.” The PSL isn’t an organized militant group, but rather calls on the need for a revolution from the working class to change the trajectory of American society.
From the party’s website:
“For the great majority of people in the world, including tens of millions of workers in the United States, conditions of life and work are worsening. There is no prospect that this situation can or will be turned around under the existing system.”