But the differences couldn’t be more profound. Yes, there are a small number of antifa counterprotesters who show up to scuffle with white supremacists when the latter mount a protest (if you’re unfamiliar, historian Mark Bray explains what antifa is). And yes, there have been other incidents, such as at Trump’s inaugural, in which antifa activists committed acts of vandalism. But the far right is 1) large; 2) highly organized; and most importantly, 3) directly tied to the president of the United States and the Republican Party.
Antifa is none of those things. It is tiny, not organized on a broad scale, and has precisely zero ties to any prominent Democrat. The president of the United States and leader of the Republican Party is celebrated and endorsed by the white supremacist right (“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” tweeted David Duke Tuesday); the extreme left views Democrats as an enemy. Trump directly echoes and repeats the arguments and claims of the extreme right, as we saw him do on Tuesday; no elected Democrat shares the radical anti-capitalist ideas of the extreme left. Trump hired Stephen K. Bannon, who ran the white nationalist website Breitbart, which Bannon himself described as “the platform for the alt-right,” to run his campaign and then to be senior adviser in his White House.
It’s hard to know for certain how many converts the white nationalist movement has gained in the past year or two. But what we know for certain is that since Trump seized control of the Republican Party, all manner of far-right racial activists — white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis — have been emboldened to be more public and vocal about their rancid beliefs. Trump validated them and encouraged them as a candidate, and continues to do so as president.
No conservative can claim that he or she didn’t realize that’s what Trump was doing when they endorsed him, advocated for him and supported him. They accepted that Trump was an ignorant fool and a misogynistic creep and deeply corrupt — and they also accepted that he was welcoming the racist right with open arms. It’s nice that so many of them have come out and said they’re opposed to murderous Nazi terrorism. But however they might try to explain away their own complicity, they can’t blame it on liberals.
I usually am. 
