SGR

Okay, but regardless of whether or not it's your definition or Webster's, your application of said definition does not fit America (yet).

I'm not convinced the original antifa helped the Nazis because they thought they were 'too stupid to take seriously'. I think that it is more likely that they helped them because they were both opposed to the existing liberal order and, as has been said time and time again, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

I could be completely wrong in Antifa ushering in a more authoritarian state, but here's my thought process. Antifa has hidden behind BLM during the protests and has done serious damage to the BLM brand. While you and I can probably both look at the protests and differentiate between BLM and Antifa in regards to the majority of the violence, I'd imagine the average American can't (and the media on the right will be more than happy to play into this and lump both groups together). As a result, many Americans will associate some of the most heinous violence in these protests with BLM rather than with Antifa. This will play into racist tropes that people on the far-right spread about black people and will probably make their message more convincing to some who don't know any better. Racial tensions will continue to escalate - as more whites come to associate the violence in the protests with BLM, blacks will likely start to see an increase in racism in their daily lives. Not only that, much of this violence has been wreaked in majority black communities with many black owned businesses suffering the consequences. Is it possible some blacks will blame this violence on racism perpetuated by whites? Certainly is, I'd think (and they'd have a case for it too - Antifa is mostly white). The greater the escalation in tensions between any parties is, the closer we get to violence. The only thing that can prevent violence is communication. But large scale violence in a country generally precludes an authoritarian government response.

Since Antifa has subverted and used BLM, it's possible they could do the same to other protests in the future. If police do get defunded or reduced, and existing police are demoralized, crimes will increase because opportunists take advantage of the situation. If our government wanted to be more authoritarian or have more authoritarian power (and there are segments of our government that would like nothing more), then what they'd want to do is allow Antifa to wreak as much destruction as possible, demoralize and restrict local police as much as possible, limit or mitigate people's ability to defend themselves as much as possible, and then, after enough time, the general US public would beg for the government to exercise as much authoritarian power as it needs, as long as people feel safe again. And we'd all be worse off for it, in the long run.

But that's the essence of my train of thought - the government, if they wanted, could leverage Antifa to increase their authoritarian power by gaining consent of the masses through fear. Similar in nature to how the US security state was formed after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. People will give up liberty if they are fearful enough.