GOP Anti-Antifa Act could send masked protesters to prison for 15 years

Anyone who doubts the speed with which paranoid authoritarianism becomes the dominant view of today's GOP should read the Unmasking Antifa Act a bill recently introduced in the United States. Congress by four Republicans of the House

would punish any person who "injures, oppresses, threatens or intimidates any person" engaged in any right or privilege protected by law while "wearing a mask" up to and including 15 years in prison.

The extreme vagueness of the "oppressed" and "intimidates" raises concerns that anyone who simply shows up during a demonstration in a mask could be dismissed for a very long time if the bill becomes law .

People should not go to jail for attending demonstrations. This is why there is an amendment to the Constitution protecting the right to freedom of assembly. And 15 years is an extraordinary punishment for the behavior, no matter how threatening; Convicted murderers are often not incarcerated for so long.

"Antifa" is an abbreviation for a diverse and diffuse range of anti-fascist and anti-racist activists. This is not a coordinated movement at the national or centralized level. And various antifa chapters are only a problem for neo-Nazis. Antifa activists appear as counterproters during Fascist events, such as the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, where thousands of white nationalists armed confronted with antifa members and other protesters

distinguishing themselves from other organizations that do not like the Nazis by their willingness to use violence against the Nazis, but most of people have little to fear from their local antifa chapter. In more than 30 years of antifa activity, there was a confirmed death caused by a member of the antifa group – in 1993, when a Nazi in Portland, Oregon, was shot during a fight in a gas station. On the other hand, right-wing extremists were responsible for 670 deaths, 3,053 injuries and 4,420 attacks in the United States between 1990 and 2012, according to a report by the West Point Counter Terrorism Center . The bill was introduced by representative Dan Donovan (RN.Y.), a former attorney known to have helped Eric Garner's murderer to come out of prison . He is co-sponsored by New York Republican colleague Peter King; Rep Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), A conspiracy theorist who suggested that George Soros may have orchestrated last year's violence in Charlottesville through a complicated operation of false-flags ; be p. Ted Budd (NC), a Club favorite for growth.

Hundreds of bills are introduced in Congress every year that go nowhere. They serve as ideological statements or efforts to appease the campaign's contributors. But even when these bills, as they are called on the Capitol, are never put to a vote, they serve to demonstrate the priorities of their sponsors. And those behind the Unmasking Antifa Act are not entirely cranks with fringes. King, 25, is backed by centrist billionaire Michael Bloomberg who recently organized a fundraiser at his home on behalf of King

. Several decades ago, several states introduced anti-masking laws. go after the members of Ku Klux Klan. These laws were used more recently by local law enforcement agencies to [] arrest counterproters at Nazi rallies .