He went viral for shouting down Antifa. Now he's having second thoughts

Cheering and drumming boomed across downtown Seattle on June 11. Scores of protesters opposing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies were mostly peaceful that day.

But as the sun sank and the sky turned gold, things shifted.

Tom Clarke, 38, had followed the protest to the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building. A Texas transplant with a Mexican mother, Clarke works as a lawyer and was outraged that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been arresting migrants attending hearings at the building’s immigration court.

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Around sunset, Clarke was standing on a raised plaza across the street and said a few people dressed in black with face coverings and “trash-can looking” shields appeared next to him.

“They started knocking over planters, taking chairs,” Clarke said.

He assumed they were taking the chairs down to block the street. Clarke confronted them, upset. He yelled that he’d volunteered at local legal aid clinics for immigrants.

“You’re not here for the immigrants,” Clarke shouted, captured in a video by right-wing influencer Jonathan Choe. “Violence is not the answer.”

“No one’s getting violent, dumbass,” one of the demonstrators shouted back.

“Destruction of property is not the answer,” Clarke yelled.

“Wah wah wah,” the demonstrator hollered, heading down an escalator.

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This video of a progressive Democrat disagreeing with aggressive protest tactics has been “liked” by tens of thousands on X and Instagram. Clarke’s encounter captures the debate splitting the political left as protests condemning Trump’s policies take place in the Pacific Northwest again.

A recent surge in protests here has been mostly peaceful. But as many progressives worry about Trump ignoring judges’ rulings on deportations or deploying the National Guard to manage protests, they’re also discussing how far to go in resisting the president. And with fresh protests expected nationwide on the July 4 holiday, these concerns are still top of mind for people taking to the streets to criticize the president’s policies.

Surveys conducted over the last year have found the number of Democrats who support using force to remove Trump from office more than doubled, as has the number of Republicans who supported using the military to stop protests against Trump’s agenda.

In the weeks since Clarke went viral, he’s been reflecting, and he said he's feeling more conflicted about what he witnessed that day.

“It's kind of like the Martin Luther King versus the Malcolm X approach. Both had a similar goal,” Clarke said, referring to Civil Rights leaders who championed nonviolent resistance versus self-defense “by any means necessary,” respectively.

“I think some people were just so mad that they got to the point where they felt like destroying property, setting fires was the only way to get more attention on the situation,” Clarke said. “I understand what their tactics were, but I just didn't agree that those tactics were appropriate on that night.”

Seven demonstrators were arrested that night for allegedly pushing or punching police. Clarke and others called the black-clad protesters “antifa” – adherents to a fringe leftist philosophy that fascism must be resisted by violence if necessary – though it’s unclear, precisely, who they were or what their beliefs are.

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In the following days, Democratic elected leaders urged protesters to demonstrate peacefully. At large rallies such as the “No Kings” events that took place across the country on June 14, the vast majority of participants in the Pacific Northwest marched, chanted, waved signs, and went home. But a few confronted police or media filming them.

In Portland, a demonstrator allegedly stabbed a federal officer in the skull with a pointed stake, according to federal charging documents. And a right-wing Internet personality in Seattle was punched in the head and allegedly concussed.

'Tainting' the protest movement?

Extremism researchers and local police say that only a small number of people who attend protests actually participate in violence or property damage.

But this kind of chaos tends to attract lots of attention. The White House Instagram account posted videos of burning cars, flags, and fireworks in L.A. last month. And in both presidential debates last year, Trump brought up Seattle’s 2020 protests, greatly exaggerating that demonstrators “took over a big percentage of the city.”

Washington state Rep. Mari Leavitt argues spurts of violence are “tainting” the Trump-era protest movement.

“This small militant group are creating lawlessness in a way that makes it difficult for those who do want a peaceful protest,” said Leavitt, a Democrat who represents part of Pierce County.

After seeing a video on X of demonstrators in Tukwila kicking someone on the ground on June 14, Leavitt wrote, “Antifa and Black Bloc have again lost their damn minds,” referring to protesters who dress in black clothing and masks to be indistinguishable from each other.

“Protest is necessary,” Leavitt wrote on X. “Violence and assault are criminal.”

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Some organizers argue it’s the police who start the violence and ICE that’s ignoring the law.

“How do you respond peacefully when the system is trying to kill you and kill your loved ones?” said Rosario Lopez, an undocumented organizer who was also at the June 11 protest in downtown Seattle.

Lopez wasn’t one of the people who dressed in black and clashed with police at protests, and they couldn’t speak to allegedly violent actions. But Lopez said those demonstrators are some of the few willing to put their bodies in front of ICE vehicles to keep them from taking migrants away.

“If someone comes and kidnaps your loved one, what would you do?” Lopez said. “I don't know whether I'm going to see them again. I don't know whether they're going to survive inside the detention center.”

Twelve people have reportedly died in ICE custody since Trump took office, according to data from the agency.

Punching left

Who’s being violent and what even constitutes violence is a touchy subject on the left.

Karl Kaltenthaler, who studies and teaches about political violence at the University of Akron, said that while left-wing extremists likely damage more property, right-wing extremist violence is more widespread and lethal -- but mapping left-right politics onto all of the violence is futile.

Many demonstrators throwing rocks or setting off fireworks might not even call themselves “antifa” or have a coherent political ideology, Kaltenthaler said.

“Sometimes the people have what we call a smorgasbord of ideologies that drive them,” Kaltenthaler said. “They're all over the place ideologically.”

In the last decade in the Pacific Northwest, right-wing agitators have often been met in the streets by left-wing anti-fascists who believe “you want to only use as much violence as is necessary to stop your enemy,” according to Rutgers historian Mark Bray.

Fringe militant groups such as antifa tend to agree some level of violence is required to stop growing fascism, said Bray, who interviewed dozens of leftist militants for his 2017 book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”

One antifascist active in Baltimore in the 1990s and early 2000s told him, “You fight them with your fists so you don't have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don't have to fight them with tanks.”

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Bray emphasized the number of people willing to use violence are a very small group. At the June 14 “No Kings” march in Seattle, for instance, the Seattle Office of Emergency Management said only about 25 of the 70,000 people who showed up were dressed in black bloc, and 25 to 30 of the protesters outside the ICE office in Tukwila, a Tukwila PD spokesperson said.

After the lawyer Tom Clarke confronted black-clad protestors in downtown Seattle on June 11, he told KOMO News, "The immigrants are not being violent – it’s important to note that."

Clarke told KUOW he also spoke to several Mexican Americans who were filmed saving American flags from being burned by black-clad protesters.

After the video of Clarke and his TV comments circulated online, a flurry of congratulations, condemnations, and even offers to buy him lunch poured in. But Clarke regrets that the video became grist for the right-wing online content mill – and though he doesn’t regret what he said, he wishes he could’ve sat down for a beer with antifa protestors afterward.

“I believe that we can use the law and the Constitution and our legal protections to advocate for immigrants and other marginalized groups,” Clarke said. “But other people are like, ‘Well, they're not playing by the rules. So, why should we?’ And I don't have a counterargument to that.”