White supremacists clash with counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. (Sipa via AP Images)

The first recording above is from our interview with Mark Bray from 2017. The second recording is from October 19, 2025 after he and his family fled the United States to Spain after receiving credible death threats.

As we reported last week , Rutgers University Professor Mark Bray was attempting to leave the US out of fear for his and his family’s lives after receiving numerous death threats, when their reservations were mysteriously cancelled at the gate to their flight at the Newark International Airport. They are now safely in Spain.

We spoke with Mark Bray in mid September 2017, soon after the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, when his book, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook was published. We share that interview with you now, but first excerpts from The Democracy Now interview with him from October 15, 2025.

You will notice the difference in pronunciation of the term. Professor Bray and I use the pronunciation ANTI-fa, because it stands for ANTI fascism. An-TI– fa obscures that meaning, and sounds vaguely and perhaps ominously foreign, even un-American. But too many American lives were lost fighting fascism in the 20th century both in World War Two, and in the 1930s, when American anti-fascists organized themselves into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight the anti-Republican, fascist Franco forces, for us to betray their memory and sacrifices now. Those who survived and returned to the US were labeled premature antifascists.

With us for the hour is Mark Bray, whose book,  ANITFA: THE ANTI-FASCIST HANDBOOK, published by Melville House Publishing, came out on August 22, 2017 – one week after the incidents in Charlottesville, VA, in which Neo-Nazis, KKK, and other white supremacists, wreaked havoc, including the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of 19 others, when one of them drove his car into a crowd of counter demonstrators at high speed. White nationalist demonstrators use shields as they guard the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

As has been happening since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, 2017, media attention has been focusing on a formerly obscure network, Anti-fa, or Anti-fascist Action, and in particular their tactics of property damage, physical violence and what some consider un-American interference with free speech on college campuses. But beyond the sound bites, disturbing photos and videos taken out of any meaningful historical context, just what IS Anti-fa?

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists march in Charlottesville on 11 August. The rally and subsequent death of a counter-protester were decried as real-world consequences of far-right online movements. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Mark Bray is an historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He completed his PhD in Modern European and Women’s and Gender History at Rutgers University in 2016, and is currently finishing his manuscript “The Anarchist Inquisition: Terrorism and the Ethics of Modernity in Spain, 1893-1909.” “The Anarchist Inquisition” explores the emergence of groundbreaking human rights campaigns across Europe and the Americas in response to the Spanish state’s brutal repression of dissent in the wake of anarchist bombings and assassinations. He teaches at Dartmouth College, where his recent statements about Anti-fa have generated a good deal of controversy, with Dartmouth’s president denouncing them and more than 100 professors denouncing the denouncing. Mark Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House, 2017) and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero Books, 2013), as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School (PM Press, 2018).

From left: Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Lisa Sharon Harper, Rev. Carlton Smith, Cornel West, and others (including Seth Wispelwey wearing a white robe and red stole) protesting white supremacy in Charlottesville. CREDIT: Heather Wilson, @aNomadPhotog / Dust & Light Photo

Thanks to Democracy Now! for allowing use of the interview with Cornel West. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/14/cornel_west_rev_toni_blackmon_clergy#transcript

Thanks to Democracy Now! for permission to use their interview with Mark Bray after his safe arrival in Spain: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/15/mark_bray

US designates four European anti-fascist groups as terrorist threats https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/13/us-antifa-terrorist-designation

Death threats and accusations: the professor targeted by the US far right https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/death-threats-and-accusations-the-professor-targeted-by-the-us-far-right

US anti-fascism expert blocked from flying to Spain at airport https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/09/anti-fascism-mark-bray-rutgers-university

Rutgers Expert on Antifa Flees to Spain After Death Threats https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/nyregion/rutgers-professor-threats-antifa.html