Justin Brannan
photo by Jason Jamal Nakleh

Councilman Justin Brannan (ex-Indecision) responds to Trump Jr trolling him: "your dad is a fascist"

As you may know, Brooklyn Councilmember Justin Brannan was in hardcore bands Indecision and Most Precious Blood before pursuing a career in politics, and he’s in the news this week after being pressed by conservative journalist Andy Ngo about his “relationship” to Urooj Rahman, the Brooklyn lawyer who was arrested for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail at an NYPD vehicle during the George Floyd protests. Ngo posted a screenshot of Brannan tweeting at Rahman in 2017, and also tried to “call out” Brannan for “defending” ANTIFA by posting screenshots of two other older tweets (one from 2018, one with no date), one of which reads, “Antifa simply means anti-fascist. If you are anti-antifa that means you are pro-fascist.” (In case you missed it, Donald Trump much more recently tweeted that the US will be designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.)

Ngo’s tweet received a huge signal boost when Donald Trump Jr retweeted it with three siren emojis, and Brannan amazingly responded responded to Don Jr like this: “Never met her. She tweeted at me once before I took office. What she is alleged to have done is reprehensible. Wait… you get cell service in the bunker? P.S. – Your dad is a fascist.”

Brannan also added in a followup tweet, “110,000 people dead. Worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Country being torn in two. @DonaldJTrumpJr is busy trolling me?!”

Brannan has also been vocally in favor of peaceful protesters and against agitators trying to take advantage of the situation and instill fear. He has also been critical of the NYPD trapping protesters after curfew. See his tweets below.

In that same Twitter thread from 2018 where Brannan said anti-ANTIFA means pro-fascist, he wrote:

Modern #Antifa politics can be directly traced back to those who led the resistance to the emergence and eventual infiltration of white power neo-Nazi skinheads in the UK punk rock music scene in the 1970s and 1980s.

I first learned about Antifaschistische Aktion as a teenager on tour in Germany. In response to neo-Nazism gaining prominence, a bunch of activists, including many punk & hardcore fans, organized self-defense groups and revived the tradition of street-level anti-fascist protests.

In the late 1980s, many punk and hardcore kids here in the U.S. began following suit. They organized and formed Anti-Racist Action (ARA) on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than they would be with fighting fascism.

And now, in 2018, as we barrel towards paranoid authoritarianism becoming the dominant worldview of today’s Republican Party, we have come full circle with the obligation as Americans to fight fascism in all its shape-shifting manifestations.

Here are his more recent tweets referenced above:

Brannan also retweeted this:

[h/t Lambgoat]