Was Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden endorsed by Black Lives Matter and Antifa? No, neither of those claims is true: There is no central "antifa" (antifascist) organization and a search of Biden's campaign contribution reports on the Federal Election Commission website showed no contributions from the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the BLM movement's official name. The person making the claims offered no corroborating evidence.
The claims appeared in a meme posted to Facebook (archived here) October 7, 2020 on the "Donald Trump Fan Club" page. It opened: "Here's who supports the candidates."
It continued:
Biden endorsed by BLM and Antifa, TRUMP endorsed by NRA and Law Enforcement. Choose your President.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Oct 9 19:17:32 2020 UTC)
Lead Stories conducted a contribution search on the Federal Election Commission website on October 9, 2020, and found no evidence of contributions from Black Lives Matter to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
(Source: Screenshot taken by Lead Stories on Fri Oct 9 18:17:01 2020 UTC)
In a search of the BLM website on October 9, 2020, the only reference to Biden was found in a September 23, 2020 item:
Lastly, we are calling on Joe Biden and Donald Trump no matter who is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, to make a commitment to sign the BREATHE Act into law within the first 100 days of their administration.
BLM has launched a #WhatMatters2020 campaign to galvanize supporters to vote in the 2020 presidential election. Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, did not mention either candidate during a video on the campaign's page. "We need to vote," she said. "We need to vote for safety. We need to vote for healing. We need to vote for love."
Lead Stories emailed the Black Lives Matter press contact on October 8, 2020 and again on October 9, 2020, to learn if the group has made an endorsement. Lead Stories will update this report, if appropriate, when Black Lives Matter's spokesperson responds.
There is no centralized "Antifa" organization. The word is an abbreviation for antifascism, a philosophy of opposition to fascism. There is a wide array of independent groups that identify with these antifascism aims.
Leading U.S. Antifa scholar and Rutgers University lecturer Mark Bray told Lead Stories in an email exchange July 31, 2020, that groups of activists who share the antifa mindset have a range of goals, --"They don't talk about antifa in general but rather their propaganda (usually online) represents their specific antifa group." Bray is author of the seminal book about Antifa: "The Antifa Handbook".
As a means of corroborating the claims that "Antifa" is not a centralized organization, could not and did not contribute to Biden's campaign, Lead Stories also conducted a contribution search on the Federal Election Commission website on October 9, 2020, and found no evidence of contributions from Antifa.
(Source: Screenshot taken by Lead Stories on Fri Oct 9 18:17:01 2020 UTC)
