Anarchist Group Marks Anniversary of President’s Assassination With Tweet Praising Killer

A far-left extremist group based in Brooklyn has marked the 117th anniversary of the assassination of a sitting U.S. president by posting a message on social media commemorating the killer.

“Anarchist Leon Czolgosz made history carrying out a famous attack on the US political establishment today in 1901. #IGD,” the anarchist group known as The Base tweeted.

The Base is a self-described “revolutionary anarchist center committed to the spreading of anarchist ideas and organizing.”

The Base has almost 8,000 Twitter followers and almost 10,000 Facebook followers and, according to Far Left Watch, the group uses these platforms to radicalize, recruit, and mobilize other extremists.

Czolgosz, the anarchist assassin celebrated in the social media posts, remains somewhat of a shadowy figure to historians. Cary Federman, author of “The Life of an Unknown Assassin: Leon Czolgosz and the Death of William McKinley” described the killer as “a mystery, lost in the discourse of deviance, criminality, and anarchism.”

Federman cited James W. Clarke, the author of “American Assassins,” as calling Czolgosz a “revolutionary, seeking to overturn the political order.”

Clarke is said to have described Czolgosz as a political “zealot,” who was “obsessed with the need for radical social change in America.”

In September 1901, at a public event in Buffalo, New York, Czolgosz shot the president twice in the stomach at point blank range. McKinley died eight days later.

William McKinley, 25th president of the United States serving from 1897 to 1901. National Archive/Newsmakers via Getty Images

The “#IGD” in the tweet commemorating Czolgosz stands for “It’s Going Down,” a prominent Antifa website.

Far Left Watch claims that IGD has openly advocated for violence against supporters of President Donald Trump, as well as for his assassination.

Far Left Watch also alleges links between The Base and the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM), identifying RAM as “another violent, far-left extremist group.”

On its website, RAM self-identifies as a movement of “revolutionary anarchists” and openly states on its website that its aim is “to begin the revolutionary process” and in order to accomplish this “goods, land, and tools must be expropriated, or taken away from those who withhold them.”

The issue of the tweet lauding Czolgosz has also been cast in context of censorship on social media platforms, which face allegations of anti-conservative bias.

Critics point to tech companies’ moves to de-platform the likes of commentator Alex Jones, while arguing that radical left-wing accounts remain active.