Unless there is a club charter then a group doesn't exist, so there's no such thing as antifa.
Just wondering where you got the whole "antifa wants to install a brutal authoritarian dictatorship by destroying shop displays and throwing milkshakes at racists" thing from, is all. If you had an answer you would've given it by now
Antifas (plural, it's not a proper name but a noun) began in the wake of the second World War as the post-Nazi government dragged its feet in ousting or holding accountable the remaining SS officers. They were a response to a state not doing its civic duty, and they inspired similar antifas in other parts of the world for similar reasons: always in response to fascist infiltration of society in positions of power or influence, and always as a stopgap measure when liberal governments failed to purge the rot and stood by idly while fascists moved through their ranks. In almost every case, they were comprised of socialists and communists, as you point out derisively.
Today is no different, except that the measures used by American and European antifas are kinder and gentler compared to their forbears. They destroy property, not people. They disrupt, humiliate, and sometimes injure, but virtually never maim or murder. They are the only ones standing up to the racism and hatred of the far-right in the US and UK, using the only means at their disposal, since the levers of representative parliamentary governance have failed to stem the rise of fascism in the last decade. If you want them to stop making mischief and throwing sardines at people, think about antifas from the libertarian perspective; they are what happens when the state fails to protect its people, and they are forced to perform a role they would rather not have to. Of course they are violent--it's violence in societal self-defense, it's a last resort. Nobody is happy that it's come to this.
That's why your characterization of them as having anything to do with top-down dictatorial oppression is laughable and almost sad. In every instance where they drive rascist mafiosos out of Croatia, reduce the attendance of white pride gatherings down to a handful of stubborn morons, and prevent literal gun-toting psychos from getting anywhere near migrants and refugees, they operate in defiance of top-down structures of rule. The ones who advocate the type of thing you're opposing are their enemies, who want a militarized border, forced sterilization, economic disenfranchisement of minorities, a restoration of "national purity". All of those require a giant authoritarian boot stepping on your face. Our governments aren't doing anything to stop the boot as it comes stomping down, so antifas begin to appear to slow its descent at the very least.
But the disgusting reaction to antifas is an exact mirror of all the other times they have spontaneously formed. Rather than seeing them as a symptom of milquetoast governance unwilling to tackle ascendant right-wing nationalism and identitarianism, which would require the state to actually acknowledge complacency (if not outright responsibility) in abetting it, the mass media creates and nurtures the consensus that antifas are the problem rather than a poor substitute for a solution. They criticize the mess and inefficiency of the citizen bucket-brigade that forms when the local fire department goes on strike and somebody's home is set ablaze.
I was trying to drive to work the other day and I almost got knocked over by some asshole with a bucket! There was water splashing everywhere, and some got on a lady's shirt. There were like 10 guys with buckets behind him, and they were all dumping them onto an apartment complex for some reason... I couldn't see through all the smoke. But they were dumping the buckets really aggressively and I felt unsafe!
