Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) posted a tweet on Wednesday in which he posed with an Antifa handbook, the far-left wing group labeled as a “terror ideology.”

Ellison, a prominent Democrat on Capitol Hill who also serves as the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, attempted to troll President Donald Trump with the selfie, writing it “strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.”

Antifa made plenty of headlines in 2017 for their incitements of violence at anti-Trump and anti-conservative protests. Several of their most high profile events took place on college campuses, where black-clad activists gathered to protest speeches by conservative activists. A protest on the UC Berkeley campus against alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos caused upwards of $100,000 in damage, while the university was forced to spend an estimated $600,000 on security for a speech by Ben Shapiro.

FBI Director Christopher Wray labeled Antifa as an “active domestic terror” ideology. Speaking with legislators last fall, the Bureau chief blasted the left-wing group over widespread violence at pro-Trump rallies throughout the country.

“While we’re not investigating Antifa as Antifa — that’s an ideology and we don’t investigate ideologies — we are investigating a number of what we would call anarchist-extremist investigations, where we have properly predicated subjects of people who are motivated to commit violent criminal activity on kind of an Antifa ideology,” Wray told a House panel.

The book Ellison happily took a selfie posing with, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray, seeks to defend and normalize the actions of Antifa.

Members of Antifa believe that violence is justified when used against political foes or to send a message during protests. Many claim that violence against so-called “fascists,” is justified as self-defense from an imagined threat.

Minnesota GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan said Ellison’s post amounted to complicity in a movement “that continues to threaten the well-being of Republicans in Minnesota and around the country.”

Spokesman Karthik Ganapathy says Ellison has not read the book but has espoused nonviolence throughout his career.

At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/r81nYoeqpL

— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 3, 2018

(Nat Golden – YWN)