Viral Video Shows Teacher Claiming Antifa, Not Trump Supporters, Stormed the Capitol

A new viral video that has surfaced online appears to show a teacher lecturing her students about the recent Capitol riots. In the clip, the teacher claims that Antifa were the ones who actually invaded the Capitol, rather than supporters of President Donald Trump and members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys.

The video was posted on the Instagram account @KnowYourRacists earlier this week, and it has received over 19,000 views. It was also shared to the r/WorldNewsVideo subreddit, where it received over 5,000 upvotes and was subsequently shared to other subreddits.

The @KnowYourRascists caption appears to have been written by the student who filmed the video; the caption alleges that the teacher began speaking on the subject of the Capitol riots, unprompted, in a class that has nothing to do with current events, Language Arts. "[S]he just RANDOMLY started talking about this in 1st period, it was language arts class and we were about to do work when she started talking about the Capitol raid," the caption reads.

As seen in the video, the teacher claims that the scene at the Capitol was peaceful until members of Antifa showed up. In actuality, there appears to be no credible evidence that anyone associated with Antifa—which is an umbrella term used to refer to far-left militant groups that demonstrate against white supremacism—was present for the storming of the Capitol building, or that they were posing as Trump supporters that day in Washington, D.C.

"Supporters arrived and suddenly there was violence. Already, three of those have been identified as Antifa members that were in the building," the teacher says at the beginning of the video. Then, a student (possibly the one who's filming) asks her about Proud Boys being involved with the riots, but she doesn't respond, either because she doesn't hear the question or because she chooses to ignore it.

"We had trouble with this all summer long, where peaceful demonstrations were fine, until a bunch of Antifa members showed up and started violence," the teacher adds. "They were paid to be there. They were paid to do violence. So the Trump supporters would look bad."

Despite some beliefs among a faction of Republicans that those who stormed the Capitol weren't President Donald Trump's supporters and were actually Antifa, the FBI hasn't found links between the Capitol riots and Antifa.

In the two-minute clip, the outspoken student again argues that Trump supporters and Proud Boys were the ones who stormed the Capitol. The teacher responds by saying that there are videos of Trump supporters yelling at those breaking into the Capitol building to stop. Video footage of Trump supporters booing the break-in and yelling "Antifa" does exist, but, again, the FBI has found no evidence of Antifa's involvement.

When the student mentions that people breaking into the Capitol were wearing MAGA hats, the teacher counters, "Anybody can put on a MAGA hat. When they're paid to be there and cause a riot, they want to make it look like Trump supporters. So they wear Trump hats and carry Trump flags. Does that make them Trump supporters? No. You guys need to look at the history," she says.

The teacher then says that Trump supporters participating in the Capitol riot could not have been trying to overthrow the government, due to a lack of weapons. "Show me the video where those thousands of supporters were carrying guns or weapons of any kind," she said, claiming she was sharing the facts. "You cannot have a government overthrow without guns."

One student points out in the video that all of this is "just [her] opinion."

One TikTok user, @Positiveaf, asked his followers to help him track down the school where this video was filmed and the teacher captured on tape; in a video posted on Wednesday, he alleges that he was contacted by someone in the school's administration, who told him that the teacher was actually a substitute and that she was dismissed within a half hour, once students notified the principal that the sub was sharing misinformation unprompted.

Earlier this week, another student went viral via a video of her calling out her teacher for displaying a Blue Lives Matter flag in his class. The lead-up to the 2020 presidential election and the protests against police brutality throughout the summer sparked many conversations about the roles that teachers have in speaking about political issues in the classroom. One Texas teacher was put on leave in 2020 for having a Black Lives Matter flag in a virtual classroom, while a teacher in New Jersey asked a student to take down a Trump flag that was visible behind him.

Newsweek reached out to @KnowYourRascists to try to identify the original source of the video or obtain comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.