The antifa and alt-left labels are bogus frames based on the same approach corporate media use to create false dichotomies on issues where there really are not two sides.
One strategy that dishonest media, the people they enable and trolls use is to create false equivalencies.
There's an actual alt-right, comprised of white supremacists, neo-nazis and a collection of haters and bigots. They are real. The groups have names and websites.
So, right wingers and neoliberal Democrats have created their false equivalency frame, attacking the 90% of Americans who oppose fascism, calling them Antifa. I am not saying that Antifa does not exist. It does exist in Europe. But I don't believe there is a real Antifa presence in the USA.
If there are violent anti-police or anti-alt-right actors, I believe they come from the same places as the people who became violent at Occupy Wall Street locales-- Black Bloc anarchists and undercover operatives/ agents provocateur working for police or other DHS operations or, right wingers operating as agents provocateur, like Patrick Howley. OEN writer Charlie Grapski described in his article, Anatomy of a Deception: How a Conservative Magazine Attempted to Discredit the Occupy Movement, how Howley attempted to discredit Occupy protesters by precipitating a response from the guards at the National Air and Space Museum.
The centrist Dems who gave the world Donald Trump by voting for Hillary in the Democratic primary, who continue to hate and vilify Bernie Sanders supporters, rather than smelling the coffee and seeing that the future of the Democratic party is progressive, have created a disparaging label, the "alt-left." Pretty soon they'll be creating antisla for anti-slavery, antipol for anti-pollution and who knows what else. These establishment people are a part of the problem.
The 2016 election made it clear that the Democrats have a huge problem. The question is who. Are the people, mostly young people, who participated in a massive populist uprising supporting Bernie Sanders the problem? Or are the primary voters who were deluded to believe that Hillary Clinton was a highly qualified candidate, without seeing that she had huge problems with being untrusted and disliked, the problem?
The reality is, progressives and their media are under a massive assault, both from the far right and the near right, which includes establishment Democrats and their limp liberal supporters. If you are still calling yourself a liberal, when you have progressive values, wake up. Read Chris Hedges book, Death of the Liberal Class. Understand that we have Donald Trump because liberals accepted Hillary's can't-do-ism and her history of incompetence and failure.
Some will say to let go of what happened in 2016. But the truth is, many centrist Democrats and their supporters are ratcheting up their attacks on progressives, on Sanders supporters, on Medicare for all supporters. We need to fight back and make it clear that these faux progressives are frauds and shills for the system that is killing the middle class.
So, when people attack progressives with "alt-left" framing, don't take it. Call them on their bullsh*t. When people, almost entirely right wingers, accuse protesters of being antifa, as though that's a bad thing, be aware of what they are doing. And don't let them frame who you are what progressives do as anything other that healthy exercise of Democratic rights.
There's a movement to recruit Bernie Sanders or someone else to run as a third party candidate, since it is becoming clear the Democrats are gearing up to shove neoliberal corporatist Kamala Harris down America's throat-- another fake progressive. Expect Harris's backers, i.e., establishment Democrats, to ramp up their attacks on progressives and our values and issues using the antifa and alt-left labels and, since the media is licking them up, more of the same.