Rutgers Professor, Antifa Expert, Says His Attempt To Leave U.S. Was Blocked

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — The Rutgers professor who is described as an expert on antifa, and who said he has to flee the country due to death threats, said his flight to Spain was mysteriously blocked Wednesday night.

This comes the same day, also Wednesday, President Donald Trump vowed to use "the full weight" of the federal government to go after antifa, which Trump declared an international terrorist organization.

Mark Bray said he was trying to board a flight to Spain from Newark airport when he was suddenly informed his flight was canceled. NJ Advance Media reported Bray and his family were going through a facial recognition scan when it started turning up error messages.

“‘Someone’ cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second,” Bray posted on Bluesky social media. “We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.'"

Bray said this week he, his wife and their children have to leave the country and relocate to Europe after he received death threats — including one that listed his home address — for comments he made in the past about political violence and antifa.

Bray said he received the death threats one day after Fox News published this Change.org petition last week, which was launched by the Rutgers chapter of conservative student group Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. The petition calls for Rutgers to fire Bray because of statements he's made, including this interview and this 2017 interview with Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press." In those interviews, Turning Point USA alleges Bray endorsed political violence.

"I support anti-fascism in so far as I think fascism is not good, and I think the direction this country is headed in is really, really scary, and I'm witnessing little bit of that myself," Bray told CNN Wednesday. "They label anyone they don't like with antifa-aligned, such as myself, and try to equate protest with terrorism. And that has really dangerous implications for civil liberties in this country."

Other Rutgers students launched this petition Sunday that calls for Rutgers to ban the Turning Point USA chapter from campus. So far, more than 1,700 students have signed that petition.

Bray himself told the Guardian newspaper Tuesday: “I am not now, nor have I ever been, part of any kind of antifascist or anti-racist organization – I just haven’t. I’m a professor. I’m a professor of the history of the left," he said.

However, in this interview he gave in June, Bray describes himself as an "activist." "I've been interested in left politics, radical politics for many years both as an activist and as scholar," he said.