The Berlin Wall was officially called the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart". Russia claims they are fighting in Ukraine to denazify their regime. North Korea is called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
A bit naive to take these self-appointed labels at face value.
AIDS activists like Act Up were genuine about the threat of AIDS.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the civil rights movement were genuinely students committed to nonviolence.
The suffragists genuinely wanted woman's suffrage.
But for anti-fascists, we have jpeg memes calling them fools.
Just like how racists dismissed the civil rights movement, homophobes dismissed gay marriage, people against women voting dismissed suffragists, and people made jokes about AIDS in the 80s, people who dismiss anti fascists are probably... well...
We'd all like to imagine we're August Landmesser - especially those who were driving around with American flag bumper stickers during things like Abu ghraib. The ones who are most fervent about saluting also swear they'd never be heiling. Sure.
Right. Nobody ever thinks they're the bastard.
Yes, because "fascist" is possibly one of the most abused words in our political landscape.
If a group showed up from the right promising to beat up "commies" I don't think people would be too keen on that either.
There are groups that self-describe as fascist such as National Alliance, American Vanguard or Patriot Front. National Vanguard has careful literature back to 1930s fascism. Search for "National Vanguard History of American National Socialism" it's a lengthy multipart series on why they think they are the true descendents of American fascism. There's also groups like Identity Evropa (now known as AIM) and the base.
There's pro fascist gab, telegram, bitchute, rumble, and parler channels/groups. They make memes about how much they absolutely love fascism and are extremely open and explicit about it.
I've lurked in these groups, gone to their meetings, I've got literature with titles like "why Hitler was right" and "fascism will fix it".
But sure enough there's people who even look at this that are like "well well, people will call school hall monitors fascists" as if it can't actually exist.
This is equivalent to hearing a school child call something gay and then concluding homosexuality couldn't possibly exist.
I mean really now ... knock it off. People aren't that stupid.
(I'm not anti-fascist btw, I'm just anti-bullshit. All the fascist logic I've heard happens to be bullshit but it's the BS I've got a problem with)
Trump and the republican party at large has been called a fascist a truckload of times. This alone means "antifa" can take action against an immense swath of the population.
In the exact same way, there are groups that label themselves as communists or hell, even pedophiles, and we should still be wary if the anti-commie or anti-pedo force showed up because you can't trust vigilantes not to be utter morons.
I know there's some wild imaginations depicting other things but they aren't grounded in reality.
There aren't anarchists marching with face-coverings, helmets, weapons, and tactical gear shouting pronouns to overtake blue cities. The craziest fictions people convince themselves of.
This is probably the most organized group there is: https://rosecityantifa.org/articles/ ... they're pretty focused. The Rose City Nationalists for instance, is a splinter group kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too extreme, similar to how the Black Legion split off from the KKK.