Anti-fascism: It's Complicated
October 14, 2025
by William P. Meyers

Site Search

Popular pages:

What is Antifa? Anti-fascism? First, ask: what is fascism?

Donald Trump recently (September 22,2025) signed one of his royal proclamations: Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization. One good thing can be said about the order: it is short, just three paragraphs. Maybe Donald wrote it himself.

The "facts&qout; stated in paragraph 1 are mostly lies. True, some anarchists have gone to Antifa protests, and you can call going to protests militant. Some anarchists and socialists do believe they have the same right to bear arms as anyone else (say Proud Boys). But most anarchists are pacifists. And many people who go to Antifa protests (often a group within a larger, more standard protest) identify as some sort of socialist or communist, or more often, none-of-the-above. They have not engaged in violence or terrorism, except perhaps occasionally resisting arrest, blocking traffic, or tossing a rock through a corporate window. Doxing is mostly done by Trump's right-wing thugs, not Antifa.

Generally, Antifa is a contraction of anti-fascist. Since the U.S. military fought the fascists of Germany and Italy during World War II, many members of Antifa are probably over 100 years old.

In this essay I want to discuss what it means to be anti-fascist, which in turn requires knowing what fascism is, or was. My impression is that most contemporary Antifa types have foggy to mistaken ideas of fascism. If they don't like someone, or some action, or policy, they call it fascist.

The basics of fascism, especially in the United States, have largely been lost to history. That was partly on purpose, because our ruling class quickly turned from fighting fascism to fighting communism. Fascism presented inconvenient truths that had to be covered up.

Allow me to begin with a short list of books. Numerous books have been written on Hitler and friends. These should be required reading for would-be fascists and anti-fascists alike:

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

The Collapse of the Third Republic by William L. Shirer

The Pope at War, The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

You can also find my earlier essays on the subject: Fascism.

Fascists did not all agree with each other. To put it mildly. Hitler often disagreed with Mussolini. General Franco refused to join Germany and Italy in fighting World War II. Hitler liquidated one of his main groups of supporters (or at least their leadership), the SA, shortly after coming to power, in the Night of the Long Knives.

Democracy was an enemy, but not the main enemy, of Fascism. The main enemy was communism, and its socialist allies. Religion and race could be important, but were not primary. If you count casualties in the German attack on the USSR during World War II, Hitler killed far more atheists than Jews during his reign. Still, fascism is authoritarian, dedicated to one-man (or perhaps one-woman) rule.

In its heyday fascism was not a traditional conservative movement. Traditional conservatives back then were monarchists. The Catholic Church, monarchical in its own structure, supported fascism because it was (mostly) anti-atheist and anti-communist. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Marshal Petain, and General Franco (the four best known fascist leaders) were all Roman Catholics. On the other hand, Hitler thought he had a direct line to God, was suspicious that Jesus was a Jew, and thought the Vatican should be subordinate to Deutschland. So things could be complicated. When Hitler and his Catholic friends lost the war the Pope quickly sucked up to the U.S. and begged to recast fascists as atheists or pagans. And so history was erased.

On economic policy there were differences among fascists as well. Some were more left (early National Socialists and Mussolini) and some were more right (Franco and Petain). All agreed that the class conflict between workers and capitalists was a bad thing. As authoritarians they believed the State should decide. Mainly the state decided in favor of itself or the capitalists. But in Nazi Germany in particular workers were given all sorts of benefits, in many cases better than they would get in the U.S. under the New Deal, like long paid vacations [see Hitler's Social Revolution by David Schoenbaum].

So a lot of hairs should be split before calling someone, or an organization, or a government, fascist. Being authoritarian, yes, but not like Stalin or Mao. Being religious, but just being a conservative Catholic (or Lutheran, the mainstay of the Nazi Party) does not in itself make you fascist. American Catholics, at least traditionally, tend to favor democracy [though many were fascist supporters until the war started]. I see no reason to call President John Kennedy a fascist, though it is a label one might apply to Senator Joe McCarthy. Certainly Father Charles Coughlin was a fascist.

How many qualities of fascism does one need to have to qualify as fascist? Does one fascist quality trump some not-so-fascist qualities? Does racism does not make you fascist if you believe in democracy? Capitalists that support democracy are not fascists. Nationalists are not necessarily fascists. Authoritarian socialists, like the young Mussolini, may not be fascists, but they can easily become fascists.

Consider Donald Trump. He clearly tried to steal the 2020 election. He has authoritarian tendencies. He has racist tendencies, though he likes Jews, especially rich ones. He ignores Congress a lot. He would like the federal courts to just agree with him on everything. He would like the state and local governments to simply agree with him on everything. Today, as I write, I don't think he has met the threshold of being a genuine fascist. But I can see him going there in the future. He just does not seem to get that Americans, left, right, and center, do not like to be bossed around. Fascism, to be successful, requires most people to like, or at least not mind, being bossed around.

Consider ICE agents. They use force, but all police agencies use force at times. They are enforcing immigration laws made by elected officials, Congress. They may, at times, go beyond the boundaries of the law. We should hold them accountable for that, as we should with all police. I can see why anarchists and those who support immigration scofflaws like to use the term fascist for ICE. But I think that is historically inaccurate. If you do not like the immigration laws, elect different Representatives, Senators, and Presidents. Note that most anarchists see all police as fascists. It is weird they do not see criminal gangs as fascists.

So what does anti-fascist really mean? Truth be told, the GIs who fought the Germans were more often motivated by American nationalism than by genuine anti-fascism. Most of the southern white American soldiers were racists, dismissive of blacks, Jews, and likely anyone not white. That did not mean they were not happy killing German soldiers.

In a fascist world, since fascism is based on nationalism, fascists would fight fascists. In fact, several of the nations Hitler invaded, like Austria and Poland, had fascist governments. Is a less fascist group, fighting a more fascist group, anti-fascist?

Left-of-liberal Americans tend to call everyone right of center fascists. I've heard liberals who disagree with leftists called fascists. A lot of anti-fascist sentiment in the U.S. is just blow-hard self justification. Were fascists really marching in the streets (on a regular basis, not the small groups we have seen during the Trump era), how many of us would actually stand up to them?

Hopefully we won't find out. Hopefully, in the end, Trump will prove to not be significantly worse than President Reagan or Dick Nixon. I can't rule out Trump becoming a dictator, but I am more worried that he will be a Herbert Hoover, plunging us into a Great Recession with his moronic economic policies.

Just to be clear, I hate fascism. But to stop it, understanding it helps. Painting a picture of fascism to conform to an ideological agenda, as when right-wing Americans emphasize the Socialism part of the term National Socialism, only helps those who try to manipulate us.