On Monday, just one day after the Republican Party staged a Horst Wessel-style memorial for Charlie Kirk in Glendale, Arizona, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization.”
The order claims that antifa is a “militarist, anarchist enterprise” that uses “illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide.”
Antifa, as even FBI Director Christopher Wray was forced to admit in a September 2020 congressional hearing, is not an organization but a broad current of opposition to fascism. “Antifa is an ideology, not an organization,” said Wray, who also testified that the bureau had no data showing any lethal violence committed by the organization.
Since antifa as a formal organization does not exist, Trump’s executive order amounts to a blanket authorization to brand political dissent and opposition to his fascist regime as “terrorism.”
One can be anti fascist without being anti fascist? Are you on fucking crack M8?
One can be anti-facist without being part of the antifas, yes. I don’t know from where you are but antifa is a specific subculture here, and in many places in Europe at least.
I feel like you’re still thinking ‘antifa’ is an organisation, when it’s simply being opposed to fascism. It’s a concept, not a movement, and it only appears to be a movement when fascism is on the rise, which tends to cause* antifa people to group together more to oppose it. There are some groups explicitly for doing antifa action, but if you’re against fascism, you are antifa by definition. Also ‘antifa’ action can be anything from denouncing Nazis online to protecting trans rights to protesting to any number of other things.
The right has tried to make ‘antifa’ into some sort of bogeyman for a decade, and we shouldn’t allow them to frame what it means.
It’s similar to liking video games. I’m a ‘gamer’ because I like to play games, but I don’t belong to any gamer groups, I don’t go to conventions, and I don’t compete in tournaments. Some people do those things, but I’m no less a gamer because I don’t.
Yes, I am antifa. Enough that I own this book (which I actually recommend everyone read who wants to resist fascism):
No it’s not, also in Europe antifa simply means anti-fascist.