Anti-fascism is in our nation’s DNA

Thursday, June 4, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Let’s consider who are fascists.

Benito Mussolini was a fascist who gained dictatorial power over Italy in 1926 and ruled violently over the nation through World War II, subjecting Italians to extrajudicial imprisonment, economic deprivations, assaults by government forces, coercion, the victimization of minorities and more.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco was a fascist who, as military dictator of Spain for four decades beginning in 1936, was responsible for the executions of tens of thousands of Spaniards.

Adolf Hitler was the face of fascism, responsible for the extermination of millions of Jews and a litany of war crimes.

Fascism’s face also shows in groups that want to oppress specific people and believe power should be held in only a few hands.

The Ku Klux Klan is a fascist organization that has killed, assaulted and terrorized untold numbers of African-Americans and other minorities.

Fascism’s face can be seen in Jim Crow laws, used to disempower and dehumanize blacks. The same face of fascism is found in the Tulsa massacre, which occurred 99 years ago last weekend and left hundreds of black residents dead and thousands homeless at the hands of white mobs.

Today, fascist groups include the Boogaloo Bois, who agitate for civil war and have turned up heavily armed at Black Lives Matter protests. That includes Las Vegas, where authorities announced that three men with ties to the group were arrested Saturday after allegedly conspiring to take Molotov cocktails to a protest downtown.

The Proud Boys are neo-fascists with a long and bloody history of assaulting protesters. A unifying element in fascism is to use force, rather than peaceful democratic processes, to force outcomes you want: We all saw the attempted intimidation of heavily armed militia types who invaded the Michigan Legislature.

Fascists are those who would use or support the use of unlimited authoritarian power to suppress or eliminate those considered to be threats to the leader or the ruling class — such as people who believe in democracy and impartial justice, minorities, immigrants, dissenters, critics, academes, etc.

Now, let’s consider who are anti-fascists.

Most Americans fit that description. We at the Sun are proud to be among them.

There’s nothing remotely unseemly about being anti-fascist. To the contrary, Americans have a proud heritage of fighting fascists — we’ve sacrificed enormously to protect the world from them.

Indeed, being pro-fascist means you hate the U.S. Constitution, which is a fundamentally anti-fascist document.

But with President Donald Trump vilifying the left-wing anti-fascism movement — and particularly antifa, which is short for anti-fascist — we feel it’s important to point out that anti-fascism is as American as Fourth of July fireworks and fall football weekends.

Being anti-fascist doesn’t translate to being part of antifa. It means standing up to fascism wherever and whenever it arises. And it means protecting anti-fascist principles and values, like peaceful protesting and freedom of expression.

But Trump hasn’t pointed a finger at any fascist groups. He’s shielded them while threatening to designate antifa as a terrorist group and making his false and incendiary allegations that left-wing extremists are causing the violence and destruction we’re seeing in cities coast to coast.

This is a deep concern to all anti-fascist Americans, because what Trump is saying is simply not true. The reality is that there are small groups of agitators on both the left and right, along with irresponsible and criminal opportunists who are looting and vandalizing, using the protests as an excuse and cover for their crimes.

Trump could have focused on all of this. He could have called out everyone responsible.

He didn’t. Instead, as was the case in Charlottesville, Va., and in other circumstances, he sided with white nationalists and other right-wing extremists. He hasn’t yet called them “good people,” like he did in Charlottesville, but he made it clear who he considers the enemy and who he doesn’t.

He lined up with the fascists.

It was yet another example of Trump attacking our democracy. The import of his statements couldn’t be more obvious. Why does Trump consider anti-fascists the enemy? Because he admires fascists and finds them inspirational.

Moreover, Trump, the GOP and Fox News intentionally mischaracterized antifa.

An extremely loosely organized group of people of diverse interests, modern antifa originally arrived to protect people counter-protesting against violent right-wing extremists like the KKK, neo-Nazis and the Proud Boys.

Antifa traditionally does not start violence, but if the far right they oppose gets violent, antifa willingly fights back. Too often, antifa is confused with organized anarchist groups which absolutely initiate violence and destroy property. Because antifa is not an organized entity, certainly some people might be antifa sympathizers and also violent anarchists. Responsible people must oppose irresponsible violence.

But overall, antifa’s standard operating procedure is to protect against violent right-wing agitators bullying others. Case in point: The last time the nation saw antifa in full bloom was in Charlottesville protecting nuns and peaceful counterprotesters from a Unite the Right mob. Antifa’s approach involves not backing down to the violent right, and one could reasonably argue this is a form of incitement to violence. However, antifa responds that one must not permit the right to be violent at will. And in Charlottesville, when the mob attacked counterprotesters, police were not able to stop them. Antifa was. Under any circumstances, characterizing antifa as the same as the global anarchist movement is flatly wrong. Nor is there evidence of any murder caused by antifa, unlike violent right-wing extremists.

Nonviolent protest is always the right answer. The problem is we’ve got violent right-wing groups harming counterprotesters and it’s not successfully being prevented.

Some groups of radical leftists who want to damage the country certainly exist, just as the radical right does. In America, though, the violent right wing is overwhelmingly the cause of political violence. And in antifa’s case, there is this: Every indication is that once there is no more threat of right-wing violence, antifa will also cease to exist, because its state mission is to stop right-wing violence.

Drawing equivalency between antifa and the far right has been roundly rejected by people who study extremism.

Consider Trump’s stance in light of reports on antifa from hate-watch organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

SPLC: “Individuals loosely affiliated with antifa are typically involved in skirmishes and property crimes at demonstrations across the country, but the threat of lethal violence pales in comparison to that posed by far-right extremists ...”

ADL: “... it is important to reject attempts to claim equivalence between the antifa and the white supremacist groups they oppose. Antifa reject racism but use unacceptable tactics. White supremacists use even more extreme violence to spread their ideologies of hate, to intimidate ethnic minorities, and undermine democratic norms. Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years; they have murdered hundreds of people in this country over the last 10 years alone. To date, there have not been any known antifa-related murders.”

Supporting violent white nationalists while demonizing left-leaning groups is not what the leader of an anti-fascist, democratic nation does. Clearing out peaceful protesters using pepper spray, horses and shields just for a blasphemous photo op isn’t what a U.S. president does. Quite the opposite.

So the Sun will say it again — we’re anti-fascists. We don’t condone violence, and especially attacks against the police and others who are honoring their commitment to protect and serve the public, but we passionately believe that Americans must stand up against fascism at every turn. And we support the overwhelming majority of Americans who share that view.