But that doesn’t sit well with, you know, fascists. Fascism works best when people don’t oppose it, especially the people who are not yet directly hurt by fascist policies.
For example, if you aren’t transgender, don’t know anyone who is transgender and don’t really understand that whole thing anyway, you are unlikely to protest the fascist targeting of transgender people in the U.S.
The same goes for immigrants. Whether your response to seeing immigrants kidnapped off of the street by masked ICE agents is to applaud, shrug or say, “I don’t like this but they shouldn’t have come here illegally,” you are supporting fascism.
And let me be clear: We are living under fascism right now. The Trump administration is a fascist administration. And the vast majority of Republicans are either avowed fascist themselves or are happy to support fascism because it benefits them (which, of course, makes them fascist).
But what is fascism? Wikipedia, the purest place on the internet, defines it as “a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement…characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”
I mean, come on. That’s exactly what’s happening right now.
And like I said, fascism is very bad. But Trump and the far-right are trying to rewrite history where the Nazis are the good guys. Most people look at Hitler and see a monster. Trump looks at Hitler and sees a role model.
Trump recently issued an executive order designating antifa a “terrorist organization.” In other words, according to Trump, if you are anti-fascist, you are a terrorist.
“Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that calls for the overthrow of the U.S. government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law — using illegal means, including violence and terrorism, to accomplish these goals,” the White House declared. “The Order directs the Federal government to investigate, disrupt and dismantle all illegal operations conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa.”
Granted, antifa isn’t an organization with membership cards. It’s just a bunch of people who think that fascism sucks and are willing to protest against it. This Order is clearly intended to stifle free speech and pit Americans against one another. It’s also deliberately broad. Anyone could be declared antifa or acting on behalf of antifa. Remember McCarthyism? U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy went on a persecution spree of people he declared communists, ruining a lot of lives in the process. People eventually realized he was full of shit. Anyway, this is like McCarthyism if McCarthy had an army of armed agents ready to do his bidding.
Trump said of antifa, “They have been very threatening to people, but we’re going to be very threatening to them, far more threatening to them than they ever were with us, and that includes the people that fund them.”
“We’re going to be…far more threatening to them than they ever were with us,” says the President of the United States. A chilling claim since Trump has the weight of the military, law enforcement, the Department of Justice and Republican lawmakers across the country. Oh, and the Supreme Court.
“We’re deploying the full might of the federal law enforcement to crack down on antifa and other domestic terrorist organizations,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Reuters.
That’s a lot of might, all right. If that sounds scary, it’s supposed to. Fascism thrives in a culture of fear. They want people to be too scared to stand up, to protest, to declare themselves anti-fascist.
Meanwhile, antifa has frog costumes.
Seriously, though, the people Trump is declaring terrorists are civilians who strongly oppose the Republican agenda (see Project 2025. Like, they’re literally flying through it). A big focus of anti-fascists is ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and how it is operating as a violent extrajudicial secret police force. It turns out, a lot of people in the U.S. do not like this at all. They do not want to see protesters shot, journalists brutalized, pastors hit with pepper balls and children detained.
But Trump and the Republicans want you to believe that the people being victimized are the people doing the kidnapping and brutalizing. ICE agents are so unfairly maligned, Republicans complain.
Boo fuckin’ hoo.
No one is free and no one is safe under fascism. Not even the people benefiting from it. And that’s why we all have to be anti-fascist. We’re on the right side of history.
