On Monday, President trump obeyed the universal requirement and has refused the comment that the blame for the incident in Charlottesville lies on the “many parties”, explicitly condemning white nationalism. “Racism is evil,’ he admitted with great reluctance, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists”.
A day tramp backpedaled, explaining that the gathering of white nationalists were “very good people” and simultaneously “has accused both sides”, including the seemingly “ultra-left” anti-fascists.
First hitting the headlines in February when they sought cancellation of the speech of the far-right provocateur Milo Yannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, the anti-fascists regained public attention by opposing participants of a meeting of white nationalists Unite the Right in Charlottesville.
But who are the fascists? And where did they come from? Militant anti-fascism, or “anti-fascists” — it is the policy of the social revolution undertaken by far-left radicals and aimed at combating the extreme right. His followers — mostly Communists, socialists and anarchists who prefer alone, without the help of the police or of the state, to restrain the advance of white nationalists. They promote popular opposition to fascism, similar to what we saw in Charlottesville.
Anti-fascist groups exist worldwide, but by itself is not interconnected antifa organization, it also cannot be called an ideology, like socialism or tactics, as the barrier of the picket is a special group. Antifa is an Autonomous anti-racist groups that control and monitor the activities of local neo-Nazis. They expose their work to neighbors and employers, conducts awareness-raising campaigns, support of migrants and refugees, and put pressure on the authorities in charge of the venue of events scheduled white nationalists, seeking their cancellation.
For the most part anti-fascist activity is non-violent. But their willingness to physically defend yourself and others from violence, white nationalists and organize in advance to stop the Nazis initiatives before they entail human casualties, distinguishes them from the liberal antiracists.
Anti-fascists claim that after the horrors of slavery and the Holocaust physical violence against white racists and ethically justified, and strategically effective. According to them, we should not abstract to evaluate the ethical status of violence when it is not, there are values and context. Instead, they put forward an ethically coherent, historically grounded argument for fighting with the Nazis until it’s too late. As explained by the Cornell West emerging from neo-Nazi attacks in Charlottesville: “If not for the anti-fascists, to defend us from the fascists, we would be squashed like cockroaches”.
Although since the rise of trump anti-fascists often considered as a new force in American politics, anti-fascist tradition dates back almost a century. The first anti-fascists fought with the Blackshirts of Benito Mussolini in the Italian province, skirmished with the Nazis in the taverns and alleys of Munich and defended Madrid against the nationalist rebel army of Francisco Franco. Outside Europe, anti-fascism became the model of resistance of Chinese people against the Japanese imperialism during the Second world war, and resistance to Latin American dictatorships.
Modern anti-fascist policy began with the counter waves of xenophobia and originated the skinhead movement in Britain in the 1970-ies and 80-ies. It also has its roots in the self-defense groups organized by the revolutionaries and migrants in Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall, when will broke the brutal neo-Nazi forces.
Since the late 1980’s and 2000’s years, the activists of the Network to combat racist action (ARA) in the United States and Canada doggedly pursued the members of the Klu Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other supporters of white supremacy. Their motto was simple, but sounded boldly: “We go where they go”. If Nazi skinheads handed out at a punk show in Indiana leaflets about why “Hitler was right”, ARA was there to point them to the door. If the Nazis were to give light weight centre of Edmonton in Alberta, racist posters, ARA tore them out and replaced with anti-racist slogans.
The very tactics of the response to a small fascist groups to some it may seem trivial, but the rise of Hitler and Mussolini shows that the resistance can not be switch that you can simply turn on when a crisis occurs. Once the Nazi and fascist parties gained control of the government, to disrupt the emergency brake it was too late.
Looking back, the anti-fascists came to the conclusion that to stop Mussolini would have been much easier back in 1919, when his first Nazi – numbered a hundred people. Or eliminate right-German workers party, which consisted of only 54 members at the time when Hitler was present at its first meeting — that’s after he made it the National socialist German workers party (Nazi party). Although the regimes that inspired the original protests, has long been dead, the anti-fascists give their all against a small fascist and Nazi groups, as if they were-brutal movements or future regime.
For many years, anti-fascists criticized for the fact that they were very serious about groups of 40 or 60, whether kukluxklan or the Nazis. Members of the oldest existing in the country anti-fascist groups — the organization Rose City Antifa out of Portland (Oregon), which for ten years — even criticized the leftists for what they send their forces to expose the activities of small groups of local racists, islamophobes and fascists instead focus on more large-scale and systemic injustices.
Long before right-wing has its own name, the anti-fascists were already doing a thankless job cleaning miserable message boards and find out about clandestine neo-Nazi meetings. They kept track of those who sowed the seeds of death, the seedlings of which we observed Charlottesville. You accept their methods or not, anti-fascists, who devote themselves to the fight against racism, does not equate with the right-wing trolls who tell jokes about the gas chambers. Behind the masks lurk antifa nurses, teachers, neighbors, and relatives of all races and genders who don’t hesitate to put themselves at risk to stop fascism at any cost.
Is it required the death of Heather Heyer to so many of us, especially white, have begun to treat seriously the threat posed by white nationalists, for several generations, exposing the colored community persecuted? The history of the anti-fascist movement demands that we were serious about violence by white nationalists. Gone are the days when they could “just ignore”.
