Antifa And Its Origins - Today Fascism is Alive & Effectively Operational

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In his latest book, Paul Gottfried explains how "fascism" became uprooted from time and place in our political parlance.



https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/antifa-and-its-origins/">Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade, by Paul Gottfried (Northern Illinois University Press: 2021), 216 pages.



n this sequel to his 2016 book Fascism: Career of a Concept, Paul Gottfried turns his attention to antifascist critics and movements from the years immediately after the Great War up to the present day. The reader will learn that the contemporary treatment of fascism by self-described antifascists like Antifa is very different from how Marxist and liberal critics responded to the ideology and its adherents in the first half of the 20th century. Today the fear of fascism is used as a political weapon by the post-Marxist left to bully their politically disadvantaged critics. It is a form of indoctrination that serves to reinforce official orthodoxy. "Fascism became," writes Gottfried, "the favored term of political scolds and those who sought to trample on the historical liberties of those who offended them."



To accomplish this political purpose, fascism is defined broadly to include those who have no ideological connection to its original historical meaning. No longer "firmly anchored in time and space," fascism has become "a ubiquitous, continuing danger to democratic societies" and a term "wielded by the powerful...in such a way as to silence pesky dissenters." Those who identify as antifascists today are not expressing a coherent worldview but rather "a collection of sentiments and attitudes" that amount to "a statement against the Western past." The antifascist left is pushing the ruling class farther in the direction it is already moving: "toward transforming Western countries into multicultural societies, erasing the remnants of a reactionary historical past, and assuring popular acceptance of nontraditional lifestyles."

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continuing ....



How the definition of fascism changed gives us insight into the transformation of the political left over the course of a century. Gottfried justifies his study with the claim that an understanding of today's left is not possible without an appreciation of what it rejects. He insists with some justification that traditional Marxism does not inform the thinking of the antifascist left today. Unlike the modern left, traditional Marxists prioritized the welfare of the working class against bourgeois owners of capital. They did not deny human biology, oppose national borders, or cavort with a globalist ruling class. They would have identified the lifestyle revolution of the modern left as evidence of Western decadence. Gottfried believes Antifa is an anti-patriotic force that seeks to tear down Western institutions rather than build or reform. Antifa, he writes, is "far too irrational and nihilistic to be Marxist." Many progressives have formed alliances with multinational corporations to advance their goals. Groups like Antifa justify their violence with the absurd claim that mob violence in the short term will preserve democracy from a fascist resurgence.

[Bricktop]

Writing books about this nonsensical gaggle of leftist goons only serves to empower them further.



Antifa, as far as I can deduce, only exists as a tag given to a number of anarchic half wits who enjoy and utilise violence to increase social disruption. I can find no evidence of a clear structure including any sense of leadership or declared policies and rational beliefs other than its zealots claim to be fighting fascism.



They are interested in thuggery, rather than reason. They do not deserve anything less than scorn and derision.

[Anonymous]

Empower them or expose them Bricktop?

[Bricktop]

Ignore them.



They are unworthy of validation at any level.

[Anonymous]

I'd read the book.