Fascism, a far-rightultra-nationalistic ideology best known for its use by the Italian Fascists and the Nazis, became prominent beginning in the 1910s. Organization against fascism began around 1920. Fascism became the state ideology of Italy in 1922 and of Germany in 1933, spurring a large increase in anti-fascist action, including German resistance to Nazism and the Italian resistance movement. Anti-fascism was a major aspect of the Spanish Civil War, which foreshadowed World War II.
Before World War II, the West had not taken seriously the threat of fascism, and anti-fascism was sometimes associated with communism. However, the outbreak of World War II greatly changed Western perceptions, and fascism was seen as an existential threat by not only the communist Soviet Union but also by the liberal-democratic United States and United Kingdom. The Axis Powers of World War II were generally fascist, and the fight against them was characterized in anti-fascist terms. Resistance during World War II to fascism occurred in every occupied country, and came from across the ideological spectrum. The defeat of the Axis powers generally ended fascism as a state ideology.
After World War II, the anti-fascist movement continued to be active in places where organized fascism continued or re-emerged. There was a resurgence of antifa in Germany in the 1980s, as a response to the invasion of the punk scene by neo-Nazis. This influenced the antifa movement in the United States in the late 1980s and 1990s, which was similarly carried by punks. In the 21st century, this greatly increased in prominence as a response to the resurgence of the radical right, especially after the election of Donald Trump.
The fasces as depicted in the logo of the National Fascist Party. It is an axe bound in a bundle of wooden rods, symbolizing a magistrate's power over life or death through the death penalty. In the 20th century, it became the premier fascist symbol.
With the development and spread of Italian Fascism, i.e. the original fascism, the National Fascist Party's ideology was met with increasingly militant opposition by Italian communists and socialists. Organizations such as Arditi del Popolo and the Italian Anarchist Union emerged between 1919 and 1921, to combat the nationalist and fascist surge of the post-World War I period.
In the words of historian Eric Hobsbawm, as fascism developed and spread, a "nationalism of the left" developed in those nations threatened by Italian irredentism (e.g. in the Balkans, and Albania in particular). After the outbreak of World War II, the Albanian and Yugoslav resistances were instrumental in antifascist action and underground resistance. This combination of irreconcilable nationalisms and leftist partisans constitute the earliest roots of European anti-fascism. Less militant forms of anti-fascism arose later. During the 1930s in Britain, "Christians – especially the Church of England – provided both a language of opposition to fascism and inspired anti-fascist action". French philosopher Georges Bataille believed that Friedrich Nietzsche was a forerunner of anti-fascism due to his derision for nationalism and racism.
Michael Seidman argues that traditionally anti-fascism was seen as the purview of the political left but that in recent years this has been questioned. Seidman identifies two types of anti-fascism, namely revolutionary and counterrevolutionary:
Revolutionary anti-fascism was expressed amongst communists and anarchists, where it identified fascism and capitalism as its enemies and made little distinction between fascism and other forms of right-wing authoritarianism. It did not disappear after the Second World War but was used as an official ideology of the Soviet bloc, with the "fascist" West as the new enemy.
Counterrevolutionary anti-fascism was much more conservative in nature, with Seidman arguing that Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill represented examples of it and that they tried to win the masses to their cause. Counterrevolutionary antifascists desired to ensure the restoration or continuation of the prewar old regime and conservative antifascists disliked fascism's erasure of the distinction between the public and private spheres. Like its revolutionary counterpart, it would outlast fascism once the Second World War ended.
Seidman argues that despite the differences between these two strands of anti-fascism, there were similarities. They would both come to regard violent expansion as intrinsic to the fascist project. They both rejected any claim that the Versailles Treaty was responsible for the rise of Nazism and instead viewed fascist dynamism as the cause of conflict. Unlike fascism, these two types of anti-fascism did not promise a quick victory but an extended struggle against a powerful enemy. During World War II, both anti-fascisms responded to fascist aggression by creating a cult of heroism which relegated victims to a secondary position. However, after the war, conflict arose between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary anti-fascisms; the victory of the Western Allies allowed them to restore the old regimes of liberal democracy in Western Europe, while Soviet victory in Eastern Europe allowed for the establishment of new revolutionary anti-fascist regimes there.
Anti-fascist movements emerged first in Italy during the rise of Benito Mussolini, but they soon spread to other European countries and then globally. In the early period, Communist, socialist, anarchist and Christian workers and intellectuals were involved. Until 1928, the period of the United front, there was significant collaboration between the Communists and non-Communist anti-fascists.
In 1928, the Comintern instituted its ultra-leftThird Period policies, ending co-operation with other left groups, and denouncing social democrats as "social fascists". From 1934 until the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Communists pursued a Popular Front approach, of building broad-based coalitions with liberal and even conservative anti-fascists. As fascism consolidated its power, and especially during World War II, anti-fascism largely took the form of partisan or resistance movements.
The Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGL) and the PSI refused to officially recognize the anti-fascist militia and maintained a non-violent, legalist strategy, while the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I) ordered its members to quit the organization. The PCd'I organized some militant groups, but their actions were relatively minor. The Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni, who exiled himself to Argentina following the 1922 March on Rome, organized several bombings against the Italian fascist community. The Italian liberal anti-fascist Benedetto Croce wrote his Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, which was published in 1925. Other notable Italian liberal anti-fascists around that time were Piero Gobetti and Carlo Rosselli.
Concentrazione Antifascista Italiana (English: Italian Anti-Fascist Concentration), officially known as Concentrazione d'Azione Antifascista (Anti-Fascist Action Concentration), was an Italian coalition of Anti-Fascist groups which existed from 1927 to 1934. Founded in Nérac, France, by expatriate Italians, the CAI was an alliance of non-communist anti-fascist forces (republican, socialist, nationalist) trying to promote and to coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy; they published a propaganda paper entitled La Libertà.
Giustizia e Libertà (English: Justice and Freedom) was an Italian anti-fascistresistance movement, active from 1929 to 1945. The movement was cofounded by Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, who later became Prime Minister of Italy, and Sandro Pertini, who became President of Italy, were among the movement's leaders. The movement's members held various political beliefs but shared a belief in active, effective opposition to fascism, compared to the older Italian anti-fascist parties. Giustizia e Libertà also made the international community aware of the realities of fascism in Italy, thanks to the work of Gaetano Salvemini.
Many Italian anti-fascists participated in the Spanish Civil War with the hope of setting an example of armed resistance to Franco's dictatorship against Mussolini's regime; hence their motto: "Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy".
Between 1920 and 1943, several anti-fascist movements were active among the Slovenes and Croats in the territories annexed to Italy after World War I, known as the Julian March. The most influential was the militant insurgent organization TIGR, which carried out numerous sabotages, as well as attacks on representatives of the Fascist Party and the military. Most of the underground structure of the organization was discovered and dismantled by the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism (OVRA) in 1940 and 1941, and after June 1941 most of its former activists joined the Slovene Partisans.
The anti-fascist resistance emerged within the Slovene minority in Italy (1920–1947), whom the Fascists meant to deprive of their culture, language and ethnicity. The 1920 burning of the National Hall in Trieste, the Slovene center in the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Trieste by the Blackshirts, was praised by Benito Mussolini (yet to become Il Duce) as a "masterpiece of the Triestine fascism" (capolavoro del fascismo triestino). The use of Slovene in public places, including churches, was forbidden, not only in multi-ethnic areas, but also in the areas where the population was exclusively Slovene. Children, if they spoke Slovene, were punished by Italian teachers who were brought by the Fascist State from Southern Italy. Slovene teachers, writers, and clergy were sent to the other side of Italy.
The first anti-fascist organization, called TIGR, was formed by Slovenes and Croats in 1927 in order to fight Fascist violence. Its guerrilla fight continued into the late 1920s and 1930s. By the mid-1930s, 70,000 Slovenes had fled Italy, mostly to Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia) and South America.
The specific term anti-fascism was primarily used by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which held the view that it was the only anti-fascist party in Germany. The KPD formed several explicitly anti-fascist groups such as Roter Frontkämpferbund (formed in 1924 and banned by the Social Democrats in 1929) and Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (a de facto successor to the latter). At its height, Roter Frontkämpferbund had over 100,000 members. In 1932, the KPD established the Antifaschistische Aktion as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD". Under the leadership of the committed StalinistErnst Thälmann, the KPD primarily viewed fascism as the final stage of capitalism rather than as a specific movement or group, and therefore applied the term broadly to its opponents, and in the name of anti-fascism the KPD focused in large part on attacking its main adversary, the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany, whom they referred to as social fascists and regarded as the "main pillar of the dictatorship of Capital."
The movement of Nazism, which grew ever more influential in the last years of the Weimar Republic, was opposed for different ideological reasons by a wide variety of groups, including groups which also opposed each other, such as social democrats, centrists, conservatives and communists. The SPD and centrists formed Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold in 1924 to defend liberal democracy against both the Nazi Party and the KPD, and their affiliated organizations. Later, mainly SPD members formed the Iron Front which opposed the same groups.
The name and logo of Antifaschistische Aktion remain influential. Its two-flag logo, designed by Max Gebhard [de] and Max Keilson [de], is still widely used as a symbol of militant anti-fascists in Germany and globally, as is the Iron Front's Three Arrows logo.
The historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote: "The Spanish civil war was both at the centre and on the margin of the era of anti-fascism. It was central, since it was immediately seen as a European war between fascism and anti-fascism, almost as the first battle in the coming world war, some of the characteristic aspects of which – for example, air raids against civilian populations – it anticipated."
The Spanish anarchist guerrillaFrancesc Sabaté Llopart fought against Franco's regime until the 1960s, from a base in France. The Spanish Maquis, linked to the PCE, also fought the Franco regime long after the Spanish Civil war had ended.
1934 demonstration in Paris, with a sign reading "Down with fascism"Maquis members in 1944
In the 1920s and 1930s in the French Third Republic, anti-fascists confronted aggressive far-right groups such as the Action Française movement in France, which dominated the Latin Quarter students' neighborhood. After fascism triumphed via invasion, the French Resistance (French: La Résistance française) or, more accurately, resistance movements fought against the Nazi German occupation and against the collaborationist Vichy régime. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the maquis in rural areas), who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers and magazines such as Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Soldier) during World War Two, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks.
There were debates within the anti-fascist movement over tactics. While many East End ex-servicemen participated in violence against fascists, Communist Party leader Phil Piratin denounced these tactics and instead called for large demonstrations. In addition to the militant anti-fascist movement, there was a smaller current of liberal anti-fascism in Britain; Sir Ernest Barker, for example, was a notable English liberal anti-fascist in the 1930s.
United States, World War II
"Anti-fascism in the United States" redirects here. For the contemporary anti-fascist movement, see Antifa (United States).
Anti-fascist Italian expatriates in the United States founded the Mazzini Society in Northampton, Massachusetts in September 1939 to work toward ending Fascist rule in Italy. As political refugees from Mussolini's regime, they disagreed among themselves whether to ally with Communists and anarchists or to exclude them. The Mazzini Society joined with other anti-Fascist Italian expatriates in the Americas at a conference in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1942. They unsuccessfully promoted one of their members, Carlo Sforza, to become the post-Fascist leader of a republican Italy. The Mazzini Society dispersed after the overthrow of Mussolini as most of its members returned to Italy.
During the Second Red Scare which occurred in the United States in the years that immediately followed the end of World War II, the term "premature anti-fascist" came into currency and it was used to describe Americans who had strongly agitated or worked against fascism, such as Americans who had fought for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, before fascism was seen as a proximate and existential threat to the United States (which only occurred generally after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and only occurred universally after the attack on Pearl Harbor). The implication was that such persons were either Communists or Communist sympathizers whose loyalty to the United States was suspect. However, the historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have written that no documentary evidence has been found of the US government referring to American members of the International Brigades as "premature antifascists": the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Strategic Services, and United States Army records used terms such as "Communist", "Red", "subversive", and "radical" instead. Indeed, Haynes and Klehr indicate that they have found many examples of members of the XV International Brigade and their supporters referring to themselves sardonically as "premature antifascists".
The Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO) was a resistance movement which advocated the independence of Burma and fought against the Japanese occupation of Burma during World War II. It was the forerunner of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League. The AFO was formed during a meeting which was held in Pegu in August 1944, the meeting was held by the leaders of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the Burma National Army (BNA) led by General Aung San, and the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP), later renamed the Burma Socialist Party. Whilst in Insein prison in July 1941, CPB leaders Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Soe had co-authored the Insein Manifesto, which, against the prevailing opinion in the Burmese nationalist movement led by the Dobama Asiayone, identified world fascism as the main enemy in the coming war and called for temporary cooperation with the British in a broad allied coalition that included the Soviet Union. Soe had already gone underground to organise resistance against the Japanese occupation, and Than Tun as Minister of Land and Agriculture was able to pass on Japanese intelligence to Soe, while other Communist leaders Thakin Thein Pe and Thakin Tin Shwe made contact with the exiled colonial government in Simla, India. Aung San was War Minister in the puppet administration which was set up on 1 August 1943 and included the Socialist leaders Thakin Nu and Thakin Mya. During a meeting which was held between 1 and 3 March 1945, the AFO was reorganized as a multi-party front which was named the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League.
The anti-fascist movements which emerged during the period of classical fascism, both liberal and militant, continued to operate after the defeat of the Axis powers in response to the resilience and mutation of fascism both in Europe and elsewhere. In Germany, as Nazi rule crumbled in 1944, veterans of the 1930s anti-fascist struggles formed Antifaschistische Ausschüsse, Antifaschistische Kommittees, or Antifaschistische Aktion groups, all typically abbreviated to "antifa". The socialist government of East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Eastern Bloc referred to it officially as the "Anti-fascist Protection Rampart". Resistance to fascists dictatorships in Spain and Portugal continued, including the activities of the Spanish Maquis and others, leading up to the Spanish transition to democracy and the Carnation Revolution, respectively, as well as to similar dictatorships in Chile and elsewhere. Other notable anti-fascist mobilisations in the first decades of the post-war period include the 43 Group in Britain.
With the start of the Cold War between the former World War II allies of the United States and the Soviet Union, the concept of totalitarianism became prominent in Western anti-communist political discourse as a tool to convert pre-war anti-fascism into post-war anti-communism.
Modern antifa politics can be traced to opposition to the infiltration of Britain's punk scene by white power skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of neo-Nazism in Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Germany, young leftists, including anarchists and punk fans, renewed the practice of street-level anti-fascism. Columnist Peter Beinart writes that "in the late '80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began following suit, though they initially called their groups Anti-Racist Action (ARA) on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than they would be with fighting fascism".
The contemporary antifa movement in Germany comprises different anti-fascist groups which usually use the abbreviation antifa and regard the historical Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifa) of the early 1930s as an inspiration, drawing on the historic group for its aesthetics and some of its tactics, in addition to the name. Many new antifa groups formed from the late 1980s onward. According to Loren Balhorn, contemporary antifa in Germany "has no practical historical connection to the movement from which it takes its name but is instead a product of West Germany's squatter scene and autonomist movement in the 1980s".
In Greece, anti-fascism is a popular part of leftist and anarchist culture, September 2013 anti-fascist hip-hop artist Pavlos 'Killah P' Fyssas was accosted and attacked with bats and knives by a large group of Golden Dawn affiliated people leaving Pavlos to be pronounced dead at the hospital. The attack lead international protests and riots, the retaliatory shooting of three Golden Dawn members outside of their Neo Irakleio as well as condemnations against the party by politicians and other public figures, including Prime MinisterAntonis Samaras. This episode led to Golden Dawn to being criminally investigated, with the result in sixty-eight members of Golden Dawn being declared part of a criminal organization whilst fifteen out of the seventeen members accused in Pavlos's murder were convicted, "Effectively banning" the party.
Today's Italian constitution is the result of the work of the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy.
Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia (ANPI; "National Association of Italian Partisans") is an association founded by participants of the Italian resistance against the Italian Fascist regime and the subsequent Nazi occupation during World War II. ANPI was founded in Rome in 1944 while the war continued in northern Italy. It was constituted as a charitable foundation on 5 April 1945. It persists due to the activity of its antifascist members. ANPI's objectives are the maintenance of the historical role of the partisan war by means of research and the collection of personal stories. Its goals are a continued defense against historical revisionism and the ideal and ethical support of the high values of freedom and democracy expressed in the 1948 constitution, in which the ideals of the Italian resistance were collected. Since 2008, every two years ANPI organizes its national festival. During the event, meetings, debates, and musical concerts that focus on antifascism, peace, and democracy are organized.
Bella ciao (Italian pronunciation:[ˈbɛllaˈtʃaːo]; "Goodbye beautiful") is an Italian folk song modified and adopted as an anthem of the Italian resistance movement by the partisans who opposed nazism and fascism, and fought against the occupying forces of Nazi Germany, who were allied with the fascist and collaborationist Italian Social Republic between 1943 and 1945 during the Italian Civil War. Versions of this Italian anti-fascist song continue to be sung worldwide as a hymn of freedom and resistance. As an internationally known hymn of freedom, it was intoned at many historic and revolutionary events. The song originally aligned itself with Italian partisans fighting against Nazi German occupation troops, but has since become to merely stand for the inherent rights of all people to be liberated from tyranny.
Dartmouth College historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, credits the ARA as the precursor of modern antifa groups in the United States. In the late 1980s and 1990s, ARA activists toured with popular punk rock and skinhead bands in order to prevent Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other assorted white supremacists from recruiting. Their motto was "We go where they go" by which they meant that they would confront far-right activists in concerts and actively remove their materials from public places. In 2002, the ARA disrupted a speech in Pennsylvania by Matthew F. Hale, the head of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator, resulting in a fight and twenty-five arrests. In 2007, Rose City Antifa, likely the first group to utilize the name antifa, was formed in Portland, Oregon. Other antifa groups in the United States have other genealogies. In 1987 in Boise, Idaho, the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment (NWCAMH) was created in response to the Aryan Nation's annual meeting near Hayden Lake, Idaho. The NWCAMH brought together over 200 affiliated public and private organizations, and helped people, across six states--Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a group called the Baldies was formed in 1987 with the intent to fight neo-Nazi groups directly. In 2013, the "most radical" chapters of the ARA formed the Torch Antifa Network which has chapters throughout the United States. Other antifa groups are a part of different associations such as NYC Antifa or operate independently.
A June 2020 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies of 893 terrorism incidents in the United States since 1994 found one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to a fatality (the 2019 Tacoma attack, in which the attacker, who identified as an anti-fascist, was killed by police), while attacks by white supremacists or other right-wing extremists resulted in 329 deaths. Since the study was published, one homicide has been connected to anti-fascism. A DHS draft report from August 2020 similarly did not include "antifa" as a considerable threat, while noting white supremacists as the top domestic terror threat.
There have been multiple efforts to discredit antifa groups via hoaxes on social media, many of them false flag attacks originating from alt-right and 4chan users posing as antifa backers on Twitter. Some hoaxes have been picked up and reported as fact by right-leaning media.
During the George Floyd protests in May and June 2020, the Trump administration blamed antifa for orchestrating the mass protests. Analysis of federal arrests did not find links to antifa. There had been repeated calls by the Trump administration to designate antifa as a terrorist organization, a move that academics, legal experts and others argued would both exceed the authority of the presidency and violate the First Amendment.
^"90 let od požiga Narodnega doma v Trstu" [90 Years From the Arson of the National Hall in Trieste]. Primorski dnevnik [The Littoral Daily] (in Slovenian). 2010. pp. 14–15. COBISS11683661. Archived from the original on 14 October 2012. Retrieved 28 February 2012. Požig Narodnega doma ali šentjernejska noč tržaških Slovencev in Slovanov [Arson of the National Hall or the St. Bartholomew's Night of the Triestine Slovenes and Slavs]
^Sestani, Armando, ed. (10 February 2012). "Il confine orientale: una terra, molti esodi" [The Eastern Border: One Land, Multiple Exoduses] (PDF). I profugi istriani, dalmati e fiumani a Lucca [The Istrian, Dalmatian and Rijeka Refugees in Lucca] (in Italian). Instituto storico della Resistenca e dell'Età Contemporanea in Provincia di Lucca. pp. 12–13.
^Jože Pirjevec, Milica Kacin-Wohinz: Zgodovina primorskih Slovencev (The history of the Slovenians living on the Coast), Nova revija, Ljubljana 2002
^Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists?: The German Communists and Political Violence 1929–1933, Cambridge University Press, 25 Aug 1983, pp. 3–4
^Heinrich August Winkler: Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933. Bonn 1990, ISBN3-8012-0095-7.
^Hoppe, Bert (2011). In Stalins Gefolgschaft: Moskau und die KPD 1928–1933. Oldenbourg Verlag. ISBN9783486711738.
^Stephan, Pieroth (1994). Parteien und Presse in Rheinland-Pfalz 1945–1971: ein Beitrag zur Mediengeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mainzer SPD-Zeitung 'Die Freiheit'. v. Hase & Koehler Verlag. p. 96. ISBN9783775813266.
^Braunthal, Julius (1963). Geschichte der Internationale: 1914–1943. Vol. 2, p. 414. Dietz.
^Siegfried Lokatis: Der rote Faden. Kommunistische Parteigeschichte und Zensur unter Walter Ulbricht. Böhlau Verlag, Köln 2003, ISBN3-412-04603-5 (Zeithistorische Studien series, vol. 25), p. 60
^De Miguel, Jesús y Sánchez, Antonio: Batalla de Madrid, in his Historia Ilustrada de la Guerra Civil Española. Alcobendas, Editorial Libsa, 2006, pp. 189–221.
^Phil Piratin Our Flag Stays Red. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2006.
^Andrzej Olechnowicz, 'Liberal anti-fascism in the 1930s the case of Sir Ernest Barker', Albion 36, 2005, pp. 636–660
^Tirabassi, Maddalena (1984–1985). "Enemy Aliens or Loyal Americans?: the Mazzini Society and the Italian-American Communities". Rivista di Studi Anglo-Americani (4–5): 399–425.
^Mark Bray (2017). "'Never Again': The Development of Modern Antifa, 1945–2003". In Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Melville House Publishing. pp. 39–76.
^Defty, Brook (2007). Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945–1953. Chapters 2–5. The Information Research Department.
^Siegel, Achim (1998). The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism: Towards a Theoretical Reassessment. Rodopi. p. 200. ISBN9789042005525. "Concepts of totalitarianism became most widespread at the height of the Cold War. Since the late 1940s, especially since the Korean War, they were condensed into a far-reaching, even hegemonic, ideology, by which the political elites of the Western world tried to explain and even to justify the Cold War constellation."
^Guilhot, Nicholas (2005). The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order. Columbia University Press. p. 33. ISBN9780231131247. "The opposition between the West and Soviet totalitarianism was often presented as an opposition both moral and epistemological between truth and falsehood. The democratic, social, and economic credentials of the Soviet Union were typically seen as 'lies' and as the product of a deliberate and multiform propaganda. [...] In this context, the concept of totalitarianism was itself an asset. As it made possible the conversion of prewar anti-fascism into postwar anti-communism."
^Reisch, George A. (2005). How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic. Cambridge University Press. pp. 153–154. ISBN9780521546898.
^ "Aktionsfeld 'Antifaschismus'" [The field of "anti-fascism"]. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Archived from the original on 15 May 2020. Retrieved 29 July 2019. Das Aktionsfeld "Antifaschismus" ist seit Jahren ein zentrales Element der politischen Arbeit von Linksextremisten, insbesondere aus dem gewaltorientierten Spektrum. [...] Die Aktivitäten von Linksextremisten in diesem Aktionsfeld zielen aber nur vordergründig auf die Bekämpfung rechtsextremistischer Bestrebungen. Im eigentlichen Fokus steht der Kampf gegen die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung, die als "kapitalistisches System" diffamiert wird, und deren angeblich immanente "faschistische" Wurzeln beseitigt werden sollen.
^ Linksextremismus: Erscheinungsformen und Gefährdungspotenziale [Far-left extremism: Manifestations and danger potential] (PDF). Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. 2016. pp. 33–35. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2 June 2020. Die Aktivitäten "antifaschistischer" Linksextremisten (Antifa) dienen indes nur vordergründig der Bekämpfung rechtsextremistischer Bestrebungen. Eigentliches Ziel bleibt der "bürgerlich-demokratische Staat", der in der Lesart von Linksextremisten den "Faschismus" als eine mögliche Herrschaftsform akzeptiert, fördert und ihn deshalb auch nicht ausreichend bekämpft. Letztlich, so wird argumentiert, wurzle der "Faschismus" in den gesellschaftlichen und politischen Strukturen des "Kapitalismus". Dementsprechend rücken Linksextremisten vor allem die Beseitigung des "kapitalistischen Systems" in den Mittelpunkt ihrer "antifaschistischen" Aktivitäten.
^McGaw Smyth, Howard (September 1948). "Italy: From Fascism to the Republic (1943–1946)". The Western Political Quarterly. 1 (3): 205–222. doi:10.2307/442274. JSTOR442274.
^Bogel-Burroughs, Nicholas; Garcia, Sandra E. (28 September 2020). "What Is Antifa, the Movement Trump Wants to Declare a Terror Group?". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 October 2020. One of the first groups in the United States to use the name was Rose City Antifa, which says it was founded in 2007 in Portland.
^Clarke, Colin; Kenney, Michael (23 June 2020). "What Antifa Is, What It Isn't, and Why It Matters". War on the Rocks. Retrieved 26 June 2020. [...] Antifa, a highly decentralized movement of anti-racists who seek to combat neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and far-right extremists whom Antifa's followers consider 'fascist' [...].
^Feuer, Alan; Goldman, Adam; MacFarquhar, Neil (11 June 2020). "Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 June 2020. Despite claims by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr, there is scant evidence that loosely organized anti-fascists are a significant player in protests. [...] A review of the arrests of dozens of people on federal charges reveals no known effort by antifa to perpetrate a coordinated campaign of violence. Some criminal complaints described vague, anti-government political leanings among suspects, but a majority of the violent acts that have taken place at protests have been attributed by federal prosecutors to individuals with no affiliation to any particular group.
^Richter, Michael (2006). "Die doppelte Diktatur: Erfahrungen mit Diktatur in der DDR und Auswirkungen auf das Verhältnis zur Diktatur heute ("The double dictatorship: experiences with dictatorship in the GDR and effects on the relationship to the dictatorship today")". In Besier, Gerhard; Stoklosa, Katarzyna (eds.). Lasten diktatorischer Vergangenheit – Herausforderungen demokratischer Gegenwart [Burdens of a dictatorial past – challenges of a democratic present]. LIT Verlag. pp. 195–208. ISBN9783825887896. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
Eley, Geoff (1996). "Legacies of Antifascism: Constructing Democracy in Postwar Europe". New German Critique (67): 73–100. doi:10.2307/827778. ISSN0094-033X. JSTOR827778.
Copsey, N. (2011) "From direct action to community action: The changing dynamics of anti-fascist opposition", in Copsey, Nigel (2011). The British National Party : contemporary perspectives. Abingdon, Oxon New York: Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-48384-1. OCLC657270952.
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