Why did you become an anti-fascist?

[Game Girl]

What inspired you to become an anti-fascist? What motivated you into fighting against oppression and hate?

I'll start. My inspiration was actually a member of my family.

My great uncle Albert was a Polish immigrant who moved here years ago. When he was a child, him and his parents were sent to a Nazi concentration camp. I remember he told me about it one day. Of course, he didn't go into great detail, as the memories were painful. But they did alot of horrible things to him. He mentioned something about experiments. I don't remember much about what he told me, but I'm reluctant to research the subject. Purely because I know I'll not like what I find. His mother died while in the camp, but he, his father and all the other prisoners were freed. When he became an adult, he moved to Scotland and married my mothers aunt. They had several children and grandchildren, one of whom I was very close to.

Sadly, great uncle Albert died 2 years ago. But he was very elderly and he wasen't afraid of dying. Despite what happened when he was a child, he admitted he had a good life and was ready to die. He died peacefully in his home, with his family around him.

What was my great uncles crime in the Nazi's eyes? He was Polish. Thats it...Thats when I realised just how cruel Nazi's were and when I learned it wasen't just Jews that suffered. When I learned about neo-nazis/fascists, I immediently hated them. They want to oppress people and force their own ideologies onto others. They will glady wage war and violence to get their view across. A war nobody wants. Thats why I became an anti-fascist. To stop history from repeating itself. To let those thugs know that ANY ideology involving Hitler or Nazis or fascism will NOT be tolerated in a civilised society.

To accept the Swastika in my home would be a grave insult on my great uncles memory. It's a symbol I will NEVER accept. It's a symbol I will gladly burn!

[Sasha]

pretty much the same, jewish bi-sexual lefty with family who fought both in the resistance and spain and a lot of dead family in the camps, it would have been quite surprising if i wouldnt have ended up an staunch anti-fascist

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

well i really don't want to go into great detail, but i used to know someone who also went to a concentration camp.

[Susurrus]

I never really wasn't an anti-fascist, but what really cemented it for me was reading this:http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bright/berkman/bmyth/bmch28.html It's one thing to have the accounts of survivors and such, which are horrific, but to read the accounts of people in that situation with little chance of survival is another.

[praxis1966]

For me it was a bit different because of where I grew up, the Southeastern US. That led me to anti-fascism not because of Nazis, but because of the Klan, Conservative Citizens' Councils (the modern incarnation of the old white supremacist and segregationist White Citizens' Councils formed during the Civil Rights era), and various neo-Confederate groups like the League of the South. However, I didn't learn of those until adulthood.

On a more visceral level I began to oppose the kinds of attitudes and actions associated with white supremacy at a very young age. I had a very culturally diverse group of friends growing up, indeed as far back as elementary school. I saw these friends, who had slept over at my house, whose parents had fed me, and whom I'd grown very close to abused (often physically) and demeaned as early as the first or second grade in elementary school. White supremacy and racism, therefore, are things that produce a reaction in a way that I don't think a lot of other people of my skin color understand, leastways not here in the US... In a way, it was these experiences I think that led me to revolutionary leftism in the first place. Getting called a "nigger lover" has a way of doing that to you...

[28350]

jewish bi-sexual lefty with family who fought [...] in the resistance

this^

but also it's not exactly radical to declare yourself an antifascist. fascism isn't too political fashionable nowadays, but even so, fascism isn't some ultimate evil against whom we should side with non-fascist capitalists.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I grew up in a country where everyone hates Nazis.

[Vendetta]

Common sense.

[Black Sheep]

A revleft article.Seriously.

[Luisrah]

My father is a communist and fought against the fascist or semi-fascist dictatorship in Portugal. He was arrested and had to endure torture, and he told me all the stories about it.

[Rafiq]

Fascists in Lebanon are assholes

[Kadir Ateş]

For a communist there is only anti-bourgeois.

[Stand Your Ground]

My 8th grade teacher taught me about the Holocaust. So mostly that, but I always disliked discrimination before that. Then I was looking for anti-discrimination forums and revleft popped up lol.

[Susurrus]

For a communist there is only anti-bourgeois.

Not really, many fascists are working class unfortunately.

[praxis1966]

Exactly. Anybody who thinks that the TEA Party, who are about a step and a half from being full bore camicie nere IMO, is made exclusively of corporate fat cats is kidding themselves. Same goes for the Klan, BANA and various neo-Nazi organizations.

[Arlekino]

For me probably personal not nice stories. My Grandmother was killed by Nationalist "Forest Brothers" and links with nazis ,well now actually their are freedom fighters can we see how Baltic States government can show true colours. After the war, seems Stalin did favour for my mother as she told me. As well as transition from kind of Socialism to Neo Liberism hm I don't want to live that kind of society, I see in my own experiences is crap life we all population changed for the worse. So lets hope rebuild better society without fascist.

[Steve_j]

Its inherent to my politics, i am a communist.

[bricolage]

Exactly. Anybody who thinks that the TEA Party, who are about a step and a half from being full bore camicie nere IMO, is made exclusively of corporate fat cats is kidding themselves. Same goes for the Klan, BANA and various neo-Nazi organizations.
I don't think that the was the point they are making, you'd be hard pushed to find any movement which wasn't predominantly composed of the working class, its a simple reflection of demographics. The point about 'anti-bourgeois' is that fascism is a form of the rule of capital but it is not separate from more democratic ones. The history of anti-fascism as a political ideology and ideological movement has been the subordination of class autonomy to social democracy or worse. Dauve goes into this well in When Insurrections Die. (http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/9)

[Rusty Shackleford]

Teh red army pwned the nazis in WWII.

but seriously, ive always had an aversion to it.

[bricolage]

To add, countless members of my mothers family died in death camps, the rest got away by escaping from moving trains, bribing secret police and my grandfather had to rescue his own father from behind barbed wire. After the war some made it to England, David Ben Gurion actually staying with my grandmother, some remained stuck in what was left of Poland, the rest went to what was the British Mandate of Palestine and now live in Tel Aviv. The ones who are alive would all describe themselves as 'anti-fascist', half of them will still wave Union Jacks or vote for Netanyahu.

I fully agree with defending communities, meeting, football terraces if under attack and if far right street movements are marching down your street then yeah stop them. For me though this is just self-defence and the problem arises when anti-fascism is translated into some sort of political movement or strategy which tends to end up either playing by the rules of bourgeois democracy and legitimising some other faction of capital or becoming dead end subcultural gang warfare. Fascism is a product of both crises in capitalism and of class insurgencies, this has always been the case, it will be eliminated when these insurgencies are capable of dealing with these crises, not when leftists decide to 'smash' it.

[praxis1966]

What I was saying is that you can do both (anti-fascism and revolutionary leftism) at the same time. Further, I don't have any particular problem with fighting fascist movements which exist outside the state apparatus no matter what that movement's class background is. And while I don't doubt that anti-fascism doesn't necessarily equal leftism automatically, I don't see them as inherently oppositional either. That and as someone with I'd say (at least) a modicum of class consciousness I don't see myself as getting co-opted into some social democratic movement either. Shit man, as an anarcho-syndicalist I don't even believe in political parties let alone social democracy, lol.

At any rate, I basically agree with your second post, but I think Kadir is being a little myopic if he thinks that struggling against fascist movements is a bad idea... Then again, it's hard to surmise much from a post which consists of all of seven words, lol.

[bricolage]

I don't think it's about your individual political beliefs though, more the social role that anti-fascist movements (which, as opposed to individuals, is what I think we are generally talking about) tend to play. This has historically (and still today) led to either tacit or overt support for democratic parties of capital or repressive state apparatus. While you yourself may be against integration into such institutions, the political line of 'stopping' fascist movement x, y or z is more often than not translated into this. The most horrific example is that David Cameron as a signatory to Unite Against Fascism but there are countless others.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I sympathize with Dauve's points in W.I.D. but I also think that one can be a "anti-fascist" w/o buying into the whole sham that are "united fronts" against fascism, with the two particularly egregious examples in Germany and Spain. This is especially true if one lives in an area that's plagued by ultra-nationalism and violent bigotry. I live in Alaska, so I've never really had to deal with "fascists".

But I do think that the threat of fascism is still even in the present day dramatically exaggerated. As (I believe) Alexander Cockburn once said, the institution of public school represents an infinitely greater threat to the average black teenager than the KKK ever will.

[praxis1966]

But I do think that the threat of fascism is still even in the present day dramatically exaggerated. As (I believe) Alexander Cockburn once said, the institution of public school represents an infinitely greater threat to the average black teenager than the KKK ever will.

There was a time and a place where what you're saying was completely untrue, but that was at minimum 25-35 years ago. Cockburn's absolutely right about the public school system and his point could be extended to Latino/as and Native Americans as well. However, I'm pretty sure there's still some egregious shit that goes on in a wider societal sense that begins with schoolchildren and their inherited prejudices... Knowing what I do about the Deep South, it's more of a social problem these days than any form of organized white nationalism... Even still, organized white nationalism exists, and I see no problem crashing their little street parties when they throw them.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

I was born anti-fascist.;)

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Where I grew up there were like 4 white families in the neighborhood, everybody else was Hispanic. So naturally most of my friends weren't white but a lot of white kids at school were racist assholes who would attack my friends(and me if I was there). Then they tried to recruit me to hate my own friends which didn't end too well so every once in a while they would try and jump me. I also lived on an Native American reservation for two months one summer and they faced numerous attacks by neo-nazis for some reason. My experiences with these people led me to be militantly antifascist before I was even a leftist.

[black magick hustla]

I sympathize with Dauve's points in W.I.D. but I also think that one can be a "anti-fascist" w/o buying into the whole sham that are "united fronts" against fascism, with the two particularly egregious examples in Germany and Spain. This is especially true if one lives in an area that's plagued by ultra-nationalism and violent bigotry. I live in Alaska, so I've never really had to deal with "fascists".

But I do think that the threat of fascism is still even in the present day dramatically exaggerated. As (I believe) Alexander Cockburn once said, the institution of public school represents an infinitely greater threat to the average black teenager than the KKK ever will.

i think the point is that anti-fascism as a political category is egregious. i think that is difference to fighting fascists as a matter of self-defense, in the same way fighting a bully, or cops, or whatever can be a matter of self-defense. this is utterly different than the plethora of anti-fascist groups today, especially in the US.

[Dogs On Acid]

My father.

Racist, Homophobic (except lesbians :laugh:), Anti-Semitic, Nationalist, Authoritarian, Patriarchal, never pays child support, abandoned my half-sister (never met her), Petit-Capitalist, Commodity Fetishist, Cocky, Arrogant, Liar/Delusional, Anti-Drugs, Social-Conservative, Verbally-Abusive and Piss-head.

Hence I refuse to visit him. He finds it strange...

[Die Rote Fahne]

Before I even realized what fascism was. I was always anti-nazi, and as I learned about fascism in school (World History) I grew to despise it.

Thankfully I had a teacher who was a Social Democrat, and sort of soft on Lenin. He liked the NEP, and was always very moderate on the USSR, questioning the motives of Boris Yeltsin, and expressing that he read Chomsky.

By grade 12 I was a full fledged anti-fascist, knowing what it actually meant.

[LegendZ]

I read about the Native American and his family that was assaulted. That was the final straw.

[black magick hustla]

I read about the Native American and his family that was assaulted. That was the final straw.

but racism has nothing to do with fascism. racism as we know it has existed since the rise of modernity, imperialism, slavery, etcetera.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

but racism has nothing to do with fascism. racism as we know it has existed since the rise of modernity, imperialism, slavery, etcetera.

The family was jumped by a bunch of skinheads who were shouting racial slurs at them while they attacked them. Are we really going to think these punks aren't neo-nazi fascists? And I've lived in the area before, attacks on Native Americans by neo-nazis is too common in Nevada and you'd be really surprised of how widespread these fascist views are there.

[Renno]

Hardcore-punk!

[Dr Mindbender]

My growing up in Northern Ireland inspired in me a hatred of bigotry in general. Ulster Loyalism has always struck me as another arm of fascism.

[The Stalinator]

How did I become an antifascist?
When I was like 13 I met a few fascists on the internet, and then I tried to imagine what my life would be like under fascism.

And then I thought "fuck that shit".

[Smyg]

Must've been around six or seven. The janitor at my school, who always was nice to everyone, was severely assaulted by a gang of neo-nazis. Afterwards, when he got better, he went around to every class showing photos of his wounds. It was terrifying. :crying:

I suppose that started it. And since my mother worked with immigrants and refugees most of my life, and was an active member of Amnesty International, I heard a lot from her. Specifically, about the horrible treatment of refugees from both state and people.

That's right people, emotionally scarring your children might make them antifascist. :ohmy:

[Red Future]

When I saw pictures of Auschwitz.

[Lirwin2]

The book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" was my first step. I've always been interested in history, but this was life changing, my eyes had been opened. It's an entire movement based upon hatred of human beings, and that was when I realized I wanted to spend my entire life fighting fascism.