anti-fascism

Origins

A fasces ( FASS-eez; Latin: [ˈfaskeːs]; a plurale tantum, from the Latin word fascis, meaning 'bundle'; Italian: fascio littorio) is a bound bundle of wooden rods, often but not always including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a Roman king's power to punish his subjects, and later, a magistrate's power and jurisdiction. They were carried in a procession with a magistrate by lictors, who carried the fasces and at times used the birch rods as punishment to enforce obedience with magisterial commands. In common language and literature, the fasces were regularly associated with certain offices: praetors who were referred to in Greek as the hexapelekys (lit. 'six axes') and the consuls who were referred to as "the twelve fasces" as literary metonymy. Beyond serving as insignia of office, it also symbolised the Roman Republic and its prestige.

After the classical period, with the fall of the Roman state, thinkers were removed from the "psychological terror generated by the original Roman fasces" in the antique period. By the Renaissance, there emerged a conflation of the fasces with a Greek fable first recorded by Babrius in the second century AD depicting how individual sticks can be easily broken but how a bundle could not be. This story is common across Eurasian culture and by the thirteenth century AD was recorded in the Secret History of the Mongols. While there is no historical connection between the original fasces and this fable, by the sixteenth century AD, fasces were "inextricably linked" with interpretations of the fable as one expressing unity and harmony. Italian Fascism, which derives its name from the fasces, arguably used this symbolism the most in the 20th century.

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.

Liberal and conservative anti-fascism

Liberal and conservative anti-fascism refers to opposition to fascism grounded in the defense of constitutional order and national stability, focused on preserving liberal democracy against the fascist threat, rather than the radical social transformations demanded by revolutionary anti-fascists.

This form of anti-fascism is often associated with prominent figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, who opposed fascist authoritarianism while also resisting the revolutionary left. It was supported by a broad coalition of groups, including capitalists, trade unionists, social democrats, reformist socialists, and moderate conservatives, all of whom united in their opposition to fascism and their support for political stability.

Counterrevolutionary anti-fascism sought to challenge fascist ideologies and movements, aiming to preserve existing democratic structures and stabilize society. It focused on reinforcing confidence in democratic governance and addressing extremist movements, setting itself apart from revolutionary anti-fascism, which frequently aimed at challenging capitalist systems.

In Great Britain, conservative anti-fascists primarily concentrated on maintaining the Westminster system of parliamentary rule, marginalizing fascist groups through legal and institutional means such as the Public Order Act 1936, which cracked down on the British Union of Fascists. Anti-fascists in the Labour Party and Liberal Party, on the other hand, opposed fascists actively through media campaigns, petitions, parliamentary debates, and public discourse. Both forms recognized fascism as a threat to the constitution, and both approached revolutionary ideologies, including communism, with caution. British counterrevolutionary anti-fascism in the 1930s was shaped by an alliance that transcended traditional political divisions. Churchill's leadership was pivotal in creating an antifascist front that included both conservative and social democratic figures. This coalition rejected the pretense that fascism was the only defense against communism, instead defending the constitution of the United Kingdom. Through organizations like the Anti-Nazi Council, the counterrevolutionary antifascist movement rallied elites across the political spectrum, including trade unionists and churchmen, to oppose fascism and preserve liberal democracy. This broader vision of anti-fascism, sepearate from socialist and communist approaches, helped shape Britain's resistance to Nazi aggression.

History

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-democratic organisers 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-left Third 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.

Italy: against Fascism and Mussolini

In Italy, Mussolini's Fascist regime used the term anti-fascist to describe its opponents. Mussolini's secret police was officially known as the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism. During the 1920s in the Kingdom of Italy, anti-fascists, many of them from the labor movement, fought against the violent Blackshirts and against the rise of the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. After the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) signed a pacification pact with Mussolini and his Fasces of Combat on 3 August 1921, and trade unions adopted a legalist and pacified strategy, members of the workers' movement who disagreed with this strategy formed Arditi del Popolo.

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-fascist resistance 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.

Slovenians and Croats under Italianization

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 Slovene anti-fascist resistance in Yugoslavia during World War II was led by Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. The Province of Ljubljana, occupied by Italian Fascists, saw the deportation of 25,000 people, representing 7.5% of the total population, filling up the Rab concentration camp and Gonars concentration camp as well as other Italian concentration camps.

Germany: against the NSDAP and Hitlerism

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 Stalinist Ernst 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 and Max Keilson, is still widely used as a symbol of militant anti-fascists in Germany and globally, as is the Iron Front's Three Arrows logo.

Spain: Civil War against the Nationalists

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."

In Spain, there were histories of popular uprisings in the late 19th century through to the 1930s against the deep-seated military dictatorships of General Prim and Primo de Rivera. These movements further coalesced into large-scale anti-fascist movements in the 1930s, many in the Basque Country, before and during the Spanish Civil War. The republican government and army, the Antifascist Worker and Peasant Militias (MAOC) linked to the Communist Party (PCE), the International Brigades, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), Spanish anarchist militias, such as the Iron Column and the autonomous governments of Catalonia and the Basque Country, fought the rise of Francisco Franco with military force.

The Friends of Durruti, associated with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), were a particularly militant group. Thousands of people from many countries went to Spain in support of the anti-fascist cause, joining units such as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the British Battalion, the Dabrowski Battalion, the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, the Naftali Botwin Company and the Thälmann Battalion, including Winston Churchill's nephew, Esmond Romilly. Notable anti-fascists who worked internationally against Franco included: George Orwell (who fought in the POUM militia and wrote Homage to Catalonia about his experience), Ernest Hemingway (a supporter of the International Brigades who wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls about his experience), and the radical journalist Martha Gellhorn.

The Spanish anarchist guerrilla Francesc 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.

France: against Action Française and Vichy

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.

United Kingdom: against Mosley's BUF

The rise of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930s was challenged by the Communist Party of Great Britain, socialists in the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party, anarchists, Irish Catholic dockmen and working class Jews in London's East End. A high point in the struggle was the Battle of Cable Street, when thousands of local residents and others turned out to stop the BUF from marching. Initially, the national Communist Party leadership wanted a mass demonstration at Hyde Park in solidarity with Republican Spain, instead of a mobilization against the BUF, but local party activists argued against this. Activists rallied support with the slogan They shall not pass, adopted from Republican Spain.

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-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". Peter N. Carroll, a historian of the Americans who served in the XV International Brigade, challenges their account, however, quoting contemporary descriptions of the term being used as a tool to challenge the loyalty of those veterans and minimize their sacrifice. He cites, for example, a speech in 1945 by Representative John M. Coffee at Madison Square Garden, where he mentions those veterans and says, "they call them premature anti-fascists in some nasty Washington circles today!"

Burma, World War II

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.

Poland, World War II

The Anti-Fascist Bloc was an organization of Polish Jews formed in the March 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was created after an alliance between leftist-Zionist, communist and socialist Jewish parties was agreed upon. The initiators of the bloc were Mordechai Anielewicz, Józef Lewartowski (Aron Finkelstein) from the Polish Workers' Party, Josef Kaplan from Hashomer Hatzair, Szachno Sagan from Poale Zion-Left, Jozef Sak as a representative of socialist-Zionists and Izaak Cukierman with his wife Cywia Lubetkin from Dror. The Jewish Bund did not join the bloc though they were represented at its first conference by Abraham Blum and Maurycy Orzech.

After World War II

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.

The war ended in Italy on 2 May 1945, with the complete surrender of German and RSI forces to the Allied forces, as formally established during the so-called Surrender at Caserta on 29 April 1945, marks the definitive defeat of Nazism and Fascism in Italy. By 1 May, all of northern Italy was liberated from occupation, including Bologna (21 April), Genoa (23 April), Milan (25 April), Turin and Venice (28 April). The liberation put an end to two and a half years of German occupation, five years of war, and twenty-three years of fascist dictatorship. The aftermath of World War II left Italy bitter toward the monarchy for endorsing the Fascist regime for over 20-plus years. These frustrations contributed to a revival of the Italian republican movement. The liberation symbolically represents the beginning of the historical journey which led to the referendum of 2 June 1946, when Italians opted for the end of the monarchy and the creation of the Italian Republic. This was followed by the adoption of the 1948 Constitution of the Republic, created by the Constituent Assembly and representatives from the anti-fascist forces that defeated the Nazis and the Fascists during the liberation of Italy and the Italian civil war.

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".

Use of the term

The Christian Democratic Union of Germany politician Tim Peters notes that the term is one of the most controversial terms in political discourse. Michael Richter, a researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, highlights the ideological use of the term in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, in which the term fascism was applied to Eastern bloc dissidents regardless of any connection to historical fascism, and where the term anti-fascism served to legitimize the ruling government.