What A Real Anti-Fascist Group Should Do

Antifa had a coming out party last year especially during the Charlottesville protests and counter-protests. The image they portrayed came pretty much from their ancestors from Germany of the past during its 1920s and early 1930s street conflicts with the Nazis. Thus, many of their activities involve a similar approach to  street violence seen back then. And while members of the group might feel that they are fighting fascism when they throw punches at fringe groups or destroy property, they accomplish nothing on a good day. I am saying this as someone who has seen them in person before they gained notoriety.

The forces of fascism do not exist on the street. Instead, they exist in the seemingly honorable corner offices and majestic buildings that house the private sector pillars of our financial system and corporate Goliaths. The forces of fascism reside where the fuel for power accumulates. The fuel for fascism's power is wealth. That is because, in Capitalist economic systems, power follows wealh.

Thus, none of Antifa's destruction of property or street fighting contributes anything to the efforts to stop fascism. In fact, to the extent that such tactics harm the public image of the other opponents of fascism, Antifa's tactics amount to self-sabotage.

What we see in fascism is the consolidation of power. And as, previously mentioned, power follows wealth in Capitalist economic systems. Thus, where we see the potential for fascism is where wealth is accumulated. And where accumulated wealth is used to exercise power of over politicians, we have the beginnings of fascism. And we should note here that under our current form of Capitalism, which is called neoliberalism, wealth disparity has continually increased. Thus, as wealth disparity increases, the potential for fascism increases because power follows wealth.

So what we need to look for now is whether that potential for fascism is becoming realized. And, apparently, that potential has been in the process of being realized  even before Trump became President (click here).

When we look at the 3 main examples of fascism in Europe's history, which are Germany, Italy, and Spain, we find the following shared traits. They oppose democracy and liberalism while promoting a 'militaristic nationalism' and the rule of elites (click here). But another interesting tidbit about those 3 examples of Fascism is that those nations' respective leaders were supported by economic elites who saw in fascism either economic opportunities or protection from losses that could be incurred from rebellions (click here and there). At the same time, the governments gained supervision over both the economy and those elites. And while we saw a mutual support between the Obama Administration and different business elites such as evidenced by his attempts to fast track the TPP or his DOJ's failure to criminally penalize main players in the financial sector who were significantly responsible for the economic collapse of 2008, the mutual support between the Trump Administration and economic elites has spiked as shown by the Trump Administration's cutting back on environmental regulations (for examples, click here and there) as well as the DOJ dismissing the 'deferred prosecution' of HSBC for laundering money for groups like Mexican drug cartels and a Saudi Bank that has dealt with Al-Qaeda (click here and there). We should note from Mussolini's reign that some protectionism measures were enacted with the support of industry leaders (click here). We should also note that Donald Trump has spoken fondly of America following China's example of allowing their leader to serve as President for life.

At this point, we should include some disclaimers. First,  that protectionism and some government supervision of the economy does not imply a coming fascism. We should also note that government control of the economy does not imply socialism, at least from the Marxist tradition. While many became suspicious of Marxism with the Communist Manifesto's call for the abolition of private property (click here), few realized what Marx meant by that (click here to find Marx's definition of the abolition of property). Neither do more than a few realize that there were socialists who opposed Lenin's regime because it was structured after a bourgeoisie dictatorship rather than a proletariat run democracy (click here). Thus, according to Luxemburg, any government that relied on a top-down organization or did the bidding of economic elites could not be called a socialist government in any way, shape, or form. And not all authoritarian regimes that receive support from business elites can be called fascist. Finally, we should also note that because many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians fall prey to authoritarian personality types, we should expect the conservative Church to support various regimes that employ elite-centered rule provided that the right elites are in charge.

If Antifa wants to fight against fascism and other authoritarian type rule, it needs to do the following:

1. Oppose all calls to a 'militaristic nationalism.'
2. Oppose all calls for the consolidation of power for the President.
3. Stop the further consolidation of wealth.
4. Work to give all legal groups an equal voice in our political system. Here Antifa should eliminate the power that certain  groups have over our politicians without silencing them.
5. Work to distribute power to workers in the workplace. One way to accomplish this is to help with the creation of democratically run worker co-ops. In addition, Antifa should support codetermination laws that are at least somewhat similar to the codetermination laws employed in Germany.

 Yes, there are other measures to take, but the ones listed above provide an adequate hedge against fascism or any other authoritarian regime. And we should note that if the above is what's needed to fight fascism, then we should judge Antifa's motives by the above criteria.