Why Antifascism Works
Despite the predictions of liberalism, the failure of the Unite the Right 2 rally was a major vindication for antifascists.
Earlier this week the Unite the Right 2 rally only attracted a couple dozen people, despite having special subway cars reserved for them and the police attacking antifascists that showed up. This wasn’t because of writing petitions or debating fascists. It was because of people living in those communities rejecting fascism. Despite comfortable, wealthy liberals predicting that antifascism would only help the far right, what we have seen in DC is the total vindication of antifascism as a strategy. So as someone on the front lines of antifascism, why does it work?
Liberal opponents of antifascism claim that by shutting down fascist organizing we are giving the fascists greater exposure to a wider audience. They say that we are making people sympathetic to them and more likely to join them. First of all, if someone is willing to become a fascist because some fascists were confronted for their violent views, then they were a fascist to begin with. Second, exposure to the ideas of a political movement is simply not enough to make a political movement. Exposure is needed to be aware of it, but the most important thing for a lasting political movement is physical organizing. When liberals claim that confronting fascists leads to the growth of fascism, they don’t realize that making fascist movements impotent in organizing actually does more long-term harm to them than anything else. This is an inherent defect in liberalism: the belief that political organizing is unnecessary, that politics is simply an exchange of ideas rather than a struggle over how society should be ordered. This represents a fundamental disconnect from the people. Antifascist movements leave fascist movements weak and disorganized, which prevents further recruiting and keeps the fascist movement demoralized.
Liberalism cannot accept that politics is a struggle between people, because doing so undermines the conception of liberal democracy as a voluntary system. They can’t recognize that the unequal distribution of power means that for all but a few, democracy doesn’t exist. To acknowledge the nature of politics as a struggle would show the cracks in the foundation of their ideology. Thus, many liberals refuse to engage in that very political struggle, instead placing their faith in the state to keep order. This works when it comes to the left, because the state is diametrically opposed to leftist ideals.
However, this does not hold true for the right. The right's ideas of strict hierarchy and opposition to progress are the same ideals held by the state. This is why the police routinely attack antifascists while leaving fascists alone or even assisting them. Sometimes, police forces are even staffed with fascists. This is why antifascism is largely the domain of the left. We recognize that politics is a struggle over the ordering of society, and that the state will never stop the far right. Liberals are so insistent on defending a dying ideology they will allow the far right to grow, until it destroys the very liberal "democracy" they are trying to defend.
One of the primary ways the far right wins support from liberals against antifascism is claiming free speech. The far right co-opting the language of liberals and leftists against us is nothing new, such as their co-option of #MeToo, LGBTQ rights, or opposition to antisemitism. Their greatest success at this is claiming antifascism violates their free speech. Their claims of violations of free speech are usually laughable, like claiming free speech protects them from consequences of that speech, claiming free speech means people have to listen to them, or even that free speech means that they shouldn’t go to jail for stabbing people. To be clear, free speech is the doctrine that the government doesn’t have the right to stop speech it is opposed to. Free speech does not protect you from the people’s veto, where the people living in a community where speech is taking place have the right to deny someone a platform. However, when faced with the rejection of the people at large, fascists claim that this violates their free speech. The absurdity of people using free speech to destroy free speech is ridiculous, but liberals use this as an opportunity to attack the left. In doing so, they are actually helping the far right. It is telling of their motivations that whenever leftists suffer violations of their free speech, the liberals who cry about the free speech of the far right are totally silent. This demonstrates how weak liberal ideology is: to defend it, they inadvertently destroy it by promoting the cause of the far right.
