(Dobbs) If You Think Fascism Is A Bad Thing, Watch Out.
Fascism is not what the founding fathers fought for. It is not what made America great. It will not make America great again.
READ IN APP Do you think fascism is a bad thing? You should. Fascism means authoritarian rule. Fascism means obedience to the state. Fascism means crushing the opposition. Fascism means the rule of the government counts more than the rights of the governed.
So it seems odd that the Trump regime keeps bringing up “antifa,” simply an abbreviation for “anti-fascist,” as if anti-fascism is a bad thing. But like her boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi did it again late last week when she took on California Governor Gavin Newsom over the issue of California’s redistricting in response to Texas’s. She wrote on X, “Newsom should be concerned about keeping Californians safe and shutting down Antifa violence, not rigging his state for political gain.”
Now connect the dots: if you’re anti-antifa, it means you’re anti-anti-fascist, which makes you pro-fascist.
And therefore, closing the circle, if you’re anti-fascist, watch out, because today in America, you’re talking about Trump, which puts you in the government’s crosshairs. When this increasingly fascist-looking regime looks through those crosshairs, this is what they see.
Five days after that post in September, Donald Trump attacked. He declared antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” U.S. law doesn’t actually even have such a designation, but that doesn’t mean he won’t follow through with his threats against anyone giving the antifa movement material support. Don’t put it past him. As sure as Trump has turned the Department of Justice into his own weapon for vengeance, his cruel crusades against political rivals already have turned into criminal indictments. No one who fights fascism is invulnerable.
Of course going after antifa is tricky, because there is no such organization. It is an ideology, a movement. If the government wants to raid antifa, where does it start? Antifa has no leader, its believers have no membership cards, it has no brick-and-mortar headquarters, it has no bank accounts.
Antifa simply means anyone who believes that fascism is a bad thing. Until they criminalize what people are thinking, that is not a criminal act. Nor are benign forms of support for a movement. Maybe you’ve done no more than attend a speech about standing up to Donald Trump. Maybe you’ve done no more than post a social media message critical of Trump. Maybe you’ve done no more than make small donations to candidates challenging Trump. Maybe you’ve done no more than march on No Kings Day.
It doesn’t matter. In the eyes of this regime, you are Public Enemy #1. Not because you have advocated the fierce fall of this government, not because you have been violent (we leave that behavior to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and others who thuggishly tried to overturn the election on January 6th, 2021, then got pardons from this president). No, you are Public Enemy #1 simply because, to use the president’s raging rhetoric, you are part of the “sick, dangerous, radical left” and have not fallen to your knees and genuflected in the direction of the White House.
Attorney General Bondi was pretty clear on a podcast about who’s the enemy: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” But of course while it actually means inciting hatred and violence with the aim of doing harm, hate speech can be in the eye of the beholder and with these beholders, it can be anything they say it is.
Completely discarded, in the eyes of this administration, is the constitutional protection of free speech. Even Chief Justice John Roberts said in a case fifteen years ago, criminalizing support for designated terrorist groups might not “survive First Amendment scrutiny.” And despite what this regime says, antifa is not a terrorist group.
Bondi later had to walk her own warning back a bit. She had to clarify the meaning of “hate speech” with this post on X: “It is a federal crime to transmit ‘any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another.’ Likewise, 18 U.S.C. § 876 and 18 U.S.C. § 115 make it a felony to threaten public officials, members of Congress, or their families.” And of course, “You cannot call for someone’s murder.”
Which brings us to Trump’s second attack on antifa. On October 8th, he invited right-wing “influencers” to the White House for a roundtable. Some in the audience urged him to designate antifa as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Which led to a remarkable glimpse into the dimwitted decision-making process of the president, all played out for the TV cameras covering the meeting.
Trump: Would you like to see it done?
Audience member: Yes, Mr. President.
Trump: Do you think it would help?
Audience member: They have foreign links….
Trump: I’d be glad to do it.
Audience member: …. all across Western Europe….
Trump: I think it’s the kind of thing I’d like to do, if you’d like to.
Audience member: …. the Middle East…
Trump: Does everybody agree? If you agree, I agree. Let’s get it done, okay? Let’s get it done. Marco, we’ll take care of it.
Secretary of State Rubio subsequently said, “It means that we can now, number one, go after the money, the properties, the banking system of anyone who’s related to these groups.” In other words, anyone who has given material support.
As NPR then reported, “Material support is broadly defined and can mean something as small as a $10 gift card or a bottle of water. That charge, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, could be brought against anyone associated with what the administration deems to be antifa. Social media companies could take steps to restrict any communication that could be seen as related to antifa if it were to be designated a foreign terrorist group. Universities, meanwhile, could cancel conferences that touch any topic that might conceivably relate to anti-fascism, and faculty research could be curtailed.”
But of course, like hate speech, a “foreign terrorist organization” also is in the eyes of the beholder. Which worries former State Department official Jason Blazakis, who once led the office there that dealt with foreign terrorism. “When that foreign terrorist organization is so ill-defined and nobody even knows what it is,” he told NPR, “and it potentially includes all activity that can be painted as left-wing or whatever term you like to hang on it, that becomes potentially catastrophically dangerous for anybody, for everybody.”
It is worth remembering, the civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s were part of a movement. The Vietnam War protests in the 1970s were part of a movement. Today, anti-fascist rallies and marches are part of a movement. To be sure, some demonstrations have turned violent in recent years. Some protesters associated with the antifa movement have broken windows and thrown things at the police and set cars on fire. But they aren’t on a par with the radical Weather Underground or the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Black Panther Party of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
So calling antifa a “terrorist organization” is way out of scale, especially since it’s not even an organization at all. And especially when violent groups that support the president get off scot free.
If antifa has a single theme, it is that fascism is bad. Whether it takes the form of the murderous Nazi regime most of a century ago, or the form of the malevolent Trump regime today. It is not what the founding fathers fought for. It is not what made America great. It will not make America great again.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
You can learn more at GregDobbs.net
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