Hi, everyone, and welcome to the new website for We AntiFascists, a hub for information, news, and perspectives on anti-fascism and anti-fascist perspectives.
We wanted to take a moment and thank the nearly two thousand people who have joined our Facebook page since Mr. Trump first declared that “antifa” are “terrorists” a couple of weeks ago. It should go without saying that isn’t true, but it doesn’t and so here we are. We’re going to end up saying many things in the coming months and years that should go without saying, but don’t, and we welcome your contributions to that effort.
Our purpose is not to claim “leadership of Antifa,” nor to create a crafted pseudo-movement like the Adbusters‘ “Occupy Wall Street” campaign that can easily be co-opted by fringe radicals, nor to co-opt or infiltrate “antifa” ourselves. We absolutely are anti-fascists, to our very bones. In some cases, our administrators have family histories filled top to bottom with anti-fascists, going back generations even to before fascism was a word. Then we were suffragettes, abolitionists, anti-authoritarians, revolutionaries, underground railroaders, insurgents, and freedom fighters. Then we became anti-fascists, second- and third- and fourth-wave feminists, anti-racists, anti-sexists, anti-homophobes, anti-despots. We wear all those labels with pride and strive to do them justice every moment of our lives.
We stand in favor of human dignity, liberty, and happiness. We stand against oppression, authoritarianism, depotism, totalitarianism, bigotry, and exploitation. We believe that the ultimate vision of human success is when every single person has every possible chance that we can collectively provide to attain their greatest personal potential in whatever it is they wish to do, so long as it does not bring harm to the innocent.
We believe that our species has now entered a radically evolutionary period, and that by the time our grandchilren are our age, things that we accept as normal and even progressive will be understood property as the impediments to human success that they are. Concepts and paradigms such as the notion that we must expend a third of our lives generating profit for oligarchs in order to be considered worthy of our humanity, the notion that our humanity must be “earned,” to say nothing of all the identity fractures like racism, ableism, ageism, transphobia, will be seen in the not-too-distant future in the same light we view the Dark Ages.
We are at the dawn of a renaissance in human consciousness, evolving to a higher form of existence. As recent events boldly underscore, that evolution will not always be painless; some will require fighting for every inch of ground gained; some will require accepting that some people we love simply may not want to evolve and will choose to be left behind. We will need to recursively examine our internal biases and assumptions down to basic concepts like tribalism, family, religion, and nations.
If the late 1960’s was “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” in the vernacular of the day, the 2020’s must be seen as the alarm going off again after we’ve hit the snooze button a dozen times and now we have to skip the shower, brush our teeth in the car, and risk a traffic ticket to get to work. Social advances made in the early days of the humanity movement in the 1960’s, advances which felt tremendous and permanent and profound at the time, have proven fragile, fallible, and reversible.
For the love of all the beauty and wonder and hope and love that humanity, collectively and individually, has to offer, we can not allow our species to slide back into the oblivion of pre-scientific thought. We are reminded of the words of science fiction author Robert Heinlein:
“Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free.”
We must, as a matter of basic survival of our species, not merely embrace knowledge but ensure it. Critical thinking skills must be continually developed and refined and propagated; we must, as individuals, encourage those who come after us to question us and find the flaws in our work, to further refine and improve the overall condition of all humanity and thereby ensure our survival into an infinite future. We must be willing to set our egos aside and, by acting as the impersonal pseudo-identity of “Antifa,” welcome those who wish to be free to grow, learn, and – if they can, if they want to – fight as one against the forces of despotism, oppression, and indignity.
That is why we have chosen to step forward at this time, formally assume the mantle of “antifa” in direct defiance of the propaganda and threats issued by Mr. Trump and repeated by his sycophants throughout our culture, and say once and for all:
We will be free.
We look forward to providing resources and information for you to further understand and embrace your freedom through standing against “fascism,” or more to the point the attributes of fascism that empower tyranny, which are all of them. Oppression, authoritarianism, classism, racism, sexism, all forms of bigotry and ignorance. We strive to encourage and empower, even while teaching truths that we as individuals may find personally painful about our own characters, assumptions, privileges, entitlements, and acts of oppression against others.
Growth hurts, inevitably. We aren’t here to make it hurt worse; we’re here to make it as painless as it possibly can be.
We welcome everyone who stands against oppression and tyranny as our equal partners in this long-term endeavor.
With love and solidarity,
“Antifa.”
