Incredible.
Jack Posobiec references the earliest version of antifa -- the anti-fascists in the Weimar Republic who were opposed to the Nazi Party -- as the bad guys.
I think our disagreement is that you believe antifascism is a state or personality whereas I believe it is a series of actions and beliefs - and so my definition allows for people to take fascist and antifascist actions.
We see this in individuals. Eg JK Rowling advocates for womens rights (which is inherently antifascist except the transphobic part bc transphobia is misogyny which I’ll get to later) and at one time ran a campaign against disabled people chained to their beds unwillingly 24/7 (also antifascist), and many themes in Harry Potter are also blatantly antifascist. But she is overall labeled a fascist because she has made her biggest current thing to be gender fascism (transphobia). Everything she does in that realm is fascist, even though her own author name is ironically gender bent and she’s done it twice now with the intentionally “masc” Galbraith name and JK Rowling being intentionally unisex.
And we should dissect these things and look at them, because that allows us to look at ourselves and make progress.
They also set up a system that allowed slavery to be torn down in a way that had not yet happened for thousands of years in slave owning governments, giving rise to global human rights increases. Yes, they were horrible for owning slaves and those laws are horrible and have to be changed. It is quite literally against the human condition to have slavery or be a slave.
Would I personally call them antifa heros? Maybe to piss off conservatives, but otherwise no. Did they take actions that we can argue were antifascist? Yes
The original claim was that the founders were “antifascists.”
Personally, I wouldn’t call them fascist or antifascist because I disagree with the definition that extends fascism back to include all monarchies and such. I prefer to use a narrower definition of it, because the conditions of Germany, Italy, and other fascist countries were very different from the feudal system that had existed further back in the past, and it’s more useful and accurate to have a word that describes those conditions specifically. Otherwise, I think we’re diluting the term and making it much more nebulous.
Trying to fit the founders into one of these boxes of “fascist” or “antifascist” is projecting modern politics into a historical situation where it doesn’t really apply, rather than simply seeing what was. That broad way of thinking is something I consider wrong and dangerous, whatever the categories are. For example, during the Cold War, the US saw the world in terms of “communist” or “not communist” and everyone, everywhere in the world had to fit into one of those categories. Anti-colonial struggles, such as in Iran, were labelled as communist even when they weren’t. Reality is far more complex than such broad oversimplifications allow for.
The British system, for example, was a constitutional monarchy (still is) where power was shared between the monarchy and parliament. But even before parliament, feudal systems were more complex than just “whatever the king says goes,” there were layers upon layers of contracts between each level of noble that said what they could and couldn’t do, and a king that violated those contracts would likely face a rebellion from the nobility. Meanwhile, the system in Nazi Germany was designed to encourage different branches of government competing against each other, making it somewhat less cohesive and centralized than is often imagined.
Modern fascism came from feudalist practices though. Nothing exists outside of historical context.
The point isn’t to call them any specific label per se, the point is that these same desires that our country was built on would be labeled antifascist today by the current fascist government that is gaslighting us that they care about these laws and the founding fathers and constitution.
I think our disagreement is that you believe antifascism is a state or personality whereas I believe it is a series of actions and beliefs - and so my definition allows for people to take fascist and antifascist actions.
We see this in individuals. Eg JK Rowling advocates for womens rights (which is inherently antifascist except the transphobic part bc transphobia is misogyny which I’ll get to later) and at one time ran a campaign against disabled people chained to their beds unwillingly 24/7 (also antifascist), and many themes in Harry Potter are also blatantly antifascist. But she is overall labeled a fascist because she has made her biggest current thing to be gender fascism (transphobia). Everything she does in that realm is fascist, even though her own author name is ironically gender bent and she’s done it twice now with the intentionally “masc” Galbraith name and JK Rowling being intentionally unisex.
And we should dissect these things and look at them, because that allows us to look at ourselves and make progress.
They also set up a system that allowed slavery to be torn down in a way that had not yet happened for thousands of years in slave owning governments, giving rise to global human rights increases. Yes, they were horrible for owning slaves and those laws are horrible and have to be changed. It is quite literally against the human condition to have slavery or be a slave.
Would I personally call them antifa heros? Maybe to piss off conservatives, but otherwise no. Did they take actions that we can argue were antifascist? Yes
The original claim was that the founders were “antifascists.”
Personally, I wouldn’t call them fascist or antifascist because I disagree with the definition that extends fascism back to include all monarchies and such. I prefer to use a narrower definition of it, because the conditions of Germany, Italy, and other fascist countries were very different from the feudal system that had existed further back in the past, and it’s more useful and accurate to have a word that describes those conditions specifically. Otherwise, I think we’re diluting the term and making it much more nebulous.
Trying to fit the founders into one of these boxes of “fascist” or “antifascist” is projecting modern politics into a historical situation where it doesn’t really apply, rather than simply seeing what was. That broad way of thinking is something I consider wrong and dangerous, whatever the categories are. For example, during the Cold War, the US saw the world in terms of “communist” or “not communist” and everyone, everywhere in the world had to fit into one of those categories. Anti-colonial struggles, such as in Iran, were labelled as communist even when they weren’t. Reality is far more complex than such broad oversimplifications allow for.
The British system, for example, was a constitutional monarchy (still is) where power was shared between the monarchy and parliament. But even before parliament, feudal systems were more complex than just “whatever the king says goes,” there were layers upon layers of contracts between each level of noble that said what they could and couldn’t do, and a king that violated those contracts would likely face a rebellion from the nobility. Meanwhile, the system in Nazi Germany was designed to encourage different branches of government competing against each other, making it somewhat less cohesive and centralized than is often imagined.
Modern fascism came from feudalist practices though. Nothing exists outside of historical context.
The point isn’t to call them any specific label per se, the point is that these same desires that our country was built on would be labeled antifascist today by the current fascist government that is gaslighting us that they care about these laws and the founding fathers and constitution.
That’s a very low bar. I don’t think we should let them determine how we use terminology.
? What? They aren’t being serious about it, it is pointing out the slide into fascism