"Liberals Are Not Antifascist...
Fascism ain’t just flags and salutes. It’s capitalism when it gets scared. It’s the corporations, the cops, and the government locking arms to crush workers, immigrants, queer folks, and anybody who messes with profit and order. It puts property first. People last.
Liberals believe in that same system. They just want it to smile while it does it.
Social democrats (often inaccurataly called "democratic socialists") want to put a bandage on the same system. Same police. Same borders. Same bosses. They just want cheaper insulin and a few more dollars an hour without stopping thw exploitation.
That ain’t fighting. That’s managing.
And every time fascism starts creeping in, liberals do the same three things....
First, they compromise. They say we gotta work with the center right to stop the far right. So they give up ground. On immigration. On policing. On war. On labor. They think they’re saving democracy. All they’re doing is dragging the whole country further right.
Second, they police the left. When folks in the street stand up to fascists, liberals call it violence. When tenants block an eviction, liberals call it chaos. When workers walk out, liberals tell them to wait till election day and just vote. They protect the rules more than they protect people.
Third, they wait too long. By the time liberals admit there’s a fascist problem, the fascists already got the courts, the cops, and the microphones. Then liberals run around talking about "return to normal" and "civility" while people are getting run out of their homes, locked in cages, and beat in the streets. Never seeming to acknowledge that "normal" means wars, genocide, starvation, exploitation, and oppression, especially for Black and Indigenous people.
Now look at MAGA. Liberals act like MAGA is the whole problem and they’re the solution. That’s a lie.
Liberals built the road MAGA is driving on.
They expanded ICE, increasing their budget every chance they got, and they built the cages.
They bailed out banks and let factories close.
They called anyone to the left of them crazy, and told working people to shut up and "vote blue no matter who" every two to four years.
They kept wages low, rents high, and cops on every corner, then acted shocked when people got angry and followed someone promising to burn it down.
MAGA is the symptom. Liberalism is the disease that made the ground fertile.
This ain’t new. This is history.
In Germany in the 1930s, social democrats spent more time fighting communists than fighting Nazis. They banned antifascist groups. Told workers to trust the state. Then the state handed the keys to Hitler.
In Chile in 1973, liberals helped set the table for Pinochet by going after anarchists, communists, and indigenous groups, while begging for order.
Right here in the US, liberal mayors send cops to clear out camps. Liberal presidents expand ICE. Liberal judges bust unions. Then they act surprised when the far right uses those same tools and takes it evwn further.
You can’t be antifascist if you’re fine with capitalism, borders, and police. Because those are the exact tools fascism uses to do its dirty work.
The only folks who have consistently stood up to fascism in the streets, in the fields, and in the neighborhoods are anarchists and communists.
They don’t cut deals with fascists.
They don’t wait on elections.
They don’t call the cops.
They organize their neighbors, their coworkers, and their people to defend each other.
Antifascism means stopping fascism before it gets power. Not after. And you can’t do that if you want the same economy and the same government as the people who work towards fascism.
Liberals will always drift right chasing the middle.
Fascists will always push further right to take it all.
Eventually the liberals run out of ground to give away.
That’s why liberals ain’t antifascist. The people actually doing the work, the actual Antifascists, are the ones liberals call extremists."
