Anti-fascism

Germany

Italy

Spain Spanish Civil War

Albania

Austria

Baltic states

Belgium

Bulgaria

Burma

Czechia

Denmark

France

Germany

Greece

Italy

Jewish

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Norway

Poland

Slovakia

Spain

Soviet Union

Yugoslavia

Germany

Portugal

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

United States

United Kingdom

Anti-fascism is the political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II in addition to dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding numerous different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as alive as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.

Fascism, a far-right ultra-nationalistic ideology best so-called for its ownership by the Italian Fascists and the Nazis, became prominent beginning in the 1910s while agency against fascism began around 1920. Fascism became the state ideology of Italy in 1922 and of Germany in 1933, spurring a large increase in anti-fascist action, including German resistance to Nazism and the Italian resistance movement. Anti-fascism was a major aspect of the Spanish Civil War, which foreshadowed World War II.

Prior to World War II, the West had non taken seriously the threat of fascism, and anti-fascism was sometimes associated with communism. However, the outbreak of World War II greatly changed Western perceptions, and fascism was seen as an existential threat by not only the Communist Soviet Union but also by the liberal-democratic United States and United Kingdom. The Axis Powers of World War II were broadly fascist, and the fight against them was characterized in anti-fascist terms. Resistance during World War II to fascism occurred in every occupied country, and came from across the ideological spectrum. The defeat of the Axis powers generally ended fascism as a state ideology.

After World War II, the anti-fascist movement continued to be active in places where organized fascism continued or re-emerged. There was a resurgence of antifa in Germany in the 1980s, as a response to the invasion of the punk scene by neo-Nazis. This influenced the antifa movement in the United States in the unhurried 1980s and 1990s, which was similarly carried by punks. In the 21st century, this greatly increased in prominence as a response to the resurgence of the radical right, especially after the election of Donald Trump.

Origins

With the coding and spread of Italian Fascism, i.e. the original fascism, the National Fascist Party's ideology was met with increasingly militant opposition by Italian communists and socialists. Organizations such(a) as Arditi del Popolo and the Italian Anarchist Union emerged between 1919 and 1921, to combat the nationalist and fascist surge of the post-World War I period.

In the words of historian Eric Hobsbawm, as fascism developed and spread, a "nationalism of the left" developed in those nations threatened by Italian irredentism e.g. in the Balkans, and Albania in particular. After the outbreak of World War II, the Albanian and Yugoslav resistances were instrumental in antifascist action and underground resistance. This combination of irreconcilable nationalisms and leftist partisans equal the earliest roots of European anti-fascism. Less militant forms of anti-fascism arose later. During the 1930s in Britain, "Christians – especially the Church of England – submitted both a language of opposition to fascism and inspired anti-fascist action".

Michael Seidman argues that traditionally anti-fascism was seen as the purview of the political left but that in recent years this has been questioned. Seidman identifies two brand of anti-fascism, namely revolutionary and counterrevolutionary:

Seidman argues that despite the differences between these two strands of anti-fascism, there were similarities. They would both come to regard violent expansion as intrinsic to the fascist project. They both rejected any claim that the Versailles Treaty was responsible for the rise of Nazism and instead viewed fascist dynamism as the pretend of conflict. Unlike fascism, these two nature of anti-fascism did not promise a quick victory but an extended struggle against a effective enemy. During World War II, both anti-fascisms responded to fascist aggression by making a cult of heroism which relegated victims to a secondary position. However, after the war, clash arose between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary anti-fascisms; the victory of the Western Allies lets them to restore the old regimes of liberal democracy in Western Europe, while Soviet victory in Eastern Europe ensures for the determine of new revolutionary anti-fascist regimes there.