The English word antifa is borrowed from the German Antifa which in turn is a shortened form of the word antifaschistisch (anti-fascist) and a nickname of Antifaschistishe Aktion. Antifaschistishe was borrowed from the original Italian anti-Fascisti.
There is a lot to unpack in all of that borrowing, but it's a great set of bread crumbs for tracking the history of fascism and the various movements in support or opposition to it.
So lets follow the crumbs by starting with Italy.
Italian fascism was the original fascist ideology and was developed by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini. The ideology was a combination of Italian nationalism, ultranationalism and the militarism of Italian irredentism (irredentism was the desire to have Italian majority population regions outside of Italy returned to Italy, a desire that became aggressive after World War I). It promoted an economic system where syndicates -- which represented economic producers -- worked with the state to define economic policy. Though originaly the Italian fascists were opposed to Nazism, like the Nazis, many had extreme racist views. Mussolini in particular was anti-Slavist, i.e. he clasified most Slavs, like Belarusians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Slovenes, and Ukrainians, as subhumans. As Mussolini grew closer to Hitler during World War II, antisemitism was included. I suppose this is a good moment to bring up why I believe the single worst aspect of fascism is supremacy: it is the core flaw -- malignancy -- that warps everything. The combination of nationalism and supremacy makes a lethal brew, particularly when authoritarian leadership silences all those who see the poison for what it is.
And now, moving onward to Antifaschistishe Aktion, a communist militant organization in Germany, founded and controlled by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The KPD and the Nazi Party had one thing in common: a desire to overthrow the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic. The KPD actually opposed anti-Nazi resistance from groups like the Social Democratid Party (SPD) based on the "social fascism" theory, which was a Soviet-backed ideological stance that viewed moderate democratic socialists as capitalism's last line of defense, and thus an even greater threat than the Nazis, which they also opposed. Oh what a tangled web is history. Because the KPD and SPD opposed eachother, there was no united left-wing front against the Nazi Party, and of course we know where that led. Not to stretch comparisons too much, but the Democratic Party suffers from a similar problem with having a single voice. Liberals in the Democratic Party are not violently attacking moderates, but a lot of the Party's failures can be attributed to disunity.
Historically, the first anti-fascist groups were made up of people who were socialists or communists, which is probably one reason why conservatives in the United States have instinctively viewed such groups as a threat. One of the quotes I show in this document is from Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, who is famous for, among other things, the Spanish phrase, "¡No Pasarán!", which means "They shall not pass!". It became the rallyig cry of the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, particularly during the Battle of Madrid. It's a phrase that has become a symbol of resistance against authoritarianism and hate. I have a T-shirt with the phrase on it that I sometimes wear to protests. But I include it on this site to also bring up a contradiction. Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez was an ardent communist who lauded Stalin (one of her daughters was married to Stalin's adopted son, Artyom Sergeyev); this, despite the fact that Stalin was a brutal authoritarian responsible for the death of millions. My point is that anti-fascism is a good thing, but that doesn't mean that every anti-fascist group is good. And of course, the same can be said about almost any association of people under some ideological banner. However, there are bad ideologies, and fascism is one of them.
--urthsong 9-26-2025