In a roundtable at the White House last week, the president pledged to inflict disproportionate violence on this purported enemy of the people: “We’ll be very threatening to them. Far more than they ever were with us.” Earlier, when he was asked by a reporter, “If someone takes to the streets and says they’re antifa, what happens to them?” he proffered the death penalty.
In the short run, National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, and the associated executive orders are sure to lead to the suppression of “anti-fascist,” “anti-American,” “anti-capitalist,” and other speech deemed “treasonous” by the administration, and to the arrest and prosecution of citizens and noncitizens alike who are seen as the “enemy within.”
That is not to diminish the very real threat to democracy, human rights, and civil liberties that this latest war on “terrorism” inevitably poses. The hour may be later than we think, and there is no telling what lengths this administration will go to in order to achieve its political objective: to silence its opponents once and for all.
In the name of the war on antifa, political profiling will expand into every corner of everyday life, including the nonprofit sector, the public university, and private industry, among others. Workers will be driven from the workplace. Intellectuals will be run out of the classroom (or out of the country). Groups aligned with the resistance will lose their tax-exempt status, or worse. The warning signs are here: Sources inside the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the DOJ recently leaked a list of at least nine left-leaning organizations that are already in the government’s sights.
These are dangerous times indeed for those who see fit to exercise their rights to speak freely, to assemble publicly, or to petition for redress of grievances. It is entirely possible that, in the days ahead, resistance movements against the regime will be effectively muzzled, their organizations defunded, their participants criminalized, demobilized, and demoralized.
For one thing, in branding the movement Public Enemy #1, and in tarring it as a terrorist entity, this administration has massively raised the profile of anti-fascist politics in general, with saturation coverage on a scale not seen since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. While MAGA media has driven much of the coverage, mainstream media has not been far behind.
Over time, the ideas and values on which anti-fascism is predicated will likely prove more popular than an increasingly authoritarian presidency. By some measures, they already have, with clear majorities now opposing Trump’s policies on immigration, his attacks on free speech, and his mobilization of the National Guard.
Meanwhile, public sympathy with the anti-fascist movement has only grown in recent years. In 2017, polls showed antifa with the support of only 8 percent of respondents (around the same percentage as white nationalists). But by 2024, despite a yearslong campaign to criminalize it, support for the movement had more than doubled.
In this sense, antifa has become a sort of stand-in for resistance writ large. This is surely one of the reasons the movement has become a favorite bogeyman for the far right. It may also be the reason we are now seeing so many liberals and independents rallying behind its banner—whether via viral memes on social media (such as those featuring Portland’s inflatable antifa animals) or by way of mass marches in the streets (like the one planned for No Kings Day).
Some of the most celebrated movements in our history followed a similar path from political repression to public support. In this respect, the anti-fascist movement of the present day is not unlike past waves of political protest, such as the Popular Front against fascism, the civil rights coalition against Jim Crow, or the 99 Percent movement against economic inequality.
The civil rights coalition of the 1950s and ’60s commenced with the actions of a handful of civilly disobedient minorities. It then exploded, amid police attacks and government crackdowns, into a kind of irrepressible force that would transform the racial order in America.
What’s past may be prologue, but the future is unscripted. Which direction this country takes—toward democracy or autocracy, racial justice or white supremacy, gender justice or theocracy—will ultimately be decided not only by the orders of the imperial presidency, but also by the actions (or inaction) of ordinary people in the face of its ever more authoritarian onslaught.
If current trends are any indication, however, the Trump administration’s war on anti-fascism could prove to be its most unpopular war yet—one it has already lost before it has even begun.
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