If You’re Against Antifa, You Might Be a Fascist (Or Just Really Confused)

October 17, 2025

By Brian Hews

Somewhere in America, irony is being held without bail. The political class, in a breathtaking act of semantic gymnastics, has declared war on people whose very name means “anti-fascist.”

Let’s clear something up: Antifa is not an organization. There are no meetings, no headquarters, no bake sales. It’s an ideology — a loosely shared belief that fascism is bad and should be opposed. Yet to hear some politicians tell it, Antifa is a secret army of shadowy radicals plotting the downfall of suburbia from their parents’ Wi-Fi networks.

Homeland Security (and dog shooter) Kristi Noem recently warned that “this network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13 … they are just as dangerous.” Which is quite a statement, considering most Antifa adherents can’t even coordinate a carpool, let alone a continental conspiracy.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump announced, “We will be very threatening to Antifa,” before signing an order to officially label them a terrorist group. Imagine that: threatening violence against people accused of being violent, all in the name of peace. Orwell would blush.

Pee Wee German Stephen Miller took it a step further, declaring the mission to “dismantle Antifa” and describing it as “terrorism on our soil.” The last time “our soil” was in this much danger, it was from over-watering the Rose Garden.

No retribution Pam Bondi, ever the law-and-order cheerleader, vowed to “deploy the full might of federal law enforcement to crack down on Antifa.” One imagines battalions of agents fanning out to arrest people with ironic buttons and unread copies of The Communist Manifesto.

It’s the great American paradox: a country so proudly anti-fascist that it gets suspicious of anyone who actually says they’re anti-fascist. In today’s political ecosystem, if you call yourself “Antifa,” you’re a threat; if you call yourself “Patriot Front,” you’re just “misunderstood.”

The whole debate might be hilarious if it weren’t so deadly serious. But since it is, the least we can do is appreciate the show — a national tug-of-war between people who can’t define fascism and people who think spell-check is Marxist propaganda.

In the end, America doesn’t have a fascism problem or an Antifa problem. It has a branding problem. Somewhere between the slogans, the hashtags, and the rallies, we’ve confused opposition for oppression. But hey — it’s all part of the great democratic experiment, where even logic has the right to self-destruct.