From Fighting Fascists to Demonizing Anti-Fascists: How Did We Get Here?

Other than the desperate grasping of an incompetent man?

My granddaddy fought in World War II. He was just a farm boy from the hills who got sent across the ocean to help stop a monster. He didn’t think of himself as a hero, he thought of himself as a man doing what was right. Back then, it wasn’t complicated.
Fascism was evil. Standing up to it was good.

Now here we are, eighty-some years later, and somehow being anti-fascist is considered the bad guys. The same spirit that filled the bellies of men and women who risked everything to fight tyranny is now being painted as dangerous.

Tell me how the hell that makes sense?

When Resistance Became a Dirty Word

We used to celebrate resistance in this country — at least, the kind that made for tidy history books.
But the moment that resistance started asking for workers’ rights, civil rights, women’s rights - the moment it stopped serving power and started challenging it - the story changed.

The cracks started showing during the Reagan era, when smiling cruelty became policy.
He told us government was the problem, while giving it away to the rich.
He cut social programs, broke unions, and taught people to see greed as virtue.
It was soft authoritarianism in a cowboy hat… and folks loved him for it.
By the time he was done, we’d traded community for “personal responsibility” and called it freedom.

Fast forward to Obama’s election, and the mask slipped clean off.
For millions, his presidency symbolized hope. For others, it was a threat to the old order.
The backlash was swift: the Tea Party, birther conspiracies, open racism dressed up as “patriotism.”
All the fear Reagan had planted bloomed overnight.
Fascism doesn’t die when it’s defeated; it just changes costumes.

Now “antifa” - which isn’t even an organization, just a belief that fascism has no place in a free world - is being branded a threat.

You can’t join it. You can’t pay dues. It’s just a line in the sand that says, “I won’t let hatred win.”

And somehow, that’s what they’re calling dangerous.

The Old Playbook, New Cover

Authoritarians don’t need jackboots anymore. They’ve got talk shows, pulpits, and flag pins. They know if you control the story, you control the people. So they twist language until up feels like down and right feels like wrong.

Call anti-fascists “terrorists,” and suddenly it’s easier to ignore the rising tide of hate.
Label compassion as chaos, and you can pretend silence is safety.
But the same fear they’re using to divide us now is the same fear our grandparents fought to destroy.

The Truth We Can’t Unsee

Fascism doesn’t always storm through the gates. Sometimes it creeps in, dressed in “tradition.” It tells you that order is peace, that questioning power is betrayal, that love needs permission, and that empathy is weakness.

But here in these mountains, we know better. We’ve survived coal barons, crooked politicians, and men who thought they could own the land and the people on it. We know a wolf when we hear one howl — no matter what costume it’s wearing.

Soft Hands, Strong Backbone

Being anti-fascist doesn’t mean breaking things.
It means refusing to break people.
It’s choosing compassion over compliance.
It’s choosing truth over comfort.
It’s knowing peace is something you fight for… not something you beg for.

In my world, resistance looks like neighbor helping neighbor. It looks like women teaching their daughters to question everything. It looks like turning off the noise, grounding your nervous system, and remembering that calm doesn’t mean quiet.

So How Did We Get Here?

Maybe we forgot what freedom really costs.
Maybe we got so used to comfort that we stopped noticing who was paying for it.
Or maybe, deep down, those in power just realized that a calm, connected, awake people are impossible to control.

Either way, calling anti-fascists the enemy is one of the cruelest jokes in modern history.

Because every ancestor who fought for democracy - every farmer, every nurse, every soldier, every code breaker - they were antifascists.

And I, for one, am not about to let their legacy be rewritten.

This is not the end of humanity

If your granddaddy fought fascists, and now you’re afraid to call yourself anti-fascist,
then the story’s been twisted somewhere along the way.

Real patriotism isn’t obedience. It’s courage.
It’s ordinary people standing up when it’s easier to stay quiet.
It’s kindness with a backbone, love with teeth, and hope that refuses to die.

So we keep showing up… calm, grounded, and unafraid to call a wolf a wolf.
Because being anti-fascist isn’t radical.
It’s remembering who we were raised to be.