It's extremely concerning how the political right (and an alarming number of self-declared "centrists") have taken to using "antifa" as an insult, as if being opposed to fascism is some kind of moral degeneracy.
When it comes to extreme ideologies like fascism (street thuggery, dictatorship, genocide, white supremacy, violent oppression, eugenics, anti-Semitism ...) you're either opposed to it, or you support it.
There is no moderate centre ground when it comes to fascism. No matter how much you might wish for it, there simply isn't a convenient fence for right-on handwringers to sit on.
When it comes to fascism the only sensible position for anyone other than fascists is on the anti-fascist side. This is because if the fascists gain power they'll eliminate all opposition starting with the leftists and the anarchists before they move on to eliminating the democratic socialists, liberals and traditional conservatives.
If you have any political opinions other than fascism (or pig-headed apathy about all political issues and a willingness to adopt total subservience to your political leaders in order to save your own skin if fascists ever come to power) then you have a responsibility to be antifa.
Inaction when it comes to fascism is clearly implicit support for fascism, but promoting the ridiculous, but increasingly popular false equivalence that those who oppose fascism are "just as bad" as the fascists themselves is even worse. It's worse because it implies that to oppose fascism is morally repugnant, when in reality smug indifference to fascism is the real moral degeneracy that people should be worrying about.
It was the self-serving indifference of the people who just quietly got on with their lives as their neighbours and work colleagues were dragged off by the fascists who allowed the political purges and then the Holocaust to happen.
Britain has a long tradition of resisting fascism (the battle of Cable Street, WWII, opposition to the National Front in the '70s and '80s, ridicule of the BNP & EDL ...) but nowadays many of the descendants of those who made incredible sacrifices to beat fascism during the Second World War are actually more likely to share content from extreme-right hate groups like Britain First on Facebook and whine piteously about how nasty the Antifa leftists are, than they are to do like their grandparents did and actively resist the horrors of fascism.
In fact we've no excuse at all for inaction, or for mindlessly spewing the ridiculously dangerous trope that to oppose fascism is as bad as fascism itself.
Back in the 1930s nobody knew the appalling scale of the horrors that fascism would inflict on Europe but the British working classes came together in solidarity to beat Oswald Mosley's fascist blackshirts into submission. Nowadays we've got access to an enormous mass of information about the horrors that are possible when desperate people succumb to the lure of fascism, so we've no excuse at all for not being anti-fascists.
So next time you hear anyone smugly condemning those who stand up against fascism as being "just as bad", remember that they're condemning all anti-fascists, including previous generations of your family who made such sacrifices in the fight against fascism on the continent.
They're essentially saying that your grandparents/great-grandparents were just as bad as the concentration camp guards in Nazi Germany because they actively, and in many cases violently, resisted fascism.
By making this ridiculous argument they're placing themselves on a mythical centre-ground where inaction and pseudo-liberal handwinging in the face of violent swastika waving white supremacists intent on dictatorship and genocide is morally superior to active resistance and condemnation!
It's long been said that "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing". And it should be obvious that all that is necessary for the triumph of fascism is for right-wingers and sickeningly smug so-called "centrists" to go around spreading the incredibly dangerous notion that to actively oppose fascism is as bad as fascism itself.
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