Everyone marginalizes people they find undesirable. When was the last time you thought "where is a group of people I can't stand to be around? I want to go hang out with them right now."
Sure, but why do we have to conflate "disagreement" with "undesirability"? I'm old enough to remember a time when we could disagree about things without pretending our opponents are Hitler reincarnate. I often find myself wanting to spend more time with people I disagree with to understand their perspectives better or to help them see that we probably have more common ground than they may realize or even just to do my part to heal our culture by rejecting the notion that it's necessary, good, or morally acceptable to hate people we disagree with.
> Sure, but why do we have to conflate "disagreement" with "undesirability"?
Because most people find being challenged very tiresome and uncomfortable. People who are high in openness actually enjoy being challenged, but they are a minority (and it's definitely a spectrum).
I believe this, but there was also a time when it was considered a virtue to be more open-minded--calling someone "a literal Nazi" over some minor ideological disagreement (and then calling for them to be fired, attacked, etc) would have been roundly and correctly criticized. Now it seems like it's considered virtuous to exaggerate differences, police ideas, etc.
The irony is that the original antifa - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion - was, essentially, a KPD-affiliated militia. As such, their definition of "fascism" included social democrats at some point, and their propaganda included bits like "fighting fascism means fighting the SPD just as much as it means fighting Hitler and the parties of Brüning".
I don't know why anti-authoritarian lefties today are so eager to embrace this legacy, or at least its symbolism.
No, because ideally you'd have an ideologically neutral source, specially for politically charged topics. But such sources are essentially nonexistent, so we're left trying to subtract out the biases from wikipedia articles.
Don't get me wrong, wikipedia has value; it's just not a trustworthy source for certain topics. At the very least you should take a peek at the "history" tab to see alternative viewpoints.
I have always found it amusing that people who use this slogan tend to be deeply concerned about bias from the other side but see no problem with such a glib statement.
That's the thing though, I never hear that statement from conservatives or non-liberals - they never seem to utter it, even in a sarcastic or mocking tone.
I only ever hear it from what seem to be sincere liberals/progressives, and often in the context of dismissing claims of liberal bias. In fact, that seems to be exactly how it was used in this very comment chain.
If you're going to attribute deaths that happen in a communist country to communism itself, then don't you need to also attribute deaths that happen in democratic/capitalist countries to democracy and capitalism? Should we add them up and compare?
> The most famous anti-fascists were and are communists
You are equating Anti-fascists to communists, which is ... a position.
The most famous anti-fascists are the democrats. Not the American Democrat party - anyone who believes in the ideals of democracy, personal freedom, and equality.
> The most famous anti-fascists are the democrats.
They might be the most numerous ones, but the anti-fascism has pretty much always been claimed by the communists, they even built a famous anti-fascist protection wall to stop the fascists from sabotaging their economy. Very few democrats felt the need to talk about themselves as anti-fascists, that's a far-left thing. Democratically minded people act anti-fascist but don't speak of it. Communists speak of anti-fascism while they torture political opponents to death.
I think the argument is that the further left you go, the more likely you are to explicitly describe yourself as an anti-fascist and make a big deal about your opposition to fascism, as opposed to just quietly disliking fascism like most of us do and not feeling the need to announce it.
Like all sane people I oppose fascism, but I don't put "anti-fascist" in my Twitter bio, wear antifa t-shirts, or run around loudly telling everybody about how much I hate fascists, because why should I need to? Of course I'm an anti-fascist, who the hell isn't? It feels as unnecessary as having to tell people that I'm "anti-genocide" or "anti-pedophilia".
It's also true that communist regimes have always used "anti-fascism" as an excuse for their atrocities, just like fascist regimes have used "anti-communism" to justify their atrocities. The original Antifa was an offshoot of the German Communist Party, and (as GP pointed out) the Berlin Wall was officially called the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart". That doesn't mean that all anti-fascists are communists, but history is what it is.
Don't take any of this as my denying that there are still fascistic forces in our world that should be opposed. If "anti-fascism" is an important part of your identity and you feel the need to tell the world about it, good for you, I'm not going to stop you, but personally I don't see the point.
It's the same spiel the communists did with calling themselves democracies.
Democracies usually don't call themselves The Democratic Republic Of X. Communist dictatorships do that. Democracies don't build a border wall and call it an anti-fascist protection-wall, communist dictatorships do that.
When someone loudly and repeatedly exclaims how holy and pure they are, my alarms are going off. Yours aren't?
