DUMBING FASCISM DOWN, THEN AND NOW:

Even today, this kind of reductionist political attack remains popular, and not just among Antifa street marchers. The United States, like many other countries, does contain a genuinely radicalized right-wing political fringe, including some who call themselves fascist. However, these are not influential political actors. Yet that did not stop then-presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke from assailing Trump in October by declaring, “Outside of the Third Reich, give me another example of a Western leader who has called people of one faith inherently defective or dangerous or disqualified from being successful in that country.” Julian Castro, another 2019-era Democratic presidential candidate, declared that Trump advisor Stephen Miller is a “neo-Nazi.” Last June, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called migrant detention centers on the Mexican border “concentration camps,” language clearly intended to signal moral equivalence with the Nazi holocaust. Six weeks later, at a sentencing hearing for two Proud Boys who got into a street fight with Antifa extremists, New York Supreme Court Judge Mark Dwyer stated, “I know enough about history to know what happened in Europe in the ’30s when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead… We don’t want that to happen in New York.”

While judges and lawmakers may claim to be speaking metaphorically or speculatively, some of those listening seem to be taking the comparisons literally. Before he shot and killed nine victims in Dayton, Ohio, last year, 24-year-old Antifa supporter Connor Betts frequently decried political opponents as “Nazi” on Twitter, declaring, ominously, “Nazis deserve death and nothing else.”

The destruction of fascism in Europe 75 years ago should be remembered as a great victory. And fascism itself should be reviled—but not in a way that inflates false fears or smears conservatism, nationalism, and even patriotism as offshoots of Nazi ideology. The millions who died fighting actual fascism did so to preserve freedom of conscience and national self-determination. And their legacy should not be distorted by those who would seek to dress every political opponent up in Death’s Head cap badges and calf-high jackboots.

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