Revolutionary Antifascism: Anarchism and Antifa in the Late 20th Century

Since Donald Trump’s 2016 election, “antifa” has become the new bogeyman of the far right. Yet despite its sudden growth in popular consciousness, antifa is situated within a long tradition of opposition to fascism. Although anti-fascist organizing stretches back to the 1920s and ‘30s, contemporary US antifa dates back to the late 1980s when anarchists and punks developed a revitalized strategy of revolutionary anti-fascism to combat the growing power of the far right. This history has received new attention since Trump’s election, and the anti-fascist organization Anti-Racist Action was even featured in a recent PBS Frontline documentary. But the development of antifa tactics within the anarchist milieu as part of a broader revolutionary strategy has thus far gone under-examined.

This paper explores the development of antifa as part of the revolutionary program of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (1989-98), which worked closely with Anti-Racist Action. Antifascism became one of the federation’s three main focuses of activity, alongside anti-police activism and Zapatista solidarity organizing. Love and Rage identified their own social base as the “reproletarianized” children of the white middle class—a product of neoliberal globalization—which was the same potential base for fascism in the United States. They thus felt that they had a special duty not only to fight fascists in the streets, but also to offer a liberatory alternative to attract angry young white people looking for radical answers to their problems. This paper ultimately argues that for Love and Rage, anti-fascism could not simply mean the defense of the liberal democratic state against fascism, but actually necessitated its revolutionary overthrow and the construction of a libertarian socialist society.