ExtremismUnderstanding 21st-Century Militant Anti-Fascism
Anti-fascist militancy has existed for as long as fascism has, but militant anti-fascism is still largely neglected across both academic and policy-practitioner communities.
Ariel Koch, in his study of anti-Fascist and anarchist recruitment and mobilization, notes that “While most of the research on radicalization and political violent extremism focuses on jihadism or the contemporary right-wing extremism, it is important not to ignore the reaction that right-wing extremists created and provoked in the past, which is still relevant in our days: left-wing extremism, which is embodied today in violent anarchists and anti-fascists.”
The purpose of his study, he says “is to examine this under-researched phenomenon while focusing on popular and recent modes of mobilization and recruitment of this “new revolutionary left”, which reflect a threat that is developing in Europe, North America and the Middle East – but not from the jihadi or right-wing aspects, but from anti-fascist and anarchists’ militancy aspect.”
Koch, however, explains why the study of antifa and left-militancy has been lagging behind the study of Islamic militancy and far-right violent extremism. After 50 pages of research on antifa and anarchist violence, Koch tells us:
Yet, this threat [from antifa and the anarchists] is negligible compared with the threats posed by both right-wing extremists and jihadists. In other words, it is necessary to be aware of the anarchists’ challenge, but one has to be careful not to exaggerate it.
In a new study from CREST Research, Nigel Copsey and Samuel Merrill say that the threat antifa actually poses notwithstanding, there is a need for a more robust, evidence-based understanding of the antifa phenomenon, especially in a context where militant anti-Fascist protest in the United States has been conflated with “domestic terrorism.”
They write:
The militant anti-Fascist movement, or Antifa, is a decentralized, non-hierarchical social movement. It is loosely structured on dispersed networks of local groups. It has a distinctly anti-authoritarian orientation, consisting, for the most part, of anarchists; anarcho-communists; left-libertarians; and radical socialists. The movement is transnational, but it responds in local conditions.
Their study presents evidence from six local case studies: three from the United States: Portland, New York City, Philadelphia; and three from Britain: Brighton, Liverpool, London. The study adopts a multi-method approach, combining interviews with anti-Fascist activists drawn from these six localities, as well as analysis of digital platforms used by local militant anti-Fascist groups (Rose City Antifa; NYC Antifa; Philly Antifa; Brighton Antifascists; Merseyside Anti-Fascist Network; and London Antifascists).
