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Cheap Seats 2017The Antifa Primer - 08/30 
By Rich Trzupek
I realize that all you Antifas out there are having a great time. You get to dress up like ninjas, scream obscenities and throw crap at people. What fun!
Since most of you are young men, I am certain there is a getting laid element to the whole show. (I was a young man once and can report with some certainty that there is always a getting laid element). “Look babe, that’s me on TV throwing rocks at the pigs! I’m the one in the black mask. No, the OTHER one in the black mask! No, not that one, the OTHER one!”
If you are going to protest fascism, I humbly suggest that you take a little time to identify what fascism is and isn’t. Here’s a few pointers:
Fascism is a form of socialism: That uncomfortable fact often gets overlooked with the left declares someone a fascist, but it’s right there in the Nazi party name: The National Socialist German Workers Party.
And the Nazis came through with full-on socialism: nationalizing production, fixing wages, freezing prices – the whole grandiose, utterly unsustainable model. Bernie would have loved their economic model. Capitalists are not, by definition, fascists my dear Antifas. They are the enemies of fascists.
The life expectancies of fascist critics are very short: Now we all understand that President Trump has been known to say mean things about his critics, especially those in the mainstream media. And, we also understand that in this hyper-sensitive era saying mean things is an unpardonable sin among most of the left. Still, that’s not quite the same thing as fascism.
If you are Antifa and you are reading this, chances are that you are breathing, which means no secret policeman has dragged you off to a concentration camp or taken you out in the alley so that they could end your life through a fatal case of lead poisoning in the form of slug of that substance injected into your cranium at high velocity.
That method of dealing with critics is another defining characteristic of fascist regimes, indeed of all totalitarian rule. Legend has it that Mao’s secret police would not only dragged dissidents out of their homes in the middle of the night, they would present the widow or widower a bill for the round expended in executing their spouse.
Fascists don’t allow critics to organize: As an individual living in the Third Reich you might get away with criticizing the Nazi regime if you were very quiet about it, were selective in the choice of people with whom you shared those feelings and had extraordinarily good luck. But, attempting to lead or join any sort of organized resistance was the equivalent of painting targets on the back of every single person in the resistance group.
Leaders of both Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany tried to organize peaceful resistance to Nazi rule. They failed, with most of the leading clergy ending up dead or rotting away in a concentration camp. A group of students calling themselves the “White Rose” attempted to speak out against the war and the mass murder of Jews. They were quickly rounded up and disposed of.
Fascists control the media: I can hear my critics rolling their eyes at this one: “That’s exactly what Trump is trying to do!” No, he’s not. He’s calling the media out in public, which is a big difference from shutting them down. Trump understands that an independent media is one of the foundations of a free society.
Thus Chris Matthews is free to expose his appalling ignorance, Rachel Maddow can smirk away at the administration all she wants and Wolf Blitzer can continue to deliver the news like a college professor who took an overdose of Quaaludes. Nobody is stopping them. But, when they say something stupid or tell an outright lie, we’ve got a President who will call them out on it.
That’s not fascism. That’s fantastic.
rich@examinerpublications.com
www.threedonia.com
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