The End Of Antifascism

Fascism’s brand died in 1945. Antifascism’s died last week—and it should have died long before that.

An Assassination Shatters The Antifascist Myth

The shell casings found near the rifle that killed Charlie Kirk were not just evidence; they were a manifesto. As you can see on p.2 of the Affidavit of Probable Cause, etched into the metal were the phrases “hey fascist! CATCH!” and the lyrics to “Bella Ciao”, the Italian antifascist anthem. Alongside them were inscriptions from a different modern milieu: “Notices buldge [Sic] OWO what’s this?” and “if you read this you are gay lmao”—slogans from the online subcultures centered in the overlapping furry and transgender paraphilias.

This combination was no coincidence. The alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was embedded in the connected worlds of militant antifascism and radical transgender activism. He was in a relationship with a male roommate attempting to transition into a facsimile of a woman. The evidence paints a clear picture: the man charged with this political assassination was not a disgruntled conservative, but a product of two of the most extreme factions on the modern left.

In the hours after the shooting, a predictable and desperate narrative emerged from commentators on the left. Despite all evidence, they claimed Robinson was an “ultra-MAGA” supporter. This was a lie, easily debunked by Utah voter records showing he was unaffiliated. The reason for this denial is simple: to admit the truth is to topple a load-bearing wall of their ideological edifice. For years, “antifascism” has served as an unlimited moral hall pass, excusing any behavior so long as it was directed at the right targets. The rationale was childish but effective: if fascists are the ultimate evil, then antifascists must be the ultimate good, and anything they do is therefore justified.

The End Of Marvel Movie Morality

The assassination of a man in front of his children for engaging in political dialogue destroys that fairy tale. When “antifascism” includes political murder, the label isn’t a badge of honor—it’s just a brand for thuggery.

This simplistic Marvel movie morality was always a historical lie. Back in 2020, as self-styled antifascists (Antifa) joined with Black Lives Matter to riot in dozens of American cities, former Bernie Sanders advisor Matt Duss shared a post on Twitter suggesting that the G.I.s who landed at Normandy on D-Day were also Antifa.

As it turns out, we have contemporaneous opinion surveys of those G.I.s, and they were well to the right of current-year leftists attempting to retcon them as fellow travelers.

The original antifascists belonged to Antifaschistische Aktion, a militant wing of the German Communist Party (KPD). Their enemies were not just the Nazis; they brawled with Social Democrats and centrists in a violent struggle for control of the streets. They were not defenders of liberal values but enforcers of a party line, another gang in the political warfare that doomed the Weimar Republic.

The Opposite Of Fascism Can Be Evil

This flawed moral framework—where evil resides exclusively on the far right—forced a disastrous corollary: the opposite of fascism must be good. But this has never been true.

Postwar Germany’s Kentler Experiment, where the state deliberately placed foster children with pedophiles for decades, was a grotesque evil that no fascist regime would have tolerated. The recent social contagion of transgenderism, which—abetted by an eager medical industry—has led to the permanent mutilation of confused adolescents and tragic deaths, such as that of an 18-year-old from sepsis after surgeons made a fake vagina out of his colon, is another. Critics who pointed out the obvious harms were silenced with the ultimate trump card: “The Nazis did the opposite”. Ironically, this ignored the grim connection between the Nazis and the Institute for Sexual Science founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, often held up as a progressive hero. Erwin Gohrbandt, who conducted some of the first sex change operations under Hirschfeld, later helped design medical experiments for the Nazis at Dachau. History is not a cartoon.

This same twisted logic fuels soft-on-crime policies that have devastated American cities. If noticing disparate crime rates is “racist,” and racism is “fascist,” then the “anti-fascist” thing to do is to pretend the disparities don’t exist. The result is leniency for violent repeat offenders and preventable atrocities, like the killing of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light-rail train.

Iryna Zarutska looking up at the man charged with murdering her, Decarlos Brown, Jr.

The death of Charlie Kirk by the hand of a self-styled antifascist should end this charade. The left can no longer claim a presumption of goodness based solely on what they oppose. Their policies—from child sex changes to the lax policing of violent crime—must now be evaluated on their material outcomes. And those outcomes are too often suffering, mutilation, and death.

The antifascist brand died on that rooftop in Utah. Good riddance.