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.A new study says that 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.”
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.”