The West has a plague of homegrown terrorists putting Islamic extremists to shame with their frequency and ferocity of attacks: Antifa, an umbrella term for a loose collection of groups and individuals and is meant to be a shortening of the words “anti-fascist”.

The only problem with their self-given label is that Antifa embodies just about everything defining a fascist. Merriam-Webster defines fascism as promoting nation and often race above individuals, standing for a centralised, autocratic government, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Contrastingly, there is very little in any of the victims of Antifa which resembles fascism.

We promote the equal rights and interests of individuals – justice which is blind to identity. Far from a centralised government, conservatives commonly advocate federalism – the competition of the states. Contrasting with autocratic government, conservatives champion the smallest government and least regulation necessary. Conservatives generally prefer free markets instead of economic regulation, and social liberty instead of social regimentations such as enforced political correctness through the various para-judicial tribunals and commissions operating as thought police.

Most notably, conservatives personify the opposite of fascism with our strong advocacy of free speech, even when that speech is bad. If you asked me what single greatest change our parliaments could make to increase personal liberty and freedom of speech in Australia, I would answer the abolition of the Human Rights Commission and the various state-based anti-discrimination tribunals. These are tools of forcible suppression of opposition which real fascists should adore.

In Australia, fascistic leftists are frequently seen forcibly suppressing any opposition to their politics. They physically blocked 50 people from entering a venue in Melbourne last year who wanted to listen to a distinguished paediatrician give a lecture on gender dysphoria. A lot of extra police resources were needed to control the violent behaviour at what would have otherwise been peaceful events when Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren Southern visited Australia. The extreme left are fundamentally fascistic and resort to violence to attempt to silence dissent.

An early advocate of fascism, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, observed that one of the few principles of fascism is that any type of questioning the status quo is not to be tolerated. If you do not conform with dictated ideas, even the most violent response is justified to prevent your evil ideas from even being heard by anyone else. Sound familiar?

The violent left are the real fascists: those uncivilised barbarians who refuse to protest peacefully and abide the law, but impose their political agendas on all who disagree. Their insatiable appetite for dictatorial power to control other people’s opinions, jack-booted suppression of opposing ideas and socialist control of the means of production bear all the hallmarks of 1940s Germany’s fascism. They lack only fascism’s ultranationalism – menacingly replaced by the other extreme: globalism.

If Antifa were really opposed to fascism they would behave entirely the opposite of how they usually do, and advocate conservative or even classical liberal policies instead of authoritarianism. The only reason the fascistic left pretend to oppose fascism is because they seek to demonise rather than debate.

Two things happen when leftists call conservatives fascist. One, they redefine yet another word, as they have with “marriage” and “racist”. When it means anything, it means nothing. Two, they remove all doubt of their willful ignorance and they simply look stupid to everyone else by personifying that which they claim to oppose.

The domestic terrorists calling themselves Antifa and those of their kind are the real fascists we should all be concerned about.

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