this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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Founding fathers were antifa
...what?
Fascism as a movement didn't exist then but if you do want to label people as fascists then the founding fathers, many of whom owned people of other races as "property" and built slavery into the system they created definitely qualify.
It didnt have a name or a clear, written set of ideals until Mussolini coined it; but the sentiments that led to it have existed since the dawn of humanity.
In which case, as I said, the founding fathers were fascists.
Do you think I am disagreeing with you or something?
If the colonial empires existed today, what would you call them?
Orwell wrote an essay on Kipling that applied the label of "pre-fascist" to him so feel free to use that instead. For the sake of conversation we can then agree that anti-pre-fascists are antifa or close enough. You could also insist on pre-antifa, that's pretty catchy.
After all, lesser evil empires fighting fascists still earn the title of antifascist, do they not?
Even if they, say, starve, imprison, and use "forced labor" on millions of their own citizens as a form of political control.
Otherwise you'll find that pretty much the only people that deserve the term of antifa are anarchists, which I'm also fine with, welcome to the right side of socialism.
No, they absolutely do not. Wtf.
Lesser-evilist brainrot is now getting applied to history? Am I supposed to look at the Punic Wars or the Mongol invasion of China and label one side as fascist and the other side as antifa? Is this the point that discourse has reached now?
Christ, lesser-evilist ideology needs to have a stake driven through it's heart yesterday. You fail history class forever.
As long we're all being consistent then and agree that only anarchists are antifa, because the Maoists and Stalinists sure don't count as antifascist in your definition. We'll also accept the kind of Marxists the Soviets and CCP ended up killing too.
Or just about anyone that's actually shot a Nazi in the face, statistically mostly conscripts of lesser evil empires.
Bruh you just said that slaving colonial empires are antifascist. I don't give a shit what you think about "Stalinists" or Maoists, go read a book and educate yourself and stop talking nonsense before expecting anyone to take your opinion on anything at all seriously.
The Soviets and Maoists are also slaving empires. That's just a historical fact, mister "read a book."
Like I said, I'm fine not calling them antifa.
Particularly the Maoists because let's be real, they made the Kuomintang do all the work in WW2.
Why aren't you?
I was just joshing. Though, do fascists want to own slaves? When I think of fascism, slave owning is not something that comes to mind.
Nazi Germany built it’s war economy on the backs of slaves. Jews, and political dissidents didn’t all go straight to the death camps; many went to slave labor facilities/camps until the conditions broke them and they were no longer useful.
So maybe not individual slave ownership, but mass state run slave labor absolutely. The end stage fascist economy can’t exist without it.
I have my existence thanks to those forced laborers. They sabotaged production, including the tank shell that didn’t explode when it hit my grandfather’s position back in 1944.
I just don’t think owning slaves equals fascism the way the comment I replied to says.
I was mostly being silly when I made my original comment cause fascism didn’t exist back then. But I do wonder if fascism did exist, just without the name.
But I also don't think a fascist would create the constitution as it was back then. Free speech, right to privacy, all the rights surrounding justice… Seems like a fascist would be against these things.
I’m definitely unqualified to participate in a debate on what fascism is and isn’t, so if there’s something I’m missing, please let me know as this stuff is very interesting, and Google doesn’t usually help.
I'm just confused what definition of fascism you're going off of where the British parliament imposing a tax on tea is fascism but people of one race owning people of another race and forcing them to work though beatings and abuse isn't.
But yes the real answer is that they were neither pro- or anti-fascist because fascism wasn't a thing. In terms of history, I don't really think we should label it fascism anytime someone does a bad thing. But if we are going to use it that way then we should do so consistently.
What about the constitution and bill of rights? That honestly feels like something an anti fascist would write to prevent a fascist from taking over.
When I read about fascism, though, it is never about owning slaves. It’s more about how the government treated its citizens/media/economy/etc. Maybe it’s something they did, but owning slaves was not what made them fascist.
....But they still very much got rid of the feudal equivalent of a dictator - a king - which is a step in the right direction, especially at the time. Notably many founding fathers were against slavery.
Eg this abolitionist from the 1500s originally was okay with slavery for black people, but not Natives, and then later changed his mind. He was FAR from perfect as an activist or abolitionist, but the steps he did were PROGRESS, and that counts. That you can criticize the past is a good thing, it means society did better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas
This is a completely different position from what was originally being argued, which is the absolutely insane position of "The founding fathers were antifascist." If you want to say, like, "The American Revolution did more good than harm" then sure, whatever, that has nothing to do with what I'm disputing here.
Yeah... no. White America is pretty much the spiritual godmother of fascism.
Nazis literally looked to some of America's founding fathers and the Confederacy for inspiration.
The confederacy was also defeated by Americans
Yes, but the the cowardly founding fathers were nowhere to be seen.
(I said nothing about "Americans")
With Nietzsche as the godfather
I'm not familiar with that; what's the relationship between Nietzsche and fascism?
Nietzsches sister was a fascist and claimed her brother was too (edit: after his death). A cursory glance from the Nazis showed them the concept of the Übermensch so they ran with it, but there’s not actually much there to support fascism. Nietzsche was a dick and there are all sorts of horrible things he wrote about non white men, but he wasn’t really a Nazi.
If I've got my Nietzsche right, then wouldn't the idea of Ubermensch as something you can become rather than something you are not really line up with fascism anyway? Seems like they just took a word that sounded cool if anything.
Yeah, but the thing about fascists is, they’re dumb, so they didn’t think about it any further.
There's a ton in Nietzsche to support fascism, starting with his virulent hatred of democracy, socialism, and liberalism.
He is simply the most important philosopher for the creation of fascism, including Giovanni Gentile, who gave Mussolini all his ideas.
That's not to say he was a fascist himself, for example he absolutely hated nationalism and that's kind of a requirement, or there isn't any value in his works, I think there's actually a decent amount in there for any kind of attempt at self actualization and rejecting victim mentality, but he's definitely what you might call a proto-fascist thinker.
Keep in mind that there's more kinds of fascist than Nazis. There's even more kinds of Nazi than anti-semitic Nazis.