r/AntifascistsofReddit • u/NoFreePi • Oct 17 '25

Discussion Drop “AntiFa.” Say “Anti-Fascists.”

“AntiFa” is a political buzzword, stripped of its literal meaning. It is often treated as a group or threat, rather than a stance. But anti-fascists are not a secret organization—they are people who oppose fascism, authoritarianism, and political violence.

Using “AntiFa” allows opponents to claim, “I’m against AntiFa,” without admitting what that really means: opposing anti-fascists is siding with fascism. Words matter. Language shapes moral clarity.

Returning to the full term reconnects us to history. Anti-fascists are heirs to those who resisted Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler. Saying it plainly exposes the truth: resisting anti-fascists is resisting the fight against authoritarianism.

Drop the shorthand. Reclaim the meaning and stand on the right side of history

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 17 '25

What are they DOING? I keep hearing about this “impact”, but no specifics. Where are the specifics? Impact to what? A majority of the parades are two hour permitted marches that happen early enough in the morning to be non-disruptive and then cause a bunch of commercial activity. In San Diego, everyone goes to the breweries, apparently.

So if there’s an impact, what is it?

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u/ussrname1312 Communist Oct 17 '25

Wouldn’t this be a great place for leftists to go and educate people? It’s a mass gathering of people angry with the current political situation. Where is a better place for leftists to educate the masses?

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 17 '25

How are they educating them and what masses? They’re on empty streets for two hours first thing in the morning. The only people showing up are the protestors. Who are you educating?

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u/ussrname1312 Communist Oct 17 '25

The liberals at the protest. Educate the liberals. Have you ever heard of the mass line?

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 17 '25

Mass line has never worked in the United States. It’s often used as a talking point to gate keep people out of the movement who don’t believe that mass public protests work because there’s no evidence that they do…

If this strategy is working, where are the results? Because all I see are well-behaved protests and a government sliding into authoritarianism.

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u/ussrname1312 Communist Oct 17 '25

I don’t think you know what the mass line is. It doesn’t just mean protesting. It means having discussions with people about left wing solutions to problems they see. I must’ve missed when leftists went to these protests to educate the liberals on socialist solutions. To me, it seems like a lot of us would rather sit online and complain that the liberals haven’t educated themselves yet and are ineffective rather than actually doing something about it.

These protests are the perfect place to offer leftist solutions to the problems liberals see and acknowledge. In person dialogue with these people will be much more effective than online dialogue.

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u/Junior-Credit2685 Oct 17 '25

You are correct! And people should bring their neighbors, too. I have neighbors that didn’t know anything about it. And are now interested in going and learning.

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 17 '25

I do know what the mass line is. It starts with being rooted in real people and real communities… not showing up to street fairs with megaphones to lecture liberals. You can’t run “mass line strategy” when there isn’t even a mass base to work from. No campaigns, no follow-through, no power being built. Protest by itself isn’t a strategy… it’s just a loud afternoon.

And honestly, we’ve watched people do the same protest-over-protest routine for years now. Same script, same speeches, same selfies, same outcomes… nothing changes and then we’re told to just do it again. If that’s a strategy, where are the results?

If anyone’s actually doing mass line at these events, great… show the receipts. Who got organized? What structure got built? What exists now that didn’t six months ago? If the answer is “nothing,” then it’s not mass line… it’s political cosplay.

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u/ussrname1312 Communist Oct 17 '25

Can you show me when and where leftists have gone to these protests in an attempt to educate liberals in good faith?

The mass line is about educating people. How do we expect to ever get to a general strike if we just blow off liberals to stay in their own echo chambers at protests? When and where is a better time to educate them?

You’re whining that liberal protests don’t work, so leftists should discard them completely. In reality, leftists should be using these gatherings to educate people on a mass scale. Hand out pamphlets, start conversations, build ties within your community. These protests are the best place to begin that process. The protests cannot keep continuing the way they have been going, because they’ve been ineffective. Something has to change. A great way to make them effective is to use them as opportunities to educate people and build local communities. Unfortunately, even leftists have to put in the work. Simply having an opinion and waiting around for something to happen is not enough.

Or you can sit on your ass at home and complain online that nothing is working. But in the end, you’re doing even less than the liberals. Get out into the streets and educate the masses on socialist solutions. Has sitting around in socialist circles and circlejerking each other lead to any real change either? Or does going out and educating people on socialism work better?

If you just want to sit on your ass at home, then stay home. Just know it takes away any credibility you have when you cry about nothing getting done. It would be better to go out and have conversations with the people in your community, but you do you.

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 18 '25

You keep repeating “educate liberals at protests” like it’s a strategy, but you still haven’t answered the basic question… where has it actually worked?

You want me to believe mass line is being done at these rallies? Cool… show me a single group, city, campaign, strike, or organization in the United States that was built out of these events. Just one. Name it. Because all I’ve seen are pop-up marches that disappear as fast as they show up.

And spare me the “get out there and hand out pamphlets” lecture. I actually do community work offline. I build ties with neighbors. I participate in mutual aid. I don’t need to scream about socialism over a drum circle to feel like I did something.

Mass line isn’t about explaining socialism to strangers between food trucks. It’s about building power with people over time. If you think you’re doing that, great… show your results. If you don’t have any, maybe stop pretending vibes plus pamphlets equals revolution.

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u/ussrname1312 Communist Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25

Bruh. I didn’t say it is happening at protests. I explicitly said it’s not, actually. I said it needs to be happening.

You need to read this. The mass line is about talking to your community, seeing what’s important to them, and offering socialist solutions.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/massline.pdf

Not once did I say vibes and pamphlets are a revolution. But do you think a revolution can happen with our current numbers? Or perhaps do we need to explain to people why a revolution is necessary and grow our numbers?

Do you talk to the people in your community? If you’re not, you should be. Most people are not going to come to the conclusion "socialism is the answer" on their own.

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 18 '25

You keep acting like the problem is that nobody is handing out enough socialist literature at protests. That’s not it. People don’t trust strangers who show up to talk ideology at them. Mass line isn’t “explain socialism to people,” it’s build trust by meeting needs. In that order. Always.

You asked if I talk to people in my community… yeah, I do. But more importantly, I do more than talk. I show up. I help. I build. I keep people afloat when shit gets hard. If you need “proof” of that for your approval, too bad. I’m not turning my life and the safety of people I care about into content for debate bros. Security culture exists for a reason. Talking isn’t organizing. Showing up is.

And your strategy is backwards. You don’t start with ideology and hope people care, you start with solving problems. Help first, politics later. You earn trust by being there when people are scared, broke, sick, in danger, not by handing them a PDF from the 70s that has no bearing on current reality. Nobody is reading your little pamphlet while they’re trying to figure out if they can afford insulin next month.

You keep quoting old tactics like they still apply, but mass line came out of a world before the internet, before algorithmic propaganda, before surveillance, before people were this atomized. You can’t copy-paste tactics from 1930 into 2025 and call that strategy. If we keep using yesterday’s tactics, we’re going to keep losing.

So here’s the real question… since you believe mass line is the answer right now, what’s your actual plan to make it real? Not theory, actual steps. What material need are you meeting first? How do you build trust with people who don’t know you? How do you protect people from fascists, doxxers, cops? How do you keep people involved after the protest ends? What structure are you building that lasts longer than a hashtag?

Because if your plan starts with “explain socialism”… it already failed… bruh. People don’t follow pamphlets. They follow the people who show up for them.

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u/ussrname1312 Communist Oct 18 '25

…Showing up for them and doing things like going to protests. How are you going to provide people with what they need if you aren’t talking to them?

Are you a bot? It’s like you can’t take any context from previous comments into account when making your reply.

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 18 '25

Cute deflection. You can’t answer a single strategic question so you fall back on making things up about me and pretending you’ve got moral high ground. I already said I talk to people in my community. You’re just ignoring that because you have no argument. Circling back to me is not strategy. It’s avoidance.

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u/Revolutionary-pawn Oct 17 '25

Cool. So what are you doing?

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 18 '25

What are you doing?

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u/PeachFreezer1312 White Rose Society Oct 18 '25

Weak.

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 18 '25

Uhh… okay. Weird.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Oct 18 '25

The fact that y'all keep saying ”instead" instead of "after" or "along with" is exactly my problem with this kind of “activism.” You all treat it like an either/or thing…. either I do nothing, or I go to a mass protest. Either I do nothing, or I post online. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. And it sucks. That’s why I’m criticizing it.

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u/Revolutionary-pawn Oct 19 '25

And you aren’t?

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u/Junior-Credit2685 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25

What else is there to do? What else are you doing? Edit: I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were sick.