Antifa Goes Global: How a 1930s Street Brawl Became Planet Earth’s Favorite Political Inkblot

PARIS—Somewhere between a Greek philosophy seminar and a Berlin squat party, the word “antifa” slipped its linguistic moorings and became a global Rorschach test. To one half of the planet, it is a vigilante boogeyman lurking behind every broken Starbucks window; to the other, it is the last lonely fire brigade in a world already smoldering. The truth, as usual, is messier—like trying to photocopy smoke while someone is setting the copier on fire.

The term is simply shorthand for “anti-fascist,” a political tradition that predates TikTok, television, and even that regrettable mustache. Its roots reach back to 1930s Europe, when German and Italian leftists formed militant street leagues to brawl with brownshirts who, inconveniently, had state backing. Historical spoiler: the fascists won the first round, but the branding stuck. After the war, antifa re-emerged in punk squats and university basements, a decentralized network of anarchists, communists, and that one guy who insists on wearing a balaclava in July. No CEOs, no membership cards, no HR department—just an ethos: punch Nazis, not clocks.

By the 1980s the idea had gone backpacking. Scandinavian blocs protected migrant neighborhoods from neo-Nazi boneheads, while Brazilian favela collectives borrowed the aesthetics to resist police death squads. In South Korea, antifa-adjacent students squared off against military dictatorships, proving that authoritarianism comes in many flavors, none of them gluten-free. The internet merely turbocharged the franchise, allowing a meme born in Hamburg to inspire black-clad marchers in Portland, Oregon, who in turn became stock villains on Russian state TV. Globalization, ladies and gentlemen: even our bogeymen are outsourced.

What antifa actually does varies by zip code and mood. In Greece they hurl yogurt at Golden Dawn; in Britain they doxx far-right Telegram admins between cups of tea; in France they serve as a sort of unofficial security detail for refugee camps, occasionally pausing to debate whether the camps are themselves oppressive. Funding? Mostly bake sales, benefit gigs, and the occasional cryptocurrency wallet that everyone forgets the password to. Leadership? Picture a flock of caffeinated crows arguing over a map—then set the map on fire.

Governments, bless their sclerotic hearts, have responded with the nuance of a drunk rhino. Donald Trump tweeted about labeling antifa a terrorist organization, apparently unaware you can’t drone-strike an idea. Turkey’s Erdoğan uses the term to jail Kurdish activists, while Poland’s ruling party lumps antifa in with “LGBT ideology,” a rhetorical sandwich only a populist could digest. Meanwhile the Chinese state media, never missing a chance to wag a finger, denounces antifa violence while running re-education camps in Xinjiang—because irony died years ago and no one bothered to claim the body.

For the rest of us, antifa functions less as an organization and more as a moral inkblot. If you believe democracy is self-cleaning, the black bloc is an unsightly stain. If you think fascism arrives in tailored suits long before it dons a armband, then a few cracked windows seem like preventative maintenance. The uncomfortable truth is that antifa only looks apocalyptic in societies already losing faith in their own immune systems. When parliaments dither and platforms monetize extremism, clenched fists become the de-facto antibodies.

And so the idea endures, sloppy and self-contradictory, like a drunk text from history itself: “Don’t let the bastards win (again).” Whether that message ages like wine or like milk will depend less on the balaclavas than on the rest of us—citizens, voters, keyboard moralists—deciding if liberal institutions still have a pulse or if we’re just waiting for the paramedics to pronounce the patient. Until then, every broken bank window, every doxxed neo-Nazi, every awkward Thanksgiving debate will serve as a tiny referendum on which century we’re actually living in. Choose your fighter; the rest is just choreography.