Long before today’s weaponized rhetoric, long before politicians distorted the term, people across Europe resisted authoritarian movements because danger left them no choice.
They acted because survival demanded it.
They were:
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Workers guarded union halls (1919–1939)
They formed night watches and protection groups as fascist street movements attacked labor organizers in Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, and Vienna. -
Jewish communities confronted immediate danger (1933–1945)
They built underground networks, mutual-aid circles, and later armed partisan brigades as Nazi persecution escalated into mass extermination. -
LGBTQ+ people resisted the earliest purges (1933–1945)
They relied on coded communication, hidden gathering places, and clandestine support networks as the Nazis targeted LGBTQ+ people under Paragraph 175. -
Immigrant neighborhoods faced nationalist militias (1920s–1930s)
Communities in London’s East End, Paris, New York, and Barcelona organized street-level defense, culminating in confrontations like the 1936 Battle of Cable Street. -
Women defended one another from state violence (1922–1945)
They forged documents, sheltered fugitives, carried intelligence, and protected each other as authoritarian regimes used surveillance and sexualized violence as political weapons. -
Artists, writers, and intellectuals were forced to choose a side (1920s–1940s)
Many were censored, exiled, or driven underground, using literature, art, and journalism to expose atrocities and undermine fascist propaganda.
These were not radicals.
These were neighbors responding to the reality unfolding around them.
Antifascism has always meant one thing: people who recognize authoritarianism — and refuse to let it advance.
How Antifascism Formed
Antifascism did not begin as a unified ideology.
It began as community defense.
In Spain, anti-fascist workers, peasants, students, and militias mobilized against Franco beginning in 1936.
Across Germany and Italy, underground networks used clandestine presses, sabotage, and intelligence-sharing to survive regimes built on terror.
In France, resistance cells organized escape routes, disruption campaigns, and underground newspapers from 1940 until liberation.
In Eastern Europe, Jewish partisans formed armed brigades and family camps, disrupting supply lines and saving thousands.
In Britain, organizers tracked fascist groups, disrupted rallies, and protected vulnerable communities throughout the 1930s.
Antifascism was never abstract.
It was practical, local, improvised, and necessary.
A Continuum of Defense
Every wave of antifascism echoes the one before it.
People act because the alternative is annihilation.
Communities organize because abandonment is lethal.
Resistance continues because authoritarianism spreads wherever it is not interrupted.
The tools changed — but the purpose never did.
Signals, warnings, underground newspapers.
Safe houses, mutual aid, neighborhood patrols.
Labor strikes, boycotts, sabotage, information networks.
Antifascism endures because authoritarianism returns if it is not confronted early.
Why These Symbols Endure
Many of today’s recognizable antifascist symbols were born from these movements.
They were never created for style.
They were created for survival.
They helped mark safety, build trust, and identify allies under surveillance and censorship.
Cerberus — vigilance in every direction
A three-headed guardian representing the understanding that authoritarianism rarely attacks from a single front.
The red star — shared struggle across borders
A symbol used by worker movements and resistance brigades who believed liberation is collective.
The black flag — refusal
An emblem of non-cooperation with authoritarian rule, propaganda, or enforced silence.
Feminista — the backbone of community defense
Honoring women who organized safe houses, carried intelligence, sheltered families, and held the underground together.
Antifascista Siempre — continuity across generations
A reminder that antifascism did not begin with us and will not end with us.
Our design line includes these same symbols — not as decoration, but as continuation.
Each symbol carries a lived story. They link past danger to present vigilance, past resistance to present refusal. They survive because the forces that created them have not disappeared. And the people who choose them understand that ignoring authoritarianism has never protected anyone.
Antifascism is not extreme.
Pretending fascism is not rising is extreme.
Digitized Archives for Further Exploration
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Holocaust Encyclopedia
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org
International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam)
https://iisg.amsterdam/en
European Resistance Archive
https://www.resistance-archive.org
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research – Digital Collections
https://collections.yivo.org
Internet Archive – Anti-Fascist and Labor History Collections
https://archive.org
Recommended Reading for Understanding Antifascism (2025)
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On Tyranny — Timothy Snyder
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How Fascism Works — Jason Stanley
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The Origins of Totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt
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Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook — Mark Bray
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Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present — Ruth Ben-Ghiat