We are used to seeing Antifa — aka AntiF(irst)A(mendment) — reflexively label anyone they disagree with as fascists.  If the topic wasn’t so serious and if Antifa wasn’t so violent you could just laugh them off.  Yeah, we conservatives are such fascists that we want citizens to be armed, we want limited government, less regulations, etc.  Seriously, we were the original anti-fascists.  If we used a fraction of the tactics that Antifa does it would be in the news 24×7.

I just saw this fascinating historical fact in a book I’m reading about the Cold War.  The book was published in 2012, so it predates Antifa by many years.  The author was describing the spread of the secret police (the NKVD / KGB) into Eastern European countries and how they relentlessly went after fascists, or more specifically how they called anyone they didn’t like a fascist as a pretext to imprison or kill them.

But in every country occupied by the Red Army, the definition of “fascist” eventually grew broader, expanding to include not only Nazi collaborators but anybody whom the Soviet occupiers and their local allies disliked. In time, the word “fascist,” in true Orwellian fashion, was eventually used to describe antifascists who also happened to be anticommunists. And every time the definition was expanded, arrests followed.

Some of these “fascists” had been identified in advance . . .

Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

So there is more evidence that Antifa and their apologists on the Left are just running the Communist playbook.  They disingenuously call their opponents fascists to deflect attention from their Communism.  And make no mistake: If they had the power of the KGB they’d start arresting and punishing conservatives today.