Deconstructing memes: Is the US Constitution the handbook for anti-fascist resistance?

Under the current administration the public is subjected to daily forms of propaganda and misinformation. Whether the propaganda is coming from Trump himself or someone else in the administration, you can bet that what is being said is anything but the truth.

Unfortunately, too often some of the public responses to the banality from the Trump Administration are also filled with propaganda and misinformation. In September, Trump designated antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Antifa is short for anti-fascism, which means it is not an organization, it is a belief and a practice that opposes fascism in all forms. Anti-fascism is, and has also always been, international, thus is can never be just domestic.

There have been plenty of responses to Trump’s designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization claim, but many of the responses are not rooted in the antifascist tradition. In September, I deconstructed another meme, which made the absurd claim that US generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton were the founders of antifa.

Then there is the recent photo-meme I have seen on social media that made me shake my head. The photo says, “They found the antifa handbook! It’s the Constitution!

Now, there is no simple way to respond to this absurd claim. The only logical response is to look at the very nature of what it means to be an antifascist, followed by the creation and the meaning of the US Constitution.

What is antifa?

“For certain people, America has been fascist all along, and it just depends on what side you are on.”  Robin D.G. Kelley

Shane Burley in his 2017 book, Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, defines antifa as:

A direct-action interaction of Anti-Fascist Action developed by autonomous and anarchist blocks in Germany, France and the UK and adopted as a primary anti-fascist organizing method worldwide. It differentiates itself by direct engagement with fascists in the streets, fighting over “contested spaces,” and using a “no platform” strategy.

There has been a long tradition of people resisting fascism in the US, especially communities that were confronted by genocide and slavery. In the book, The Black Antifascist Tradition, the authors argue that Black people that were forcibly brought to the US have always resisting forms of fascism within the US, stating:

“Black Antifascism is embedded with and in dialectical relationship to such transformative Afro-diasporic moments as the Campaign Against Lynching, the Pan-African Movement, Anticolonialism, Anti-imperialism, International Communism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, Black Feminism, LGBTQIA+ struggles, Black Anarchism, and the contemporary Abolitionist movement.”

This is a significantly different understanding for most white Americans, many of whom believe that fascism originated in Europe. This makes sense in many ways, since white people have not endured the same kinds of fascist policies and laws that Black and Indigenous people have faced after legalized slavery, such Jim Crows laws, legalized lynching, eugenics, segregation and mass incarceration. For Indigenous peoples still living in the US they have faced various forms of genocide, like so-called boarding schools, the so-called Indian Wars, reservations, the US violation of hundreds of treaties, and being denied their own spiritual traditions.

Now that white people are experiencing what the current Trump Administration is doing, even though they are still not the primary targets of oppression, they think that this is the first time that fascism has been practiced in the US. The longtime abolitionist Angela Davis helps us understand how we resist this and who should be leading the resistance:

“The only effective guarantee against the victory of fascism is an indivisible mass movement which refuses to conduct business as usual as long as repression rages on. It is only natural that Blacks and other Third World peoples must lead this movement, for we are the first and most deeply injured victims of fascism.”

This brings me to why I believe the above photo/meme is absurd. There might be useful words and principles in the US Constitution, but they have never been applied fully  to Black, Indigenous and numerous others communities of color.

It is also an important that we come to terms with the creation and use of the US Constitution as something that has always serve elites in this country. Just because we learned in 8th grade civics class that the Founding Fathers were great men who created the most democratic experiment in the history of humanity, doesn’t mean it was true.

I highly recommend that people read the book, We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few, by Robert Ovetz.  Ovetz argues that the Constitutional framers were elites who owned lots of land and slaves, in addition to creating a system that would help them protect what they owned and make it extremely difficult to make meaningful changes using the political systems they designed. This is why those of us who believe in the possibilities of social movements using direct action is what makes change, not using the existing political process.

The history of anti-fascist efforts over the centuries demonstrates that revolutionary change is what is needed and that we can never vote our way to real and substantive change. Saying that the US Constitution is the handbook for antifa is both insulting and absurd. In fact, I would argue that the US Constitution is antithetical to anti-fascism.