A previous commentor made a great point about the naming of things. Often the labels for highly political movements are euphemisms at best. Some of the least democratic countries in the world include the DPRK, DRC, and the PRC. And just about every violent revolutionary movement has similar naming, like the PLO and so many others. Look to their actions, not their name or stated mission, to make your own assessment.
Antifa is in the same position as many other early stage revolutionary political movements rooted in socialist ideals. I’d characterize them as highly volatile, anti-establishment, anti-police, with many autonomous factions, and so forth. Because of this disorganized and volatile nature, their initial steps can only be disruption to the incumbent political and police forces they stand against, not to create their own. They’re too chaotic at this stage to stand any chance of supplanting the status quo with anything better on their own. Their best hope is for the current political forces to enact better policies as a reaction, but it won’t be anything created by antifa itself. Because to create order requires a unified vision, and besides sharing a common enemy, unity is something their many factions lack at this time. That being said, the brief attempt at creating something in the CHAZ was illustrative of the challenges any early stage political force faces. In it, for example, the ratio of police (or armed militia) to civilians has to be extraordinarily high. And when their police force is as young, hot-blooded and untrained as it is today, it will be more violent than that of the stable government they oppose. Such an early stage government faces external threats, obviously, but because of the elevated level of chaos within it there are substantially more internal threats than a later stage government has to deal with. And so, were antifa to successfully implement its own government it would necessarily be fascist (in the police-force dominated, no room for dissent aspect of fascism) or it would fall apart. Despite their name and mission, and despite their far left position, if they are like any of the similar movements in history their authority early on will stem from a threat of violence, which your post doesn’t attempt to deny—only that for this cause, that fascist response, to you, would be justified.
This is Ba Sing Se levels of delusion for some people.
[1] This one shows a bit more at the beginning, making it look like the crew had already been asked at least a few times to move: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbXWAHad-4
We let our teenagers become broadcasters, influencers, reviewers, and players, but failed to teach them how to avoid being parasocially suckered, influenced, gaslit, and used as pawns.
Perhaps we need to craft an educational system which is more substantial. Or perhaps we need to teach early grade-school civics and ethics, so that teenagers will have had a round of memetic inoculation before being introduced to modern cryptofascists. I certainly think that my scant lessons in high school were crucial in helping to rebut some of the stupider strains of online thought today, like sovereign citizenship, flat-Earth astronomy, or (the modern flavor of) the Lost Cause.
Fascism is an attempt to preserve tradition and meaning in an increasingly chaotic and senseless world. It creates order by demanding a return to organic hierarchical structures and by eliminating threats to a meaningful existence. Fascism is clearly incompatible with modern values which place the individual first. Individualism atomizes people rather than seeing them as part of a whole, and indeed today people lack the feeling of togetherness that is brought about by striving collectively for a higher cause. Some people can experience it fleetingly in the modern world—soldiers, for example—but it’s rare that a fire rages within anybody anymore. Everyone dedicates their lives working toward some cause and under some underlying pretense, but what is it that gives your life’s work meaning and to what end does your effort go? Now put yourself in the shoes of the teenagers who are so seduced by fascism or any other system that promises to give meaning to life. It’s not hard to imagine that in those turbulent formative years one would favor a way of life that, on one hand connects you to your past (culturally, geographically, spiritually), and on the other hand provides some hope that your efforts today are not going to be in vain—what meaning does your life’s work have if you expect the next generation to tear it down? You say fascism has little ideological substance. Its substance, to use your frame, is the preservation of meaning. Odds are, your ideology is rooted in modern norms that stand at odds with nature. They deprive the world of meaning. I would argue that that is worse than fascism.
If people can't agree on what Nazi means we should ban the word altogether since it has loaded political context and doesn't foster proper discussion.
It appears to me that:
1) Some use Nazi to mean Nazi Party with proper historical context 2) Some use Nazi as tool to bludgeon anyone they don't like 3) Some use Nazi to be an umbrella term for anything related to fascism, racism, right-leaning ideology, all kinds of other stuff.
If a single word means all kinds of things to all kinds of people, it's a useless word.