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I want to talk a little bit about why the Trump campaign using the red triangle in an “Anti-Antifa” ad is extremely concerning, regardless of the intent and excuses provided by the campaign. 1/?
Most are well aware of the genocide commited against the Jewish people, but its important to remember that the Holocaust was ensconced in an elaborate campaign of social and political repression, of which the triangle became an important symbol.
For the Nazi’s vision of the third reich to unfold, it required the removal, and in many cases elimination, of any group of people who, in the Nazi’s view, threatened their success and dominance.
So the Nazi’s started persecuting and rounding up those who had been deemed a problem and some of the first to go were the political opposition. The first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, was originally established not to hold Jews, but to hold political prisoners.
German Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and other members of the political resistance where some of the first victims of the Nazi camp system. As that system expanded, and more groups were persecuted, the Nazi’s found themselves in need of a classification system
You see not every prisoner served the same purpose. Some prisoners were to be exterminated, some were to be used as labor, some “reformed,” some used to keep other prisoners in check. And thus the triangle badge system was created.
The badge ststem was complex and layered and used in various ways (I linked a good read) but I want to focus specifically on the red triangle, and why it’s use by this president is setting of sirens for those studying the history of fascism. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps
The red triangle signfied that you were a political prisoner. A person deprived of their freedom and in many cases life because of the political ideology that you subscribed to was in opposition to that of the Nazi party.
Using the red triangle in an ad calling for the criminalization of antifascism, is a direct callback to the criminalization of those who opposed the Nazi’s. It does not matter what the campaign’s excuse is, the intent does not negate the reality of that symbol or its effect.
Over the past weeks Trump, the GOP, certain law enforcement agencies, and right wing media, have been in a coordinated campaign to convince America that there is a coordinated leftist supported Antifa plot to destroy America, and they must be deemed terrorists.
Fascism rarely exists without the criminalization of the opposition. Antifa (which stands for “antifascist” and is an ideology not a structured organization) is a boogyman the President is trying to use to associate leftist ideology with criminality. https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-trnd/index.html
Antifascist ideology can be found in many places but its often associated with Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Social Democrats, and leftist ideology. The admin is well aware that declaring Antifa a terrorist organization will result in the criminalization of leftists.
To be clear there is no evidence that Antifascists have participated in coordinated acts of terror, particularly in the recent protests against police brutality, and their record regarding violence is often limited to street brawls with white nationalists https://www.thedailybeast.com/antifa-is-literally-never-mentioned-in-the-first-prosecutions-of-protest-violence
The Antifa panic on the right is ultimately scapegoating, and scapegoating is a tactic. In America people are dying en masse, millions are unemployed, and the country is watching their fellow citizens get shot, beaten, and brutality every day—
— but to do anything about the crisis would be to acknowledge responsibility. It’s easier to create the specter of “violent leftist terror” and brand them criminals as a show of force than it is to do something to fix a broken nation.
The Nazi’s also dealt in scapegoats and specters. They assigned each of their scapegoats a colored triangle, and a place in the machine of extermination. It’s our responsibility to keep our eyes open and make sure #NeverAgain isn’t just a slogan.
