Antifa (German: [ˈantifa] ^ⓘ) is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement.^[1][2][3] The antifa movement has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then-Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the late history of the Weimar Republic. After the forced dissolution in the wake of Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground.^[4] In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, the contemporary antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.^[5]

The contemporary antifa movement has its roots in the West German Außerparlamentarische Opposition left-wing student movement and largely adopted the aesthetics of the first movement while being ideologically somewhat dissimilar. The first antifa groups in this tradition were founded by the Maoist Communist League in the early 1970s. From the late 1980s, West Germany's squatter scene and left-wing autonomism movement were the main contributors to the new antifa movement and in contrast to the earlier movement had a more anarcho-communist leaning. The contemporary movement has splintered into different groups and factions, including one anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist faction and one anti-German faction who strongly oppose each other, mainly over their views on Israel.

German government institutions such as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education describe the contemporary antifa movement as part of the extreme left and as partially violent. Antifa groups are monitored by the federal office in the context of its legal mandate to combat extremism.^[1][2][3][6] The federal office states that the underlying goal of the antifa movement is "the struggle against the liberal democratic basic order" and capitalism.^[2][3] In the 1980s, the movement was accused by German authorities of engaging in terrorist acts of violence.^[7]

Antifaschistische Aktion was established by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) based on the principle of a communist front and its establishment was announced in the party's newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) in 1932. It functioned as an integral part of the KPD during its entire existence from 1932 to 1933.^[8] A member of the Comintern, the KPD under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann was loyal to the Soviet government headed by Joseph Stalin to the extent that the party had been directly controlled and funded by the Soviet leadership in Moscow since 1928.^[9][8]

The KPD described Antifaschistische Aktion as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD".^[10] The KPD had proclaimed that it was "the only anti-fascist party" during the elections of 1930.^[9] Unlike the situation in Italy, no party regarded itself as "fascist" in Weimar-era Germany. Central to Antifaschistische Aktion was the use of the epithet fascist. According to Norman Davies, the concept of "anti-fascism" as used by the KPD originated as an ideological construct of the Soviet Union,^[11] where the epithets fascist and fascism were primarily and widely used to describe capitalist society in general and virtually any anti-Soviet or anti-Stalinist activity or opinion. This usage was also adopted by communist parties affiliated with the Comintern such as the KPD.^[12]

During the Comintern's Third Period (1928–1931), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was included by the KPD in the category of "fascists"^[13] based on the theory of "social fascism" proclaimed by Stalin and supported by the Comintern in the early 1930s, according to which social democracy was a variant of fascism and even more dangerous and insidious than open fascism.^[8] The KPD doctrine held that the communist party was "the only anti-fascist party" while all other parties were "fascist".^[14] The KPD did not view fascism as a specific political movement, but primarily as the final stage of capitalism and the KPD's anti-fascism" was therefore synonymous with anti-capitalism. Throughout this period, the KPD regarded the centre-left SPD as its main adversary.^[8] Thälmann "took his instructions from Stalin and his hatred of the SPD was essentially ideological".^[15] In his sympathetic history of Antifaschistische Aktion, published by the Association for the Promotion of Antifascist Culture, Bernd Langer notes that "antifascism was always a fundamentally anti-capitalist strategy" and that "communists always took antifascism to mean anti-capitalism. Therefore all other parties were fascist in the opinion of the KPD, and especially the SPD".^[16] A 1931 KPD resolution described the SPD, referred to as "social fascists", as the "main pillar of the dictatorship of Capital".^[17] Consequently, anti-fascism and anti-fascist action in the language of the KPD also included the struggle against the social democrats.^[8] In the early 1930s, the KPD had stated that "fighting fascism means fighting the SPD just as much as it means fighting Hitler and the parties of Brüning".^[14] While some KPD members initially believed Antifaschistische Aktion should include other leftists, this opinion was quickly suppressed by the KPD leadership which made it clear that Antifaschistische Aktion would also oppose the SPD and that "Anti-Fascist Action means untiring daily exposure of the shameless, treacherous role of the SPD and ADGB leaders who are the direct filthy helpers of fascism".^[18]

Occasionally, the KPD cooperated with the Nazis in attacking the SPD and both sought to destroy the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic.^[18][19] While also opposed to the Nazis, the KPD regarded the Nazi Party as a less sophisticated and thus less dangerous fascist party than the SPD. In December 1931, KPD leader Ernst Thälmann declared that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest" of the SPD.^[20][21] In 1931, the KPD under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann internally used the slogan "After Hitler, our turn!", strongly believing that a united front against Nazis was not needed and that a Nazi dictatorship would ultimately crumble due to flawed economic policies and lead the KPD to power in Germany when the people realised that their economic policies were superior.^[22][23]

The relationship between the KPD and the SPD was characterised by mutual hostility. The SPD had itself adopted the position that both the Nazis and the KPD posed an equal danger to liberal democracy^[24] and SPD leader Kurt Schumacher famously described the KPD as "red-painted Nazis" in 1930.^[12] The SPD-dominated Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold described itself as a "protection organization of the Republic and democracy in the fight against the swastika and the Soviet star" and both the Reichsbanner and the Iron Front opposed both the Nazis and the "anti-fascist" KPD.^[25][26] In 1929, the KPD's paramilitary organisation, Roter Frontkämpferbund (Alliance of Red Front-Fighters), an effective predecessor of Antifaschistische Aktion, had been banned as extremist by the governing SPD.^[27] In December 1929, the KPD founded Antifaschistische Junge Garde as a successor to Roter Frontkämpferbund, which was banned.^[28]

Despite this animosity between party leaderships, on the ground there was considerable co-operation against the Nazis between rank and file activists of the KPD, SPD and other left groups such as in local anti-fascist committees and militias, particularly in 1932 as the fascists gained ground and calls for a united front by Leon Trotsky, August Thalheimer and other left leaders became more urgent.^[14] It was in this context that the KPD began to emphasise the specific threat of Nazism, leading to the formation of Antifaschistische Aktion and later the turn away from the "social fascism" doctrine. The 1932 congress organised by KPD dedicated energy to attacking the SPD. It featured a large Antifaschistische Aktion logo flanked by imagery that showed the KPD fighting the capitalists next to imagery openly mocking the SPD.^[29]

After the forced dissolution in the wake of the Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground.^[4] Theodore Draper argued that "the so-called theory of social fascism and the practice based on it constituted one of the chief factors contributing to the victory of German fascism in January 1933".^[13][15]

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, groups called Antifaschistische Aktion, Antifaschistische Ausschüsse, or Antifaschistische Kommittees, all typically abbreviated to antifa, spontaneously re-emerged in Germany in 1944, mainly involving veterans of pre-war KPD, KPO and SPD politics^{[30][31][32][33]} as well as some members of other democratic political parties and Christians who opposed the Nazi régime.^[34] Communists tended to make up at least half of the committees.^[34] In the western zones, these anti-fascist committees began to recede by the late summer of 1945, marginalized by Allied bans on political organization and by re-emerging divisions between communists and others and the emerging state doctrine of anti-communism in what became West Germany.^[35] In East Germany, the antifa groups were absorbed into the new Stalinist state.^[30]

The contemporary antifa movement in Germany comprises different anti-fascist groups which usually use the abbreviation antifa and regard Antifaschistische Aktion of the early 1930s as an inspiration. Contemporary antifa "has no practical historical connection to the movement from which it takes its name, but is instead a product of West Germany's squatter scene and autonomist movement in the 1980s".^[30] Many new antifa groups formed from the late 1980s onwards. One of the biggest antifascist campaigns in Germany in recent years was the ultimately successful effort to block the annual Nazi-rallies in the east German city of Dresden in Saxony which had grown into "Europe's biggest gathering of Nazis".^[47] Unlike Antifaschistische Aktion which had links to the Communist Party of Germany and which was concerned with industrial working-class politics, the late 1980s and early 1990s autonomists were instead independent anti-authoritarian libertarian Marxists and anarcho-communists not associated with any particular party. The publication Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, in operation since 1987, sought to expose radical nationalists publicly.^[48]

Most contemporary antifa groups were formed after the German reunification in 1990, mainly in the early part of the 1990s. In 1990, Autonome Antifa (M) was established in Göttingen. Antifaschistische Aktion Berlin, founded in 1993, became one of the more prominent groups. Antifaschistische Aktion/Bundesweite Organisation [de] was an umbrella organisation at the federal level that coordinated these groups across Germany. Aside from their violent clashes with ultra-nationalists, these groups participated in the annual May Day in Kreuzberg which resulted in large-scale riots in 1987 and which have been characterized by a significant police presence.^[49][50] In 2003, Antifaschistisches Infoblatt joined Antifa-Net, part of an international network, including the likes of Britain's Searchlight and Sweden's Expo magazine.^[51]

Steffen Kailitz notes that "the difference between the autonomist scene and terrorist networks gradually lost importance from the 1990s" and that a number of antifa groups were involved in violent activities from the 1990s.^[52] In October 2016, antifa in Dresden campaigned on the occasion of the anniversary of the reunification of Germany on 3 October for "turning Unity celebrations into a disaster" to protest this display of new German nationalism whilst explicitly not ruling out the use of violence.^[53] Antifa protesters were involved during the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit confrontations.^[54][55]

• Conny Wessmann
• Far-right politics in Germany (1945–present)