You Cannot Be Anti-Fascist And Anti-Gun

It’s impossible to be both anti-gun and anti-fascist because the foundation of antifascism has always been the ability of ordinary people to resist power when institutions either collapse or side with the oppressor. The right to self-defense isn’t some modern culture war talking point; it is the historical backbone of every movement that’s ever stood up to tyranny.

Fascism doesn’t arrive all at once. It doesn’t start with tanks in the streets or soldiers kicking down doors. It starts with small steps that feel manageable at first. A law here, a speech restriction there. A growing faith that “the system” will correct itself, even as that same system concentrates power into the hands of fewer and fewer people.

When you remove guns from the public while allowing the state to remain armed, you create the exact conditions fascism depends on: a population that cannot meaningfully resist. You can have the most passionate convictions in the world, but without the means to defend them, they exist only at the mercy of whoever holds power.

History makes this painfully clear. The Italian partisans weren’t filing petitions when Mussolini’s forces marched through their towns. The French Resistance didn’t fight occupation with strongly worded letters. The Warsaw Ghetto fighters knew that the odds were impossible, yet they still armed themselves because they understood something too many modern “anti-fascists” have forgotten: freedom means nothing if you can’t protect it.

Every major antifascist struggle was armed because it had to be. No authoritarian regime has ever been toppled by moral arguments alone. When a government decides that dissent is a crime, or that certain people are less human than others, the only thing that stands between oppression and freedom is whether ordinary people are capable of saying “no” in a way that cannot be ignored.

Modern antifascists who argue against gun ownership are, knowingly or not, advocating for a monopoly on force in the hands of the state and its enforcers. They imagine a version of antifascism that relies entirely on goodwill and institutional accountability, even though history has shown those institutions are the first to crumble or comply when authoritarianism rises. That isn’t antifascism. That is submission dressed up as virtue.

If you genuinely believe in opposing fascism, you must also believe in the right of people to defend themselves and their communities. You cannot claim to fight authoritarianism while demanding that only the state should have weapons. The same logic that fueled the Black Panthers’ patrols of police in Oakland, the miners’ strikes in Harlan County, and the anti-colonial uprisings in Algeria applies today: disarmament doesn’t make anyone safer, it only makes resistance impossible.

Antifascism isn’t a hashtag or a fashion statement. It’s a commitment to the idea that no government, no leader, and no movement should ever hold unchecked power over the lives of others. That commitment means trusting ordinary people with the tools necessary to defend themselves. You can be anti-fascist, or you can be anti-gun, but you cannot be both.