Antifa (Germany)

Antifa (German: [ˈantifa] ^ⓘ) is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple militant groups and individuals on the political left, who describe themselves as anti-fascist; its primary activity has been combating fascism: initially Nazism, and later neo-Nazism. The antifa movement in Germany has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came.

Antifaschistische Aktion 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 ('power seizure') in 1933, the movement went underground. In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different autonomous 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. 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. The federal office states that the underlying goal of the antifa movement is "the struggle against the liberal democratic basic order" and capitalism. In the 1980s, the movement was accused by German authorities of engaging in terrorist acts of violence. According to the these agencies, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement.

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. 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.

The KPD described Antifaschistische Aktion as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD". The KPD had proclaimed that it was "the only anti-fascist party" during the elections of 1930. 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, 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.

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" 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. The KPD doctrine held that the communist party was "the only anti-fascist party" while all other parties were "fascist".

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. Thälmann "took his instructions from Stalin and his hatred of the SPD was essentially ideological".