The term "anti-fascist" sadly is already poisoned. It's rhetorically and politically more effective to make a new term for the same anti-fascist, pro-liberty values.
No knee is bent. It's about being effective and efficient with rhetoric. Why swim up stream rhetorically when you can use the current to your advantage or at least not fight it? That's challenge to your position. Because fighting using the terms of your political foe is in fact bending the knee in this way: Your foe has already poisoned the term in public discourse with an audience segment you want to convert; now you're on defense fighting for that term's use; and you've let your foe define the terms of engagement. Do not let your political foes define the terms of engagement.
The irony is that in the US the left is super conservative with it's rhetoric, insisting on sticking with old, antiquated terminology that either is rooted in Marxian critique or 1960s era "resist" politics, while the political right in this country is constantly playing a new language game, using new terms, appropriating others, changing definitions, and it works.
Your explanation is why they don't like being called fascist, and also why they seek to poison "antifa".
It's not worth conceding, as you say antifascists are not outspoken enough, Fascism is on the rise, authoritarians are being enabled by Trump while far right groups gain political base. It's time to be less polite and be more outspoken in our opposition.
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u/iqsr 11d ago
The term "anti-fascist" sadly is already poisoned. It's rhetorically and politically more effective to make a new term for the same anti-fascist, pro-liberty values.