I Am An Anti-fascist

I am an anti-fascist.

Even worse, the lesson that I was on an evil path did not begin to penetrate my thick skull until I saw the video of another old white man viciously attacking defenseless Buffalo policemen and heard our unimpeachable white male President denounce the pitiless Buffalo criminal as an antifascist and a member of that notorious terrorist organization, Antifa. The lesson was finally driven home when our patient President repeated, for us slow learners, during the Great Debate that Antifa was responsible for all the unrest and violence in America. Worse yet, I must confess that I felt a moment’s hurt that Antifa never asked me to join or even sent me a newsletter. After that brief moment of hurt I roused myself and felt appropriately guilty for my crimes. 

Yes, it’s a tired cliché for criminals to whine about bad childhood influences instead of taking responsibility for their offenses. I freely admit my guilt, and I only bring up my early environment to help others avoid the addiction I failed to kick. I did not even realize that I was a dopa addict until I recently read that we weak humans get a dopamine hit each time we listen to the ravings of bellowing blowhards that support our world views and the louder they rave, the greater the dose.

The unfortunate circumstances of my birth were the evil beginning. I was born in a military hospital outside St. Louis, Missouri in 1943, smack in the middle of WWII. Due to the post-war housing shortage we remained in a barracks for several years after the war. I was bussed to kindergarten near the Parade Grounds where the day began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a bugle call. I attended Memorial Day parades in which proud veterans, heroes all, marched and were cheered by emotional crowds. These were gateway drugs whose insidious effects began to warp my innocent mind as I entered the dawn of reasoning.

In my formative years we lived in the city where the hard drug was ubiquitous and easily obtained. Throughout the late 1940s and into the 60s, it was drummed into my foolishly receptive brain that the Nazis and the fascists were the enemy of all humankind. In war comics and on television I inhaled deeply the propaganda that the Nazis and the fascists were more than just the enemy; they were the evil enemy. I allowed myself to be led astray by the seductive tones of what I was told was the quintessential American voice of Walter Cronkite. I mainlined the newsreels, television documentaries, and Hollywood movies, in black and white, of the war in North Africa, in Sicily and up the Italian peninsula, the Normandy landings, the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of concentration camps.  I huddled in dark theaters and tried to reduce my out-of-control craving for more dopa by ingesting Milk Duds or JuJu Bears that stuck to my teeth and gums the way that the idea that the GI Joes who defeated the evil Nazis and fascists were American heroes stuck to my drug-addled brain. I see now that I was misled by my dopamine addiction when my warped world view was reinforced by what I thought to be a true American Hero, Spencer Tracy, in “Judgement at Nuremberg”, when he presided over the trials of Nazis and condemned them as war criminals. Or John Wayne leading the invasion of Normandy in “The Longest Day.” This saturation bombing had a lasting effect on my still-developing and under-defended brain.

I confess that I still enjoy the high I get from that propagandistic war film “Casablanca.”

I confess that I don’t know when I absorbed the reality that Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and all the Nazis were fascists. Previously, in my youthful innocence, I had thought Fascism was a proper name applicable only to Mussolini and his followers who were equally evil but less competent. With time, I learned to make some distinctions. Somewhere in those formative years I learned that not all Germans had been Nazis and not all Germans were evil. Only the Nazis were evil. In high school I got all A’s in courses, which made me susceptible to the misleading mathematical proof: Nazis = Fascists; Nazism = Evil; Therefore: Fascism = Evil. I was too far gone to be saved by the recent lesson that some Nazis were very fine people.

I confess that in college and after, I continued to abuse WWII stories and histories, and I devoured the many popular books about the war, such as Berlin Diary, The War Years, and The Arms of Krupp, to feed my dopamine addiction, but not Mein Kampf.

I confess that in my own deeply unpopular and divisive war I looked back longingly at what everyone said was the deeply popular World War II, a war that united the country. My war was controversial and divisive, many questioning the righteousness of our cause. No one publicly questioned the righteousness of our cause against Nazism and fascism during WWII, once we got into it. Back in my impressionable youth, I had learned that St. Louis hero, Charles Lindberg, had been an outspoken admirer of the Nazis—before the war. I never learned how he felt once the war started. And I confess, I didn’t bother to try to find out.

I confess that I scornfully dismissed Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s efforts to rehabilitate us antifascists when she explained why we had to support fascist regimes around the world. I was too much of a basket-case to even try a dose of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine Methadone. Quite possibly I would have had a different perspective on the situation when federal police savagely beat me when I was peacefully demonstrating against our support of fascist regimes in Central America. Possibly I would have realized that from the police point of view, I was an aggressive and dangerous member of Antifa, even as I lay on the steps of the federal building while they continued to whale away on me with nightsticks.

But no, I was too far gone.    

Looking back, it seems that my whole life I have abused antifascist drugs. They have molded me into the misshapen being I am today.  I do not try to avoid my personal responsibility for this terrible addiction that has crippled me and rendered me unable to walk with Nazis or fascists or those they support. I hope someday to kick the habit.

I am inspired by the knowledge that through the years a lot of old white men like myself, and some even older, even some who fought the Nazis in WWII, have found the strength to get off the terrible antifascist dopamine drug, and they have cleansed their hearts and minds such that they are now able to support Neo-Nazis and fascists and pandering politicians.

I confess that I cannot. Not yet.