I come from a long line of anti-fascists.

My cousin Adolph Pace was a member of the 101st Airborne Division that parachuted onto the Normandy beaches on D-Day.

His parachute was later used to make the wedding dress of my cousin Helen. The blood and dirt stains of battle were covered up with love and care by her mother Jennie’s crocheted lace hearts and flowers.

Before my father went down South to fight for the civil rights of what were then called “negro voters,” he spent almost two years in the frigid climate of Thule, Greenland, where he worked at a NORAD post during the Cold War.

Although the enemy was officially “communism,” he considered it a battle against the forces of oppression and the labels didn’t matter.

He felt the same way about the racists in Mississippi who, while they did not overtly adopt Hitler or Stalin as their role models, engaged in the same tactics of hatred and intimidation.

In my immigration practice, I have had contact with many courageous individuals who have fought against fascism, including clients who openly opposed dictators, the Taliban, and repressive Central American gangs.

I know what fascism looks like, smells like, sounds like.

I also know the people who call themselves anti-fascists or “antifa” in this country are frauds. I say that from personal experience.

Today, if you are looking for fascism, you will find it.

That does not mean that it actually exists, only that you are capable of turning innocent straw into racist gold, like a social justice Rumpelstiltskin.

I’ve written about many of these instances where, for example, a random comment has been turned into a federal case, resulting in the loss of jobs and reputation.

Nikki Haley dealt with that a month ago when she was accused of being a bigot for suggesting that it’s not a good thing to vote for Biden because that means we will end up getting Kamala Harris.

A factual statement becomes an indictment of women of color. Fascism!

And then we have the strange idea that calling a man a man and a woman a woman is bigotry and oppression, and that using the wrong pronouns will lead someone to commit suicide.

It’s a twisted version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” wherein we are forced to pretend that gender is not only fluid, it’s not even “real.”

We also cannot overlook the crusade to defund the police, which has been a pet project of the Antifa left (because there is no Antifa right) since well before one rogue police officer killed George Floyd.

The irony is that the very people who want us to strip money and resources from law enforcement end up being the ones who scream the loudest when they themselves are victims of crime.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Democratic party official in Minnesota who had vowed to defund the police in 2020 and was recently a victim of a violent carjacking.

They say that a conservative is a liberal who was just mugged. Perhaps we should change that to “a liberal who was just carjacked” since Shivanthi Sathanandan is now whining for tougher penalties for criminals.

And my favorite is when they tell us that books that are readily available in libraries and on Amazon have somehow been “banned.”

There is this sense that unless children can have access to graphic novels about how Johnny became Janie and then engaged in sodomy during school recess, we are being Orwellian censors, destroying the creativity of our youth.

These are all First World problems.

Fascism exists today, only not in this country. At the very least, it is not ingrained in our legal system, in our government agencies, and in our religious organizations.

Those things happen in other countries, the ones that people are fleeing to seek shelter in the United States.

You can argue that there are hate groups, and you can throw around the term “white nationalism,” but these are aberrations, and do not occupy positions of authority in our institutions.

I understand there are politicians who say things we don’t like, and sue Disney, and pass laws that try and stop women from having abortions and do things that generally make liberals and squishy moderates angry, but these are all a part of the political process.

These are not the actions of fascist dictators, and the self-styled Antifa of today are simply children, looking for relevance in a world that is on to their game.

Now let me go look for my parachute.

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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].