As a student of history and an understudy to antifascists who have been doing this work for longer than I have been alive, let me insist that we have been here before. The Nazis are not the first major wave of fascist violence ever, though the term fascism does come from this era. Though, not even directed at Germany's reactionary movement, but Italy's, beginning in the 19teens. Hitler's fascism was not the only brand happening at the time, with Mussolini and particularly Franco becoming much lesser-known despite their own atrocities.
But the Nazi party, its symbolism, it's messaging, its leaders and members, its uniform, are both the most recognizable fascist flavor to people outside of antifascist spaces, and it is the most re-adopted flavor by modern fascists. (Though please note how many have shifted towards other fascists when they had to be more covert: adoption of fasces in logos, Pinochet references, etc.)
But there is often this belief that the periods between WW2 and the recent reemergence of neo-nazis are disconnected by a big gap of silence. This is not the case.
In every decade since the 30s, there have been cycles of increasing social progress and individual autonomy, followed by a fascist wave of backlash, which is fought off by antifascists. The fascists retreat to safe corners and organize covertly, social progress increases, and then the backlash follows again. It has repeated constantly until the present.
The one seeming outlier where fascist organizing domestically was a bit weak (In the US) was in the early days post 9-11, and I believe that it correlates with the number of fascists who heartily signed up for the military, thereby exporting the domestic fascism rather than disappearing it entirely. Since the Vietnam war, there has been considerable cynicism towards and within the US military, and 9-11 created a massive burst in nationalism, patriotic fervor, and reestablished the US military as a "necessary" arm of the state. Even many who criticized it before found it to be a necessary evil. It was in this period that the domestic anti-war movement saw such substantial growth in response to the spike in ultra-nationalism.
It's all a dance. One side gets more of a foothold and the other side fights back.
And so it is this context that gives us a framework for groups fighting for rights within these periods. For trans people, life was progressing pretty nicely in Germany under new innovation and study like that of Magnus Hirschfeld. You could be more open, you could pursue better gender affirming care. And it was the first institution the nazis targeted when they rose to power. In the US, trans life was heavily criminalized, and in a series of uprisings and co-collaboration with other civil rights and revolutionary groups, the 1960-70s saw our community fight back. We gained more community, greater visibility, better care. Then reactionary backlash pushed us back. Reagan era policy. The AIDS crisis. The emergence of the first officially recognized "neo" nazis. Then a slow creep of visibility and acceptance. Queer rights have never been more popular! Then fascist backlash hits again.
Parallel to every spike in fascism, you have 3 groups within minority communities. Assimilationists and/or collaborators. Ranges from folks who just want to keep their heads down and not be associated with the larger movement of the community to those who actively sell out the community. Grifters, informants, peace police. Then you have the reactionary base. They see the assimilationists and recognize they are wrong or at least not helpful, and settle on a path of isolationism and/or an adoption of the same fascism targeted at them but instead weaponized against others. Often under the guise of safety. And then the third group is revolutionary solidarity. Those who take pride in their identity, not as a separate and unique thing, but as a group formed by those who came before and is connected to many people and groups around us today. Those who seek to fight the system that creates this loop rather than single out individual groups that we can pin responsibility to.
Fascists would not have the success they do in each push if they were not explicitly accounted for within the system. The military aids fascism. The police aid fascism. The legal system aids fascism. Both on the individual level: arming fascists, protecting fascists, attacking the people who try to fight the fascists; and on an ideological level: the system itself tilts towards fascism and enforces fascism in a boring bureaucratic level. The lynch mobs who kidnap people from their homes are no different than the cops coming to steal people away from their homes. The occupying forces destroying people's houses are no different than the slow court case that decides to evict you and tear down your home.
In 2020 I read about Leslie Feinberg tearing down nazi fliers on the same exact street corners in the 90s that I had torn down in the 20teens. In the late 20teens I read about Stewart Christie crashing a neo-nazi meeting which was published in his book from the 2000s about events from the 50s, and he'd recount chants and strategies I've used with comrades to disrupt nazi meetings in the early 20teens. Trans theorists will describe arguments in the 90s we are having today. Queer folks who fought for rights in the 70s lamented losing them again in the 90s, and I've been in courthouses where the fight to restore them happened 15+ years ago. I've been to the first Pride parades of a few places, and I wonder if this is how it felt in the 70s when they slowly started appearing across the country. I think how bisexuals are said to not have contributed anything to queer movements, but do they know Pride was created by a bi woman? They say transmascs have done little for trans rights, but do they know who really started the fight at Stonewall? People try to paint aces as brand new parts of our community, but they were marching in some early days, longer ago than identities that are more accepted.
I don't just study history because I am a freak for a good story--though that plays a role--I study history because we've been here before, and knowing these things can stop us from repeating our same mistakes. These things happen over and over and over, and in the patterns we can derive strategy, we can derive meaning, and we can connect to countless countless people who know exactly what we are going through. The cure to isolationism is connection, and history is so full of connection.
"No one ever--" wrong. "Where were--" right here the whole time. "I've never seen--" it happened. And some goober obsessed with the topic wrote six books about it and namedrops all their friends who wrote about it too.
It's like James Baldwin said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
If you like to read then PLEASE read more. If you do not like to read then please utilize other forms of knowledge-sharing. Audiobooks, video essays--LISTENING to people. There are so many records and transcriptions and interviews out there but you can also learn plenty by talking to and listening to people who have done this before. I don't just mean experts, I mean our elders.
When you can look at an 85 year old who comes from such a different background and lived in a world that sounds so foreign to you and they finally say something that strikes to your core at how familiar it is, it becomes that much harder to find that we are so different and separate from each other.
