This viral anti-fascist slogan functions as a perfectly closed loop of reciprocal fears: both the theys in play gets crushed by the weights of their own historical metaphors. A zero-sum that sounds radical but mobilizes absolutely nothing against actual modern fascisms.

Au contraire, it fuses anti-fascism with revolution.

By invoking 1789 — guillotines, revolutionary terror, the violent overthrow of an entire social order — it presents anti-fascism as necessarily revolutionary, which is precisely the frame the far-right international needs. It lets them say: "See, anti-fascism = communism, just like we told you."

It collapses the moral obligation to resist the specific horrors of fascism into a totalizing revolutionary project, and in doing so it alienates exactly the cons…