Branded a terrorist by Donald Trump,Michael Taylorwears the identify Antifa as an inheritance the identical legacy that when stood towards fascism on the battlefield.
I AM ANTIFA. Or so says PresidentDonald Trump, branding me and thousands and thousands like me as terrorists in the identical breath he decries faux news and radical left bogeymen.
Its a label that stings not as a result of its novel God is aware of weve heard worse however as a result of it erases the very soil from which it springs. Let me let you know who I actually am, earlier than the algorithms and outrage machines bury the reality.
My father fought in World War II. He was one of many Diggers who stormed the seashores, dodged the shells and stared down the abyss in locations whose names nonetheless echo like ghosts: Tobruk, El Alamein, New Guinea. When the struggle spat him out, he landed in a Soldier Settlers camp on the dusty fringes of rural Australia a patchwork of tin shacks and hopeful paddocks the place damaged males tried to sew lives from the scraps of peace.
Everybodys father there had fought. The camp was a republic of the scarred: limps from shrapnel, coughs from gasoline, eyes that sparkled away when thunder rolled like distant artillery.
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Nobody talked concerning the struggle. Not actually. The troopers wore their deep wounds like second skins seen to all, however spoken of in silences across the communal hearth, or in the best way a mans hand trembled pouring tea. Their lives have been irrevocably modified, folded and refolded like outdated maps now not main anyplace acquainted. But they carried on. They planted crops in unforgiving soil, raised children who knew the style of damper bread and the sting of billy tea and constructed a world the place freedom wasnt a slogan however a hard-won breath.
Wed finally study, piecing it collectively from half-heard tales and library books, that they werent simply preventing different armies. They have been battling beliefs the poison of fascism that choked Europe, Asia and past. Ideals that promised order however delivered ovens and gulags, that crushed the human spirit below the boot of blind obedience.
My father and the 1000’s world wide Allies from each nook of the globe have been the antidote. They have been anti-fascists, plain and easy. Not with hashtags or headlines, however with bayonets and bullets, with the sweat of reconstruction and the vigilance of survivors.
And so have been we, the kids, schooled within the camps unstated creed: Guard the sunshine. Question the shadows. Forgive the person, however by no means the machine that marched him to insanity.
As scarred as these troopers have been, one thing extraordinary occurred in that camp. Former enemies Germans, Italians, even Japanese migrants fleeing their very own ruins washed up on Australian shores, looking for the identical fragile peace. Friendships shaped over shared fences and shearing sheds.
My father put it to me one night, his voice gravelly from years of unstated grit:
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That forgiveness wasnt weak point; it was the last word defiance of fascisms divide-and-conquer rot. It constructed bridges the place bombs had fallen. It echoed theNuremberg trials, theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, the quiet revolutions of decency that adopted. Anti-fascism wasnt a membership or a dressing up it was the air we breathed, the legacy etched into each settlers callused hand.
Yet now, in 2025, President Trump tells me and thousands and thousands like me that I belong to a terrorist organisation. ANTIFA, he calls it, a shadowy cabal of chaos when, in fact, its the ghost of that very combat: a refusal to let authoritarianism creep again in, disguised as populism or America First.
As a outcome, I see good folks on a regular basis people with settler blood of their veins being abused on social media. Labelled warmongering ANTIFA bastards for daring to name out lies, for marching towards wars and White nationalism, for remembering that fascism doesnt die; it simply rebrands.
I appear to have missed one thing. What modified? The weapons? No, the beliefs are the identical: the cult of the strongman, the demonisation of the opposite, the march towards unchecked energy. The distinction is the battlefield. Its not Normandy or the Pacific; its Twitter feeds and city halls, the place phrases are the brand new entrance strains.
And the troopers? Were nonetheless right here, the kids of these camps, scarred by our personal wars of inequality, local weather denial, eroded truths however carrying on.
Trumps slur isnt simply an insult; its an erasure. It paints the anti-fascist because the fascist, the defender because the destroyer. But historical past doesnt bend that method. My fathers forgiveness teaches me to pity the person behind the microphone, twisted by his personal governments machine.
Yet it additionally calls for I combat the idea that fuels him the one which whispers struggle is glory, division is power, and fact is elective.
So sure, Mr President, name me ANTIFA. Ill put on it like my fathers medals: not for the shine, however for the burden. Because in the long run, the actual terrorists arent those who bear in mind the struggle. Theyre those who wish to begin one other.
This story was initially printed onThe Australian Independent Networkand has been republished with permission.
Michael Tayloris a retired former public servant who resides in Canberra andwrites atThe Australian Independent Media NetworkandCaf Whispers.
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