Fighting the Good Fight: An Overview of the Contemporary Anti-Fascist Countermovement.

This paper examines the contemporary anti-fascist movement against organized white supremacist movements in the United States. It describes differences between militant activists who typically respond to supremacists with direct, often violent action and non-militant activists whose responses take the form of peaceful, non-violent counter-rallies at times or locations wings in regard. The differences in tactical choices stem from differences among activists in political beliefs, membership and alliances with mainstream and/or conventional political and community structures, and the sense of threat from supremacists. In addition, the militancy of certain anti-fascist activist may be explained as part of new social movement adaptation of movement-countermovement dynamics where activists develop identity marked by specific cultural markers and engage in direct political action rather than relying on the state and existing political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]