Updated 2/6/17 at 2:30 p.m.: Catholic journal America Magazine reports the "Fascism Forever Club" was an in-yearbook joke, quoting the former student government adviser at Georgetown Prep during Neil Gorsuch's later high school years as saying students would create fake clubs and activities.

"They were all inside jokes on their senior pages,” Steve Ochs said.

In an update, The Daily Mail notes that a reference to the club appears in more than one place in Gorsuch's Georgetown Prep yearbook. But it also quotes a Gorsuch friend as saying the name of the club was a "self-deprecating joke" and that the organization never actually existed. A school spokesman also told Snopes.com that "no such club ever existed" there.

Original Story:

High school is forever, the saying goes. And for Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch, it's proving particularly true today.

Gorsuch both created and headed the "Fascism Forever Club" at Georgetown Preparatory School, which he graduated from in 1985, The Daily Mail reports. The school is a selective all-boys Jesuit prep school, and now reportedly costs day students $30,000 annually and boarding students $50,000.

"In political circles, our tireless President Gorsuch's 'Fascism Forever Club' happily jerked its knees against the increasingly 'left-wing' tendencies of the faculty," a Georgetown Prep high school yearbook states, according to The Daily Mail.

The report was published just over 24 hours after President Donald Trump announced Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee from the White House, and – regardless of Gorsuch's intent in using the term in his high school club's name – comes at a time when accusations of fascism have been aimed at Trump.

Gorsuch, a federal appellate court judge, is facing left-wing opposition in the wake of his nomination, and has received criticism from the likes of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as well as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Liberal activist organization People For the American Way also has launched an ad painting Gorsuch as anti-women's rights and pro-Wall Street.

Conservatives, meanwhile, have hailed Gorsuch – who holds degrees from Columbia and Oxford universities, as well as Harvard Law School – as an outstanding legal thinker and a worthy successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

The news from Gorsuch's past has already prompted many posts on Twitter, some of which dismiss the club as a joke:



Hey guys! So, it's a bad idea to have SCOTUS justice who started a club called "fascism forever."



This is a non-partisan statement. — shannonwoodward (@shannonwoodward) February 2, 2017

Let's all at least consider that a 1980s "Fascism forever" club was a young conservative's cheeky response to liberals calling Reagan one. — Kyle Blaine (@kyletblaine) February 2, 2017

Fascism Forever sounds like if nazis had invented the YA genre. — Maris Kreizman (@mariskreizman) February 2, 2017

Who among us has not started a "fascism forever" club at our elite DC prep school? https://t.co/nP9AdEAHIK — Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) February 2, 2017

Fascism Forever ~ Neil Gorsuch should immediately withdraw from consideration for #SCOTUS.

Imagine @FoxNews if Obama had founded that club. — Cletis L Stump (@CletisStump) February 2, 2017

Sure it *sounds* bad, but we all had youthful indiscretions. For Obama it was weed; for Gorsuch, worshipping fascism https://t.co/TK2AOjxJm2 — Nathan Yaffe (@nathanyaffe) February 2, 2017

Dear Progressives, as you watch the #UCBerkleyRiot, isn't THIS really who you are? Can't you see it is YOU who wants Fascism Forever? -VJ — RealVinnieJames (@RealVinnieJames) February 2, 2017

Neil Gorsuch mocking the left's hypocrisy with "Fascism Forever" makes me like him even more. #UCBerkleyRiot is a great example! — Josh Burlingame (@josh_burlingame) February 2, 2017

Liberal hypocrisy out in force today More outrage about a joke in a HS YB 'Fascism Forever' than masked fascists rioting @ UC Berkeley #Milo — Why Hate Liberty? (@BrandonLiberty2) February 2, 2017