The Washington Post made an editorial decision to label “racist” President Trump’s tweet suggesting that four radical, America-bashing congresswomen leave the country. The tweet isn’t racist, and the explanation for the editorial decision is so weak that it must be a pretext for printing “Trump” and “racist” together repeatedly in headlines and news stories.

The Post’s ploy is annoying and amusing, at the same time.

But there’s nothing funny about the Post’s editorial decision to call Antifa “antifascists.” Antifa calls itself antifascist but, as I argued here, a serious newspaper wouldn’t take their word for it.

As Douglas Murray observes, the exact meaning of “fascist” is hazy because the word has been overused. Indeed, what George Orwell said 75 years ago (quoted by Andrew Stuttaford) remains true today:

Almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

By the same token, most people would agree that a group of masked thugs that goes around, en masse, beating people with whom it disagrees about politics is fascist or, at a minimum, has fascist tendencies. No reasonable person would accept that it is antifascist.

One of Antifa’s recent high-profile victims was Andy Ngo. He’s a gay, center-right journalist who has filmed Antifa’s behavior.

Does the Washington Post believe that Ngo is a fascist? If not, it should stop calling Antifa “antifascist.”

The Post attacked Trump for describing a large crowd of North Carolina supporters as “patriotic.” The Post thought that, because some members of the crowd had chanted “send her back” in reference to Ilhan Omar, Trump was casting the crowd in too favorable a light with that label.

Yet, the Post is fine with casting Antifa in a far too favorable light by giving it the heroic label of “antifascist.”

Why? Probably because the Post doesn’t like the people Antifa brutalizes.

Antifa isn’t exactly an ally of the Post, but it is part of the anti-Trump resistance. That, apparently, is good enough to warrant giving it the honorable label “antifascist.”