Today is November 4th, the day that anti-fascist organizations have organized rallies and events to take place to bring awareness to fascism within the United States. Live streams can be viewed on YouTube using simple searches such as “Antifa Live”, or just “Antifa”.You’ll see a lot of the same signs and slogans across the screen. Most of which was being shared across social media weeks before the events were scheduled, mainly coming from the website RefuseFascism.org

The characteristics of the website are aimed at arming people with the means to get their message across. You can start your own rally, and have signs or banners mailed to your location. It has its own hint of a stern militant approach, using slogans like “End the Trump/Pence Regime”, while fostering the more universal approach with “End the Nightmare”. The strategy itself seems as if it’s designed to instigate anger by use of identity politics, and that the Trump/Pence agenda of “America First” should be taken as literal as it can be.

There is no direct message as to who is to take the place of the current administration that they have set up an attack against, but the message is clear that the organizers and groups that fund them, view them as a threat to democracy itself and human rights in general.

During the live feed, this woman was approached and asked by the person filming a live feed, “If the regime is driven out as you say, who would take the presidents place?” She very calmly replied “we have a list of who needs to be removed, you’ll find out”.

Many events like these are loose and it’s hard to put a finger on who is in control, or what the true message of the group actually is. Everyone has their own opinion on the matter, and some look to be just meandering around the event slowly because, well it’s an event and people just wanted to see what’s going on. The foundation of where the material comes from is pretty settled on its own, but how far the marches intend to go to achieve the specified goal depends on how the visitors of the event plan to take it, and will largely speak for the message itself.

If protesters within the marches choose to take action by means of damage, with the intent to silence those that disagree, is it really a march against fascism? Or if they choose to go peacefully with no damage, and the current administration ends after its first or second term in the way the democratic election process was intended to work in a fair election, was it really a fascist regime they were speaking against?