Mark Bray is an American historian and university professor specializing in the analysis of fascist movements. In 2017, he published a book with Melville House entitled *Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook*[2], translated into French in 2024 under the title *L'Anti-fascisme, son passé, son présent et son avenir* (see below). Following the "hunt for antifa" declared under Trump and after receiving death threats, he was forced to flee to Spain with his family. Interview conducted by a fellow student at UCL on December 11th.
Mark Bray, Antifascism: Its Past, Present, and Future, translated from the English by Paulin Darnel, foreword by Sébastien Fontenelle, Lux Publishers, August 2024, 328 pages, EUR17.
Libertarian Alternative: You left the United States after receiving numerous threats. How do you analyze the fact that an academic was targeted in Trump's America?
Mark Bray: It's the result of decades of Republican attacks on universities in an anti-intellectual critique of expertise, fueled by the rise of anti-vaccine and climate-skeptic ideas. The situation has worsened in recent years. Turning Point USA, co-founded by Charlie Kirk, has maintained a professor watchlist since 2017, and I'm on it. All professors on this list receive threats and are subjected to harassment. In states like Texas and Florida, governments have banned the teaching of certain subjects, fired teachers because of their political views, or because they taught controversial topics.
Would you call the second Trump administration fascist?
I would distinguish between the administration, its policies, and its goals, which I would call fascist, and the actual situation in the United States, which has not yet reached the stage of a full-fledged fascist dictatorship. We still have functioning political parties. We have elections. We have mass demonstrations where people are not shot or arrested. I think the Trump administration and many of its allies are fascist to some degree, trying to implement an agenda to create an authoritarian state. I just don't think they've quite succeeded yet.
Do you think we're getting closer to that?
It's hard to say. Historically, achieving this requires a truly serious crisis or emergency. Trump doesn't currently have such an emergency, but he has tried to fabricate them. For him, immigration is an invasion, Antifa is a terrorist organization, and even his justification for tariffs is tied to emergencies. But he would need a more real crisis for enough Americans to be terrified enough to accept it. That could happen. The economy isn't doing well. I think the fact that the United States has a federal system in which the states retain significant authority relative to the federal government makes centralizing power somewhat more difficult. There's a scenario in which the level of authoritarianism reaches a kind of plateau.
Outside of government, could you explain how the rise of the far right is playing out on the ground in the United States?
For decades, the far right has successfully campaigned to win local elections in school boards, city councils, and other public bodies in many conservative states, where it has managed to alter school curricula. The rise of the far right is less about local right-wing activism than about its ability to influence many societal perspectives through social media, discourse, and culture.
The decade from 2011 to 2020 saw the most significant progressive social movements the United States has experienced since the 1970s. There was Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter (BLM), the LGBTQ+ liberation movement, #MeToo... During this period, many cultural shifts occurred around what was considered racist or sexist. And every time there is progressive social change, it provokes a negative reaction, which was the case here, in a very violent way. Social media is increasingly controlled by right-wing billionaires. There has been a huge cultural backlash, with efforts across social media, through various types of influencers, to make explicit racism and sexism acceptable again. I think this has reshaped the country's cultural landscape in a way that favors MAGA politicians who present themselves as the guardians of common-sense American values.
Do you see an increase in racist violence? From a European perspective, we seem to be seeing an increase, but is that simply because it receives more media attention?
Over the past ten years, that's true. Studies have shown that Trump's election in 2016 emboldened much of the far right to be more aggressive and violent. I think that has continued, but it's also important to note that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the anti-immigrant force, recruits without any qualification requirements. There are many right-wing extremists looking for work who, by working for ICE, give free rein to their violent racism toward immigrants. So I would place ICE violence within this broader context. There isn't really a concerted effort by local fascist groups to attack people. There are individual hate crimes, but I think ICE has become a more significant vehicle for this type of fascist violence.
Does all of this represent a genuine break in the history of the United States, or is it, on the contrary, the culmination of a system that, from the outset, was driven by an authoritarian, imperialist, and racist dynamic?
I think it's more a matter of continuity than a break. If you consider American history as a whole, you see that every time Black people have fought for their freedom, there has been a racist reaction from white people. That's what happened with BLM, and Trumpism is another version of it. The United States has been a white supremacist country since its inception. There was a brief period between the 1960s and today when, due to the civil rights movement, both parties had to declare that racism was wrong, but it can't be said that it disappeared. The Republicans have never ceased to be a racist party. Today, in response to the BLM movement, they are embracing a slightly toned-down white supremacist narrative. Overall, this is a continuation of the long tradition of white supremacy that has existed in the United States since its inception.
What is your analysis of the various resistance movements in the United States, whether organized anti-fascist groups or more spontaneous reactions from the general public?
The events in Los Angeles in June 2025 against ICE were probably the most significant moment of resistance to Trump. I think the anti-ICE movement in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York is the most encouraging form of resistance in the United States right now. It's an effort toward community self-management and self-defense, and it's a kind of antifascist struggle. Another aspect has been the "No Kings" protests, which have brought together more than 7 million people across the United States, including in small towns. Ideally, I'd like to see a kind of fusion between these two movements: the massive popularity of "No Kings" and the local organizing and direct action of the anti-ICE movement. I think that's really what a mass antifascist movement in the United States looks like right now. There are, of course, antifascist groups in the United States, but they haven't really been visible in the public sphere over the past five or six years, which shows how absurd Trump's attention to them is.
The "No Kings" protests, in opposition to Donald Trump, were able to gather more than 7 million people in the United States.
Wikimedia
Do you have an explanation for why these organized antifascist or left-wing groups are so invisible?
Around 2016-2017, many fascist and far-right groups in the United States wanted to assert their presence in the streets and establish their own independent political position in American politics, even independently of Trump and the MAGA movement. The most famous effort was the "Unite the Right" demonstration in Charlottesville in 2017. Many antifascist and antiracist groups showed up and organized a counter-protest. They largely won the battle in the streets in 2017-2018. And in 2020, the far-right demonstrations ended. They failed.
What happened, then, is that many far-right groups simply aligned themselves with the MAGA movement, and their members participated in demonstrations during the pandemic, for example, against vaccines or masks. One exception is the Patriot Front group, which doesn't really organize demonstrations, but rather small flash actions. A dozen of its members get into a truck, drive to a location without warning, get out, march briefly, take a photo, and then drive off. This prevents antifascists from mobilizing to oppose them. The reason these antifascist groups aren't very visible is that they haven't had a reason to be active in the streets to confront the far right. The American antifascist movement is very focused on a culture of security and protecting the identity of its members. Therefore, they have been active in the shadows.
What similarities do you see with the United States in the growing attempts to ban antifascist movements, particularly in Europe?
Trump and the American far right have influenced right-wing politics in other countries, including in Europe. There have been several attempts to emulate Trump's declaration labeling Antifa a terrorist organization. This is certainly very worrying. The decree declaring Antifa a terrorist organization has no real legal force, as domestic entities cannot be declared terrorist; only foreign entities can. Thus, the US government's declaration that there are four alleged terrorist Antifa groups in Europe appeared to be an attempt to create some kind of imaginary foreign terrorist entity called Antifa in order to link American groups to these European groups and then declare the American groups terrorist. This has not yet happened. The right has realized that it is useful to portray the left as violent, intolerant, dangerous, and terrorist.
Do you see any specific features in what is happening in Europe? Are there things you would never see in the United States, or vice versa?
Around 2016-2018, the most effective method used by American antifascists was doxxing[1]. This was evident, for example, in the efforts to organize the follow-up to the "Unite the Right" rally in Washington in 2018. Most fascists didn't show up because they were afraid of being doxxed, since at the first rally, many of them had lost their jobs, been denounced by their families, or been intimidated. Doxxing was therefore a very effective method at the time. This is no longer really the case today, as the social cost of being a fascist or Nazi has somewhat disappeared in the United States. European antifascists have told me that it is rarely done in Europe, that it is not seen as honorable.
What tools can a political organization like the UCL mobilize to fight against all of this?
I think it's simply a variation on the role of the anarchist political organization within the broader struggle. The role of these organizations is, among other things, to clarify the political dynamics of the struggle and to create a space where like-minded activists can exchange views, coordinate their actions, and try to influence the broader struggle in a direction that aligns with what the political organization wants to promote. This can be done in any type of struggle, including the antifascist struggle.
Certainly, many people see elections as the solution to antifascism. In this context, being able to argue in a concerted manner that elections have almost never stopped fascism and that we cannot rely on them, that we must mobilize a form of self-defense and collective self-management of the community in the face of fascism, is a kind of anarchist intervention in the discourse of antifascism. And I think that the role of an organization like UCL is to try to promote these anti-authoritarian perspectives, these perspectives that foster the building of solidarity networks from the ground up. But of course, it's easier said than done.
Interview conducted, translated, and transcribed by Sano (UCL Marseille)
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[1]Doxxing is the practice of publicly disclosing someone's personal information.
[2]In French, "Antifa: le manuel anti-fasciste" (Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Manual).
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Mark-Bray-Depuis-leur-creation-les-USA-sont-un-pays-supremaciste-blanc
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Link: (en) France, UCL AL #368 - Antifascism - Mark Bray: "Since their creation, the USA has been a white supremacist country" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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