30+ Guides To Taking Anti-Fascist Action
Part One: Community Responses To Fascism
Anti-fascist researcher and author Spencer Sunshine (check out his latest book Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege!) recently put up an excellent post on his blog listing 30 handy guides to actions that every anti-fascist should be reading through and taking notes from in 2025. You’ll find the original blog post here. We wanted to do a bit of a deep dive into those recommendations and add a few of our own, in case you think it’s time to start making plans and taking action to protect your community from the threat of modern-day fascism.
Spencer breaks down the guides into six different categories - for the next little while, we’ll break them down and give you our take on what he’s come up with, starting with:
COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO FASCISM - these guides discuss different ways that communities can respond when they are targeted or threatened by fascists.
A Community Guide for Opposing Hate (Bard Center, WSC and MHRN) This 100-page guide has some practical ideas but is written from a mainstream liberal perspective that over-emphasizes relying on institutions like the media and police to “solve” the problem of fascism for us. There are also some organizations they recommend contacting whose stance on things like Palestine and their animosity towards community-based anti-fascism (looking at you here, Anti-Defamation League!) means that our collective would not recommend contacting them.
Community Response to White Nationalism (CO•RE Bloomington)
This website is specifically designed to address threats a typical college town might face. Again, its focus is very much on relying on authorities and institutions to respond to fascist activity and organizing, but there is still useful information to be found here.40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists (Spencer Sunshine and PopMob)
We love this list of 40 practical activities that just about anyone could take on to build resistance to fascism! We especially like it because each of the 40 ways centers direct community involvement. You’ll find a print version of this ‘zine on our resource website.“Organizing for an Oregon Where Everyone Counts,” Section Three in Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement (Rural Organizing Project)
This excerpt from Spencer’s book Up In Arms contains real-life examples of how rural areas and small towns can organize to resist fascism.Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide (SPLC)
As an anti-fascist collective, we cannot recommend this guide because of its explicit “hands-off” approach to fascist organizing that concedes public space to bigots and goes against what history has shown to be effective. It’s also heavily reliant on police responses to solving fascism, which is unrealistic at best. Still, there are a few tidbits of information in there worth looking at.
Now, adding some more guides that didn’t make Spencer’s list:Anti-Racist Neighborhood Watch Quick Start Manual & Resource Packet (Portland Assembly and PNW Antifascist Workers Collective
This is a very detailed and well-thought-out plan for organizing your neighbourhood to stand up to threats from bigots. If you’re looking for a local project to take on and involve your neighbours in, this could be the one!30 Anti-Fascist Actions (Antifa International)
This wasn’t included in Spencer’s blog post but is our own collective’s list of 30 specific Anti-Fascist Actions that we believe anyone can do, perhaps with some help from friends. We will be posting about specific actions from our list as a monthly anti-fascist action challenge for you to take on!
Next time, we’ll look at some guides about how to respond to far-right extremism in schools, libraries, and in our own homes, so stay tuned for that!