Thread by @IndigiTrans

Americans who volunteered to fight fascists prior to WWII were deemed, as Umberto Eco notes, “‘premature anti-fascists’—meaning that fighting against Hitler in the 40s was a moral duty for every good American, but fighting against Franco too early, in the 30s, smelled sour...

https://twitter.com/ExExtremist2/status/1805735038136295570

...because it was mainly done by Communists & other leftists.”

This term was oft use to denote someone as “communist” by the FBI & Red Scare McCarthyists.
A Spanish Civil War antifascist, Bernard Knox wrote of 1st being called the term in amesmerizing 2001 LA Times essay...

“The Confessions of a ‘Premature Anti-Fascist’”:

-"How, I wondered, could anyone be a premature anti-Fascist? Could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? A premature antiseptic? A premature antitoxin? A premature anti-racist? ...

"If you were not premature, what sort of anti-Fascist were you supposed to be? A punctual anti-Fascist? A timely one? In fact, in the ‘30s, as the European situation moved inexorably toward war, the British & French governments (the French often under pressure from the British)..

...passed up one timely opportunity after another to become anti-Fascist."

In WWII w Knox often parachuted deep behind enemy lines to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines & sabotage Nazi working with his fellow “premature anti-fascist” Maquis resistance fighters.

The French resistance antifascists, or Maquis, called those who decided to join their cause in 1945 when it was clear the allies would drive Nazi forces back Resistants de la derniere heure, or ”last-minute anti-Fascists.”