Thread by @karimfranceschi

That’s me in 2016, one of the founders of the Antifascist Internationalist Tabur—later dubbed Antifa Platoon by Rolling Stone magazine.

Now, as Trump announces he’s designating Antifa a major terrorist organization, I want to share my own experience. You be the judge. Thread 🧵

As an Italian antifascist, I carry a heritage. When I sang “Bella Ciao” with my Kurdish comrades during the siege of Kobani, I was using the same words my father had sung on the hills of Tuscany with his partisan comrades as they fought against the Nazi-Fascist occupation. /2

We fought within the "The Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS". Despite media sensationalism, in reality we were little more than a small fire team within the YPG, flying the Antifa flag for a photo op. We disbanded around the time of the Tabqa battle, which was our first real engagement. /3

At the time, we were mostly Italians, with a few volunteers from other countries. Most were anarchists, socialists, or libertarians—some were simply adventurers. We had come to support the democratic project of Rojava and to help translate it to the world. /4

Syria wasn’t just ISIS and al-Qaeda fighting a brutal dictatorship. There was a third way—one that spoke of ecology and women’s rights. One that sought to unify Syria around its most precious treasure: its diversity of languages, cultures, and religions. /5

The Antifascist Internationalist Tabur project fell apart, and something else entirely took its place: the YPG Enternasyonal Tabur. A platoon fully aligned with the SDF’s philosophy, it shed the arrogant idea of “translating” through western symbology. /6

Now media-shy, we built an elite unit made up of the best elements from the many transnational volunteers who had joined the good fight. We didn’t care about propaganda—only concrete results on the field. /7

Raqqa was on the doorstep. We trained relentlessly.
Veterans with combat experience in modern armies joined. We shared skills, learned from each other, and fought our hearts out. /8

I eventually got injured and passed the torch. That was the end of my journey—but the tabur lived on. They went on to fight in Afrin, resisting a jihadi–NATO alliance intent on ethnically cleansing the Kurdish enclave north of Aleppo. Some who had survived Raqqa fell under Turkish bombs. /9

Then came Trump’s 2019 withdrawal. To my knowledge, the Tabur had completely disbanded by then—but founding members like Constantine were still there, dying under Turkish bombs. The gains made against ISIS were being erased by an unholy Turkish–jihadi alliance and the backstabbing of the U.S. administration. /10

While hundreds of American volunteers made their way back home, in over a decade, none sought to pick up arms, or to use the skills they had obtained in Syria to exact revenge or target political figures. /11

The context of war is very different—just as it was in 1943 occupied Italy. In such conditions, we can fight, and we shall not shy away from arms if circumstances demand it. But it is not our way to open fire on unarmed civilians. That is not what antifascism is about. /12

Kirk’s rhetoric did violence before any bullets—marking whole groups as suspect, inferior, expendable. Antifascism loses when it forgets that if bullets become the only language, the struggle for meaning (the ground where fascism secures hegemony) is already lost. /13

The shooter’s violence betrayed antifascism. No slogan or Bella Ciao can redeem it. After WWII, fascists still held office in Italy—yet partisans laid down arms. However narrow, a democratic path had opened. Antifascism means seizing those openings, not closing them. /14

Trump brands Antifa terrorists, a label that threatens our lives, based on the lone act of someone who vaguely used leftist slogans. Yet he embraces Syria’s former al-Qaeda leader, delisting his globally recognized terrorist group responsible for countless atrocities. /15

The very tools of counterterrorism, once built to fight al-Qaeda, are now turned inward. With al-Qaeda itself legitimized. By redefining terror, Trump reveals his true intent: to protect the possibility of fascism, while repressing the possibility of antifascism. /END