Media coverage can sometimes make it feel like fascism in the U.S. is undefeatable. It’s true that the threat has increased: in the United States half of all politically motivated attacks have been carried out by white supremacist individuals and organizations, resulting in over 81% of deaths from terrorism in 2019, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In spite of these statistics, domestic counterterrorism policy indiscriminately targets migrants and communities of color even though political violence still exists and the offenders have increasingly been white men. But the percentage of the U.S. population who would wage rightwing political violence is far lower than the number—between 6% and 10% by varying polls—who merely identify as or support the far right.

When far-right groups—like the III%ers, Patriot Prayer, the Klan, or the Proud Boys—plan protests, rallies, marches, or riots aimed at committing violence against marginalized groups, communities can organize in different ways to disrupt them. Quick but careful planning can yield the complete destruction of the fascists’ recruitment efforts.

Safety and security are key. Violence is a core tenet of fascism, and fascists are more than willing to use it, so counterprotest organizers must prioritize the safety of participants.

Build a broad coalition in the community. If any far right group has announced their intention to stage a rally in your town, recruit broadly from your community. If your organization works quickly and coordinates person-to-person using word of mouth, flyers, posters, pamphlets, and a social media campaign, you should be able to oppose them. Involve young people in your alliance and encourage them to humiliate the fascists, because their penchant for humor is one of the strongest your community has. Publicize the fascist group’s history, what their intentions are for your community, what their key figures have said and done in the past, and what their stated goals are for the future.

Intelligence and counterintelligence

Though you may be short on time, give yourselves as much of a crash course in intelligence and counterintelligence as possible, becoming familiar with various skills that would help with your counterprotest. It’ll be worth it in the end.

Use open-source intelligence: the collection and assessment of publicly available information. In anti-fascist terms, this usually means spending time on whatever online communities will still platform far-right extremists. Your organization will have to create a process to analyze the information and to make plans based on it.

Learn about and utilize social engineering. There may be situations where your group will need to access information that is not publicly available. Anti-fascist social engineering refers to methods of influencing fascists to divulge information they would have preferred to keep secret without knowing that they are giving it to anti-fascists. This may include their plans for violence, access to closed chats or private forums where they speak more openly about their plans, their passwords, or other contact information.

Try simple networking—not necessarily with the fascists themselves, but with people who might have information about their activities. When engaged in this, it’s crucial for organizers to take every safety precaution possible to avoid having any identifiable information get back to the fascists.

Learn how to safely communicate what you learn within your organization. Don’t underestimate the fascists’ technical abilities or their attention to detail. Develop good security culture through information security practices, setting up safe systems for planning together in person and online, and maintaining as much anonymity as possible. Even though you will be counterprotesting, work to reverse your information risks by trying to get one step ahead of the fascists. If you can, it’s also useful for someone in your group to be responsible for determining the fascists’ technical capabilities to gather information about your group members or other counterprotestors. Safely share any of this collective counterintelligence with other groups.

Find ways for your group to learn situational awareness. Be mindful that it’s important to stay calm on the day of the protest. Become knowledgeable about far-right symbols as the groups who are organizing will likely be made up of a coalition of individuals allied with or interested in scattered fascist sects, not usually organized under one distinct banner. It’s important for all participants in your group to be able to identify these symbols in the interest of safety. Most situational awareness in counterprotest comes from experience, but you and your group can prepare even if you do not have a lot of experience in direct action.

Remember: the police and fascist groups tend to be allies. This has been proven again and again throughout the history of the U.S. and especially in recent years.Be on the lookout for signs that you are about to be kettled (the act of surrounding people and trapping them, usually with some kind of movable barricade) with no means of escape, or tear-gassed by police or fascists. Keep an eye on the police for any less-lethal or sonic weapons they may try to use against you. The tendency will be for the cops to protect far-right groups and to attack leftists who attempt to stop the fascists’ efforts to mobilize.

Action planning

Learn the landscape in which you will be acting. Come up with as many contingency plans as possible by creating a “playbook” of counterprotest actions.

Hinder the fascists’ march route by overwhelming their numbers and surrounding them at their starting point. This is a recommended primary objective and one that usually works. But the success of this plan depends largely on the sentiments of the police and whether or not they will disperse you in order to allow the march to proceed. The idea is that the fascists will be unable to draw a neutral audience from your community to listen to them spout their hateful rhetoric and recruitment strategy for their genocidal programs against marginalized communities.

Literally silence the fascists. Beyond putting a physical barrier between the fascists and your community, it is strongly recommended that you create an auditory barrier as well. Coordinate music and a legal method for playing it so that you might drown out their hateful speeches with something much more fun. Whistles were designed to cut through the noise of crowds and pair beautifully with drumlines and singing voices.

Be prepared to switch to another action. When and if the march blockade is overrun,consider planting glitter bombs, breaking off into a few smaller groups and reconvening at secondary points, or redirecting the flow of the fascist march into a natural barrier like a river or hill.

Advise members of your group to conceal their identities. Dress in clothing without logos or patterns (preferably dark), cover their hair and faces and any identifiable marks (like tattoos), and wear comfortable footwear. Most people should leave their electronic devices at home, and only those with the technical expertise to practice digital security should bring them.

Bring the essentials. If you have the means, consider getting gas masks, helmets, leaf blowers, and shields for your group, especially if you have the intelligence that you might be facing violent repression from the police. The essential counter protest kit includes bottled water, goggles, umbrellas, food, and, for appointed observers, something which can be used to film violent behavior (and ideally livestream on platforms like ACLU-sponsored mobile justice apps). Optional materials include laser pointers to hinder police cameras and drones, and balloons to mark rallying points and to serve as indicators of which direction tear gas will blow. Keep your eyes peeled on the street for things that can be used as protection, like traffic cones to trap and concentrate tear gas canisters.

Build space for a diversity of tactics. Where fascists gather, there will almost always be a group countering them whose tactics may seem extreme to some. But these groups are often practiced and experienced at dealing with fascists, and are prepared more than anyone else to protect the community from them. So their presence is not only unavoidable, it’s desirable. Welcome them and do not dissuade people in your group from joining them or planning their own actions. Not everyone will agree with their tactics, but community organizers should seek to understand that different people have different experiences with oppression.

Find a group to offer legal observation before your action. Legal observers, like Up Against the Law, will accompany your counterprotest as a clearly-identifiable neutral third party who can monitor the legality of actions at the counterprotest and can help in the case of possible arrests, connecting counter-protestors with free legal support if needed.

Always be prepared for possible arrests. Have everyone in your group write the phone number of a legal support team on their arm in sharpie so that they may call in case of arrest. Even if you are not engaging in any illegal behavior, no one who is counterprotesting fascists is immune from arrest, and so it is a risk that everyone should be willing to take. People who might lose their livelihoods if arrested (even if they are eventually acquitted on their charges) should support in other ways. Create bail donation funds and be ready to hold in-person rallies outside of the jail to make noise in support of those inside and to be there for them when and if they are released.

Permanent resistance culture

A counterprotest is a reactive tactic but can include progressive, constructive elements. Fascism must be replaced with something better, which in many cases is covered in other community organizing practices in this project like starting worker cooperatives, commons councils, and community gardens. Resistance culture brings the spirit of the protest into everyday life, so that the revolution may become a permanent fixture until life is improved for all. Keep in mind that what you are working for will almost assuredly make even your opponents’ individual lives better even if they are unable to recognize it.

Take heed of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message in Letter from Birmingham Jail:

…I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’

Remember: the fascists you are opposing want to eliminate targeted groups like the LGBTQ+ community, Latinx people, Indigenous people, Jewish people, and/or Black people through their eventual death, even if they say things like they merely want “an ethnonationalist state” or to “stop white genocide.” We may be in the early stages of a Fourth Reich and should not oppose groups who wish to prevent another Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust by any means necessary. Ensure that your community is one that permanently resists fascism with direct action.

Next: Start a community garden under Environmental Justice