{"id":8719,"date":"2025-09-07T23:54:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T23:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/8719\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T23:54:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T23:54:06","slug":"b-c-author-links-anti-fascist-movements-throughout-history-in-a-graphic-novel-style-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/8719\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. author links anti-fascist movements throughout history in a graphic novel style book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cComic books were made for Nazi punching,\u201d writes historian Mark Bray in the foreword to The Antifa Comic Book: Revised and Expanded<\/a>. He points out that Superman and even our own Captain Canuck originated in the 1930s before they became interwoven with Second World War, anti-fascist propaganda.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So, what does Antifa mean? Author and illustrator Gord Hill<\/a> defines it this way:<\/p>\n

\u201cAntifa was short for anti-fascist action originally, and it was started in Germany in the 1930s by the German Communist Party. It reemerged in the 1970s in West Germany because they still had neo-Nazi organizing going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, I think in the North American context now, Antifa is more of a broad general term for anyone who involves themselves in anti-fascist organizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the term has come to encompass any movement that opposes fascism, racism, and other extremist ideologies. Hill isn\u2019t surprised the term has been weaponized by the right, much like woke has.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe far right uses woke to smear anything that they disagree with, so I don\u2019t put too much relevance [in] that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Now in its second edition, The Antifa Comic Book: Revised and Expanded picks up where the original 2018 version left off. Hill says the book was initially inspired by Donald Trump\u2019s first run at the White House, back in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Arsenal Pulp Press asked me if I would be interested in doing an Antifa comic book, because I\u2019ve been involved in anti-fascist and anti-racist organizing. So, I agreed, and that\u2019s how the comic started,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He admits much has changed since the original book was published.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen the emergence of right-wing and far-right populist movements over the past decade. They draw a lot of inspiration from the classical fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany, and that is part of the vision of a lot of the far right. They would like to reestablish those types of movements and to have that type of state power again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill is a member of the Kwakwaka\u2019wakw First Nation on Vancouver Island and B.C.\u2019s Northwest Coast. His previous works include The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book and The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book, among others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, that\u2019s mostly been my primary focus for two or three decades now. The Antifa Comic Book comes out of my experience organizing anti-fascist and anti-racist activities, mostly in the late 80s and through the 1990s. And with that, I studied a lot of the history of these groups. I studied the history of colonization and then was involved in some of the actions that are in the comic books.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, it\u2019s definitely a crossover between my activism and this history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The second edition covers everything in the first book, along with the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack and the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024. There is plenty of Canadian content as well, including the Quebec City Mosque attack in 2017 and the 2022 Freedom Convoy that took over the streets of downtown Ottawa.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Antifa Comic Book is vividly illustrated, combining history and current events in a way that is accessible to most readers because of its graphic novel style.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good for children and young people and even adults who might have a hard time to sit down and read a 300-page history book but may be able to skim through a comic and at least get the main gist of a certain history or something like that. So, I think it\u2019s a really good medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as heavy as the subject matter is, Hill is deliberate in ending the book with a positive takeaway for the reader.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope they get a better sense of the history of fascist movements and the long history of anti-fascist organizing as well, beginning with the Italian fascists, when we had the first anti-fascist groups emerge and fight against those forces and ultimately defeated Mussolini and actually executed him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the main thing I hope [they] will get is the history and the knowledge that these movements have been defeated in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Antifa Comic Book: Revised and Expanded<\/a> is published by Arsenal Pulp Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cComic books were made for Nazi punching,\u201d writes historian Mark Bray in the foreword to The Antifa Comic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-8719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}