London-based writer. Often climbing.
Yes, exactly. There are some things on this list where, if everyone opposed to fascism did one of them, we’d win tomorrow. Realistically, not everyone will, but it’s still the right thing to do, to prise every bit of power from their grasp.
I won’t say just vote, but you should do that, too, at every level!
Depending on how much time and money you have:
I’ve ordered these roughly by how effective I think they’re likely to be (this is of course just one guy’s opinion); you should pick the one(s) that are most attractive to you and best fit your current situation.
Fair warning, none of the above will instantly fix the problem and I grant that some of them probably seem pretty weak sauce in the face of fascism, but the more people do them, the weaker the fascists will get.
As other people have said, it was borrowed from the Italian fascists, who themselves got it from an 18th century painting showing a famous event from Roman history/legend. There’s no evidence that it was ever actually used in Ancient or Classical Rome.
Funny side story is that some Nazis and other German nationalists thought it wasn’t ‘German’ enough, so the leading Nazis felt they had to invent an older ‘Germanic’ tradition to justify its usage. So, it’s a fake German tradition that was in fact borrowed from the Italians, who got it from a fake Roman tradition that was actually made up by a French guy.