Anarchism

You say fascists "only understand violence" and that violence is sometimes "the only tool in the toolbox"

Big emphasis on "sometimes"

But here's what troubles me: if someone genuinely believes Trump supporters, conservatives, or people like Charlie Kirk are fascists (as many in these communities do), then your framework justifies violence against millions of ordinary Americans who simply have different political views.

I mean if there were millions of fascists in this country then you would have your answer. We should smash the fascists even if they're the majority or even everyone or even billions.

But this is why, far more important than antifascist violence is all the other work antifascists do to lower those numbers without directly killing people. Direct actions, protests, riots, propaganda, and demonstrating prefigurative systems are all much more effective at "killing" fascists than actually going out and killing people. And frankly, mass slaughter does not reflect the vision of society that we should be striving towards.

Furthermore, at least in my opinion, Trump supporters are not necessarily fascists. Trump is a fascist for sure, and people who do actual legwork for Trump are fascists (foreshadowing), but merely voting for Trump is not enough for the simple reason that voting in elections is completely meaningless besides showing your allegiance.

The problem isn't just theoretical - we've seen this play out. The person who allegedly killed Kirk said he "had enough of his hatred."

And he was right to do it! Kirk spent his entire adult life bringing the fascists into power. But because he was erudite and wore a suit, that makes his activism acceptable somehow.

Someone in Portland killed a Trump supporter, claiming anti-fascist motivations.

This incident, right? 1000% justified, even if we take the police narrative at face value. Danielson was an active fascist working with Patriot Prayer during the George Floyd protests. Danielson got the death he deserved while he himself was terrorizing his community.

And the reason why it made the news is because antifascists going out and targeting fascists in the streets like what the police allege Reinoehl did (which fuck the cops I don't believe them for a fucking second) is unheard of, although it shouldn't be! News agencies don't cover stuff that happens all the time because it makes for boring stories.

These aren't random acts - they're the logical endpoint of the "violence against fascists is justified" framework when combined with expansive definitions of who counts as a fascist.

No, they're the logical endpoint of fascists being fascists and the community needing to defend ourselves against their presence.

I'm not trying to gotcha you here. I genuinely want to understand how this framework doesn't inevitably lead to the political violence we're seeing, ...

One of my goals as an anarchist is to drive the amount of violence in human society integrated over future spacetime to the minimum possible value. However, the minimum is not zero, simply because there are situations in the present where we either kill a fascist (and it ends up on the news), or we let the fascists kill an innocent person (and it ends up as a statistic), i.e. someone is going to get killed. And since the fascists generally beget violence and innocent people generally do not beget violence, killing a fascist is the optimal choice if one needs to be made.

Or in much simpler terms: a requirement to maximize tolerance is to be intolerant of intolerance, even with violence if necessary.

So yes there's gonna be some political violence. The question is: is it gonna be fascist violence that begets more violence, or antifascist violence that takes some of the fascists and their violence out of the picture?

Actually, this critique is a little more broadly applicable than just fascists. More specifically: we need to oppose the status quo and the people who fight to keep things the way they are because the status quo is violence. See the Wikipedia article on social murder and its source material for more information.

or how it's meaningfully different from what actual fascist movements have historically done - labeling their opponents as existential threats that justify extreme measures.

Because simply put, fascists and antifascists are not really comparable, and fascists simply are demonstrably existential threats for all life on Earth. From the least charitable perspective, antifascists are overzealous or misguided in our attempts to create a better world free from hierarchy and domination. Fascists, in contrast, explicitly want to create a world based around domination, hierarchy, and violence.