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| September 20th, 2025 | |
|---|---|
| 10:55 pm [Link] |     In the U.S. the shift to pronouncing it AnTIFA, with the stress on the second part of the word, took off after 2016 and especially in 2017 during Donald Trump’s rise. The ones who pushed this usage were right-wing and conservative media figures, from Fox News anchors to talk radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, and soon after that politicians in the same orbit picked it up as well. The reason was not accidental: pronouncing it as AnTIFA severs the direct link to the clear meaning of anti-fascist, and instead recasts the word as a kind of proper name, an alien or shadowy group, something unfamiliar and threatening. This made it easier to frame Antifa not as a movement opposing fascism but as a domestic terrorist organization, a framing that really accelerated during and after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, when conservative outlets deliberately leaned on this pronunciation to support their political narrative. |