BIDLACK | Remembering the Big Antifa | Opinion | coloradopolitics.com – coloradopolitics.com

When I sat down at my computer on the morning of Jan. 6, 2022, I was at first tempted to write a few words about the sorry state of political discourse in the United States today given that, exactly a year ago, I was riveted to the TV news. I watched something never before seen in the US, not even during the Civil War: a confederate flag being carried proudly through the halls of the very Capitol building I walked many times during my life. I was shocked then and am saddened now by the events that unfolded that day, and perhaps even worse, the political brainwashing the national GOP has undergone to purge actual facts from memory.

But when I turned to Colorado Politics that morning, I found my fellow essayist Eric Sondermann had already written a fitting and powerful column on that very subject. I dont always agree with Eric, but his thoughts about Jan. 6 are well worth reading.

And so I wont write directly on the attempted coup or insurrection, or whatever term you wish to use, as my eyes were drawn to another story that I found both powerful and touching, and which does help us reflect on the events of that January day in 2021: the passing of Lawrence Brooks.

Mr. Brooks was, at 112 years of age, the oldest veteran of World War II. He died on Wednesday after an exceptionally long and well-lived life. He was drafted into the Army at the relatively old age of 31. And that age being old is one of the things that time does to fool us.

Mr. Brooks spent the war mostly in the 91st Engineering Battalion, a largely black unit. After his service he returned to his home in Louisiana and worked for decades and raised his family. He did not seek out the status of oldest vet, but he held that position with honor, until his passing on Jan. 5.

And you know what Mr. Brooks was during WWII?

He was antifa.

That term, misused by the far right, doesnt name an actual, organized clique. There is no ordered and structured antifa group like there are formal organizations like the Proud Boys and the KKK. Rather, to be antifa is to be, well, anti-fascist. You know, against things like Hitler and his goal of a thousand-year Reich. Fascism is a school of thought that believes in a far-right, very authoritarian dictatorial government where they suppress differences of opinion, a free press, and they try to convince folks that only they are right and anyone with any alternative point of view is not only wrong, but unpatriotic. Ring any bells for anyone?

When did it become wrong to be antifa? Mr. Brooks went to war to stop fascism, as did my dad and millions of others. We are all, or at least all of us should be, anti-fascist.

While honoring Mr. Brooks, there is another WWII veteran out there that comes to my mind. We dont know his or her name now, and we wont for a while. That person will eventually be, not the oldest, but rather the very last living veteran of the war.

That person likely lied about his or her age to enlist, later in the war, and was born in the late 1920s. Of the approximately 16 million Americans who served in WWII, roughly 240,300 are still alive. We lose about 245 each day and that last survivor will find him or herself utterly stripped of brothers and sisters in arms over the next 20 years, or so.

And that last person will be, of course, antifa in its actual meaning, anti-fascist.

So it is with a heavy heart that I note the passing of Mr. Brooks, and my mind turns to whomever is now the oldest living WWII veteran. And then that person will pass, as will his or her successor, and on and on until there is only one.

When we lose that last member of the greatest generation, I hope we find ourselves in an America where the events of Jan. 6, 2021, are noted with scorn in our history books as a failed attempt, by a failed leader who was way too comfortable with the instrumentalities of fascism, to steal an election in the name of saving it, and not as a new normal for the nation.

Millions went to war in the 1940s to fight an idea so evil that it had to be put down at a massive cost in blood and suffering. I hope that when that final veteran, looking back over his or her five score-plus years, can know that our own embracing of a man who would be a tyrant, was a brief flirtation and that we awoke from a national nightmare wherein a Capitol was despoiled.

In the meantime, Salute, Mr. Brooks.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

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BIDLACK | Remembering the Big Antifa | Opinion | coloradopolitics.com - coloradopolitics.com