I known I am always complaining about Italy 🇮🇹 but one of the first thing Meloni's government did was pursue and arrest active anarchic groups, under the accusation of terrorism.
But remember: she’s not fascist until we find a Mussolini bust in her house.
…yes, we did find one in the house of the president of the senate that her party elected, but it wasn’t her house so it doesn’t count.
It was worse for tfg because antifa was also defending blm protesters during their demonstrations.
That's also assuming antifascist's definition of fascism is correct. For example, in the Russian conscious, a defining characteristic of Nazis is that they are a threat to Russia. But obviously that definition isn't sufficient. So a government should still be opposed to them, even though they are 'anti fascist'.
I'd also look for signs of trying to influence journalists and silence independent reporting. Such as back in the George W. Bush era, United States, when speaking against the White House was a fast track to getting blackballed out of the press corps. We learned about torture and Blackwater massacres of villages through foreign news agencies.
Before that, it was simply that huge rich companies controlled the few channels that existed (newspapers and the big three, ABC, NBC, CBS. PBS got away with some investigatory journalism due to its small following. Kids watched Sesame Street and that is what kept the PBS budget alive. (Now, Big Bird's a communist.)
