“Your grandpa was an antifascist” works for liberals and baby leftists as their rhetorical attempt to frame fascism as illegitimate, unpatriotic, etc., but it’s ultimately based on twice-faulty assumptions.

The first is the idea that things being “un-American” even should be regarded as bad; ultimately, appealing to nationalism is always a dead end because the compromises necessary to continue supporting your nation will sabotage all other good principles.

But the second faulty assumption is that it were even true.

Now, there was a brief period where the fascism and ultra-nationalism of Germany, Italy, Japan, and their satellites were opposed to the interests of British and U.S. imperialism. But only a brief period. In fact, even before the war was over, they were planning how to use fascists to keep Communists out of power in the settlements that followed. U.S. General George Patton saying, “We fought the wrong enemy,” in regards to the Nazis and Soviet Union is possibly possibly apocryphal, but they represented his real views, and he wasn’t out on an island feeling that way when considering the treatment and rehabilitation of many top German military officers who led the “Holocaust by bullets“, and plans like Operation Gladio are considered, to say nothing of the USA’s long history of supporting any “anti-Communist” regimes around the world throughout the Cold War. And who’s more reliably anti-Communist than a fascist?

Franco, a fascist dictator-for-life, died aged 82 in 1975.

U.S. President Gerald Ford’s official statement was, “It was with sorrow that I learned of the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who led his country for almost four decades through a significant era in Spanish history. With his passing, I express deepest sympathy to his wife and family on behalf of the Government and people of the United States. We wish the Spanish people and the Government of Spain well in the period ahead. The United States for its part will continue to pursue the policy of friendship and cooperation which has formed the touchstone for the excellent relations existing between our two countries.”

As long as there have been fascists, there have been antifascists. But fascism is not and has never been un-American, and that’s sort of the whole problem.