Temu. No idea what scam they’re running but I will never buy anything from them.

As other people have said, it was borrowed from the Italian fascists, who themselves got it from an 18th century painting showing a famous event from Roman history/legend. There’s no evidence that it was ever actually used in Ancient or Classical Rome.

Funny side story is that some Nazis and other German nationalists thought it wasn’t ‘German’ enough, so the leading Nazis felt they had to invent an older ‘Germanic’ tradition to justify its usage. So, it’s a fake German tradition that was in fact borrowed from the Italians, who got it from a fake Roman tradition that was actually made up by a French guy.

Yes, exactly. There are some things on this list where, if everyone opposed to fascism did one of them, we’d win tomorrow. Realistically, not everyone will, but it’s still the right thing to do, to prise every bit of power from their grasp.

There are lots of Fediverse alternatives to social media, including Lemmy (which I guess you know about?) and the ones people have mentioned here already (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Loops, PeerTube). The advantage of the Fediverse is that it can’t be co-opted by a single bad actor, in the way that Musk took over Twitter and made it into a Nazi bar.

I won’t say just vote, but you should do that, too, at every level!

Depending on how much time and money you have:

• Join a union (and give time and money to organising the union)
• Join an antifascist political party (and give time and money to organising the party)
• Lobby your representatives to demand they oppose fascism
• Join protests against fascism
• Join civil society groups that are antifascist (either directly or because they’re pro human rights or anti-racist, or what-have-you) (and give time and money etc.)
• Boycott businesses that are owned by or enable fascists
• Join co-operatives (and give time and money etc.)
• Join community groups (these don’t even have to be political)
• Support local, independent media and good freelance journalists
• Spread the word about all of the above

I’ve ordered these roughly by how effective I think they’re likely to be (this is of course just one guy’s opinion); you should pick the one(s) that are most attractive to you and best fit your current situation.

Fair warning, none of the above will instantly fix the problem and I grant that some of them probably seem pretty weak sauce in the face of fascism, but the more people do them, the weaker the fascists will get.

You cannot achieve any good by hurting people.

People are so convinced that if we’re more cruel to criminals, they’ll stop committing crimes, or if we’re harsher to workers, we’ll work harder, or if you’re tough on border controls, immigrants will go away. It does not work and it cannot work.