US

FACT CHECK: Does This Image Show Dwight Eisenhower’s Antifa Membership Card?

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An image shared on Facebook purportedly shows former President Dwight Eisenhower’s antifa membership card.

Facebook/Screenshot

Verdict: False

The antifa membership card is fabricated.

Fact Check:

The image shows what appears to be the 34th president’s supposed lifetime membership card to the organization “Global Antifascism Initiative.” It features a portrait of Eisenhower in military attire and lists the alleged date he joined the organization as Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

There is no evidence the membership card is genuine. The fabricated card appears to play on Eisenhower having a key role in the Allied Powers defeating the fascist Axis Powers led by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The modern antifa movement is an “umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations,” according to The Associated Press. It lacks official leaders and is organized into local cells, the outlet reported.

The Daily Caller News Foundation didn’t find any record of the “Global Antifascism Initiative” existing. Experts confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the membership card is fake.

“There was no such thing, and, even if there was, Eisenhower was working day and night in the Pentagon,” Chester Pach, a history professor at Ohio University and the co-author of “The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” told the DCNF in an email. “Eisenhower didn’t even vote while he was in uniform because he believed that any political activity was inappropriate for a career military officer.”

“That picture – which they altered – was taken when he was a five-star General of the Army,” Tim Rives, deputy director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, said in an email. “He was not promoted to that rank until Dec. 20, 1944.”

Photographer Yousuf Karsh took the picture of Eisenhower in 1946, according to Karsh’s website. In the fake membership card, the five stars seem to have been removed from his hat.