Do You Remember When Wearing Masks Was Mandatory? Then Virtue Signalling? Now It's Fascist

 When COVID-19 arrived, we were told we must wear masks.  Then, after these requirements were eased, the progressives imagined that continuing to wear masks was a sign of concern for others.  (Let me emphasize that people at high risk of death from COVID, the immune compromised and elderly might well have good reason to continue wearing masks.  This is not a criticism of those people.)

The problem was that many states had laws prohibiting the wearing of masks as disguises:

The original version of the statute was enacted in 1923.^[10] See 1923 Minn. Laws ch. 160, § 1. Like similar laws enacted during the same era, the law grew out of concerns over the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. See Wayne R. Allen, Note, Klan, Cloth & Constitution: Anti-Mask Laws & the First Amendment, 25 Ga. L. Rev. 819, 821-22 & n.17 (1991).

6/6/25 NPR:

ICE agents, as well as other federal agents delegated to work with ICE, are increasingly wearing masks during operations, something many people find objectionable. But at a press conference on Monday, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said agents had good reasons to do so.

"People are out there taking photos of [agents'] names, their faces and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves," Lyons says. "So I'm sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I'm not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don't like what immigration enforcement is." 

This sort of intimidation of police is something I would expect of the Klan.  If progressives object to our immigration laws, they should have changed them while they controlled Congress and the White House.  9/29/17 Mother Jones:

Over the past year of clashes between “alt-right” and left-wing protesters and an escalating debate over violence as the means to an end, the word “masked” has become an epithet of sorts to describe protesters on the left.

Last month in famously liberal Berkeley, California, where right-wingers have been planning rallies that seem intended to stir up raucous counterprotests—and which have drawn hundreds of masked opponents—city leaders passed an ordinance allowing the city manager to set ground rules as to what kinds of items cannot be worn or carried into protest areas. Masks and other face coverings have been banned at every local demonstration since. 

These rules haven’t thwarted antifa, a loose-knit network of groups and individuals who aim to confront—sometimes violently—people they identify as fascists. On August 27 in Berkeley, more than 100 antifa protesters clad in various configurations of black hoodies, bandanas, hats, and sunglasses—and some carrying heavy poles or shields—ignored the city ordinance and marched en masse to Civic Center Park, where a handful of right-wingers had made sporadic appearances during the day.

So, it is okay for Antifa to wear masks as disguises but not law enforcement.  How special.