Position statement on anti-fascist political work

Posted on 15 November 2015 by Anarchist Affinity — 1 Comment ↓

Position statement adopted 6 Sep 2015, modified 4 October 2015.

1. Purpose and Scope

1.1. This position statement is intended to sketch some initial points of agreement in order to facilitate Anarchist Affinity’s continued involvement in anti-fascist work in 2015. It is neither comprehensive nor complete, and we recognize that this position will have to be re-visited, reviewed and developed on as the situation and our understanding develops.

2. Basics

2.1. The Australian state is inherently racist; both the state and capitalism in Australia are rooted in racist premises and racist practice.

This commenced with invasion, and continued (and in many ways continues) with acts of dispossession and genocide perpetrated against this continent’s first peoples. It continued with the establishment of control and domination over the entire continent, and with the fostering of a ‘white Australia’ nationalist ideology.

Despite periods of modification, notably the brief period of official multiculturalism, the legitimating ideology of the Australian state has been an exclusionary one that pits a predominantly ‘white Australia’ against perceived internal and external threats. This racism permeates all levels of Australian society; popular racism interacts with the state and capitalism.

2.2. There has long been a small and often irrelevant fascist milieu operating on the fringes of Australian nationalism. The far-right, including fascist actors, seeks to break out from and reach an audience outside of the its milieu. The most significant break-out by the far right in recent political history was the short term success of the One Nation party in 1998.

2.3. The effect of the far-right achieving mainstream success in 1998 was to break the official multicultural consensus and to open the space for the Australian state to move further to the right, most notably on immigration and indigenous affairs.

2.4. In 2015 we have witnessed attempts by fascist actors to utilize the political opportunities opened by the Abbott government’s renewed attacks on the Muslim community. For the first time in several years fascist actors are reaching a wider political audience on the basis of anti-Muslim racism.

3. Position of Anarchist Affinity

3.1. Anarchist Affinity contends that the far-right must not be allowed to achieve wider political traction. A growing far-right represents a particular threat to all groups seen as outsider to the narrative of Australian nationalism.

3.2. Where there appears to be a genuine threat of far-right groups cohering and gaining traction among a significantly wider audience, Anarchist Affinity will seek to act in concert with other groups and actors who wish to counter the threat of the far-right and who understand this threat in similar terms to ourselves.

3.3. Anarchist Affinity seek to support self-organisation and self-defense by communities experiencing racism and colonisation. We seek to amplify the voices of people who experience racism (including anti-Muslim racism) and other communities attacked by the far-right.

3.4. Where possible Anarchist Affinity seeks to identify and organize cooperatively with the libertarian anti-state elements of any wider campaign against the far-right.

3.5. In anti-fascist work Anarchist Affinity rejects nationalism, appeals to “Real Australian” national identity, and appeals to the state. Anarchist Affinity opposes racism at all levels of Australian society.

3.6. In anti-fascist work Anarchist Affinity argues that the working class, which includes the diverse communities attacked by the far-right, can and should organise to defend itself. We seek to support, facilitate and engage in grass-roots resistance to attacks by the far-right.

3.7. The political minimum we will argue for in working with other actors on this issue:

3.7.1. Direct action to confront and disrupt the far-right is appropriate where there is a genuine prospect of far-right groupings gaining access to and cohering in an audience significantly wider than their own circles;

3.7.2. No appeals to the Australian state, legal system, or the police to ‘deal’ with the far-right;

3.7.3. Any critique of the far-right must also critique the racist practice of the Australian state, in particular in relation to both colonisation and the border regime.

3.8. On the basis of the above political minimum, Anarchist Affinity will continue to participate in the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, as well as the autonomous anti-facist network. This position will be periodically reconsidered.

Some Reflections on Reclaim Australia, July 18th

Posted on 20 July 2015 by Tom — 1 Comment ↓

The following is written by a member of Anarchist Affinity and an active Antifascist.

It seems obvious that the main conflict and debate that is raging in the immediate aftermath of the latest round of Reclaim Australia isn’t even about the fascists, but about the police, though the two are linked. Many people are shocked by the level of violence and aggression displayed by the police, and plenty of people are condemning those on the left for physical confrontation as much as they are the fascists. I think both of these views are mistaken.

For a start let’s deal with the police. It’s important that our media explains that the cops aren’t on our side- but let’s not pretend to be surprised either. Many people see the police through the traditional liberal lens- that they exist to protect society from crime. For the many people who copped pepper spray, saw the police pepper spray medics, took random punches to the face and received cursory “fuck offs” from the police yesterday, that notion is not going to gell particularly well with their feelings at the moment. Marxist or Anarchist theory will point out to you that the police exist to protect private property and the state, and little else.

Yesterday was one of the more open ‘iron fist under the velvet glove’ moments we’ve had in Australia in a while. Certainly the most since I’ve been an activist. Believing that cops exist to protect you probably means that you’re from a somewhat privileged background whereby the police are more friendly/less violent towards you. Try asking some of the blackfellas from Redfern why they don’t like cops; or the Grocon workers who have had their pickets smashed by riot cops because they went on strike to defend safe workplace conditions. The police are the armed protection of a stratified class society, and when they defend and facilitate fascist rallies based on the liberal ‘free speech laws’, what they’re doing is defending movements (i.e the racist fascists) who’s growth will smash working class and civil rights. There are numerous reports of racism within the Australian police force, and countless black deaths in custody that no one has ever been charged for; the Australian police are not in any way exceptional, their acts of oppression and racism are similar to that of the police forces in other nations. Control and oppression just come with the role. The psychology of police can be debated by other people, I don’t doubt that there are police who genuinely take the job thinking of the ‘positive’ social roles, but that’s not inherently what the role of the police force is. That is why people use slogans like ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards). Not because they’re so ignorant to think every individual police person is necessarily an absolute bastard. Part of building a revolutionary movement will mean, at some stage, confronting and dismantling the police institution and replacing it with something that’s actually democratic. With something that responds to working class needs whilst maintaining the few positive social roles they do have and destroying the rest.

So, the police pulling pepper spray was ‘in response to violence from the left’, apparently. Maybe this is true, I certainly saw some of it. But I sure as hell will not condemn anyone for it*, especially when known nazi squads deliberately wandered into our crowd provoking a fight. Violence should never be a first resort or even an ideology, and by the same token neither should non-violence. They are simply strategies employed for political purposes. We are not living in a fantasy world, where everyone is going to ‘respect’ everyone else and just stand around in the streets and have a big debate over cupcakes or tea or something. I had friends there yesterday whose rage I think was/is entirely justified; whose family members have been racially abused and attacked for years. Of course they were going to be really fucking angry. Yesterday they wanted to defend their themselves and their communities, and what they faced was an active racist and fascist movement on the streets, with the police backing them up. You can only take so much abuse before you fight back.

Some reading of the history of fascism will point out to you that fascist politics is entirely about physical domination of the streets and their opponents. Hitlers ‘Blackshirts’, Mussolinis ‘Brownshirts’, the National Front etc. We are dealing with much more than our local fundamentalist anti-abortion Catholics here. Reclaim, the United Patriots Front and their fellows on the far-right aim to use their cries of ‘free speech’ and their ‘politically acceptable’ rallies to start building political space and a movement that will grow to allow them to dominate. At times the first call of response has been violent confrontation – we know the anarchists and communists of 1930s Germany had to employ street fighting as a tactic, and maybe if our liberal friends had supported them Hitler may not have won. The Battle of Cable Street is another classic example. Red Action in the 80’s UK forced the Nationalist movements to retreat in ways that were extremely successful.

“Only one thing could have broken our movement – if the adversary had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed with extreme brutality the nucleus of our new movement.” – Adolf Hitler, 1933 Nuremberg Nazi Party rally.

*I was pepper sprayed twice yesterday, the first time was because I was attempting to pull away a fascist who had a) punched a friend in the face and b) attempted to choke another. At that stage, he hadn’t been attacked by the left. Then the cops attempted to arrest me. It was quite clear to me and everyone else yesterday that we weren’t the ones, and never were going to be the ones to be protected. Thanks again to the comrades who pulled me out of that situation.

Interview with Kojo Barbah from South London Anti-Fascists and the Anti-Raids Network

Posted on 26 July 2014 by Guest Author — 1 Comment ↓

Kojo Barbah is a London based activist and a founding member of South London Anti-Fascists. He is also a member of the direct action migrant solidarity organisation the Anti-Raids Network.

Maybe we can begin by discussing the origins of South London Anti-Fascists (SLAF). Though London is a city with a long, continuous and quite notorious history of anti-fascist organising, SLAF only came to my attention last year, in the wake of the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on May 22nd. How and when did the group come together? Was the decision to reactivate the group out of mere necessity, in response to far-right attempts to capitalise on Rigby’s death, or were there other factors?

South London Anti-Fascists were originally formed by trade unionists in 2008, namely Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council and Croydon Trade Union Council. It was in reaction to the London Mayor and Assembly elections, which returned the highest proportional vote for the fascist British National Party (5%) in London and guaranteed them a seat in the Assembly. The vote, though overall still small, was acutely concentrated in Barking and Dagenham, poor deindustrialised North East London suburbs where the BNP were made the official local council opposition with 12 elected councillors. In South London, Morden was also a flashpoint for far-right activity. In 2009, the BNP’s membership was leaked and though some people on it were never fully paid up fascists there was a sizeable number in this area, including a small scaffolding business run by a fascist which still operates today. Our view was that the far right were gaining ground in traditional working class areas and the privatisation agenda pursued by Labour had abandoned and alienated working class interests. We were lucky to have a paid organiser to support our efforts. The far-right needed to be tackled using a diversity of tactics and the divided efforts of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) (predominantly SWP) and Searchlight/Hope Not Hate (HNH) were clearly not working.

Antifa at this time was at a low point as the BNP had moved away (though never completely abandoned) from street confrontation to wearing suits and appearing like professional politicians. Also, there were stories of Antifa attempting to blow up cars belonging to the wrong people and getting sent down for it. SLAF worked initially as a collective where HNH, UAF and autonomous antifascists could work together to organise against local threats and support individuals and communities who were targeted or concerned about local activity. We dwindled in activity as the threat of the BNP receded after 2010. The EDL emerged as a new threat and the UK Independence Party, though marginal, were in the background. I was the chair and my political orientation was changing too. I moved from a democratic socialist orientation to a more social anarchist position. During our down period, I read a lot more!

Lee Rigby’s death definitely prompted a reactivation. I personally got a lot of calls asking what should be organised as the then leader of the EDL, Tommy Robinson, was coming to Woolwich. We were disorganised and too small in number to respond so initially we had to watch him on TV unopposed. A meeting was called by a prominent local anarchist a day later and I suggested using the SLAF banner as it happened in our patch. We made a callout to confront the EDL outside Downing Street and have started to hold regular meetings ever since.

Organised antifascists like Anti-Fascist Action (1985-1990’s) and the contemporary Anti-Fascist Network have stressed, alongside the necessity of counter mobilisation and confrontation on the streets, the importance of ‘filling the political vacuum’. This type of counter analysis generally consists of a class-struggle critique of capitalism, but often extends to critiques of the state, political liberalism and nationalism. SLAF seems to take this responsibility very seriously, and argues persuasively that struggles against all other forms of oppression (ubiquitous police harassment and violence inflicted upon communities of colour through policies like the Met Police’s ‘Stop and SEARCH’; the targeting of sex workers in Soho; ‘raids’ by the UK Border Force targeting migrant workers and asylum seekers to name but a few) are also antifascist activities. Can you elaborate on this connection?

There isn’t unanimity in our group on this, we have Trotskyists and some who avoid political labels but this is the majority view.

Anti-fascism, bluntly, is stopping fascists from growing either in number or in confidence at the very least. At the maximum it is dismantling their capacity to be effective. Liberal antifascists believe antifascists are bad because they are illiberal and pay only lip service to parliamentary democracy. We oppose fascists because they seek our complete domination by exterminating working class power.

When we reformed, we wanted to express our beliefs about the nature of fascism and the state. Fascism is the ultimate expression of capitalism’s need to control and subordinate human activity to its logic and authority. The state is its most effective tool. When societies are failed by capital, the preferred solution is state repression. However in liberal democracies, unlike military dictatorships, repression cannot be nakedly deployed, apologetics are utilised to explain the contradiction of affirming human rights and the exercising of sub-human treatment. The law is the crystallisation of this – the targeting of minorities, whether it is asylum seekers, cultural groups or sex workers is the State practicing and perfecting its power to oppress. The more we allow this to happen, the better the police get at wielding it, the more polished politicians are at arguing for dehumanisation, and the more efficient media outlets are in convincing the public. We oppose state repression because it is antithesis of our power, which is our solidarity. We want to bring together the full spectrum of our human expression against state oppression. Capital, through the state, wants to divide and categorise us into economic utilities and human resources.

Fascism is capitalism unrestrained by historical appeals to morality or universal rights. The popular appeal of this doesn’t happen overnight, but is a culture that can take decades, or in times of crisis, a few years to develop and become entrenched. If we do not resist state oppression then we allow the tools of our destruction to sharpen and be ready to put into fascist control.

In an excellent piece published on the SLAF blog in May, you identify the predominance of ‘populist’ anti-immigrant rhetoric in the run-up to the European elections as a reason ‘antifascism is necessary but insufficient’, adding ‘in our analysis, the state is a much bigger threat and generator of popular racism’ (than UKIP, BNP etc). This is an observation with great relevance in the Australian context, where social justice campaigns often ignore structural issues, instead focusing on appeals to politicians, commentators and the state to be nicer, more compassionate and less racist. Given Australia’s role as a global pioneer of mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and the fact that much of this infrastructure was built by the Australian Labor Party, this too seems insufficient. How does SLAF identify the role of the state in creating, exploiting and perpetuating racism? Any thoughts about organising outside of borders and against the
state?

Australia’s legacy of white supremacy is an outpost of British imperialism. The policy of White Australia may have been publicly restrained by the British but it was tacitly endorsed and clearly financed. In managing a global empire, Britain has learned to be less explicit about its racial hierarchy but it is clearly a deeply embedded part of British culture.

We as a group have not theorised how the state has created racism, but the works of Walter Rodney, Theodore W. Allen and bell hooks would illuminate here. I believe that racism was an imperialist construct invented to justify enslavement, genocide and subjugation of darker skinned peoples and their cultures. It is necessary for imperial capitalist accumulation to continue and allay moral qualms about inhuman treatment. If they are not human, went the theory, then it was justified.

It also helped and still does help the ruling elite manage class relations. Nationalism and whiteness create a powerful collective identity that politicians use to generate a sense of pride and superiority amongst the white working class. Invoking whiteness, however subtly, signals that to be white is to be associated with being the dominator not the dominated, to be part of the history of Kings and Queens not the enslaved and impoverished, and that they are heirs to the pioneers of democracy and modernity and not savagery and barbarism. This is a myth of course, but it is said or inferred so often that it is widely believed. Even if racial myths based on biology have waned, they have transferred seamlessly into cultural myths. These ideas underlie why immigration controls are popular. They refer to the mortal danger that their biology or now culture may be irreparably damaged by the contamination of foreign bodies.

These myths aid class relations for the ruling class in another way, as they can form powerful associations to aid labour discipline. The welfare scrounger is the class equivalent of the asylum seeker. In other words, a pariah, a human to legitimately loathed. The stereotypical connotations of being Black, that is to be lazy, unable to organise your own affairs, scheming, preferring base pleasures to self-improvement and lacking a “decent” disposition provides a basis for reducing state social subsidy and weakening the power of organised labour. Racism and class hatred are interrelated, it is difficult to deploy one without making reference to the other. In breaking down these myths, we require socialisation, solidarity and struggle. Racial myths have been largely destroyed by the act of racialised people fighting to be recognised as human and white working class people living and working with racialised people and accepting that reality.

South London Anti-Fascists is part of the UK wide Anti-Fascist Network and the London based Anti Raids Network.

Anti-Fascist Network
http://www.antifascistnetwork.org

South London Anti-Fascists
http://www.slaf.org.uk

Anti Raids Network
https://network23.org/antiraids

London Black Revolutionaries
http://www.facebook.com/London-BlackRevs

Movement For Justice
http://www.movementforjustice.org

Unity Centre Glasgow
http://www.unitycentreglasgow.org

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