Category Archives: Uncategorized

Anti-Fascism, International, Uncategorized

Antifa Worldwide: A Brief History of International Antifascism

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By Alexander Reid Ross

 

Fascism, as we know it today, came amid the sweeping nationalism accompanying World War I. Numerous leftists shifting from left to right ported their watchwords of solidarity and insurrection over to militant formations designed to destroy the left and seize power. They were not unopposed in this mobilization of a left and right so-called “revolution.” This is the story of the revolutionaries, renegades, and warriors who broke with the powerful movement toward totalitarianism and continue to struggle as partisans for freedom and equality.

Fascism did not emerge on its own as a full cloth ideology. It developed from a complex history of anti-Semitism, ultranationalism, reactionary Catholicism, and the conditions of economic exploitation of industrial workers and peasants. At the turn of the 20th Century, the Dreyfus Affair marked the flash point for violent confrontations between left and right as ultranationalist anti-Semites framed a Jewish army captain for conspiring with the hated Prussians. The right relied on leagues and sporting clubs through which they could practice for physical confrontation while developing the mannerisms and affectations that would attempt to refine an otherwise blunt and stupid politics. Long at odds over the question of anti-Semitism, the left organized through associations, syndicates, and humanitarian organizations to support Dreyfus, organizing an important consensus that would affect future political positions.

In Germany, a financial crisis led to pogroms against Jews. Pogroms throughout Eastern Europe also led to the strengthening of Jewish workers’ defense organizations like the Jewish Bund. Tough men of the Jewish working class, the Bund stewarded marches for dignity and better wages, organized self-defense trainings, and developed autonomous aid networks within Jewish sectors. While Vladimir Lenin criticized the Bund for representing stop-gap politics, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party went about building combat groups that would resist the counter-revolutionary forces of the Black Hundreds.[1] The anarchists of Russia went a similar direction, including Voline of the St. Petersburg Soviet, Uncle Vanya who helped organize workers’ insurrections from Samara to Ukraine.

But Fascism emerged through the breakdown in the Dreyfusard consensus, the alliance of ultranationalists and leftists around the notion of destroying liberal parliamentarianism, and in doing so managed to bypass the strongest left-wing resistance in the early stages. Instead, through the aesthetics of futurism, the charismatic leadership of Mussolini, and the syncretic positions of national syndicalism, Fascists presented themselves as marking the radical edge that could finally penetrate the armor of moderate politics. Recognizing the danger, anarchists like Errico Malatesta called for a broad antifascist front that discarded political differences in favor of resisting the vicious hierarchies and empty rhetoric of Fascists. Marxists, under the leadership of Antonio Gramsci, would brook no compromise with the anarchist-supported Arditi del Popolo (Army of the People), hoping instead for a mass insurrection of armed workers. With the resistance internally fragmented and the left under assault by an increasing alliance between the Fascists and the state, Mussolini entered government supported by a mass movement and the Fascist blackshirts continued to assassinate and apprehend leaders like Malatesta and Gramsci.

In Germany, the left stood similarly fractured. World War I ended through a massive revolution that started in a Naval mutiny and resulted in the abdication of the Kaiser, as well as a Bavarian insurrection that deposed the local government and established a “Soviet” led by anarchists and communists. Having voted to enter the war, the Social Democrats rose to power through popular left-wing sentiment and compromises with the far right—in particular, the Freikorps, a paramilitary force of army veterans who the Social Democrats would deploy to brutally crush a Communist uprising in Berlin led by Rosa Luxemberg and Karl Liebknecht and the Bavarian Soviet, as well as a renewed uprising in the industrial Ruhr Valley led by a militant force calling itself the Red Army of the Ruhr. It was only after the defeat of these three significant left-wing revolutionary uprisings that Hitler would rise in a beerhall in Munich and pretend to lead a “national revolution” of Freikorps and other paramilitary rightist factions under Nazi guidance.

The left scrambled to the defensive to set Hitler back on his heels, setting up its own combat groups (Kampfbunds) and attacking Nazi meetings and events. Even the Social Democrats, observing the fearsome rise of the brutal Stormtroopers, set up the militant Reichsbanner, but the leadership had already granted significant powers to the Freikorps and the SA simply heightened the tensions. By the early 1930s, the German Communist Party had adopted a defeatist attitude, marking the Social Democrats as “social fascists” and supporting Nazi strikes and parliamentary efforts like a significant “no confidence” vote in the Reichstagg. Those who risked life and limb in the streets fighting Nazis were placed in vulnerable positions by their own leadership. When Hitler took power, the aspirations of the Communist Party’s “First Hitler, then us!” strategy proved totally foolish, as the Nazis immediately demobilized the Kampfbunds, including Antifaschistische Aktion, and sent the left to concentration camps.

In France and the UK, resistance to fascism also manifested in street battles and strategic competitions over urban space. Famously, the UK antifascists repeatedly broke up the meetings of the pugilistic cad, Oswald Mosley, refusing to yield London’s working class East End to fascist influence by halting a march in an event that came to be known as the Battle of Cable Street. Meanwhile, French fascists asserted that they had created fascism by destroying the Dreyfusard consensus, and paramilitary formations emerged across the far right enlisting, paradoxically, the support of anti-Jewish North African Arabs in exchange for money and services. While members of the French radical left “drifted” toward fascism vis-a-vis the “neo-socialism” of Marcel Dèat and the populism of former Communist Party central committee member, “le Grande Jacques” Doriot, others confronted fascists, blockaded meeting venues, and launched antifascist boycotts. Unlike in Germany and Italy, the French and English left was able to prevent voluntary capitulation to fascism—perhaps in part as a result of the rejection of the defeatist line that “bourgeois socialists” and “radical liberals” and even moderate conservatives should be considered as bad as, if not worse than, fascism.

Perhaps nowhere was fascism more heavily contested, however, than in Spain where fascism had a significant following. In 1930, a military coup by Miguel Primo de Rivera adopted fascism “spiritually,” but generally reproduced the old 19th Century authoritarian conservatism and bare-knuckles corporatism. While General Miguel fell from grace, however, his son José Antonio Primo de Rivera, also known simply as José Antonio, rose to prominence and supported a purer form of fascist dictatorship led by the militant forces of a fascist Falange that would defeat leftism in the streets. Leftists, of course, rose to the challenge and fought tooth and nail against the fascism of Spanish aristocrats that situated itself within the working class through an alliance with the Committees of the National Syndicalist Offensive under the leadership of Ramiro Ledesma Ramos. Street fighting between the left and the Falange-National Syndicalist alliance grew extremely intense, with assassinations and beatings spilling over onto left-wing sympathizers and liberals. Following the election of the left-wing Popular Front, leftist police assassinated a leader of the reactionary Catholic conservatives named Calvo Sotelo, sparking an outcry that led, in no small part, to the invasion of Spain by the colonial military forces of Francisco Franco. Although the Popular Front incarcerated José Antonio, the Falange formed a significant, loyal, and ferocious section of Franco’s army, which met with the valiant opposition of anarchist militias hoping not only to defend the Republic but to further the revolutionary interests of self-determination, land, and liberty. Under the anarchist leader, Buenaventura Durruti, the Iron Column marched against Franco’s invading force along with a quasi-Trotskyist forces of POUM, the liberal fighters under Largo Caballero and the Stalinist-backed Communist Party. However, supplied by corporate powers across the Atlantic and tacitly enabled through Allied neutrality and appeasement, the armies of Franco beat down the antifascist resistance with Hitler and Mussolini’s overt assistance.

When Hitler’s tanks rolled into France the next year, it found relatively little resistance. Partisan forces emerged from Italy to Greece and across the Eastern Front. These partisans worked to sabotage fascist communications and supply lines, assassinate officials, and develop antifascist networks, workers’ associations, and societies to propagandize against their respective repressive regimes. After Mussolini and Hitler invaded Greece in 1941, leftists brokered a tenuous truce with ultranationalist “Hellenic Patriots” who supported parafascist dictator Ioannis Metaxas. Fighting persisted in Ukraine and the Balkans, as well, where Nazi-allied forces committed some of the worst atrocities of the war. When the US invaded Italy and occupied Rome in 1943, the partisans of the North engaged in fierce behind-the-lines struggle against the likes of the Black Prince Borghese who remained faithful to Mussolini’s government-in-exile, the Republic of Salò. Russia marshaled and lost tens of millions of people in the explicitly antifascist war to defeat the Reich and the ideology it represented, while the fascist-friendly Allen Dulles set up the architecture for a post-war insurgency inclusive of fascist “stay-behinds” fighting against Soviet influence in Europe.

 

The tenuous peace between partisans unravelled after the War and the collapse of the Reich, at which point the British supported the Hellenic forces’ military struggle against the Communist partisans with whom they had fought only months prior. Similarly, in Italy, the US’s Office of Strategic Services, later eclipsed by the CIA, recruited Fascist agents to oppose the left-wing Popular Front in the 1946 elections, continuing over the next decades to support links between Fascist networks within the government and clandestine terrorist groups targeting public infrastructure in a “Strategy of Tension” designed to pull the population toward the security state. These fascist groups like Black Prince Borghese’s Fronte Nazionale, which included the Nuovo Ordine and Avanguardia Nazionale, were schooled by the CIA-supported Greek military dictatorship that took power in 1967, and attempted on at least one occasion the similar overthrow of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party, were opposed in the streets by a mass movement of left-wing workers, students, and women in the tradition of antifascist partisans.

In France, Franco-sympathizer Pierre Poujade extended the street fights of the 1930s into the 1950s with his radical right populist party of the Union de Défense des Commerçants et Artisans, which was heavily contested by the left. The far-right paramilitary group Organisation Armée Secrète emerged out of the far-right hatred of the post-War Fourth Republic and resistance to decolonization in Algeria to plague the left and set the violent standard for fascist militants organized through groupuscules like Occident and the Groupe Union Défense. These organizations met opposition in Algeria by the militants of the Front de Libération National and in France by militant ultras. A former Poujadist named Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had purportedly lost the use of one eye in a particularly brutal street fight before rising to lead the new National Front in 1972. Some three years later, a bomb blast ripped through Le Pen’s Paris apartment, followed just two years later by a car bomb that killed Le Pen’s close ally, “national revolutionary” François Duprat.

In Italy, the assassinations, fights, and bombings between left and right grew so intense that the period between 1969 and the late 1970s became known as the Years of Lead. The “Hot Summer” of 1969, in which a wave of factory strikes and occupations spread to the general population, sparking the Autonomia movement, was followed by an explosion in Milan’s Piazza Fontana set by fascists to frame the left. Police rounded up anarchists and leftists by the hundreds, including a railroad worker named Giuseppe Pinelli who died in police custody, producing a massive outcry throughout Italy. As fascists persisted in attempting to infiltrate left-wing groups and co-opt the leadership of Autonomia, ongoing clashes and bomb blasts rocked Italy, which spilled into other countries as Italian fascists laying low abroad helped to spread their strategies and tactics elsewhere.

In Germany, opposition to fascism was similarly complicated by post-war “stay-behind” networks. Like Italy, the post-war order in Germany maintained tacit bonds between state entities like the Bundesnachrechtendienst and non-state fascist groupuscules. However, fascist groups like the Sozialistische Reichsparty faced a ban, making overt organizing difficult. At the same time, veterans organizations became breeding grounds for Holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda, and anti-immigrant sentiment was not unusual. During the 1980s, a strong horizontalist resistance movement grew in opposition to nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and economic exploitation called the Autonomen movement, which targeted and was targeted by fascists seeking to generate mass resistance to immigration, refugees, and multicultural society. Partly in response to the Autonomen movement and the government’s ban on certain fascist parties, “national revolutionaries” developed the strategy of “Freie Kameradschaften”—small groups of 3 to 5 people committed to engaging in political violence against the homeless, disabled people, migrants, non-whites and non-straight people. Through the Freie Kameradschaften, fascists began to appropriate the strategies of the Autonomen movement, including donning black clothing and black masks to maintain anonymity. Yet they met with violent resistance from the leftist Autonomen movement, which produced a new wave of horizontalist Antifaschistische Aktion groups.

As with the Italian terrorists who fled through Franco’s Spain to promote fascism elsewhere in the world, Nazi war criminals like Klaus Barbie had escaped to areas of Latin America and worked to foster a new international movement. Throughout Latin America, and most notoriously in Argentina where the fascist-organized Alianza Anticommunista Argentina fought a “Dirty War” against left-wing Peronists known as Montoneros, fascists helped train and create anti-left paramilitary groups that instigated the conditions for Civil War and military coup. These forces found militant opposition in the form of national liberation armies like the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional in El Salvador who engaged in a long-term revolutionary war against paramilitaries who committed such heinous acts as assassinating the Archbishop Romero during mass and raping then murdering a group of Catholic nuns. At the same time, fascist networks oriented through Salazar’s Portugal strove to maintain colonialism in African countries like Guinea-Bissau, where anti-colonial forces under Amílcar Cabral fought them.

Such far-right and colonial networks developed and/or supported by fascists found happy allies within the US government, including the fairly extensive intelligence networks created by fascist propagandist Willis Carto, Roy Cohn and Lyndon Larouche. Intimately tied to the former’s large base of supporters was a rising fascist militant named David Duke, who mass marketed a new generation of Ku Klux Klan violence as “white civil rights.” Having fallen off after its height in the 1920s, the Klan received a boost of support from the White Citizens Councils and the populist politician George Wallace in the 1960s; however, Wallace’s events faced violent resistance from community groups, and FBI support for integration hindered the Invisible Empire’s growth. The resurgent Klan found powerful opposition in the form of civil society groups and new anti-racist formations.

 

As the Southern Poverty Law Center came into effect, working within the courts and peaceful social organizations to promote diversity against hate, left-wing radicals developed more militant strategies for opposing the rise of fascism. Targeting racism through militant class struggle, the Workers’ Viewpoint Organization attempted to organize an inter-racial textile workers’ union to oppose the Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina. However, the Klan fought back, uniting with area fascists for a 1979 ambush against an anti-Klan rally that left five dead and five wounded. Other left-wing groups like the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee emerged with the desire to expose fascism within the US and to defeat racism through militant class struggle, and met with varying levels of success in the Midwest amid the rise of fascist skinheads.

As well as Latin American military dictatorships, Italian fascists also influenced the English far-right, bringing the “political soldier” concept to a group of fascists that decided to splinter front the National Front and organize skinheads as the frontline shock troops of a new fascist movement. These fascist skinheads mobilized through a network of Oi! punk bands and publications, spreading throughout North America and meeting an increasingly organized resistance by the mid-1980s. Anti-racist skinheads organized into Anti-Racist Action, Red and Anarchist Skinheads, and local manifestations of Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, among other groups, to confront fascists attempting to create a violent mass movement against non-straight, non-white people in society. As fascist skinheads were beaten out of urban areas by anti-racists, fascist strategy moved toward the militia and Patriot movement during the 1990s, which provided a new kind of “leaderless resistance” based in rural areas where the left had a less formidable presence.

These small bands of violent fascists often identified with the fascist skinhead movement also appeared in France under the Parti Nationaliste Française et Européen and Troisième Voie through the related paramilitary formation, the Jeunneses Nationalistes Révolutionnaires, who at times stewarded marches of Le Pen’s Front National. With Le Pen increasingly pressuring the centrist parties at the polls, the French Socialist Party created the popular S.O.S. Racisme group, which promoted multiculturalism through large events and public gatherings. In the streets, the foot soldiers of the “national revolution” found more violent opposition from gangs like the Black Dragons and Duckie Boys. Similarly, in the UK, the large Rock Against Racism movement gave way to the Anti-Nazi League, which cultivated a mass movement against the National Front and British National Party. More confrontational and revolutionary left-wing groups also emerged like Red Action and Anti-Fascist Action, which like Anti-Racist Action joined the militant horizontal strategies and tactics of Antifaschistische Aktion. By the late 2000s, these groups and groups like them were increasingly referred to as “Antifa.”

The appropriation of Autonomen movement strategy and tactics came to a head amid the 2008 recession, when “Autonomist Nationalists” began to form black blocs from the Czech Republic to Germany and the Netherlands. The black blocs were repeated by supporters of the “CounterJihad” movement appearing in Germany as PEGIDA and in England as the English Defense League, among other places. Meanwhile, those groups have seen a rising wave of opposition, including a humiliating running battle between fascists and antifascists in Brighton that left the “March for England” in tatters. This and other events showed that groups with names like National Action and National Resistance that have emerged from Sweden to Ukraine, linking up for spontaneous street demonstrations and acts of mob violence, are virtually impossible to oppose without organized community defense.

In the US, the CounterJihad groups associated with the militia movement galvanized the anti-mosque movement of 2014, appearing outside of places of worship or community centers often with black masks armed with assault rifles and other weapons. These formations are increasingly opposed by likewise-armed community defense groups and antifas who seek to protect non-white communities from attacks and intimidation. More recently, the alt-right has emerged in league with Donald Trump, taking much of its inspiration from the “intellectual” fascist milieu that emerged during the Years of Lead to link left and right and reproduce the conditions that led to the destruction of the Dreyfusard consensus. Where the alt-right has moved into the physical space of real life, it has been dogged by antifa opposition—as in the recent protests against Milo Yiannopolos at the University of California–Berkeley.

 

Fascism has never arisen without opposition through community consensus. Instead, antifascists have worked to root out fascist infiltration and “entryism” that seeks to pass as the merger of left and right, while also militantly opposing fascist marches and meetings. Where fascism obtained power, it did so through the largely through the betrayal of the organized left by its leadership, along with state collaboration with the fascists amid significant, often violent, fighting amongst left-wing groups. If, in Italy and Germany, antifascists had decided to join with powerful liberals and even conservatives to defend their communities against Blackshirts, if the Communists of Germany had not succumbed to the temptation of labelling social democrats the equivalent of fascists while completely alienating everyone outside of a particularly small section of the industrial working class, perhaps fascism might never have emerged—perhaps it would have only been a detail in the history of Italy in the 1910s. It is wise, then, to heed the warnings of history and to maintain a form of militant antifascist action based in tactical alliances and the spirit of friendship rather than vulgar self-interest and political bravado. Where fascism is proud, we must be humble. Where fascism is divisive, we must unite. Where fascism is weak, we must strike.

 

[1] The shock troops of the merciless anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, the Black Hundreds are widely seen today as some of the earliest formations of what would become the fascist movement, and it was none other than the famous writer Fyodor Dostoevsky who, with a co-author, would set out the platform of the “conservative revolution” followed by the later melding of the German “Patriotic movement” and Marxian theorists known as the National Bolshevik wing of the Nazi Party.

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Alexander Reid Ross teaches geography at Portland State University. He is the author of Against the Fascist Creep and the editor of Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab. His articles have appeared at sites like ThinkProgress, The Ecologist and the Cambridge University Strategic Initiative in Global Food Security. Project Censored recognized his work for Media Democracy in Action in Censored2016.

Alternative Right, Internet Racism, Uncategorized

Twitter and Reddit Are Now Banning the Alt Right

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The Alt Right is, fundamentally, a social media phenomenon.  The concept of the Alt Right has been around since 2010, a specific confluence of white nationalism influenced by various strands of thought including Neoreaction, Paleoconservatism, the European New Right, and so on.  The phenomonon of the Alt Right, as we know it today, is that of the popularization of those ideas, turning their racialism into Twitter trolls, snarky blogs, and annoying podcasts.  They have relied on Web 2.0 platforms like Twitter for publicity and SoundCloud for podcast hosting because it puts them on an equal footing with the giants of media opinion.

The only problem is that their racism violates every rule the platform has, giving them a finite life.  Over the last year many of their leaders have been banned from Twitter.  First, Milo Yiannoupoulos of Breitbart was shuttered for leading a racist harassment raid on actress Leslie Jones.  Later Ricky Vaughn was kicked off, and then Richard Spencer and many others.  Likewise, SoundCloud began dropping white nationalist podcasts like the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation, and PayPal severed their funding.  Though many of them are trying to make new platforms like Gab their home, they just aren’t going to happen in the public consciousness.

On Saturday, February 4th, Twitter just went through on a huge banning campaign.  They shut down Charles Johnson (AKA Reactionary Tree), the account for the newly form AltRight.com, Dr. Joyce, Murdoch/ Murdoch, and several dozen other Alt Right figures were dropped from Twitter.  This is the only way for them to break into the mainstream even a little bit, which is a huge hit to a movement that needs this trolling platform to find a place for itself.  Cuckservative gave it a boost, #AltRight gave it a name, and its ability to take racism viral is what made it relevant, and without platforms like Twitter it is almost as though it will cease to be.

At the same time, Reddit has begun the purge of Alt Right subreddits that have become a home for the ugliest racism on the Internet.  R/AltRight and R/AlternativeRight has been banned from the site, with R/The_Donald likely to be next.  What this shows clearly is that they are banning them based on ideological grounds, understanding that Alt Right online forums are where plans for doxing and harassment begin.

While the Alt Right is still larger than we ever could have imagined a few years ago, the last six months have been a brutal social attack on them, and they are reeling.

Uncategorized

Mike Enoch is Now Leaving His Wife After White Nationalists Admonish Him for Marrying a Jewish Woman

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The media has been a storm over the last several days as all the hosts of the Daily Shoah have been doxed, some by their own white nationalist comrades who did not believe their politics were pure enough, and others by antifascist organizers.  Mike Enoch was the last of these to be revealed as Mike Peinovich, a well-paid tech worker from Manhattan.  This revelation was done by a group no one had heard of using some of the information that Enoch has given away himself, as well as using an old PayPal address that he was raising money with.

What followed was a rampant series of articles from Salon, Forward, and others, all revealing the details about Mike Peinovich and his alleged job at a tech start-up (they denied he worked there, however).  At the same time, they revealed that Mike’s wife was partially Jewish and ran a YouTube channel with liberal politics, including support for LGBTQ people.  This is a surprise since his wife has appeared on the Daily Shoah, including reading a racist version of “Twas The Night Before Christmas” filled with racial slurs.

The Daily Shoah then put out a special episode where the hosts said that Mike was unavailable because he was in the process of separating from his wife.  Apparently, the opinions of Nazis on the Internet were enough to peer-pressure him into literally leaving his wife.  At the same time, they allege that his family has completely disowned him and that he is out of a job.  They are saying that this is going to make him come back to the show, likely because he has nothing left to lose.

This loss of anonymity is likely going to dissuade many others from getting involved in this type of project as few people want to get a divorce, lose their job, and get shunned by their family.

Anti-Fascism, Uncategorized

Anti-Racist Action of Columbus Plans Public Demonstration to Confront Neo-Nazi Activists with Ties to Central Ohio

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The Columbus chapter of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) held a public demonstration on Saturday, January 14th to confront Greg Anglin, a local business owner who served as the original registrant of The Daily Stormer, a nationally known neo-Nazi website, run by Greg’s son Andrew Anglin, a former resident of Worthington. Greg Anglin’s Worthington business address still receives donations for the site. Through The Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin is organizing and publicizing an armed white-nationalist march in Whitefish, Montana, home of white nationalist Richard Spencer, which was originally scheduled for Martin Luther King Day weekend, but has been postponed after the city of Whitefish rejected the group’s incomplete permit application. Anglin now says the march will likely take place in February. ARA went forward with its demonstration, which was originally planned to coincide with the armed march in Whitefish. Speakers included members of ARA and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ).

ARA and anti-fascist allies are urging community members to stand up against the hateful rhetoric that Anglin and his supporters promote. “We are taking action to send a clear message to hate groups from Worthington to Whitefish, that their dangerous, xenophobic agenda will not be tolerated”, said Timothy Philip, an ARA spokesperson.

  • WHO:     Anti-Racist Action of Columbus and Community Allies

  • WHERE:    6827 N. High St., Worthington, OH 43085

  • WHAT:    Demonstration Against Hate from Worthington to Whitefish

  • WHEN:    January 14th, 2017 at 1:00 P.M.

ARA is an international network of people from all walks of life who are dedicated to eliminating racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, and the most oppressed people.

Anti-Fascism, Donald Trump, Uncategorized

Massive Protests at Trump’s Inauguration Aim to Set a Tone of Resistance for the Coming Years

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Below is the press information that the “Media Working Group” of the DisruptJ20 organizing effort made available outlining the schedule of events for the inauguration day protests Washington D.C.

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Fully-Permitted “Festival of Resistance,” Checkpoint Actions, Unpermitted Marches, DisruptJ20 Action Camp
Press Events Scheduled this Week Include Access to a Sign-Making Session and a Nonviolent Direct Action Training at the DisruptJ20 Action Camp

Press Events / Photo Ops:
1) Wednesday, Jan 11, 6 PM – 7 PM, Art Event, sign making, banner painting, art, photo op
Tyghe Berry Studio, 1241 Evart Street NE, Washington DC
2) Thursday, Jan 12, 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM, Press Conference, get info on street protests
St Stephen’s Church Auditorium, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC
3) Saturday, Jan 14, 2 PM – 3 PM, Nonviolent Direct Action Training, workshop, photo op
SIS Building Atrium, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC

Washington DC — Activists and organizers are planning massive protests and acts of resistance throughout the week of the inauguration of Donald J. Trump on January 20. The DC Counter-Inaugural Welcoming Committee, also known as DisruptJ20, is planning a “Festival of Resistance,” a massive permitted, family-friendly march and rally on the 20th, as well as an unpermitted “Anticapitalist Bloc” march, protests at all twelve Secret Service security checkpoints, activist parties, and more. The goal is to give expression to the massive opposition to Trump’s right-wing, racist, and misogynist agenda. Organizers intend to demonstrate that people of conscience are the majority, and take steps towards organizing that sentiment into a force that can have an impact on Trump’s ability to claim a mandate, setting a tone of resistance for the coming years.
**Schedule of Protest Events is below.**

Three press events will help the media organize coverage for the protests of the Inauguration. At 6 PM on Wednesday, January 11, an art event will take place to give press a glimpse of the artistic and creative energies that will be expressed during the inauguration week of resistance. At 9:30 AM on Thursday, January 12, a press conference will give media access to activists and organizers planning some of the most memorable and disruptive events of the week. At 2 PM on Saturday, January 14, an open nonviolent direct action training will allow press to see activists in a hands-on training to learn how to engage in civil disobedience and safely risk arrest.

Beginning at 9 AM on January 20, McPherson Square in downtown Washington DC will be a DisruptJ20 staging area and rallying point for many marches, as well as spontaneous, unpermitted events. An unpermitted, anticapitalist march will begin at 10 AM in Logan Circle. A fully-permitted DisruptJ20 march will begin at 12 PM at Columbus Circle and march to McPherson Square. Another permitted march organized by Occupy Inauguration will start from Malcolm X Park (often called Meridian Hill) and march downtown to McPherson Square join DisruptJ20. McPherson Square will contain tents, portable toilets, a stage, sound system, signage, a medic area, food donations, and other amenities. More unpermitted actions are likely to occur at some point after 3 PM and continue into the evening.

Colorful disruptions will occur right at the Inaugural Parade Route. DisruptJ20 organizers have identified twelve checkpoints that participants will have to pass through in order to attend the inaugural festivities. To call attention to the many threats faced by people and planet, each of these twelve checkpoints will be the site of an issue-specific protest. Issues will include racial justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+, antiwar, immigrant and border justice, labor, climate, and other issues.

Each checkpoint protest is being organized by a group or set of groups in collaboration with DisruptJ20. In the past, each checkpoint has included metal detectors, police officers, the Secret Service, and national guard. Details and logistics are still being pulled together for these twelve actions, and information will be released publicly as soon as possible.

DisruptJ20 is also coordinating mass housing for activists from out of town, legal support for arrestees and others, medic teams to be present in the street, de-escalation teams to respond to conflict, media teams to relay current information, gathering spaces for activists, and more. Information such as welcome packets, maps, and event calendars will be distributed to the press and public.

Many groups are allied with DisruptJ20 in sending a clear message during the J20 week. A climate-specific day of action will occur on Thursday, January 18, culminating in a Earth2Trump Roadshow with performers and speakers. Antifascist groups are planning a protest at the “Deploraball,” a Trump celebration planned by white supremacists, Nazis, and rape apologists on January 19 at the National Press Club. The ANSWER Coalition is planning a large rally on January 20. A #Trump420 event planned by the DC Marijuana Justice Coalition will feature people handing out marijuana joints. Through the evening, the Peace Ball, the UnNagural, and the Unity Ball will all provide entertainment, music, and libations while standing opposed to Trump’s agenda. The All in Service DC campaign has coordinated, during the lucrative weekend, for bars and restaurants to give donations to local nonprofits serving at-risk communities. The People’s Inaugural Ball on January 20 and People’s Inauguration on January 21 are being planned by #StayWokeAndFight with Howard University to call for racial justice. The Women’s March on Washington will occur on Saturday, January 21.

From January 14 to January 16, DisruptJ20 will hold the DisruptJ20 Action Camp, a series of trainings and workshops in DC to prepare people for upcoming actions, particularly those around the Inauguration. The trainings aim to provide space for participants to collectively analyze and discuss why resistance and action is important under the Trump administration, how we can resist, and what future our actions are building towards.

More releases of information from the DisruptJ20 Media Team are forthcoming, and there will be a press conference call on the evening of January 20 to provide information on the day’s activities. Please visit our DisruptJ20 Media page if you wish to sign up to receive these releases.

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SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

We are organizing a week of trainings, actions, and events leading up to the mobilization on January 20th. Below you will find details about these events as well as convergence space for the week starting with January 14th.
January 14-16th – Action Camp
Jan 14 – 15th – American University, 10am-7pm
Jan 15th – Action Spokes Council
Jan 16th – St Stephens, 1525 Newton St NW, 10am-7pm
January 15th – Trade Justice blockade webinar – http://tradejustice.net/11517
January 17-19 – Convergence Space
Food, daily NVDA trainings, Affinity group meetings, spokes councils
St Stephens, 1525 Newton St NW, 9am-6pm
January 18 -21st- Climate Convergence
January 19th – Deploraball
January 20th –
Early Morning – Blockades Action
9am – Outdoor Convergence Space @ McPherson Square opens
10am – Anti-Capitalist Anti-Fascist Bloc @ Logan Circle
12pm – Festival of Resistance, permitted march starting @ Columbus Circle
2pm – Rally at McPherson Square

Alternative Right, Anti-Fascism, anti-semitism, Neo-Nazi, Uncategorized

Montana Antifa Calls for Supporters to Contact Whitefish Hotels and Tell Them About Incoming Nazis

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As incoming neo-Nazis organized by Andrew Anglin and the Daily Stormer promise to descend on Whitefish, Montana, Montana Antifa is one of the organizations creating the counter-demonstration.  While Love Lives Here has been doing the base-building work of organizing the community against the anti-Semitic and racist harassment they have endured for weeks, they are not going to engage with the skinheads and Alt Righters who are promising to march through the streets with automatic weapons.  Montana Antifa, among others, is taking up that role, and right now they are doing a blitz on regional Whitefish and Flathead Valley hotels to let them know that Nazis may be trying to book stays with them and that they should prohibit those groups from taking refuge in their facility.

In a recent statement from Montana Antifa:

IMMEDIATE ACTION. Read this carefully and closely: NO THREATS, NO HOSTILITY, AS OF RIGHT NOW NONE OF THESE HOTELS HAVE DONE ANY WRONG. We’re asking that you call into the hotels on this list and express these two concerns:

1.) Concern that the hotels would assist Nazi insurgents by sheltering them and allowing them a base from which to commit their evil acts.

2.) Concern for the safety of the hotel, hotel staff, and guests in light of armed thugs setting up a base of operations in the hotel intending to do harm to the community.

STRESS THESE POINTS:
-There is a planned armed March by Neo-Nazis in Whitefish
-They are planning on bringing in a force of Neo-Nazi skinheads from California who are likely to be armed
-These are dangerous people intending to harm the neighboring communities in a public action with heavy media coverage.

PLEASE DO NOT:
-Threaten the hotel
-Insult the person answering the phone or the hotel
-Make ANY “or else” statements
-Harass the hotels
-Go off on a tirade
-Ask if they have Battletoads 2

Be respectful, respectable, and conduct yourselves smartly.

HAVE FUN, OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY:

Kalispel

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(406) 257-7719

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(406) 751-5050

Quality Inn
(406) 755-6700

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Kalispell Grand Hotel
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Best Western Plus Flathead Lake Inn And Suites
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Homewood Suites by Hilton Kalispell, MT
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Glacier Ridge Suites
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Colombia Falls: Meadow Lake Resort
Phone:(406) 892-8700

North Forty Resort
Phone:(406) 862-7740

Cedar Creek Lodge
(406) 897-7070

Glacier Inn Motel
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The River Rock Hostel
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Meadow Lake View
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Western Inn and Campground
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Bad Rock Bed and Breakfast
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Glacier Mountain Lodge
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Donald Trump, Re-Posted, Uncategorized

Trump The Fascist

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Note: This article is republished from its original location, published first August 25th, 2015.  We think that it continues to be important now seeing Trump heading into the White House.

by Alexander Reid Ross

The White Power Candidate?

An impressive amount of light is being shed on the current presidential candidates, and Donald Trump in particular, revealing the ugly face of fascism in the US. In late June, the most popular US neo-Nazi news website, The Daily Stormer, fully endorsed Trump. Editor of The Daily Stormer Andrew Anglin writes, “[Trump] is certainly going to be a positive influence on the Republican debates, as the modern Fox News Republican has basically accepted the idea that there is no going back from mass immigration, and Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people. He is also willing to call them out as criminal rapists, murderers and drug dealers… I urge all readers of this site to do whatever they can to make Donald Trump President.” A particularly high amount of attention has been placed on the fact that someone in the audience shouted “White power!” at Trump’s recent speech in Alabama, but what did Trump actually say during that speech?

To the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama,” Trump struts to the stage at the stadium in the majority-black city of Mobile—a Northern businessman in one of the major port cities in the Gulf of Mexico with a significant Civil War history. He seems to handle himself with all the bravado it takes for a white man from Queens, New York, who the Nation has likened to an oligarch, to ramble through what seemed like a largely ad-libbed speech for fifty minutes before an all-white crowd of an anticipated 40,000 Southerners.

The speech begins with Trump comparing himself to Billy Graham, a leader of the Moral Majority who took cues from the infamous “Jayhawk Nazi,” Gerald Winrod. By minute two of his speech, Trump declares that just last week, a 66 year-old woman was “raped, sodomized, tortured, and killed by an illegal immigrant. We have to do it. We have to do something. We have to do something.” The crowd erupts in enthusiastic applause. The US, according to Trump, is immediately beset on all sites by immigrants who pose a clear and present danger to the security of each and every white, God-fearing American citizen—“The people that built this country. Great people.”

In true populist fashion, Trump calls himself a “non-politician,” insisting that he served jury duty recently, and refused to put “politician” as his occupation. He is an outsider, the common man like us. “I know the game,” he tells us. He doesn’t rely on lobbyists, because he’s “built a great business.” Trump shifts his focus to a celebration of Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who walks onto the platform for a cameo appearance with his very own “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. Those hats are “hotter than pistols,” speaketh the Trump (“They’re made in America,” he reassures us). Sessions has declared that the opinions of climate scientists offend him, so in Trump’s world, he’s one of the good guys. Trump, however, is an unconventional leader, not a politician. In his speech, he calls for expedited elections. “Can we do that?” And then in his best manbaby impression: “I don’t wanna wait!”

Returning to the Pre-Reconstruction South

Someone brandishes an “original” copy of The Art of the Deal, one of Trump’s books, and he goes gaga; “That’s when they used real paper, right?” The crowd accepts the triumph of the paper mill—a great irony given the forest fires currently raging through millions of charred acres of Pacific Northwest rainforest, choking the air of hundreds of thousands of people. Unlike Portland, Oregon, however, the only scent of scorched earth in Mobile, Alabama, is that strange whiff of pre-Civil War nostalgia that still musters a tear for Old Dixie.

After insisting that “We’re going to build a wall” and warning that “seven and a half percent of all births are from illegal immigrants,” Trump rapidly moves on to issues of revitalizing the South by rescinding the Fourteenth Amendment. “The Fourteenth Amendment, I was right on it, you can do something with it, and you can do something fast.” What is Trump’s target here? The Fourteenth Amendment is the civil rights amendment drafted after the Civil War out of a compromise between supporters of abolition democracy and Northern industrialists who disliked the idea of racial equality. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This amendment established the basis of citizenship and the right to vote for black people in the South. Before the amendment, a politician who supported Reconstruction by amendment named Alfred Ronald Conkling declared, “[the] emancipated multitude has no political status. Emancipation vitalizes only natural rights, not political rights. Enfranchisement alone carries with it political rights, and these emancipated millions are no more enfranchised now than when they were slaves. They never had political power. Their masters had a fraction of power as masters.” The Fourteenth Amendment sought to enfranchise black voters, and to be treated “like Magna Charta as the keystone of American legislation,” in the words of one of its framers. Still, the Fourteenth Amendment came as a compromise to afford blacks various rights without engineering a far more liberatory, systemic undertaking.

By opposing the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump represents the nefarious tradition of Northern Republicans who split with the Reconstruction-era movement to spread equal rights to all citizens of the US. These industrialists sided with Southern racists to undermine Reconstruction through extreme violence, sparking the menace of the Ku Klux Klan. Agreeing with Southern Democrats that those who believed in public education and abolition democracy were mere “carpetbaggers” and “scalliwags,” these Northern industrialists turned their backs on Southern black voters and the project of Reconstruction, which ended finally in 1876 when Rutherfurd B Hayes won the election by agreeing to withdraw US troops from the South and allow “states rights” governance. As historian Leonard Zeskind explains in Blood and Politics, the history of resistance against Reconstruction marks an important tradition for white supremacists, from the anti-civil rights movement to Humphrey Ireland (also known as Wilmot Robertson and Sam Dickson) to David Duke, who would have won the race for Governor of Louisiana but for the black vote. A former Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Klan, Duke supports Trump for president, saying “he’s certainly the best of the lot,” and he “understands the real sentiment of America.”

Trump does not even have to mention black voters in the South; he merely points to the stopgap measures of the Reconstruction period as the problem that keeps the US from returning to its former glory. This position is presented on Trump’s new baseball caps, which proudly state, “Make America Great Again.” This sort of American Renaissance would occur by expelling immigrants and returning to pre-Reconstruction South. It is only after establishing these points that Trump moves to the global trade question, which he simplifies largely to the field of US-East Asia geopolitics.

“I’m a Free Trader”

The Chinese have stolen America’s future, Trump bleats, and it’s the US’s fault for allowing them to do it. The political careerists in power must be thrown out, and replaced with Trump’s “killers,” “mean” guys, economic hit men who know how to broker big, merciless deals with the Chinese. Trump presents himself as a “free trader,” but also states that he will reverse the economic order by applying a 35 percent import tax on all imports from Mexico to keep Ford and Nabisco in the US. This position of tariffs within free trade systems seems to fall close to what Nuremberg prosecutor Franz Neumann, in referring to the Nazi Party, called “a perverted liberalism.”

Most evident in his economic platform is Trump’s willingness to take shots at companies who have run afoul of his propaganda enterprise in the past. Trump tells us that Sony “has lost its way. Prices are too high,” which may have less to do with Sony’s balance sheet, and more to do with the feud that he got into with Sony late last year when Trump insisted that the multinational corporation based in Japan has “no courage, no guts” after they withdrew the film, “The Interview,” due to threats from hackers. The row went as far as Trump calling for Amy Pascal to quit her position of co-chairman due to “stupidity issues” when news came out that she consulted with Al Sharpton.

As he expands on his ideas, Trump’s outlook on international relations seems increasingly informed by similar personal beefs. He claims to appreciate the Saudis for spending tens of millions of dollars on real estate with him. However, he claims that “they wouldn’t be there without our protection.” Similarly, we receive little in exchange for “28,000 troops we have at the border between North and South Korea,” except for that “they take our trade. We loose a fortune with them. We loose a fortune with China.”

Confronting the flight of support from his campaign after he made racist remarks, Trump declares that he is suing Univision for $500 million after the Mexico-based media company for dropping Miss USA, which Trump co-owns: “I want that money!” He regrets, he tells the audience, that Univision’s audience will miss the beautiful women of Miss Universe (“summer girls, but beautiful,” he tells the audience, stealing a line from the late-’90s boy band, LFO). Trump tells us that he is “not bragging” when he gloats that he has over $10 billion dollars with an income over $400 million. “I want to put that energy,” he explains, into the American public. His main points are to “make our country rich, and to make our country great again.” How can we do the latter without doing the former? It is at this point, which would appear to many to be one of the more innocuous moments, that an audience member begins to shout, “White Power!” A cry which Trump seems to hear, but does not acknowledge (according to some reports, the slogan was heard more than once).

Flogging the Middle Class

In pinball fashion, Trump returns to China, which he claims is taking our jobs. “It’s almost as though they want us to just die,” he tells us with a faltering timbre in his voice. They’re his friends—those Japanese bankers who pay Trump rent—they’re “really smart,” but “we have dummies” who are “incompetent.” At the devaluation of the Chinese Yuan, Trump tells us that he hears “a sucking sound”—that noise discovered by Ross Perot in Mexico while NAFTA was in the works in 1991.

Like Perot, Trump makes a number of homages to the middle class. “I didn’t like ties so much, because they were made in China,” he tells the crowd, eliciting jocular approval. In other interviews, Trump has declared his disdain for hedge fund managers gutting the middle class, and called Hillary Clinton a “running dog.” Since Trump is independently wealthy, while Clinton is worth a mere $32 million, his candidacy is untainted by the special interest lobbyists in Washington, DC. “We’re a debtor nation,” the crowd is told, because the US does not negotiate well on the international stage. To fix this, Trump would use the “smartest, toughest, meanest, in many cases the most horrible human beings on earth. I know them all. They’re killers. They’re negotiators… I would put the meanest, smartest—we have the best people in the world, but we don’t use them, we use political hacks, diplomats[.]” Trump discusses his friend, Carl, who he characterizes as making “blood coming out of [his enemies’] eyes from hatred.” This macabre image was minted by Trump earlier this month in reference to his own feud with FOX’s Megyn Kelly, during which he stated that “there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her—wherever,” because she was so angry.

With these men in his charge, Trump declares, “I will rebuild our military. It will be so powerful that we won’t even have to use it. Nobody is going to mess with us.” Chants of “USA!” break out, and Trump silences the chorus with a jeremiad about “our vets” for whom “the senators up in Washington… have done nothing.” Responding to a commentator and referring to his standing in the polls, he insists, “We are tired of the nice people. I won on the economy; I won on jobs; I won on leadership by massive numbers. I won on all these categories. I said, ‘Why do we need an election? We don’t need an election. These are such important categories.’”

It’s in the Genes

In the final ten minutes, Trump surpasses all prior excesses. Describing a friend of his who “comes from a good family,” Trump asks the audience, “do we believe in the gene thing? I mean, I do.” A cry of “Yes!” comes from the stadium. Recalling the old eugenics comparison of stockbreeding, Trump states, “They used to say that Secretariat produces the best horses.” As Trump then goes through a list of accomplishments, including best-selling books and the show The Apprentice, he sticks his chin out in a move that can only be compared with a Mussolini. Trump then informs us that Generals Patton and MacArthur “are spinning in their graves,” because “we can’t beat ISIS.” Presumably, if anybody could “fire” ISIS, it would be the star behind The Apprentice.

At the end of the speech, Trump attunes his audience to anxiety: “We’re running on fumes. We’re not going to have a country left. We need to have our borders. We need to make great deals.” Regarding deals, Trump returns to the issue of Israel for which he asserts his love, but seems to believe is being abandoned by the US. Like numerous reactionary politicians, Trump avoids open anti-Semitism, throwing his support behind Israel while periodically getting in trouble with veiled anti-Semitic jokes like his recent gaff against Jon Stewart. He seems horrified that Iran “are doing their own policing.” This is “so sad,” he states, and then switches up the pace with one simple word: “Obamacare,” eliciting prompt roars of disapproval from the crowd.

After declaring his intention to rescind Obamacare, Trump begins to stump about “women’s health issues” bring about a couple of interesting minutes of awkward discomfort from the audience. He promptly switches to the lack of spirit, jobs, anything, and declares, “I am going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created… The American dream is dead, and I am going to make it bigger, stronger, and more powerful than ever before… And you’re going to love it, and you’re going to love your president.” As Trump steps away from the podium to the tune of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” having apparently reanimated a Frankensteinian monstrosity, he seems confident, and the crowd wildly applauds.

Analyzing the Speech

If we assess Trump’s political platform based on Cass Mudde’s rubric of the “populist radical right,” we can see both nativism and welfare chauvinism as the most important characteristics. If nativism is the emphasis on citizenship that traces familial lineage beyond simple birthright, and welfare chauvinism is the increase of the social wage for native citizens, then we’re inside Trump’s ballpark. While Trump is certainly a right-wing populist, there is more to his politics.

There can be no denying that Trump is nativist—in fact, he openly brags about mainstreaming the term “anchor baby,” forcing Jeb Bush to use it in order to keep up with xenophobia. However, Trump’s demonstration of a “free trade” platform with restrictive tariffs is anything but consistent, and he seems to paper over the awkward split with returns to the gimmick of “killer deals.” Tariffs would encourage companies to build factories in the US, he claims, putting more money and jobs into the working class, but would taxes go to public health care? Trump seems to indicate that increased revenue would go to the military, rather than the social wage. The military would then leverage its protection of Saudi Arabia and South Korea for financial support—in short, a protection racket. So the description of “welfare chauvinism,” or generating social programs for “native citizens” only, seems to be a stretch. Instead, Trump’s interesting mix of personalization of economic order and increased protectionism within a liberal, “free trade” framework seem to move more in kind with Mussolini’s framework.

“[Fascism] is not a matter of assembling any old government, more dead than alive,” Mussolini wrote. “It is a question of injecting into the liberal State— which has fulfilled tasks which were magnificent and which we will not forget—all the force of the new Italian generations[.]” This seems to keep with Trump’s insistence that he wants “to put that energy” of his own personal genius into the system that “is running on fumes.” Competitors like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are “low-energy people” and black youths have “no spirit,” but Trump is resilient and his cadre are high-impact killers.

When told that the two Boston men who urinated and beat a houseless Latino man with a metal pole were inspired by his words (“Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported”), Trump responded, “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.” He later tweeted that “We need energy and passion, but we must treat each other with respect. I would never condone violence.”

Although he claims to disavow violence, Trump’s repeated calls for exceptions from the ordinary juridical order echo the famous fascist “state of exception.” He calls on the crowd to support his impulse for extra-parliamentary aims, such as holding the elections early or not even holding elections at all, because “We are tired of the nice people.” Regarding the Fourteenth Amendment, he insists that we can “do something fast.” These impulses, matched with his personalization of economic policy, mark an important kind of leadership principle focused on his own gimmick of “deal making,” which only “the smartest, toughest, meanest, in many cases the most horrible human beings on earth” can understand. Trump would replace the incompetent “political hacks, diplomats” currently in power with his own energetic, vigorous, and ruthless crew. This rhetoric is mirrored by the words of important early fascists like Giovanni Papini—“those who hold power are of three types: the old, the incapable, the charlatans.” Trump’s people are virile and impressive, like Trump, himself. They evoke “blood coming out of her eyes from hatred.” And most of all: they want to help “make America great again.”

Holy Palingenesis, Batman!

Although there are numerous characteristics of fascism, many of which are contradictory, a minimal definition is provided by Roger Griffin: palingenetic ultra-nationalist populism. In lay terms, that means a kind of ultra-nationalist politics that calls for a rebirth of a former glory of the State. If “make America great again” holds as its referents the following:

1) Xenophobic focus on high immigrant birth rates and roving migrants raping and sodomizing elderly women;
2) Anti-Asian economic stance calling forth the image of intelligent-but-thieving Asian nations;
3) Anti-Civil Rights position decrying the unconstitutional burden of the Fourteenth Amendment;
4) A strange focus on genetic, familial heritage;
5) Anti-plutocratic politics coming from an oligarch;
6) Militaristic protectionism masquerading as liberalism; and
7) A political rhetoric devoted to energy and coming “back from the dead”

then it lands quite clearly in the tradition of ultra-nationalism known as “Americanism.” Each of these reference played its own special role during the 1960s backlash against the Civil Rights and labor movements, which after the election of Richard Nixon moved from political participation through the Wallace campaign of 1968 into various critical fascist organizations like the National Alliance and Liberty Lobby.

Is Trump a paleo- or neo-conservative? Not really. Is he a leftist? Absolutely not. But in his syncretic platform, he takes planks from both sides, from economic protectionism and anti-plutocracy to anti-immigrant and anti-civil rights rhetoric. Is he nostalgic for a bygone era? Yes, he is expressly nostalgic for that era that passed away with the Fourteenth Amendment and Reconstruction. Trump does not so much have an ideological position as a position of personal force and energy. He seeks “passion” for a new regime to beat the stale one and fill the existing system with renewed energy by eliminating the specter of rapist migrants given carte blanche by civil rights, and of course, making great deals.

Hence, while noting the complexity of fascist movements throughout history, it would be accurate to characterize Trump’s candidacy as lying within the “Americanist” tradition of fascism. Americanism began with the “America First” anti-interventionist group whose spokesperson was Charles Lindbergh, and continued through the American National Socialist Party under the leadership of George Lincoln Rockwell. While the American Nazi Party wore armbands, carried swastikas, and looked like brownshirts, the Americanist movement moved into a more astute appraisal of US politics forwarded by William Pierce and Willis Carto after the 1968 Wallace Campaign. America and Americans First has since been the banner of multifarious fascist groupuscles in the US, including JT Ready’s National Socialist Movement in Arizona. Although he may be stumping for this tendency without being fully aware of it, Trump may just be the most quintessentially “White Power” candidate that the Republican Party has seen for some time.

***

Alexander Reid Ross is a journalist and researcher based in the Pacific Northwest. He edited the anthology “Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab” (AK Press, 2014) and his forthcoming “Against the Fascist Creep” is due out soon also through AK. He is currently a lecturer in the Geography Department at Portland State University.

Alternative Right, Internet Racism, Uncategorized

How the White Nationalist Podcast the Daily Shoah is Trying to Trick PayPal

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The Daily Shoah has been one of the most popular Alt Right podcasts for the last three years, redefining the Alt Right culture with its internal jargon and snarky online troll behavior. They have stayed on the air and expanded by the regular donations of users. They had a PayPal account that they would receive donations from and, for some reason, they would read out the donations by name every week. This was starting to amount to several hundred dollars a week, that was until PayPal got wind of what they were doing.

Since their hate speech was a violation of PayPal’s Terms of Service, they banned them from using the service. This shuddered the Daily Shoah’s income source immediately and sent them scrambling, using strange libertarian services in other countries to basically receive and pay for things with BitCoin. They eventually just gave in and created another PayPal account, this time not listing it publicly and only telling its supporters and donors privately.

That PayPal account is done in violation of those Terms of Service, and is now servicing hundreds of donations a week, bringing them to one of the most well supported white nationalists publications around.

 

That account is StandardPoolCo@gmail.com.

 

If you want to let PayPal know exactly what the Daily Shoah is doing, that they have been banned before and are continuing to try to fund their white nationalist operation through PayPal, you can do this below.

Contact aupviolations@paypal.com to report the Daily Shoah and their violation of the Terms of Service.

Alternative Right, anti-semitism, Uncategorized

Why is Forward Still Employing Alt Right Writer Josh Seidel?

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A couple of months ago, as the Alt Right was getting its first rash of attention after the Hillary Clinton speech, an unknown writer named Josh Seidel published a story at the Jewish publication Forward illustrating that he was both a Jew and Alt Right.  He cited the need for white identity politics, restricted immigration, and a Trump victory, and it sent the actual Alt Right into an uproar.  The Alt Right as a white nationalist fascist movement is virulently anti-Semitic, naming the Jews as the primary enemies of the white race.  They then attacked Seidel for both being a Jewish infiltrator and clearly not understanding what the Alt Right was, and instead he was more of an Alt Liter.

We agree that he doesn’t get it, at least entirely.  For Seidel he seems to mean being iconoclastic and “edgy,” but his work was picked up in race realist publications like American Renaissance.  He loved this attention and went on to list American Renaissance on his Twitter, showing his allegiance to the publication and organization that believes that black people are genetically inferior to whites.  He has continued to claim victory for the Alt Right, and harasses leftists on Twitter in an attempt to bolster his own far right resume.

The question then comes up as to why, after a fascist movement has grown that has put Jews specifically in their crosshairs, has the Jewish publication Forward continued to prop up a self-described fascist?  This comes largely from the inability for many to actually realize the extent of the Alt Right’s fascist and racialist politics, especially their violent anti-Semitism.  It is time to tell Forward what is really going on here and to ask that they remove his content and cease to do business with Seidel.

You can contact the editors at Forward at the information below and tell them how you feel about them publishing a nationalist in a Jewish publication.  They are walking on the memories of the six million who were tortured and murdered in Europe, and we will not stand another pogrom.

Opinion Editor

Sigal Samuel

samuel@forward.com

Anti-Fascism, Donald Trump, Uncategorized

#DisruptJ20: Mass Action Called for January 20th, Donald Trump Inauguration Day

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#DisruptJ20: Call for a bold mobilization against the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017

On Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States. We call on all people of good conscience to join in disrupting the ceremonies. If Trump is to be inaugurated at all, let it happen behind closed doors, showing the true face of the security state Trump will preside over. It must be made clear to the whole world that the vast majority of people in the United States do not support his presidency or consent to his rule.

Trump stands for tyranny, greed, and misogyny. He is the champion of neo-nazis and white Nationalists, of the police who kill the Black, Brown and poor on a daily basis, of racist border agents and sadistic prison guards, of the FBI and NSA who tap your phone and read your email. He is the harbinger of even more climate catastrophe, deportation, discrimination, and endless war. He continues to deny the existence of climate change, in spite of all the evidence, putting the future of the whole human race at stake. The KKK, Vladimir Putin, Golden Dawn, and the Islamic State all cheered his victory. If we let his inauguration go unchallenged, we are opening the door to the future they envision.

Trump’s success confirms the bankruptcy of representative democracy. Rather than using the democratic process as an alibi for inaction, we must show that no election could legitimize his agenda. Neither the Democrats nor any other political party or politician will save us—they just offer a weaker version of the same thing. If there is going to be positive change in this society, we have to make it ourselves, together, through direct action.

From day one, the Trump presidency will be a disaster. #DisruptJ20 will be the start of the resistance. We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear. The parade must be stopped. We must delegitimize Trump and all he represents. It’s time to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and the world that sustains us as if our lives depend on it—because they do.

In Washington, DC

DC will not be hospitable to the Trump administration. Every corporation must openly declare whether they side with him or with the people who will suffer at his hands. Thousands will converge and demonstrate resistance to the Trump regime. Save the date. A website will appear shortly with more details. #DisruptJ20

Around the US

If you can’t make it to Washington, DC on January 20, take to the streets wherever you are. We call on our comrades to organize demonstrations and other actions for the night of January 20. There is also a call for a general strike to take place. Organize a walkout at your school now. Workers: call out sick and take the day off. No work, no school, no shopping, no housework. #DisruptJ20

Around the World

If you are living outside the US, you can take action at US embassies, borders, or other symbols of neocolonial power. Our allegiance is not to “making America great again,” but to all of humanity and the planet. #DisruptJ20

Spread the word. Join the fight. #DisruptJ20
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/disruptj20

Signed,

Agency
CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective
It’s Going Down subMedia
New York Anarchist Action
The Base
NYC Anarchist Black Cross
Pittsburgh Autonomous Student Network
Pittsburgh Student Solidarity Coalition
NightShade Pittsburgh
Pitt Against Debt
Pitt Students for a Democratic Society
Steel City (A) Team
UNControllables
Antifa Seven Hills
WNC Antifa
Asheville Anti-Racism
Black Rose Book Distro St. Louis
Resonance: An anarchist audio distro
Rose City Antifa
Torch Antifa Network Central Oklahoma Black/Red Alliance (COBRA)
Sprout Distro
New Wave Army
Puget Sound Anarchist Black Cross
Four Corners Antifa
killedbypolice.net
AK Press
PM Press Indigenous Action
Chicago Anarchist Black Cross
NYC Anarchist Book Fair
NYC ANARKOARTLAB
Autonomous Actions Against Prisons—Seattle
Antifa United
Denver Anarchist Black Cross
Loughborough Labour Party
Words as Weapons
Hackerñol
Stinney Distro
The Roosevelt Group
LeftSec/AnonAnarchistAction – i2p Darknet anarchohacker collective
Hispagatos – International hacking collective
Maryland Food Collective
Shades of Silence

Anti-Fascist News

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