Leif is a trans man who this spring faced off against gun-toting, full-on neo-nazis and other assorted armed transphobes trying to assault the audience at a Drag Queen Story Time in Wadsworth, Ohio.  Of course the police were there – to protect the nazis! When the transphobes tried to physically assault a group of children leaving the event, Leif (who was escorting the children) was bludgeoned in the attack and responded in self-defense, successfully repelling the attackers and protecting the children from physical harm. But of course, the cops decided to slap Leif and only Leif with multiple assault charges!

The evidence, including multiple videos taken of the attack, was obviously in Leif’s favor. He clearly acted in self-defense. Yet the police and prosecutors forced him to hire a lawyer and fight the charges in court. Leif had to set up a crowdfunder to help pay for his legal defense and after reaching out to us, The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund stepped in to make a contribution.

Last week, we got the good news that this was money well spent! Leif beat the assault charges in court earlier this week and happily accepted a plea deal and took a misdemeanor with zero jail time for reasons he explains here. We’re as happy as the fascists are mad that the assault charges got tossed and Leif gets to continue to live his best life, IN NO SMALL PART THANKS TO US!!!

BTW, Leif still has outstanding legal expenses to pay off, so if you feel like kicking in a bit to help him with that, you can do that right here. 

Just three days after the 2021 attempted insurrection on Capitol Hill, a mob of MAGA extremists, full-on neo-nazis, and assorted white supremacists ran wild in San Diego, beating a veteran wearing a George Floyd t-shirt, pulling knives on people, and attacking anyone showing any sort of resistance to their message of hate. That included a group of anti-fascists counter-protestors that did more to keep people in the community safe from violence than the police there that day.

In fact, the SDPD seemed there to enable the far-right goons to do as they pleased and only intervened when they could arrest someone unwilling to be victimized by the bigots. To-date, the only people charged for anything that day were anti-fascist counter-protestors.

This seems to be the doing of Summer Stephan, San Diego’s far-right District Attorney. Stephan has launched a witch hunt against “antifa” – charging 11 alleged anti-fascists with a litany of felonies while ignoring the overwhelming evidence of far worse violence being committed by the other side (who she no doubt counts as votes for her next term). Many of the defendants, facing bizarre conspiracy charges one would normally see in mafia trials, took plea deals. Some are currently serving prison sentences.

But not JW.

JW refused to bow down in fear to the overwhelming force of the state and their attempt to criminalize the self-defense of a community from hardcore bigots and extremists. He’s going to trial and he’s ready to fight and beat the charges. But his lawyer needed some help with some of the expenses involved in fighting the case. The Defence Fund was honor-bound to help out in any way we could and we look forward to JW’s press conference on the courthouse steps, after he beats the case.

Another week, another person out there defending the right of trans people to simply exist has to confront a mob of transphobic shitlords and winds up with charges from the transphobic shitlord-protecting police. This time in Sacramento, which some of you will recall was the place where police let nazis stab seven people and drop guns as they ran away, didn’t manage to charge a single nazi, but worked overtime to try to frame the antifascists targeted by the nazis, in collusion with the nazis themselves. So, no big surprise that this was the outcome of the policing efforts this time.

Still, that left our friend facing serious prison time. Given that he his the sole source of support for his disabled mom, he took a plea deal instead and will be doing about six months in prison. He reached out to ask for help paying off his court fees and providing for his mom while he’s locked up and, of course, we said “absolutely!”

Trans people shouldn’t face public hate rallies calling for their elimination.
People defending the rights of trans people to exist should wind up harmed or arrested for doing so.
We all need to stand with the people putting themselves in harm’s way to defend trans rights and answer their call when they need help.

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last two years, you may have noticed that far right extremists have shifted their apoplectic rage towards drag queens and trans people as of late. There have been hundreds of violent attacks on events featuring drag queens and events supporting trans people’s right to simply exist.

Case in point: a drag queen story time event in Wadsworth, Ohio this past spring. That event attracted heavily-armed bigots who happily implied to the media that their end goal was the lynching the “degenerates,” along with swastika-flag waving, gun toting, seig heiling nazis (pro tip to transphobes: when nazis are on your side, you’re definitely on the wrong side of history).

Most of us would stay home and let the event organizers, performers, and attendees fend for themselves. But not Leif. Leif put his body on the line defending people from the bigots’ physical violence, crucially intervening when the armed goons attacked people as they left the event.

Of course, the dozens of police on the scene doing nothing to protect people eventually stepped in to the altercation to make an arrest OF LEIF! Incredibly, despite the overwhelming evidence showing Leif acting in self-defense and in the defense of others, he’s the one now going on trial this month.

Defending people against murderous, bigoted thugs shouldn’t mean you end up facing prison time and thousands of dollars in legal fees. We’ve stepped in to help Leif defray those costs. You can too by contributing to Leif’s crowdfunder. You’re also always welcome to help us get emergency support to the people defending drag shows and countering transphobic hate by making a contribution to the Defence Fund.

Imagine going out for a drink with your mates and by chance picking a bar where high-ranking members of one of the most racist organizations in the country are socializing. If you’re like some of the friends of Offensive Antifasciste Bordeaux, you’d take that as the perfect opportunity to have a frank and honest exchange of views with the bigots of Rassemlement national (RN).

Unfortunately and before our five friends could really, really drive their points home, Bordeaux police intervened and as a result, charged and convicted them with various offences. Now, in addition to prison time, our friends face court fees, lawyer bills, and damages. The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund has intervened to help defray some of these costs and we stand with the heroes of Bordeaux for defending their preferred drinking spot from a fascist invasion. Never let them have the bar!

Andy Ngo is a one-trick pony. The guy just can’t stop trying to repeat his past success of making himself a victim to grift for $$$. More recently than the infamous milkshaking of this clown and liar, he once again tried to provoke a left-wing demonstration and wound up running back to his fancy hotel to hide, which of course he then used as the pretext to sue anyone he thought may have been at the protest he went to antagonize. In the hopes of suing them later. True, is probably preferable to when he was compiling hit lists for a neo-nazi terrorist organization, but still not cool.

Of course, on the other side of things, this meant that some of the leftists & anti-fascists Ngo was trying to sue in court for opposing him had to hire lawyers to defend themselves against this lawsuit. One of those people included a single mom who had to put up a crowdfunder to pay her lawyer. She reached out to the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund for support and how could we say no to contributing to a 0 in court for Andy’s score card?

And, at the end of the court proceedings, the board indeed read ANTIFA 1, ANDY 0. If our friend wasn’t able to hire competent legal representation, it could have gone the other way and she could have found herself having to pay this fucking Ngo troll $300,000USD.

The Defence Fund has proven this time and time again – when anti-fascists can afford good lawyers, they beat the cases against them in court. We’re help to help make sure every anti-fascist facing a trial has solid legal representation standing there with them. Please help us continue to do that.

It’s easy and fun to dunk on Ben Shapiro. Whether he’s suggesting homeowners in neighbourhoods going underwater thanks to climate change can just sell their houses or questioning whether women can get sexually aroused, Ben’s the king of self-owns.

But sometime he’s not just an amusing buffoon. Sometimes he and his pals from his far-right extremist current affairs site (no, not the far-right extremist current affairs site he used to be the editor of, the other one he started on his own) put on stunt events. Like earlier this year, when they hosted a “debate” in Pittsburgh about whether trans people have a right to exist.

As you can imagine, the good people of Pittsburgh (were NOT having it and hundreds of them showed up to try to shut it down. As you probably would have guessed, the police were out in full force to protect the transphobic stochastic terrorists from the people who did not want them to dehumanize trans people. Arrests were made, two of which reached out to us for some help with their legal defense which we were happy to provide. We hope their lawyers make a mockery of the prosecution’s case as easily as it is to make a mockery of anything Ben Shapiro believes.

Last month, the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund helped out an anti-fascist in Oregon after a confrontation with a neo-nazi “active club” member in Oregon City left the fash not-so active and the anti-fascist in handcuffs.

This altercation happened after right-wing groups assembled in Oregon City to protest an LBGTQ+ pride event. However, antifascists may have been the least of their problems that day, as the reactionary goons once again proved that no one hates fascists like other fascists. The protest turned embarrassing for the anti-trans and homophobic bigots when a crew of Portland, Oregon-based Proud Boys couldn’t keep track of who they were supposed to be protesting. They had a running beef with certain members of the local neo-nazi scene, and took the opportunity to attack members of the Rose City Nationalists (RCN), a crew also based in Portland that is part of the broader neo-nazi “active club” network.

While there is a certain entertainment value in watching fascists beat each other up, the police in Oregon City still opted to arrest and charge an antifascist in the midst of it all – one of many comrades who have suffered consequences for standing up to bigoted, authoritarian violence, and who need ongoing support. If you’d like to help us continue to help them, please consider donating to the Defence Fund.

Our Defence Fund shares a lot on common with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. Like them, we provide a LOT of legal defense support to anti-fascists facing trouble because of their anti-fascist work. In fact, the Atlanta Solidary Fund got its start in 2016 defending anti-fascists arrested after shutting down a KKK rally – something we also helped out with!

Lately, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been puttin’ in a ton of work defending Stop Cop City protestors, whose efforts to resist plans to build a sprawling, multimillion dollar, militarized police training complex in Georgia has been met with outrageous police brutality, trumped-up “terrorism” charges against 42 people, and the police murder of Manuel Paez “Tortuguita” Terán this past January. The police repression has already caught the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the National Lawyers Guild, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Nonetheless, the police continue to abuse and terrorize those opposed to the construction of their training megaplex. Their latest move: to arrest three Atlanta Solidarity Fund admins, charging them with “charity fraud” and “money laundering” for daring to collect contributions to help pay for protestors’ bail and legal defense.

This case has far-reaching implications – certainly for our own Defence Fund but also for any effort to raise money and resources to resist anything that police support. One can see how this is an attack on the constitutional rights of citizens to protest or show solidarity with protestors. More immediately to us: successful prosecution of these three would pave the way to shutting down our own anti-fascist fundraising operations.

Given that, our Defence Fund has made a sizeable contribution to the crowdfunder for the legal defense of the admins of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund – something that you can also do, if you think that criminalizing attempts to support public protest is wrong and defending those brave enough to publicly raise their voices in opposition to injustice is an important part of the society you want to live in.

The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund was established in June of 2015, when members of the Antifa International collective saw the need for a standing fund to be used to provide emergency support to antifascists when, as a result of their anti-fascist work, they were in trouble and needed immediate assistance.

Eight years on and the Defence Fund has provided emergency support to antifascists the world over, whenever they’ve faced dire circumstances resulting from their work thwarting bigotry and fascism. It remains the only international anti-fascist solidarity project we’re aware of that’s dedicated exclusively to supporting antifa in emergencies. To-date we have provided over $200,000USD in emergency aid to more than 700 antifascists in 25 different countries.

Since last June, we’ve intervened eighteen times to provide game-changing levels of support and material aid to two dozen antifascists in eleven different countries (Canada, Germany, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, and the US). This amounted to $42,310.23USD worth of support we’ve provided since June 2022.

83% of the funds disbursed since June 2022 went towards legal defence, court costs, fines, and prisoner support; 16% of contributions covered emergency relocation costs for antifascists who had been threatened at their homes by fascists. Repairing property damage accounted for the remaining funds disbursed over the last twelve months (1%).

This was money well-spent; our interventions helped save antifascists from life-altering circumstances they were facing, solely because of their public opposition to fascism. Over the last twelve months, we’ve helped antifascists in dire situations stay healthy, get to safety, and stay free. You can read about the people we’ve helped on our blog with two exceptions – an antifascist whose circumstance require us to not publicly reveal any details of their case, for security reasons; and one whose upcoming trial might be harmed by revealing any details.

The Defence Fund is operated by the Decisions Crew – a body of antifascists from around the world who have made contributions of at least $20USD to the Defence Fund. Decisions about how the Defence Fund operates are made via consensus wherever possible and by majority vote in circumstances where consensus is not forthcoming. In our first year, there were all of 45 Decisions Crew members. As of today, more than 1500 antifascists from 25 different countries have been invited to join the Decisions Crew.

As more and more places drop COVID restrictions altogether, we are seeing increasing numbers of clashes between far-right extremists and people opposed to their bigotry and violence. We fully expect this “return to normal” to result in a huge spike in requests for emergency support over the coming months – indeed, during the past two months alone the Defence Fund handled five different request for help from eleven anti-fascists and sent out $22,500USD worth of emergency aid in response. In order to be prepared to offer as much support as possible, there is currently an urgent need to build our reserve fund back up, so it’s put to use as effectively as possible when called upon.

We are extremely proud of the work we’ve done with The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund and we firmly believe it has proven itself as one of the most effective ways to support antifascism. We strongly encourage anyone opposed to bigotry and fascism to make a contribution to the Defence Fund today and become actively involved in our project of international antifascist solidarity!