Obligatory disclaimer: remember that if it's not about
you then it's not about
you.
-
Nice Nasty White Liberals seem to be having difficulty grasping the idea that non-white* people shouldn't be under neo-Nazi-imposed house-arrest, with a potential death penalty for defying curfew, every time far-right hate groups preaching genocide want to gather in our home areas to radicalise young white men as violent extremists. This isn't hypothetical. It has happened in my country repeatedly during my lifetime and is still happening now. So let me say this in words difficult to unintentionally misunderstand....
Fascists without anti-fascists result in extreme violence and genocides.
Anti-fascists without fascists result in ~literally nothing but let's call that absence peace~./waits while the usual NWLs respond with their typical moral panic in favour of neo-Nazi ~freedom~
P.S. Do feel ~free~ to hit me up with logical fallacies, I always enjoy the 7648478164734253th round of explaining that anti-fascism isn't a "slippery slope" and people who spent several years murdering fascists during the Second World War didn't come home and do the same here because they were busy building social housing and the National Health Service, those bloody commies!
P.P.S. Always lolzy when
random people in comments on a celebrity gossip website are less racist than NWL faketivists.
* Yes, the far right attack other groups of people too, and I don't think y'all are ignorant enough to need a list. Some of us are more visible than others and in recent history here the targets have disproportionately been non-white people, (mostly non-white) Muslims, and exceptionally visible non-cis-het-gender-conforming gay men and (trans)women. If I lived elsewhere in the world then that list would be different. Clearly there are other attacks on the same communities such as the arguably ethnic nationalist IRA incidentally blowing up Bevis Marks synagogue... twice... but the IRA aren't fascists.
- I CBA any more so
here are some simply worded quotes on the praxis of anti-fascism from
the work of another (this is not an endorsement of every word libcom.org has ever published, obv):
• Antifa's predecessors [...] can be seen in the mass mobilisation against Mosley's Blackshirts in Cable Street, East London, as well as less famous mobilisations in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Hulme and Stockton.
They are the 43 Group and the 62 Group, Jewish-led organisations who took it upon themselves to smash Mosley's attempts to reorganise after the Second World War. They are in the mass mobilisation of locals in Lewisham, South East London, in 1977, the Southall Youth Movement who fought skinheads in the streets, and Anti-Fascist Action, who regularly routed fascists throughout the country from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s. [spiralsheep's note: also the Anti-Nazi League, Unite Against Facism, and even Rock Against Racism, amongst many other political tendencies and tactical blocs, including squads such as the legendary Sari Squad in the 1980s.]
• [...] physical defeats led to increased divisions in the far-right, mutual recriminations and, most importantly, a puncturing of the invincible street-fighter image these groups like to cultivate for themselves.
Of course they will try and spin every defeat as them being victimised. But, they would just as much spin any unopposed march as a successful show of force, especially if they go searching for targets afterwards, as they have done in the past; 'ignore fascists until they go away' only works if you have the privilege of being ignored by them as well.
• [...] mass anti-fascist mobilisation can shut down fascists without being 'the most brutal'. In Liverpool, fascists ran to hide in a train station's left luggage department after being outnumbered 10-to-1. In Brighton, fascist marches have been made impossible without heavy police escort due to mass local opposition.
• There is nothing wrong with denying fascists a platform, whether these be rallies, demonstrations, public meetings or debates. Fascists use their platforms to build strength and, as they grow stronger, to attack their opponents.
We are not duty-bound to give fascists somewhere to spread their hate.
• [...] anti-fascists often are involved in activity beyond 'anti-fascism' whether that be migrant solidarity, union organising, anti-police-violence or whatever else. They hold film screenings, concerts and football tournaments. [...]
If people are prepared to put their lives and safety on the line to resist fascism that's a choice which should be celebrated. Community self-defence can create space for other organising to happen, whereas unopposed fascists will happily crash and disrupt left meetings and organising. [spiralsheep's note: And "crash" individual people's lives.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
