![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/08/10/1.jpg\")
Anti-fascists in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.
\nSeven years ago, anarchists and other anti-fascists converged in Charlottesville, Virginia to oppose the “Unite the Right” rally. The organizers of the rally intended to bring together Klansmen, neo-Nazis, far-right militias, and fascists from the so-called “alt-right” to build a unified white supremacist street movement.
\n\nFascists had already been building momentum in the streets for a year. The rally was poised to establish them as a legitimate pole in United States politics. If that succeeded, millions of Donald Trump’s supporters might join them. All that the organizers of “Unite the Right” had to do was get through the weekend without incident.
\n\nA few hundred brave people set out to stop them. The anti-fascists were outnumbered, underprepared, and terrified.
\n\nIt’s important to remember this today—first, because the Trump era is not over. As exhausting and demoralizing as it is, we still face the same threats and challenges we confronted seven years ago, and the outcome remains as uncertain today as it was then. Revisiting the events in Charlottesville illuminates the stakes of our current struggles—when fascists are less active in the streets, but are seeking to take control of the entire country through the apparatus of the state. At the same time, the outcome of the events in Charlottesville shows how much a small number of courageous people can accomplish by putting their lives on the line when it counts, even when victory seems impossible.
\n\nWe present here a review of the events, drawing on the recollections of some of those who were on the front lines.
\n\n Anti-fascists in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.
\nThe 2016 Trump campaign had emboldened fascists of all stripes. Coming out of Trump’s electoral victory, many fascists adopted a strategy in which they targeted locations they considered to be liberal hotspots, such as Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon.1 In some ways, this approach was savvy: in a polarizing political context, in which hatred of the other was among the chief motivations of their potential supporters, it enabled them to seek recruits by provoking and caricaturing their opposition.
\n\nAt first, the strategy bore fruit for them. On April 15, 2017, fascists rampaged through Berkeley, recording video footage of themselves beating people to use for recruiting purposes. In retrospect, we can identify that day as the high point of their campaign targeting the Bay Area.
\n\nCharlottesville is a liberal college town in Virginia. Pursuing the same strategy his colleagues had employed in Berkeley, the suit-and-tie fascist Richard Spencer led a torch-lit rally in Charlottesville on May 13, 2017 protesting the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Seeking to forge ties between various brands of Nazis and white nationalists, Spencer’s supporters organized another rally for August 12.
\n\nOn the night of August 11, hundreds of fascists who had arrived early participated in a surprise torch-lit march through the streets of Charlottesville. At the conclusion of the march, they attacked a small number of counterdemonstrators at the foot of the statue of Thomas Jefferson while the authorities looked on passively.
\n\nWatching footage of the march and the attacks with which it concluded, many people around the United States suddenly understood the threat. The situation was even more frightening for people in Charlottesville itself.
\n\nI am one of the people who went to Charlottesville to shut down the “Unite the Right” rally.
\n\nOn the night of the 11th, many of us went to UVA [University of Virginia at Charlottesville] campus to see if there was something we could do and independently arrived at the conclusion that it was not the night to engage with those fuckers in the way that they deserved. We decided that we just had to take the loss for twelve hours and pin our hopes on the next day. Later that night, there were arguments, accusations of cowardice, recriminations, second-guessing. Personally, I felt that all that would have happened would have been that we would have gotten completely fucked up and possibly worse, making it even less likely that there would be enough people on hand for the day of the rally itself.
\n\nI remember somebody saying that some UVA employee in a uniform told them, “You all should get out of here. If they go after you, we’re not going to be able to do anything about it.” That was a classic cowardly law-enforcement thing to say. At the same time, it was not factually untrue.
\n\nOn the other hand, the night of the 11th, someone I didn’t know at a meeting I participated in said that his best advice for the next day was to “Fake it till you make it.”
\n\nThat was basically what we did.
\n\nI did not sleep on the night of August 11, 2017. I was certain that some of us were going to die the next day.
\n\nMy friends and I had traveled to Charlottesville in order to put a stop to the “Unite the Right” gathering. We had just returned from the campus of the University of Virginia, and based on what we had seen, I felt that there was no chance that the next day was going to end without bloodshed.
\n\nOn that night, if a necromancer had presented me with the following prophecy, I am sad to say that I would have accepted it with relief:
\n\n“One of you will die tomorrow, but your opponents will leave town in disarray. Public opinion will turn sharply against them both locally and nationally. They will cannibalize each other and this event will be remembered as the nadir of the Trump administration. In three years’ time, young people will topple the government that these murderers serve.”
\n\nThe truth is, I was certain that we were in for something much worse than that. I lay awake until dawn, running through scenarios in my mind. Then I got up and prepared to go confront the fascists.
\n\nLooking back afterwards, one anarchist who was in Charlottesville recounted,
\n\n\n\n\nFriday night seriously shook people, but it probably made us more determined and smarter on Saturday. I almost want to say wiser. We knew exactly what kind of victory we needed to deny them, and we knew we would have to do it without the advantage of physical superiority.
\n
On August 12, angry locals, religious leaders, and other opponents of fascism squared off against the fascists amassing in downtown Charlottesville. Police looked on, permitting intense confrontations to take place between the two groups without doing anything. Anti-fascists found themselves in a volatile and perilous situation.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/08/10/3.jpg\")
State troopers guarding the fence around the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.
\nI had no interest in dealing with an out-of-state gun charge or getting into a situation in which I might be tussling with police with a gun in my pants. Those are two things I prefer to avoid under any circumstances. For that reason, I left my gun in my vehicle on the morning of the 12th. But later that morning, as it became inescapably clear what sort of situation we were dealing with, I went back and got it. At that point, I was less concerned about an out-of-state gun charge than I was about being unprepared for something worse.
\n\nNever before or since have I been involved in a day so fucked up that I sincerely felt that the least-bad option was to be messing around with a gun in a chaotic situation involving United States police officers. Not only did it feel certain that some of us were going to die, I also feared that it was entirely possible that one of us might have no choice other than to employ lethal force.
\n\nThere were quite a few anti-fascists with guns that day, not all of them open-carrying. One of the under-reported aspects of the day was that a large number of anti-fascists exhibited a fair degree of restraint and decent situational awareness in regards to gun safety. Many of us will always regret not managing to be in the right place at the right time to stop the fascist who killed Heather Heyer, but it’s easier to perpetrate a mass casualty incident than it is to prevent one. Despite the considerable stress and uncertainty of the situation, no one on our side has anything to regret in that department.
\n\nBy contrast, there was one neo-Confederate guy who fired his gun in the immediate vicinity of the crowd. That did not speak highly of his judgment. If we did not kill anyone, it was because we decided not to, despite having been directly provoked.
\n\nUltimately, the street confrontations forced public officials to rescind the permit for the “Unite the Right” rally, and the same police officers that the fascists had been courting were forced to drive them out of the park in which they were gathered. This aroused consideration agitation and dismay among the participants in the rally, who had hoped to hold an orderly event while projecting an image of strength.
\n\nIn a subsequent interview, one anarchist who fought in Charlottesville argued that the rally was defeated by the diversity of tactics that anti-fascists employed and by the contradictory goals of the participants:
\n\n\n\n\nUnite the Right was all about image. They wanted three things: to look like victims of antifa/”SJW” aggression, look like friends of the police, and look like they were winning the physical battle in the streets. I think all those wires got crossed in Charlottesville because of the diversity of their opposition…
\n\nA lot of these alt-right people are scared of confrontation, even though they fantasize about power. You could tell that made it hard for them to psychologically switch gears; by the time they figured out how to deal with one kind of counter-protestor, the situation had changed and they had to go back to square one. They had to think too hard. They didn’t know if they were going to get punched or prayed at. And the whole time, they’re getting pelted with paint balloons, and they just look silly.
\n\nThen you had macho types who reacted to that paralysis by just going ham, charging in swinging by themselves. That was scary, because these were big dudes who understood violence, but it didn’t really serve their larger goals, and they lost fights because we would surround them and beat them back. It didn’t help those guys that their official rally was up a hill behind barricades.
\n\nFinally, there were the guys in full-on riot gear, plexiglass shields and clubs and face-shields, stuff like that. They had a hard time early in the day, marching into the park, because they couldn’t figure out what kind of confrontation they were in; they wanted to beat us up but they wanted it to look like our fault, and they came out worse on both counts. Later, they regrouped, and it seemed like they were ready to crack some skulls in a more paramilitary style—charge out of the park in formation and just trample whoever was in their way. I think that would have happened more if the rally had gone on longer, because they were starting to give up on the whole image thing. We should have had more tools to obscure their vision and keep them at a distance. But the cops dispersed the rally before it went there. I think we can take some credit for that.
\n\nThis sounds weird, but I think anarchists might have better discipline than Nazis, at least in this kind of situation. Fascists had the advantage when things were really scripted, and a lot of them would have had the advantage in a one-on-one fight, but they were just clumsy when it came to navigating a complex situation. I guess I mean self-discipline. But it has this real communal aspect to it, because we actually care about each other and pay attention to each other, like not just our cliques and affinity groups, but also strangers. You can’t fake that. You can’t squeeze that out of an authoritarian ideology.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/08/10/4.jpg\")
Anti-fascists tore down the fences protecting the “Unite the Right” rally, ultimately compelling officials to cancel the permit for the event.
\nThe urgency of the situation drove many people to take risks that they would not ordinarily have taken.
\n\nThe standard liberal narratives—”Don’t feed a cycle of violence” and “Leave the police to handle public safety”—strike me as particularly out of touch with reality in relation to what happened in Charlottesville. First, the police told us on Friday night that when push came to shove, they were not going to be protecting anyone if doing so actually meant putting themselves in harm’s way. We’ve seen the same thing in Uvalde since then. Second, it seemed very clear to me that if the fascists got away with doing this in Charlottesville, they would be doing the very same thing in my own town soon thereafter. I felt like, Well, I guess it’s better that we do this now in Virginia, or we’re just going to be even more screwed when we have to do it at home a month from now.
\n\nFrom my perspective, throughout the weekend, everyone who took on the rally sort of shared a sense that we had not voluntarily picked that fight. It wasn’t easy to tell either by appearance or by people’s actions who was from Charlottesville and who was from somewhere else.
\n\nBullies and sadists frequently get themselves into trouble by underestimating their opponent and overestimating their own strength, whereas people who—for whatever reason—become psychologically accustomed to being bullied or dominated can get themselves into trouble by overestimating their opponent and underestimating themselves. In Charlottesville, the fascists took us lightly, and it didn’t work out for them.
\n\nIn a subsequent retrospective, participants in the events in Charlottesville argued that the police only took action after it became clear that the fascists could not win on their own:
\n\n\n\n\nDuring the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the police largely stood back and let the confrontations play out. They only interceded to declare an unlawful assembly and clear the park when anti-fascists forced their hand, after the city and state authorities had announced a State of Emergency. This is consistent with a pattern that goes back at least a century. When white supremacists have the upper hand, police tend to give them free rein; when anti-fascists gain the advantage, police step in aggressively.
\n\nAfter Unite the Right, Charlottesville police faced a great deal of criticism for their hands-off handling of the demonstration. The response of police departments around the United States has been to shift to a more aggressive strategy involving massive multi-agency mobilizations and preemptive crackdowns.
\n
Had the police been sufficiently prepared for the situation in Charlottesville, the rally would have gone through as planned—and as a consequence, a great deal more violence might ultimately have taken place.
\n\nA tragedy took place in Charlottesville that day, nonetheless. That afternoon, as angry neo-Nazis and Klansmen fanned out from the park, James Alex Fields, a participant in the fascist mobilization, drove a car into a crowd of people, killing Heather Heyer and grievously injuring nineteen other people.
\n\nNothing could make up for the loss of Heather’s life. Many more people could easily have died in that attack; as it is, its consequences linger in the lives of hundreds of people. We honor Heather’s courage and the courage of all the others who knowingly put themselves in harm’s way that day for the sake of protecting others.
\n\nIn 2024, the place where Heather Heyer lost her life remains a place of memory, mourning, and calls to resist.
\nIn response to the rally and the attack, people immediately organized solidarity actions around the world. At least twenty took place on August 12, and well over sixty the following day. These brought a new energy to the movement against fascism.
\n\nFor example, anarchists in Chapel Hill, North Carolina organized a report-back from participants in the events in Charlottesville at the Confederate monument in the center of downtown. The next day, activists in the neighboring city of Durham pulled down the Confederate monument there, then faced down a threatened response from the Ku Klux Klan. A year later, people tore down the monument in Chapel Hill, setting a template for the wave of statue topplings throughout the country in 2020.
\n\nMeanwhile, corporate media outlets were caught flat-footed by the tragedy in Charlottesville. Their previous narratives about clashes between “extremists” had not prepared their audiences for the murder of Heather Heyer. For a few days, while corporate editors scrambled to reformulate their narratives, journalists had their hands free to simply tell the truth about what had happened in Charlottesville—and this drove some people to participate in their first anti-fascist mobilizations. These events brought Trump’s approval rating to its lowest point in the first years of his presidency, compelling him to fire his white nationalist advisor, Steve Bannon.
\n\nOn Saturday, August 19, many thousands of people converged in Boston to respond to a fascist rally. A week later, on Sunday, August 27, thousands of people converged in Berkeley to make a planned fascist demonstration impossible.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/01/03/12.jpg\")
Anarchists mobilize in a black bloc to prevent fascists from recruiting or murdering people in Berkeley on August 27, 2017.
\nJoseph Biden announced his 2020 presidential campaign with a video about the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. This underscores the importance of that day’s events in United States history. But neither Biden nor his supporters were there. The people who made the difference that day were not politicians or centrist Democrats—they were ordinary locals, many of them poor people of color, and partisans of liberation.
\n\nI already faced several felony charges from an anti-fascist march—but that was against Trump, not street Nazis. I wanted to play it cool in Charlottesville and help out however I could without making my legal situation significantly worse. I handed out earplugs to my friends as I watched them march towards the Lee monument. I felt certain that at least one of them was going to die.
\n\nLater, I helped report on police movements—which turned out to be useless, as the police were hands off that day. There were fascists in the park, anti-fascists in the street, and police in the parking lot. In other words, anti-fascists sandwiched between uniformed thugs on either side.
\n\nI helped take down the license plates of the cars that the Nazis were driving, in hopes of identifying them. I also spent some time outside the jail, in case any anti-fascists were arrested.
\n\nAfter the car attack, I moved to a local church that had opened its doors as a safe space for anti-fascists. Courageous teens from the youth group ran security outside it to make sure no far-right infiltrators made it into the sanctuary.
\n\nInside, I saw one masked-up anti-fascist lower her face covering. It was one of my codefendants. I had been mass-arrested, so I had quite a few codefendants, but this was someone from my trial group. At first, I panicked: “If anything happens to you,” I thought, “it could jeopardize our case.” But that thought didn’t make it all the way to my lips before my heart swelled for my comrade.
\n\nEarplugs, notes, radio communication about police movement. That’s not nothing, but—I wish I had fought. Not for the glory. Not to have a good story. There are just moments when it’s time to fight with everything you have before it’s too late.
\n\nIf we compare their activity under the Trump administration to what they have done under Biden, it is clear that, whatever their pretensions to being “anti-government,” none of these fascists and militia members are particularly motivated when it comes to taking on the state. They are much more interested in serving as the street-level supporters of an authoritarian government. We cannot understand the threat that they pose apart from the threat that state power itself represents.
\n\nAs we argued in August 2017,
\n\n\n\n\nUltimately, a thoroughgoing anti-fascist movement should not focus on targeting fascist groups that are so marginal that they stick out from the rest of the political spectrum, but take on the infrastructure through which any authoritarian program will be enacted. That is to say, it should focus on the state itself. If we simply fight defensive battles, the fascists will eventually gain the initiative. We should take the experiences of fighting together that we can experience in anti-fascist struggle and use those as points of departure to work together to solve all of the problems that we have.
\n
This applies regardless of whoever is in the White House come January 2025. While Trump promises to deport millions of people—a threat we should take seriously and prepare to confront—we must not forget that, thus far, both the Obama and Biden administrations have deported many more people than the Trump administration did. Rather than letting Trump and his foot soldiers terrorize us into the arms of centrist politicians while they slowly ratchet political discourse further and further to the right, we have to continue to move towards a horizon of real liberation.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/08/10/2.jpg\")
Fascists are not the only force standing between us and our freedom.
\nDonald Trump himself adopted this strategy in summer of 2020, when he sent troops from the Department of Homeland Security to attempt to subdue demonstrators in Portland, Oregon. Like the Nazis he was imitating, he, too, ultimately failed. ↩
\nOn June 13, a driver attacked a demonstration in Minneapolis, killing Deona Marie Erickson. This is the result of years of right-wing efforts to normalize—and even legalize—vehicular attacks. Now the corporate media has ceased to prioritize covering them, paving the way for more killings. In dialogue with our comrades at It’s Going Down and on the ground in Minneapolis, we have prepared the following reflections on the implications of this.
\n\nShortly before midnight on June 13, while demonstrators gathered at Lake Street and Girard Avenue to protest the murder of Winston Smith by sheriff’s deputies and US Marshals, a man named Nicholas Kraus drove his SUV into the crowd at high speed, killing Deona Marie Erickson. One Black anti-fascist militant who was on the ground at the time of the attack reports that it was clear to those present that it was an intentional attack: “You heard his engine from three blocks away.”
\n\nAccording to Unicorn Riot,
\n\n\n\n\n“Deona Erickson’s car was parked on the side of the street in a way that would protect the people who were gathering. She was sitting down on the sidewalk about 15 feet from her car moments before the perpetrator smashed directly against her car at a very high speed. Witnesses say she was then hit by her car and sent flying. Street medics on the scene resuscitated her but she later died at the hospital.”
\n
Deona Marie Erickson had two daughters. She worked as a program manager at a center for disabled adults. Today would have been her 32nd birthday. She gave her life to protect those who protest police murder.
\n\nDemonstrators detained the driver, Nicholas Kraus. Eyewitnesses dispute police allegations that he was “pulled from his car”; reportedly, police did not respond until after the attack, sending riot police to threaten the crowd before an ambulance could arrive. Under the circumstances, the demonstrators’ response was measured, to say the least.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/aishaforward10/status/1404509174516625408\n\n\n
Let’s put this attack in context.
\n\nFox News and the Daily Caller circulated a video encouraging their viewers to carry out vehicular attacks against protesters months ahead of the fascist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville at which a self-identified neo-Nazi did exactly that, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 people. Afterwards, leaked chats showed other neo-Nazis also planning to use vehicles to attack protesters.
\n\nIn summer 2020, vehicular attacks surged in response to protests against the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. Over a dozen people were killed in these and other attacks on the movement.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1404699241570705408\n\n\n
Today, legislators around the United States are taking steps to criminalize protest activity, introducing a wide range of anti-protest bills. Foremost among them, Oklahoma and Florida lawmakers have passed laws guaranteeing civil and criminal immunity to drivers who hit demonstrators with vehicles, effectively granting vigilantes the right to crash cars into demonstrators. At the same time, Florida has introduced penalties of up to 15 years imprisonment for blocking traffic.
\n\nThe message is clear enough. In short, lawmakers and police seek to crack down on pedestrians acting collectively to oppose state violence, while extending additional privileges to drivers who act individually to support state violence via their own attacks. The official institutions of the state have failed to leverage enough violence to suppress movements against police violence and white supremacy, so they are deputizing others to do so—a longstanding counterinsurgency strategy reflective of the colonial heritage of the United States.
\n\nOn a fundamental level, the form of subjectivity that these lawmakers are promoting is what we might call a motorist subjectivity: consumerist, individualized, invested in the smooth functioning of the existing order, and regarding all other possibilities as threats. Structurally speaking, for the motorist, all other human beings—traffic as well as pedestrians—are obstacles, and the only imaginable journeys are dictated by the routes established by the state and the economy. The motorist wants to see the laws enforced on others, on the premise that it will reduce the ways that others might inconvenience him, but he doesn’t want the laws enforced on himself. Conceiving of our society as an entirely mapped world—the way that Google Maps does—in which all means of locomotion, all forms of agency, are individualized according to financial means, the motorist cannot imagine why people would assemble, off road or not, to challenge law enforcement itself.
\n\nAs shocking as vehicular attacks are when they occur, they are an extension of the society in which they take place. They are anti-social, but they express and intensify the anti-social premises of our day-to-day relations with each other. Motorist versus pedestrian is a classic class opposition in a society in which transportation and mobility are fundamentally racialized. People who were raised on advertisements depicting jeeps off-roading across the suspiciously vacant landscape of the frontier only to find themselves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway for an hour every day look around for someone to blame, and—as if by design—blame those with even less power than themselves. Road rage.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/06/16/2.jpg\")
Right-wing online chatter in Minneapolis ahead of the attack that took Deona Marie Erickson’s life.
\nIn this context, the chant “Whose streets? Our streets!” asserts another form of life, another way of relating to each other and conceiving of what our lives could be. Rather than framing vehicular attacks as aberrations from an otherwise peaceful social order—to be addressed, for example, by more policing—we have to understand them as one of the ugliest manifestations of a social structure that is fundamentally racist and anti-human, which can only be addressed via new forms of togetherness.
\n\nHonoring those whose lives have been taken by police and pro-police vigilantes is a first step towards this, and it is important that people have been doing this through shared presence in particular physical spaces. The internet—the information superhighway—tends to reinforce the motorist mentality of abstract competition and hostility. One of the most basic steps we can take towards creating a new social fabric on egalitarian terms is to encounter each other in person in ways that affirm the specificity of place.
\n\nThis gives us more perspective on the ongoing efforts of city officials to evict the autonomous zone at the site where George Floyd was murdered, in order to open it up for “the free passage of traffic.” Rhetoric about “culture wars” is usually used to evoke a conflict between those on the fringe of the left and right, but here, we see centrist officials forcibly imposing a particular model for what our lives, relationships, and forms of grieving should be, even as they purport to be neutral.
\n\nNicholas Kraus, a man with a history of domestic violence and abuse, is representative of the sort of dysfunctional, alienated men that far-right provocateurs aim to weaponize to carry out stochastic attacks on social movements.
\n\nThis is effectively a watered-down version of the same strategy that ISIS has used in the Mideast in territories it does not control: taking advantage of the desperation, prejudice, and mental health issues of an entitled but disenfranchised population, the far right aims to disrupt popular mobilizations through consistent but deniable terror attacks. Their goal is to raise the risks of public organizing to such an extent that it becomes hard for movements to maintain momentum, in order to support state repression while opening up space for fascist groups to recruit and mobilize. In Turkey, this approach helped the despotic government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to crush what had been powerful social movements. The ultimate beneficiaries of this are not just far-right politicians, but also centrist capitalists who do not wish to see fundamental changes that could threaten their power.
\n\nVigilante attacks are also advantageous for the city officials who would like to present themselves as “neutral” while suppressing the protest movements against the murders that the police they oversee regularly carry out. Vigilante attacks enable these officials to change the subject from the violence of the institutions they represent back to the question of how to “maintain order.”
\n\nIf the goal of those who seek to encourage vigilante attacks is to discourage movements based in direct action, this dovetails with the goals of city officials who seek to use the Non-Profit Industrial Complex to buy off a layer of activists to oppose and undermine effective strategies from within the movement. In that regard, one of the most important ways to prevent the attackers from achieving their goals is to preserve the horizontal, grassroots structure of movements against police, while continuing to emphasize systemic forms of white supremacist violence alongside vigilante attacks.
\n\n\n\n\n“Some of these people with the megaphones, I guess their role is to get people riled up and get them in a space and march them around and educate them and tell them what their next big plans are and who they’re backing politics-wise and things like that.
\n\n“I like community, organic—no microphones, no megaphones, like right now. It’s about fifty people—but fifty people got Lake and Hennepin shut down right now, you know what I’m saying? We’re moving and grooving right now. As opposed to two or three hundred people holding signs, marching around, and then feeling accomplished, patting themselves on the back and then leaving—ain’t shit get shut down really. Police don’t even monitor the marches no more. No change will come from that.”
\n\n-Anonymous Black anti-fascist militant in Minneapolis, evening of June 15, 2021
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/06/16/1.jpg\")
\n\n\n\n“You protested because it was trendy and ‘everyone was doing it.’ I protest because people are out here dying!”
\n\n-Deona Marie Erickson, June 10
\n
In 2021, many liberals and progressives have left the streets, relying on the Biden administration to roll back the policies of the Trump administration. Consequently, the murder of Deona Marie Erickson has attracted considerably less attention than it might have just last year. This withdrawal from social struggles creates the conditions for more attacks like this to take place.
\n\nThis reminds us of the situation before the murder of Heather Heyer made world news, when the far right carried out a series of murders around the United States without drawing the attention of corporate media. Corporate media outlets were only forced to cover the events in Charlottesville because it was not possible to sweep under the rug the fact that a thousand fascists had gathered in one place and killed a white woman. Because the events took news editors—though not anti-fascists—by surprise, they were not prepared to spin the story according to the preferences of their corporate backers; so for a week, fairly honest coverage of the threat represented by the far right suddenly appeared in a variety of news outlets. Subsequently, although this coverage was tempered by efforts to demonize anti-fascists, centrist media outlets continued to report on far-right attacks in order to associate them with the agenda of Donald Trump’s administration.
\n\nBut now that centrists can’t leverage Deona Marie’s death against Trump, they are prepared to treat it as simply another sad facet of American life, to sweep it under the rug once more.
\n\nThis coincides with widespread emotional numbness arising from several years of constant tragedies. The COVID-19 pandemic has already accustomed many people to thinking of human life as expendable. Last weekend saw multiple mass shootings across several states. Poverty has reached the highest levels since the beginning of the pandemic. These are the forces that drive desperate people to adopt far-right politics wherever there are no models for a collective pursuit of liberation, creating a feedback loop that will generate more and more tragedies.
\n\n“We keep us safe.” “We protect us.” These slogans spread far and wide in the course of the movements that burst onto the world stage in Ferguson, Missouri because it has become eminently apparent that no one else is going to protect us. Deona Marie died doing her best to keep her companions safe—to open up a space in which people can come to know each other on different terms, as part of a community premised on shared consideration for all human beings, not individualized capitalist competition. We should do the same, so that everyone like her, and like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Winston Smith—might live. We should do the same, because the alternative means isolation, means eventually being treated as expendable ourselves.
\n\n\n\n\n“If the fascists would have run over Deona Marie and we would have not been holding space, not erected the barricades that the city just tried to tear down, then Deona Marie’s voice would be in vain. We’ve got to be out here. That fascist wins—that fascist who drove his car right here, he wins. ‘Oh, I got them off the street. They’re gone now. My fellow white supremacists can enjoy Lake Street now, because I got them fuckers off the street,’ you know what I’m saying?
\n\n“We’re out here stronger now. We have to be.”
\n\n-Anonymous Black anti-fascist militant in Minneapolis, June 15, 2021
\n
\nhttps://twitter.com/TigerWorku/status/1404329351211016192\n\n\n
From an internationalist anarchist woman in Rojava:
\n\n\n\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/08/15/perspectives-on-the-august-12-anti-fascist-mobilization-in-dc-two-interviews-with-organizers", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/08/15/perspectives-on-the-august-12-anti-fascist-mobilization-in-dc-two-interviews-with-organizers", "title": "Perspectives on the August 12 Anti-Fascist Mobilization in DC : Two Interviews with Organizers", "summary": "On August 12, the police spent $2.6 million to enable fascists to recruit in Washington, DC on the anniversary of the Charlottesville attacks. ", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/15/header1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/15/header1.jpg", "date_published": "2018-08-15T20:16:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:37Z", "tags": [ "DC", "Charlottesville", "antifascism" ], "content_html": "From half a world away, I hear about this sacrifice, this martyrdom. I use the words sacrifice and martyrdom and not the word “tragedy” because I am hearing about a woman comrade who chose to defend her community, and there are few things more beautiful and free in this world than that choice. She thought beyond herself, felt beyond her own personal safety, to defend those who struggled together side by side with her for freedom.
\n\nWhen a life is given and taken in struggle, it’s not an easy thing for those of us left to continue. It would dishonest for me to say this is not something heavy, but we do not have to let the weight of it become a burden—this weight can give us strength and power, and with it, we can continue her struggle.
\n\nEvery martyr is another reason to continue, another example to hold ourselves up to. For every woman whose life they take, for every comrade, for every person who stands up to defend their community, whose light they try to extinguish, we can make sure that a hundred rise up in their place. The time when we could be separated on the basis of race, class and gender is coming to an end. When we sacrifice for each other in this way, as comrades, as people who share a freedom struggle, the methods of our enemies turn to dust.
\n\nThis is the time for us to defend our communities like Deona did. Anything else, and we won’t have risen to her standard. Her choice to defend was a sacred act of love—let us all be led by it.
\n\nRevolutionary greetings, respect, and love from Rojava.
\n
On August 12, Charlottesville fascist Jason Kessler attempted to hold the sequel to last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Washington, DC. It did not go well for him. In the end, 2000 police struggled to protect two dozen fascists from thousands of anti-fascists and other foes of tyranny. To get some perspective on these events, we spoke with David Thurston—arts director for No Justice No Pride, a member of the steering committee of the DMV’s Movement for Black Lives, and a core organizer with Resist This—and also with an anonymous anarchist involved in organizing the anti-fascist bloc, among other aspects of the mobilization.
\n\nThe US government spent $2.6 million to force the fascist rally upon the people of Washington, DC. Let’s do the math: that’s over $100,000 per fascist for a rally that lasted an hour at most. Would the US spend anything like that to protect a rally organized by any other sector of the population? On the contrary, when anarchists and other advocates of liberation organize public events, the government usually spends millions of dollars to repress us, often breaking its own laws in order to do so. This shows what a farce the “free speech” defense of fascist recruiting drives is—this is not an abstract question of rights, but a concrete matter of the US government asymmetrically investing resources in promoting the spread of fascism.
\n\nTo put a number on it, then, the kind of “free speech” that enabled Kessler and his like to recruit someone to murder Heather Heyer is worth $100,000 per hour per fascist to the US government. Those are your tax dollars at work.
\n\nWe were especially inspired by the fierceness with which the black population of DC turned out to face down the police and fascists on August 12. We have some questions about whether it makes sense for anarchists to act separately in a distinct anti-fascist contingent when other sectors of the population are mobilizing so courageously and assertively. It might be more effective for some anarchists to seek to connect with other rebels on the street, in order to bring about an interchange of tactics and ideas. Hopefully, this is already taking place.
\n\nWe’ve seen some alarmist commentary on the clashes—for example, from the person who posted the following video. Permit us to repeat that the US government is forcibly extorting money from its population to fund the violent imposition of fascist rallies on communities that only stand to suffer from the expansion of white supremacist activity. In this context, it should be no surprise that people defend themselves from police violence.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/Journo_Christal/status/1028753625483538433\n\n\n
One more topic bears mention: a few reactionary media outlets have taken this opportunity to accuse anti-fascists of being “violent” towards journalists for discouraging them from filming. This is the same thing they did last year, two weeks after the violence in Charlottesville, when the editors of various corporate media publications attempted to create a false equivalency between fascists recruiting to carry out murder and genocide and anti-fascists mobilizing in self-defense.
\n\nIn a time when fascists go through video footage identifying anti-fascists in order to intimidate and terrorize them, and far-right Republican congressmen are attempting to aid and abet them via new legislation, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that anti-fascists discourage people from filming them without permission. If these journalists are really concerned about this issue, they should prioritize helping to create a world in which no one needs to fear being identified and attacked by fascists or police just for attempting to defend their communities. Instead, several journalists have prioritized assisting fascists like Kessler in getting his message out.
\n\nRead on for the interviews. You can also head here for a history of anti-fascism in DC.
\n\nWhat were your goals going into August 12? What did you think a best case scenario would be for the day?
\n\nDavid Thurston: For the past month, I’ve been working as the arts organizer for the mobilization. My first job was to make sure the rally in Freedom Plaza and the three direct action contingents got the brilliant, vibrant, colorful, and radical banners that the 411 Collective crafted. I also co-emceed the rally with Aiyi’anah Ford of the Future Foundation—we met through the organizing around the National Equality March in 2009. I wanted to see the Nazis vastly outnumbered and I wanted to see DC and DMV activists organize around a synergy and diversity of tactics—allowing us to welcome people into the movement who may never have heard of anarchist theory, but who over time could be introduced to our praxis of non-hierarchical, anti-sectarian, and revolutionary politics.
\n\nAnother anarchist organizer: I wanted to make Nazis too afraid to come to DC. I also wanted to block their march. The former did not happen due to some last minute infighting, but the latter did happen.
\n\nOverall, I would say the action was an overwhelming success. Anarchists provided a great deal of labor in every aspect of the mobilization.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/15/1.jpg\")
\nWhat did the anti-fascist demonstrators do well? What could have gone better?
\n\nDavid Thurston: We succeeded in overwhelmingly outnumbering our opposition, marginalizing their toxic politics, and putting forward an organizing model that can be advanced upon in the future. There were a number of internal challenges and conflicts that took shape in the lead-up to A12, but for the most part, the various components of our effort worked from a space of deep-rooted solidarity.
\n\nAnother anarchist organizer: We overwhelmed neo-Nazis numerically, but because of some tactical and intelligence failures, we did not get the chance to actually confront them. But when you have thousands of people mobilizing and holding space, do you really need to escalate when the fascists are already too afraid to come out? The fact that the black bloc did not escalate when there was no reason to do so enabled us to hold space, stay disciplined until the end, and demonstrate an ability to show restraint when necessary in order to accomplish the goals of the movement.
\n\nOn January 20, hundreds of people were mass-arrested during Trump’s inauguration and indiscriminately charged with eight or more felonies apiece. How did the legacy of the J20 case influence planning ahead of August 12? How do you think it influenced those who did not participate in the planning, but came to participate?
\n\nDavid Thurston: The fact that there were absolutely no convictions for J20 defendants was probably a big factor explaining why our city’s multitude of police forces were relatively restrained. My inkling is that someone above or in the orbit of Chief Newsham realized that it was not in the city’s interests for local police to play the role of being the extreme right’s de-facto storm troopers. That said, the massive deployment of state power was obscene. My guess is that a few million dollars of city money probably went into massive police overtime.
\n\nThere may have been some folks who were afraid to come out, but my opinion is that that was probably because of what the neo-Nazis represent, and not because of anything that went down with J20.
\n\nAnother anarchist organizer: We thought long and hard about how to avoid isolating ourselves from other social movements and argued against others trying to marginalize radicals. Considering that our movement had set up the tech support, website, security, trainings, and other essential aspects of the mobilization, it was impossible to isolate us on the sidelines where we would be easy targets for police violence.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/15/2.jpg\")
\nDid it make sense to call for a distinct anti-fascist bloc, when so many people turned out to oppose the fascist rally with their own ways of being militant? Why or why not?
\n\nDavid Thurston: I think it was great to have an anti-fascist bloc that could plan direct action based on the worst-case scenario of a sizable far right turnout. It was also good to have a space where the lessons of prior direct actions, especially J20, could be debated in depth.
\n\nIn practice, there was a lot of synergy between the direct action contingents and the two permitted rallies, even though the permitted rallies gave voice to ideas more in line with traditional left liberal thinking.
\n\nAnother anarchist organizer: I think the strategy of the bloc that day was to be able to
\n\nA year after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, what do the events in DC tell us about the current political situation in the US?
\n\nDavid Thurston: I think last weekend’s events make it clear that the far right is in political, ideological, organizational, and interpersonal disarray. After the debacle of Jason Kessler’s pitiful mobilization, he went on a Twitter rant attacking the rest of the self-proclaimed alt-right, calling them cowards for not mobilizing, and describing them as would-be Nazis living in their parents’ basements. While trying to get a permit in Charlottesville, Kessler managed to dox his own followers by turning over encrypted Signal threads, emails, and more to the state.
\n\nBut we can’t rest on our success last weekend. While joining a proto-fascist organization remains a marginal idea for the millions of white people who voted for Trump in 2016, specific neo-Nazi proposals and talking points—especially around immigration, border security, and global imperialist hubris—remain appealing to wide swaths of low-income, working-class, and lower-middle-class white folk in our nation.
\n\nThe radical left has immense potential to grow if we can shed the baggage of years of being fairly marginal to political debate. Anarchists need to organize creatively, finding space to work in alliance with left-leaning liberals, but also with socialist groupings with whom we have significant differences.
\n\nAnother anarchist organizer: I think the rally on August 12 shows that militant anti-fascism works. A year ago, there were 500 fascists marching in the streets of Charlottesville. This year, less than 25 showed up because they were afraid. At least on the East Coast, anti-fascism has demobilized the far right.
\n\nSo we’ve pushed back on-the-ground white nationalists… but as a movement, how do we use that strategy to disrupt other forms of organized white supremacy? How do we scale that strategy up to take on local right-wing lobbyists, local Republicans, police union officials, the Chamber of Commerce, DHS, and ICE officials?
\n\nThe fascistic turn of the United States has been a 30-year process, and there are local people with local power who are marching us there. We need to figure out how to demobilize them.
\n\nTrump did not come to power because of the “alt right”—the alt right was able to use Trump to enter mainstream politics. Now our social movements need to identify the leaders who pushed our local communities to the right, and destabilize their political power.
\n\nThe chief takeaway from this weekend is that even if we did not push the limits of the struggle, we did push a mobilization that was specifically anti-fascist. Anarchists and anti-fascists wrote the original call to action for the mobilization, provided experience, and pushed a strategy that allowed for numerous communities to come out and confront fascism.
\n\nThe most challenging dynamic we had to navigate was engaging with liberals who wanted the day to look like “Boston” [the massive anti-fascist mobilization that took place there in response to a fascist rally a week after “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville] but did not emotionally prepare for the real possibility that the fascists could have mobilized hundreds.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/15/3.jpg\")
\nDo you have any particularly instructive anecdotes to share from August 12?
\n\nDavid Thurston: My favorite moment was when the permitted march from Freedom Plaza entered the periphery of the “Rise Up Fight Back” contingent anchored by Black Lives Matter DC. They organized a block party near Lafayette to celebrate black joy and resistance, making the point that no neo-Nazi mobilization was going to intimidate them or cast a pall on the vision of black liberation that this movement was articulating.
\n\nOn a personal note, I encountered a brother named Amir who introduced himself to me at the rally. I didn’t recognize him, but Amir told me that he was one of three young black men who tried to mug me near my neighborhood in DC. Amir apologized for his actions. I was so moved and thanked him, letting him know that I wish him the best, and never wanted anyone to go to jail for something as petty as trying to take $10 from me. To see him in the struggle for a radically different future on A12 made an impact on my psyche that I have a hard time adequately explaining.
\n\nWe are living through perilous times. If we organize creatively and synergistically, radicals can lay the foundation for movements that could, within a decade or so, lead to revolutionary transformation in our country and around the world. But if we fail, the threat of global political, economic, and ecological cataclysm is immense. I have friends working hard to elect left-liberal to social democratic candidates for public office, and friends whose focus is on direct action and community-based organizing. We need to build a radical tent broad enough for all of the above if the revolutionary potential of this moment is to be realized.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/08/12/last-year-they-came-with-torches-this-year-they-come-with-badges-a-report-from-charlottesville-august-11-2018", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/08/12/last-year-they-came-with-torches-this-year-they-come-with-badges-a-report-from-charlottesville-august-11-2018", "title": "\"Last Year They Came with Torches—This Year They Come with Badges\" : A Report from Charlottesville, August 11, 2018", "summary": "Defying a massive police mobilization aimed at completely controlling all demonstrations, hundreds marched around downtown Charlottesville for hours to observe the anniversary of the clashes.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/header.jpg", "date_published": "2018-08-12T12:42:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:37Z", "tags": [ "fascism", "antifascism", "Charlottesville" ], "content_html": "A year after fascists with torches marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, anarchists and other anti-racists who traveled there to shut down their rally returned to support locals in observing the anniversary of those events. Defying a massive police mobilization aimed at suppressing all freedom to demonstrate, hundreds marched around downtown for hours. The following hasty report was submitted by some of the out-of-town participants.
\n\nWhen we arrived in Charlottesville, the atmosphere felt different than it had a year ago when we came here to oppose the Unite the Right demonstration. Then, the city felt tense, but it was also full of people who were heading into a fight they believed in. The mood wasn’t festive, exactly, but our shared desire to protect and support each another and to stand up to fascists created a lively energy.
\n\nThis year, as I walked onto the University of Virginia (UVA) campus where the rally was to be held, it seemed that the energy we had shared was nowhere to be found. The police and the state authorities had done everything in their power to dominate the environment and shape the entire weekend of events according to their own agenda.
\n\nOn Wednesday, the governor and the city manager declared a state of emergency in Virginia as a whole and Charlottesville in particular. They brought over 1000 officers to the city and housed them in student dorms, drawing censure from several student groups. The police set up checkpoints around the city at which to search people for a long list of items they declared forbidden. They created a “security perimeter” blocking roads and access to parking. They erected metal detectors and banned additional items at the UVA student rally on Saturday night, against students’ wishes. They did all this despite the fact that only anti-racist activists were expected to come to the city this weekend.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/5.jpg\")
Behind every cop, a Klansman.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/11.jpg\")
Some of the items prohibited at UVA.
\nFortunately, UVA students and other protesters were determined not to permit the police to control their event or dictate the proper way of remembering Heather Heyer, Nia Wilson, and all the other people who have been killed or harmed by fascist and racist violence.
\n\nWe waited at the Rotunda, by the statue of Thomas Jefferson where fascists with torches had surrounded and attacked UVA students last year.
\n\nAnd then, finally, life broke out once more in Charlottesville.
\n\nStudent organizers, many of whom were people of color, stood on the top steps, separated from the crowd by the metal detectors we were supposed to walk through in order to attend the rally. They fiercely decried the absurdity of the massive police presence and the institution of police itself, highlighting the connection between fascists and cops by means of a powerful call and response speech and a banner.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/1.jpg\")
Last year they came with torches; this year they come with badges.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/13.jpg\")
A flier distributed at the rally.
\nThe students led the crowd to the left side of the exterior of the Rotunda, a place the police were not controlling, and used the steps as an impromptu stage. The first speaker had only been speaking for a couple of minutes when we started hearing people shouting that riot cops were on our left. Much of the crowd migrated towards the cops and began chanting at them. The chant I heard most was, “We don’t see no riot here, why are you in riot gear?”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/2.jpg\")
A replica of the banner students were carrying when fascists attacked them at the foot of the statue of Thomas Jefferson one year ago.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/4.jpg\")
\nAfter twenty minutes or so, student-aged individuals began weaving through the crowd and telling people to come back towards where the speakers had been. No one I talked to knew why we were being called back, although there were murmurs that the police were going to declare an unlawful assembly. Eventually, we made our way back. As we got closer, we saw that the speakers had stopped and a march was beginning so we joined in. The crowd was at least a few hundred strong. We quickly took the street.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/6.jpg\")
“UVA, you’ve got blood on your hands—we won’t stop til you meet our demands.”
\nIt was clear from the beginning that the march had a radical character. We chanted against the state, capitalism, cops, white supremacy, fascists… all the different manifestations of hierarchy and oppression. It was a relief to be in this environment after the police had attempted to force an oppressive and controlled atmosphere on the rally.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/7.jpg\")
Students on the front lines.
\nStudent organizers led the march to Lambeth Field, which state troopers had been using as a staging area. Students spoke while police officers lined up on the other side of the field.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/8.jpg\")
Students in the amphitheater facing Lambeth Field.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/9.jpg\")
A line of cops in Lambeth Field.
\nThe energy lagged a bit in the amphitheater. We felt powerful when we were marching in the streets, forcing cars to turn around and yelling together our refusal to stand for oppression. In the amphitheater, we were passive audience members once more. There is a time for speeches and listening, but what I wanted, and I think what many of us wanted, was to be in the streets together. We were also getting antsy about being in a location vulnerable to police control. At the sound of a siren, the crowd decided collectively and spontaneously to leave the stadium and start marching again.
\n\nThis second phase of the march was more leaderless. There were advantages and disadvantages to this. It was not always clear what direction we were going; we had to stop a few times to confer about our path. Yet despite these logistical challenges, we marched through the streets of Charlottesville for two hours, passing through downtown and finally arriving at the park where the fascists had gathered during last year’s Unite the Right demonstration—the park where the statue of Robert E. Lee is located.
\n\nA considerable police presence was concentrated here to protect the statue—reportedly over 100 officers. Despite chants demanding to tear the statue down, several voices in the march announced that the march was over and that we should go home. I guessed that these were the voices of student organizers, as I don’t think anyone else felt such a degree of ownership over the event that they would have felt they could call for its conclusion.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/3.jpg\")
Nazi punching is self-defense.
\nDuring the time we were marching, we saw very few cops and experienced very little repression or attempts to control the march. As far as I know, no arrests were made, although there are rumors that one person was de-arrested, and two videos show scuffles in which police apparently attack people in the march as the crowd arrives at Water Street and moves onto the Downtown Mall after 9 pm.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/craftypanda/status/1028450232206614528\n\n\n
\nhttps://twitter.com/craftypanda/status/1028450667227164677\n\n\n
In retrospect, whether intentional or not, it was strategic to plan to hold the rally at the Rotunda and then instead to march to several other locations. This forced the police to keep mobilizing and deploying with the consequence that they had to draw many of their numbers out of downtown—making it possible for the march to arrive there after all, despite all their attempts to control the area.
\n\nEven though Virginia deployed over 1000 cops to Charlottesville this weekend, the police knew that attacking students and other anti-racist activists on the anniversary of the Unite the Right rally and Heather Heyer’s murder would be bad publicity. Because of this, they were forced to allow us to march mostly unimpeded. We were not searched or controlled as the authorities had promised we would be. Some people wore masks, which the authorities had declared would not be permitted. Once again, we learned that the state can only control us to the extent that we collectively accept the myth of its power.
\n\nWhen we band together against police and the state, even when our numbers are not as great as theirs, we can win—just as we succeeded in shutting down the fascist rally in Charlottesville last year, even though we were outnumbered. In contrast to last weekend’s demonstrations in Portland and Berkeley, this time there were no fascists in Charlottesville for the police to protect. The optics become worse for the police when they attack anti-fascist activists without the excuse that they are “defending other citizens.” Especially after the brutal police repression in Berkeley and Portland last week, it felt good that in Charlottesville, the police were afraid to touch us. This enabled us to be together to celebrate Heather and hold the state accountable on our own terms in a way that the authorities would never permit, were it up to them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/10.jpg\")
A memorial to Heather Heyer at the place where she was killed.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/12.jpg\")
The street where Heather was killed was chalked full of messages to and about her.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/12/14.jpg\")
“Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe.” Anti-fascist demonstrators in Charlottesville earlier on August 11.
\nOn the anniversary of the anti-fascist mobilization in Charlottesville, in response to a call for a weekend of international solidarity, we’ve received a solidarity statement from the Collectif des Mères Solidaires in France, the Collective of Mothers in Solidarity.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/10/3.jpg\")
Click the image above for a PDF of a trifold of this statement.
\nOne year ago, we felt with you the pride of seeing a powerful anti-fascist movement rise up against a far-right and white-supremacist gathering in Virginia.
\n\nWe also felt the terrible sadness of seeing a young woman who stood up against all forms of discrimination murdered by fascist hatred: Heather Heyer, this shining face, this strong and at the same time calm determination to refuse the unacceptable. Too much light, too much determination…
\n\nThis is the same hate that in Paris in 2013 killed Clément Méric, an 18-year-old syndicalist and anti-fascist militant.
\n\nElsewhere in Europe, fascism or state repression have claimed the lives of Carlos Palomino, Pavlos Fyssas, Carlo Giuliani, Renato Biagetti, Dax, and so many other young people whose names will forever be associated with the struggle for a world liberated from white supremacy, bigotry, and social injustice.
\n\nWe write from France as the mothers of young militants who have suffered violence or repression as a result of their activism.
\n\nLike Susan Bro, Heather’s mother, we are proud of the struggles of our children.
\n\nWe know that they pay, or risk paying, very dearly for their refusal of an unjust society that is imposed upon them by the powerful. Death, violence, criminal charges, imprisonment… They are familiar with all of this. We have lived it alongside them.
\n\nAnd we affirm as loudly and as strongly as we can, a thousand times over, that our children are right for fighting back!
\n\nOur own struggle, as their mothers, is to bring attention to their words—words too often neglected, deformed, or caricatured.
\n\nThe fight against the vision of the world spread by the far right must be the business of every generation, each one in its own way.
\n\nMothers from Italy and Spain, whose parents knew fascism and Francoism, have shown us the path forward.
\n\nAlongside them, we are in the process of forming an International Network of Anti-Fascist Mothers in order to mutually support one another and to be present wherever struggles are taking place.
\n\nWe are organizing to support everyday struggles in the neighborhoods targeted by racists, in the schools, and in the prisons; as well as the mobilizations that the entire world will be watching, such as that of this weekend, August 11-12, 2018, in Charlottesville.
\n\nWe are pleased to associate ourselves with this great movement of resistance, to which your courage has summoned us. We send you our gratitude.
\n\nCollectif des Mères Solidaires//Collective of Mothers in Solidarity
\n\nMeres-Solidaires@riseup.net
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/10/1.jpg\")
\nA collective to support victims of fascism and state repression.
\n\nWe live in a Europe that boasts of being a haven of peace, freedom, prosperity, and justice, built upon the blood shed by the partisans during the battles to liberate it from fascism. However, our children, engaged in various social and political struggles, are beaten, arrested, sentenced, and in some cases killed by state authorities or fascists.
\n\nWe, their mothers, affirm that the politics conducted by the governments of Europe are responsible, directly or indirectly, for this:
\n\nBy thwarting our children’s aspirations to transform our societies and standing in the way of experimentation with alternative models founded on cooperation and self-organization.
\nBy ignoring calls to respect human rights and the earth in order to defend the economic interests of the wealthy, exacerbating social injustices in their own countries and throughout the world.
\nBy provoking hopelessness throughout society, by encouraging fear of foreigners, by tolerating or allying themselves with violent movements of the extreme right, they facilitate the resurgence of fascism that terrorizes and kills.
\nExercising their freedoms of expression and of struggle, our children denounce injustice, discrimination, and the unrestrained capitalism that is ravaging the world. They defend their rights and those of the most marginalized. They fight against all forms of the drift towards fascism. They struggle for a world based in solidarity, openness, and respect for the environment.
\n\nBecause they dare to take a stand against the state, they are considered a threat. And they face disproportionate repression from:
\n\nPolice forces that use instruments of death, beatings, and arrests against those who don’t present any real danger;
\nA justice system that enables police impunity and mobilizes any means at its disposal, particularly imprisonment, against those who it wants to silence;
\nA prison system that violates the most basic human rights.
\nThe state institutes these police, judicial, and carceral forms of violence as its normal mode of functioning to serve the powerful and to criminalize social, environmental, and political struggles.
\n\nBecause we have raised them with the values of truth, solidarity, justice, and freedom, we, their mothers, demand justice and freedom for our children.
\n\nWe denounce:
\n\nThe fact that these states designate them as enemies of the Republic and of democracy, and seek to paralyze them through intimidation;
\nThe violence and repression that is exercised against them;
\nThe fact that these states tolerate the existence of fascist or neo-Nazi groups and on occasion guarantee them impunity.
\nFaced with the powerlessness of individual protest, we unite our voices so that those of our children may be heard. We share the struggles of other mothers, in Europe and throughout the world. We help and support one another.
\n\nWe will neither forget nor abandon one another. We will not allow our devastated hearts to be engulfed by the silence of the cemetery or crushed by the humiliation of prisons.
\n\nFor mothers like us, the slums where the children of migrants face discrimination, the refugee camps and the detention centers where those fleeing poverty, war, or political repression in their country are humiliated—these will always be spaces of mobilization.
\n\nAnd the anniversaries of the deaths of our children will always remind us of the urgent necessity of struggle.
\n\n-Collectif des Mères Solidaires—Collective of Mothers in Solidarity, France
\n\nLe message de soutien des Mères solidaires françaises
\n\nIl y a un an, nous avons ressenti avec vous la fierté de voir se lever un puissant mouvement antifasciste contre le rassemblement des extrêmes droites suprémacistes et racistes en Virginie.
\n\nNous avons aussi ressenti la terrible douleur de voir une jeune femme militant contre toutes les formes de discriminations assassinée par la haine fasciste. \nHeather Heyer, ce visage lumineux, cette détermination forte et tranquille à la fois pour refuser l’inacceptable.
\n\nTrop de lumière, trop de détermination… C’est la même haine qui a tué en 2013, à Paris, Clément Méric, jeune militant syndicaliste et antifasciste de 18 ans.
\n\nEt aussi, en Europe, Carlos Palomino, Pavlos Fyssas, Carlo Giuliani, Renato Biagetti, Dax… et tant d’autres jeunes dont les noms sont pour toujours associés au combat pour un monde libéré du racisme, du suprématisme, de l’injustice sociale.
\n\nNous sommes des mères de jeunes militants français victimes de violence ou de répression du fait de leurs engagements.
\n\nComme Susan Bro, la mère de Heather, nous sommes fières des combats de nos enfants.
\n\nNous savons qu’ils payent ou risquent de payer très cher leur refus de la société injuste qui leur est imposée par les puissants. Mort, violences, condamnations judiciaires, emprisonnement… Ils connaissent tout cela. Nous le vivons avec eux.
\n\nEt nous affirmons du plus haut et du plus fort que nous pouvons que nos enfants ont raison, mille fois raison de lutter !
\n\nNotre combat à nous, leurs mères, c’est d’attirer l’attention sur leur parole trop souvent négligée, déformée ou caricaturée. La lutte contre la vision du monde véhiculée par l’extrême droite doit être l’affaire de toutes les générations, chacune à sa façon.
\n\nDes mères italiennes, des mères espagnoles, dont les parents ont connu le fascisme et le franquisme, nous ont montré le chemin. Parce qu’elles sont mères, elles sont écoutées.
\n\nAvec elles, nous sommes en train de constituer un Réseau international des Mères antifascistes afin de nous soutenir mutuellement et d’être présentes sur les lieux des luttes, que ce soient les luttes quotidiennes dans les quartiers racisés, dans les écoles, dans les prisons ; ou les luttes que le monde entier observera, comme celle d’aujourd’hui, 11 août 2018, à Charlottesville.
\n\nNous sommes heureuses de nous associer à ce grand mouvement de résistance auquel votre courage nous appelle. Merci à vous.
\n\nLes Mères solidaires.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/08/09/the-lessons-of-charlottesville-a-year-later-how-the-terrain-has-changed", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/08/09/the-lessons-of-charlottesville-a-year-later-how-the-terrain-has-changed", "title": "The Lessons of Charlottesville, a Year Later : How the Terrain Has Changed", "summary": "A year after Unite the Right in Charlottesville, we can see how fascists, police, and others have learned from experience and adjusted their strategies. Have we done the same?", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/header.jpg", "date_published": "2018-08-09T19:11:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:37Z", "tags": [ "Charlottesville", "fascism", "antifascism" ], "content_html": "A year after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that left one dead and countless injured, we can see how fascists, police, centrists, and others have learned from experience and adjusted their strategies. Have those of us who oppose the rise of fascism done the same? Read on for our analysis.
\n\nFor more background on the events of August 2017 in Charlottesville, consult the reading list at the end.
\n\nSome fascist organizations disintegrated after the debacle in Charlottesville, and many still haven’t recovered. Patriot Prayer was in disarray; Richard Spencer scaled back his efforts to speak on university campuses; the Traditionalist Workers’ Party collapsed. A few months after “Unite the Right,” some anti-fascists felt confident enough to declare a provisional victory. However, a year later, fascists are reorganizing and trying new things.
\n\nDiscouraged from pre-announced mass actions like Unite the Right, the explicitly Nazi organization Patriot Front has demonstrated a new pattern of surprise attacks via their appearances at the Houston Anarchist Book Fair and the San Antonio Occupy ICE camp. Thus far, these appear to be chiefly aimed at producing video footage with which to make advertisements for fascism, but the model could be used for much more destructive means.
\n\nMeanwhile, Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer has figured out that if fascists can just hold off on publicly murdering people and deny having ties to overt white supremacists—however dishonestly—they can resume slowly building momentum while letting the police do most of their dirty work. He’s working with a volatile sector of the population—Proud Boys in Pinochet shirts—but he seems to be making his approach succeed where other fascist organizers have failed. We will surely see more groups like his attempting to rebrand fascist politics under the umbrella of patriotism, Christianity (or atheism), and other anodyne façades.
\n\nIn response to the Patriot Front strategy, we need to improve our security precautions at public events—while being careful not to create additional obstacles to expanding our movements. Our greatest security will come from others caring about us and joining in our struggles, not from technical measures.
\n\nIn response to the Patriot Prayer strategy, we have to refine our rhetoric and research in order to convey to the general public the threat that fascists pose even when they conceal their agenda behind a smokescreen. The growth of the European far right has shown how much more dangerous suit-and-tie fascists are than old-fashioned Nazi skinheads. Unite the Right turned out badly for fascists because they had not yet succeeded in teaching their rank and file to act “respectable,” but we shouldn’t count on fighting swastika-waving goons forever. One of the chief strategies by which fascists aim to recruit for their movements is to spread fear about an imagined “Antifa” that targets conservatives indiscriminately. We have to make it impossible for them to confuse the issue.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/2.jpg\")
Anarchists chasing Joey Gibson of “Patriot Prayer” out of a park in which he hoped to hold a fascist rally in the wake of the tragedy in Charlottesville.
\nThe wave of fascist and anti-fascist mobilizations that accompanied Trump’s rise to power caught many police agencies off guard. Police watched from the sidelines as Nazis battled anti-fascists in Sacramento in 2016; they lost control completely when demonstrators shut down Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley on February 1, 2017. They took a hands-off approach to the series of clashes that followed in Berkeley and elsewhere.
\n\nDuring the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the police largely stood back and let the confrontations play out. They only interceded to declare an unlawful assembly and clear the park when anti-fascists forced their hand, after the city and state authorities had announced a State of Emergency. This is consistent with a pattern that goes back at least a century. When white supremacists have the upper hand, police tend to give them free rein; when anti-fascists gain the advantage, police step in aggressively.
\n\nAfter Unite the Right, Charlottesville police faced a great deal of criticism for their hands-off handling of the demonstration. The response of police departments around the United States has been to shift to a more aggressive strategy involving massive multi-agency mobilizations and preemptive crackdowns. Police are doubling down on protecting and defending fascists under the guise of “preventing another Charlottesville” while employing overwhelming force against anti-fascist protestors.
\n\nParticipants in a small anti-fascist rally in Newnan, Georgia reported this in April. On June 30 and again on August 4, police in Portland worked closely with the fascists, deploying potentially lethal weaponry at random against everyone on the other side of their lines. (Afterwards, the Portland police claimed they would “temporarily suspend” use of one of the many potentially lethal weapons they had employed, while using the opportunity to bait demonstrators into providing further intelligence on themselves.) It is a matter of public record that police identify more with the fascists they are defending than with those who protest against them.
\n\nThe decision to announce a weekend-long, statewide State of Emergency in Virginia several days ahead of a rally in Charlottesville at which no fascist or far-right presence is even anticipated is consistent with this pattern. Police are using the violence fascists have perpetrated as an excuse to clamp down on those the fascists attacked, effectively fulfilling the fascist program.
\n\nIn the wake of Black Lives Matter and similar movements, police have widely lost credibility. We’ve come a long way since the Occupy movement when liberal protesters across the US argued that police were “part of the 99%”! Now, like the Trump regime, police recognize they are unpopular, yet appear to have concluded that they have enough institutional power and support from their base to get away with almost anything. They don’t seem to be concerned about losing legitimacy in the public eye. Perhaps they are correct that, in a polarized society, they need not concern themselves with how everyone feels about them. But this callous attitude may create vulnerabilities for them down the line.
\n\nThe way that police have taken advantage of post-Charlottesville criticism to escalate their violence in support of fascist organizing is a reminder that when we critique the institutions of the state, we have to produce a discourse that delegitimizes them completely, a discourse that cannot be appropriated for other ends. We should use this opportunity to draw connections between policing and the fascist agenda before their latest escalation becomes normalized as well.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/1.jpg\")
The institutional face of fascism.
\nAfter “Unite the Right,” Donald Trump provoked outrage by arguing that there were “fine people on both sides” and later, when pressed, assigning blame to both sides as well. Nonetheless, we can ascribe the departures of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka from his administration in part to the ensuing backlash.
\n\nToday, Donald Trump continues to appeal to racists via dog whistles—for example, gratuitously attacking well-known athletes of color such as LeBron James. He is counting on gerrymandering, the unconditional loyalty of his base, and the monopolization of force in the hands of US government institutions to maintain his hold on power regardless of how unpopular he becomes with everyone else.
\n\nSo far, this strategy has basically worked. A version of the Muslim Ban is now in effect; Trump continues to stack the courts with highly conservative judges who will hold those positions for decades to come, intensifying the racism of the carceral justice industry and making legal challenges like the J20 court case even more difficult. It’s also worth noting that many white supremacists are radicalized in prison. It’s possible to understand the current revival of fascist street violence as a side effect of the expanding prison-industrial complex. This is yet another example of how state and extra-state authoritarianism reinforce each other.
\n\nAs the state becomes the chief force implementing the fascist agenda, we have to stay focused on countering the ways it is targeting people, even as fascists attempt to draw us into private turf wars. The more effective we are at mobilizing broad resistance to its operations, the more allies we will have when it comes to facing down fascists. For example, in supporting prisoner revolts such as the upcoming nationwide prison strike, we can make it more likely that prisoners will organize along class lines rather than racial lines.
\n\nIt’s a mistake to understand the struggle between fascists and their opponents according to a binary framework. Those who like to see themselves as political “centrists” in fact comprise a third pole in these struggles.
\n\nThe centrists are not at all enthusiastic about anti-fascists being powerful enough to deny fascists a platform. Two weeks after fascists gathered in Charlottesville, anti-fascists shut down a fascist rally in Berkeley, California. In response, Berkeley’s mayor, a liberal Democrat, called on the police to classify anti-fascists as a gang and mobilize against them accordingly.
\n\nMore recently, centrist Democrats used the elections of August 7 as an opportunity to launch social media attacks on the Green Party and third party voting in general; they hope to use the specter of Trump to discipline those to their left into supporting “moderate” candidates. As they attempt to channel all disapproval of Trump into support for the party establishment, corporate media outlets, and the FBI, we will surely see them make moves to discredit direct action and radical politics.
\n\nThis gives us a new perspective on Facebook’s decision to delete the Facebook page that the Shut It Down DC Coalition was using to promote their protest against the “Unite the Right 2” rally in Washington, DC. Facebook claimed that the page in question appeared to be connected with Russian bot activity, associating anti-fascist organizing with the number one bugaboo of centrist Democrats. Perhaps this is entirely coincidental.
\n\nImmediately afterwards, Google, Facebook and Apple banned Alex Jones and his conspiracy-theory-peddling media company, Infowars. Infowars has long provided a venue for confused conservatives to find their way into far-right and fascist activity; we can hardly lament their misfortunes. But if the banning was a partisan centrist maneuver against “extremes,” we’ll be next on the chopping block.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/6.jpg\")
\nAnd us? What lessons did we learn from Charlottesville? How should our strategies shift in view of how others have changed theirs?
\n\nIn the wake of the violent clashes in downtown Charlottesville, many anti-fascists concluded that it was essential to organize as broadly as possible.
\n\nBut how do we set about doing this? For two weeks after the Unite the Right rally, the corporate media appeared sympathetic to the anti-fascist cause. This changed as soon as anti-fascists achieved victories in Boston, Durham, and Berkeley and conservative editors regained control of the discourse. We can’t count on corporate media to tell our story for us. We have to do our best to shape the narratives they produce since that is the terrain on which the police justify their attacks. However, the more we legitimize corporate media outlets as a credible source of information, the more powerful they will be when they turn against us.
\n\nWe have to build a social base directly by organizing with others who are affected by the same problems. Anti-fascists in the Bay Area, Portland, and elsewhere have repeatedly accomplished this, turning out massive numbers of people who are willing to organize with respect for a diversity of tactics. This is essential: so long as you don’t give up your autonomy, gaining the ability to act together with large numbers of people is a more important victory than shutting down any particular fascist event. We should evaluate our anti-fascist organizing according to how well it equips us to engage in all the other struggles that confront us.
\n\nThe most important aspect of collective self-defense—whether in Chiapas, Rojava, or Virginia—is being firmly tied into a social base of support. All the firearms and concussion grenades in the world will not suffice to protect people who have lost the respect of their communities.
\n\nThe struggle that is taking place here is not (just) a military clash between armed groups; it is a clash of values within an entire society. We have to spread our tactics, our values, and our unruliness far beyond the immediate sectors of the population that we are currently able to organize with. Even when we are forced to engage in open confrontation, we have to remember that what we are doing must serve as a form of education and outreach. Fascists have gained the most momentum when they’ve understood their actions, including attacks on undocumented people, anti-fascists, and other adversaries, as a means of winning recruits. We have to fight in a way that makes our opposition to all forms of authoritarianism comprehensible and appealing to everyone who could join us.
\n\nOur relationship to those who will never join us is more complicated. History has shown a thousand times over that liberal politicians will turn to us in an emergency—for example, to create a political crisis they can offer to solve—but will disavow and abandon us the instant it becomes politically expedient. At the same time, as society polarizes, grassroots support from leftists is unlikely to discourage police from hospitalizing or even killing us. If we build powerful enough movements, perhaps we will gain enough leverage on liberal centrists that they will be forced to stand up for us without thus securing the means to pacify us. But that goal is a long way off.
\n\nFinally, we have to address the root causes of suffering. If we do that, people will join our efforts for their own reasons.
\n\nIn the wake of the clashes in Charlottesville, both sides have stepped up their efforts to identify their adversaries. This is an asymmetrical conflict. Fascists who are doxxed have more to fear from society at large: Joey Gibson and countless others have lost their jobs as a result of anti-fascists publicizing their politics. Even the US military has kicked out fascists, if only after tremendous public pressure. In addition, fascists have been disowned by their parents, kicked out of school, and faced other forms of social exclusion. In some parts of the US, doxxing has reduced the fascist movement to those who are extremely privileged or disenfranchised. We should continue to use this strategy, building and circulating databases of everyone involved in far-right activity.
\n\nThose who are doxxed by fascists and the far right face a different set of risks. The police have charged people with felonies on the basis of research and speculation originating on far-right and fascist online forums. In addition, anti-fascists have also received threats at their workplaces and homes. The stress of being identified as a target for fascist violence can be considerable. In addition, if the government were to make another qualitative shift to the right, the police could utilize lists of targets supplied by fascists. In the meantime, doxxing discourages high-risk activity on the part of those whose identities are known to fascists and police officers.
\n\nThis is perhaps the chief structural function of far right doxxing: to take advantage of the asymmetrical way that the police target anti-fascists in order to tie their hands in conflicts. Republican politicians who understand this introduced the “Unmasking Antifa” law.
\n\nIn this context, it’s especially important for anti-fascists to engage in pre-emptive harm reduction. See below for a collection of guides to minimizing the threat posed by doxxing.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/5.jpg\")
The black bloc in Portland on August 4, 2018.
\nOne of the solutions to the threat of doxxing is to conceal one’s identity. There are pros and cons to this: the more effectively anti-fascists mask up, the greater the risk that they will appear alienating to those who are not familiar with the dangers of engaging in anti-fascist struggle, and the more aggressively police will target them.
\n\nOne solution to this problem is to normalize masking as a regular part of political activity so it is not only associated with illegal or confrontational activity. In the year since Charlottesville, it has become increasingly common for a wide range of demonstrators to utilize masks and protective gear. In Portland on August 4, the number of people who marched in or behind the black bloc was inspiring. At least in certain hotbeds of resistance, it should be possible to legitimize wearing masks, especially in view of the threat of doxxing.
\n\nThis is not always possible. As we wrote in our analysis of the struggles of 2017:
\n\n\n\n\n“In Charlottesville, anti-fascists largely opted to forego masks and black clothing, despite the risks of participating in confrontations while permitting fascists and police to identify them. Due to far-right and corporate media efforts to stigmatize ‘antifa’ as violent and alien, participants feared that concealing their identities would only help to legitimize the fascists. This concern underscores the extent to which anarchists were operating from a position of weakness in Charlottesville.”
\n
Over the year since, the fact that activists did not conceal their identities in Charlottesville has caused no end of grief to those on the receiving end of fascist doxxing. But it may have been the right choice, all the same.
\n\nIn situations where it is not possible or strategic to show up in black bloc gear, demonstrators can utilize a wide array of other items to the same effect: hats, umbrellas, sunglasses, reversible jackets, wigs, scarves, and the like. On a full day of actions, it’s best to bring a wide assortment of these and continue changing them throughout the course of events. Likewise, in any potential altercation, those who have their hands free should look around for cameras and other perimeter threats and attend to them.
\n\nThose who fight monsters should take care not to become monsters themselves, Friedrich Nietzsche warns us, and this is especially true when it comes to opposing fascists. Our conditions for victory are different from theirs. They want to exclude; we want to include. They want to dominate; we want to coexist. They want to attack, to exterminate; we want to protect, to nourish, to create. We have to be careful not to militarize ourselves, not to get stuck in routines and rituals, not to lose our optimism about humanity or our ability to love.
\n\nWhen our efforts to prevent fascists from organizing hit an impasse—for example, in Portland, where the full might of the police state has been utilized to defend Patriot Prayer marches—we have to identify other ways to achieve our objectives. When all the resources of the state are engaged in protecting a single fascist demonstration, anti-fascists could pick another target via which to express their values and shift the focus of attention. We have to stay flexible and continue to experiment with new tactics and ideas.
\n\nLikewise, the tragedy in Charlottesville and all the other fascist violence before and since has showed that we have to take trauma and healing seriously. Making care a fundamental part of our organizing, we can incorporate collective grieving and healing into the rest of our activities in order to be good to ourselves, strengthen bonds, and dream together about the future.
\n\nThe greatest harm that fascists could do to us would be to reshape our conception of human nature in their own image, so that we think of their pettiness and hatred in place of the tremendous potential of humanity. We should understand the relationships we forge in the process of fighting fascism as a model for the alternative that we are proposing—and treat each other accordingly. If we can create nourishing, egalitarian, and inspiring communities despite all the forces ranged against us, this will show that we have a better way.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/09/4.jpg\")
A solidarity action in Berlin following the tragedy in Charlottesville.
\nSquaring off against Fascism: Critical Reflections from the Front Lines
\nHow Anti-Fascists Won the Battles of Berkeley: A Play-by-Play Analysis
\nAugust is shaping up to be a busy month in the United States, with a convergence of struggles against fascist organizing, the prison-industrial complex, and the violence of the border as exemplified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). With our comrades at Submedia and It’s Going Down, we’ve prepared a short video addressing the situation, followed by a brief analysis.
\n\nAll out this August!
\nWe’re seeing a new wave of activity from the fascist movement that was so soundly beaten in the streets a year ago. Early on the morning of July 28, the Nazis of Patriot Front attacked the camp set up by Occupy ICE in San Antonio. This August, the same fascist groups that terrorized and murdered people last year are preparing to rally around the US again—everywhere from Providence and Washington, DC to Portland and Berkeley.
\n\nFascists are the street wing of the Trump agenda. We have to shut them down wherever they organize. But above all, we can’t let them stop us from standing up to the state, the chief source of authoritarian violence.
\n\n\n\n\n“These goons are of great use to the authorities. They can carry out attacks that the state is not yet able to, intimidating those who might otherwise rebel. They distract from the institutionalized violence of the state, which is still the cause of most of the oppression that takes place in our society. Above all, they enable the authorities to portray themselves as neutral keepers of the peace.”
\n\n \n
All out for Portland!
\nFor years, people concerned about the violence of immigration enforcement sought a point of intervention to take action against it. At the beginning of the Trump era, we proposed that people build on the example of the airport blockades by shutting down ICE offices. This summer, the Occupy ICE model finally took off, with occupations all around the United States.
\n\nThe movement has managed to accomplish a lot with a relatively small amount of people. Unlike astroturf movements like the March for Our Lives that rapidly became a series of promotional events for the Democratic Party, Occupy ICE has offered agency to the exploited and excluded and achieved a direct impact. This has included direct aid and solidarity for the struggles of immigrants, halting specific deportations, and delaying deportations on a larger scale. Occupy ICE has blocked the Trump administration’s policy of breaking up families and forced Trump to try to distance himself from his own policy.
\n\nIn short, direct action gets the goods: we don’t need political parties to make change, we can take action ourselves to force the state to stop what it is doing.
\n\nUnlike the top-down decision involving the FBI and DHS to clear the Occupy encampments in coordinated attacks, the Trump administration has thus far permitted cities to handle the encampments on their own, presumably for fear that centralized repression would backfire. In response, fascists and others on the far right have taken on the task of attacking the encampments themselves, following in the footsteps of DHS agents. The fascists aspire to act as an auxiliary force of repression to do what the forces of the state cannot currently do.
\n\nHowever, this strategy can backfire on those who hold state power. The failure of the “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville a year ago cost the Trump regime dearly. Likewise, the decision to rely on evidence provided by far-right surveillance vigilantes Project Veritas cost prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff the entire J20 case. When fascists and other grassroots reactionaries overextend themselves, their failures can undermine the legitimacy of the reigning party they hope to support. We have to see fascist attacks as an opportunity to seize the initiative in our struggle against the state.
\n\nAbove all, fascists would like us to narrow the scope of our efforts to countering their organizing; they aim to trap us in a private grudge match while the state continues to mass-incarcerate and deport people. We beat them by organizing movements that can take on the chief source of oppression, the state itself.
\n\nThe organizers of a looming nationwide prison strike have expressed solidarity with Occupy ICE, linking the fight against prison slavery to the call to abolish ICE. This has come in the form of statements from prison strike leaders in support of Occupy ICE and also recent hunger strikes in solidarity with hunger-striking migrant detainees. When prisoners unite across racial lines against prison slavery, it’s up to us to do the same on the outside.
\n\nSo in solidarity with #AllOutAugust, we encourage people to continue to organize blockades against ICE facilities; to continue to defend Occupy ICE camps and reenergize them with events, music, films, and discussions; and to mobilize solidarity around the prison strike, as well. It is easy to draw links between resistance to prison slavery and the fight to abolish ICE and the borders it violently enforces. Continuing to support the Occupy ICE camps and anti-ICE blockades is one of many ways to act in solidarity with the prison strike.
\n\nEntering into open conflict with fascists is often terrifying. Yet we hope that the movement for a world without oppression can come out of the trying events of August stronger—and that as the summer comes to a close, the struggles against borders, fascists, and police will converge in new ways and gain new momentum.
\n\nGood luck out there, dear comrades.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/07/31/1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/07/31/3.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/07/31/2.jpg\")
\nAlong with comrades in Charlottesville and around the Southeast, we are calling for a weekend of international solidarity for August 11-12, 2018 to celebrate the courage and sacrifice of those who fought the rise of fascism in Charlottesville last summer. This is an important time to renew the visibility of the struggle for real freedom and equality. The organizers of last summer’s far-right fiasco are attempting to organize “Unite the Right 2” rallies in Charlottesville and/or Washington, DC. While many in the Virginia area prepare to confront them, we invite you to join us in organizing local actions to spread the fight to every corner of the globe.
\n\nWe approach the anniversary of August 11 and 12, 2017 with complicated feelings. As some Charlottesville residents have already written, the events of last summer left many scarred, both psychologically and literally. Sometimes it can feel like the car attack carried out by the fascist James Fields overshadows a very real victory that was hard won in the streets.
\n\nSince Charlottesville, we’ve watched fascist movements in the US fragment and collapse. The street power that the alt-right and other fascist groups had been building in the months leading up to August 2017 has disintegrated. Fascist spokesmen like Richard Spencer face resistance everywhere they go; Spencer has complained that doing public events and demonstrations “isn’t fun anymore.” Many of the fascist groups that went to Charlottesville have split up. While the white supremacist right is not defeated, they are weaker, and we can trace their decline to the fights of August 11 and 12.
\n\nWhen footage of the car attack circulated, people all over the world responded with resounding solidarity—a show of force that engendered fear in the halls of power as well as among fascists of all stripes. Several continents saw solidarity demonstrations within 24 hours of the murder of Heather Heyer on Water Street. In an effort to calm some of that anger, cities began taking down their Confederate statues, often under the cover of night. People in Durham, NC tore down a Confederate statue themselves, inspiring others around the country to carry out further attacks on statues and monuments. The climate in the immediate aftermath showed a glimpse of the power and cohesion we can have. Our solidarity and commitment to each other were displayed for all to see in the weeks following Unite the Right. It was obvious that those who want to see a world free from white supremacy were more organized and determined than the alt-right.
\n\nAfter the window opened by the immediate reaction to Unite the Right began to close, backlash ensued from the state and the far right. Another wave of doxxing, arrests, and legal cases began, along with a grand jury investigation. The police became increasingly violent towards protests against subsequent far-right demonstrations, most acutely demonstrated in the police operation to defend a fascist gathering in Newnan, GA. This only added to the state repression that autonomous and anti-capitalist movements were facing before the Unite the Right rally. Despite all these obstacles, we have seen incredible solidarity and resilience on our side of the barricades of Emancipation Park.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/06/25/1.jpg\")
A solidarity demonstration in Germany.
\nTo remember Heather and everyone who fought to push back the fascist tide of Unite the Right in August 2017, we propose a weekend of international solidarity for August 11 and 12, 2018. We suggest a focus on visibility—whatever that means for you—to show that despite all the obstacles we have faced compared to the fascists and their police escorts, our movements remain resilient and strong. We know that our ties reach across borders—let’s make those ties clear.
\n\nThe TORCH Network has already called for a day of remembrance for slain anti-racists Dan and Spit on July 4. We should build on that energy to keep the memory alive of those who have died fighting fascism. This is an opportunity to build cohesion locally and transcontinentally.
\n\nThink creatively about the forms that resistance to fascism and white supremacy could take in your context. Are there active white supremacists where you live who might try to mark this anniversary themselves? What can you do to stop them? How does the world that the far right is trying to create resemble the world we already live in? Which institutions are they attempting to protect? How can you honor those who have suffered most from white supremacy? What gestures might resonate with people you haven’t yet met?
\n\nYou could hold a public demonstration, bringing people together in the streets to express opposition to authoritarianism—whether that be the violence organized by fascist groups or the border control policy that the Trump administration is pushing.
\nYou could organize a film screening, concert, or benefit dinner. For example, if you haven’t already showed the movie ANTIFA in your community, this is a good opportunity to do so.
\nYou could set up a table full of anti-fascist literature in front of the local metro stop or in a local park and distribute it to passersby.
\nYou could put up posters and stickers remembering Heather and others who have died fighting fascism and bigotry.
\nYou could hang banners in public places bearing the names of those killed by racists and fascists.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/06/25/2.jpg\")
A solidarity demonstration in France.
\nA Call to Action to the Charlottesville Resistance of August 2018
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/09/04/squaring-off-against-fascism-critical-reflections-from-the-front-lines-an-interview", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/09/04/squaring-off-against-fascism-critical-reflections-from-the-front-lines-an-interview", "title": "Squaring off against Fascism : Critical Reflections from the Front Lines: An Interview", "summary": "A participant on the front lines of the clashes in Charlottesville speaks about why outnumbered anti-fascists were able to achieve victory and how to halt the creep towards authoritarianism.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/header1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/header1.jpg", "date_published": "2017-09-04T16:03:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:35Z", "tags": [ "fascism", "Charlottesville", "antifascism", "antifa" ], "content_html": "In the three weeks since anarchists helped shut down the largest fascist rally the US has seen in decades, the pendulum has swung back and forth between new public support for anti-fascist organizing and a dishonest, fearmongering reaction spearheaded by the extreme center that plays right into the hands of far-right elements in the police and FBI. Now, fascists are shifting towards a strategy of decentralized attacks while the Trump administration prepares a new racist offensive against nearly a million residents of the United States. It’s more pressing than ever to learn from our victories in order to strategize for the next round. We spoke with a participant in the front lines of the clashes in Charlottesville about why an under-equipped anti-fascist contingent was able to defeat a more numerous body of fascists, how to halt the creep towards authoritarianism, and what courage means in these struggles.
\n\nIn Charlottesville, on Friday night, August 11, if the torchlit march had not encountered any protesters around the monument or elsewhere—if it had been able to proceed without meeting any opposition—what do you think the consequences would have been?
\n\nWell, it’s easy to be doctrinaire when you’re speculating. I mean, any time fascists do something provocative without opposition, it sets a new baseline for them. It’s like, “Oh, marching with torches and chanting ‘Blood and Soil’ is a pretty low-key thing to do, let’s always do that at our gatherings from now on. It’s fun and easy!” But I think it strengthens their movement even more when they encounter opposition that they can easily defeat, which is what actually happened on Friday. If that had been the only event in Charlottesville, or if the rest of the weekend had gone the same way, it would have been a gift to their movement.
\n\nI try to imagine the perspective of a fresh young recruit. You know he’s posturing and puffing himself up, but he’s nervous too. He feels awkward putting on that white polo shirt, he feels nervous carrying a torch at first. But then he sees everyone around him doing the same thing, his voice is amplified by a hundred voices saying the same words as him, and that nervousness turns into elation. So right there, his body learns an important lesson: “When I feel scared, these are the people who make me safe. When I feel weak, these are the people who make me strong.” This is like church, you know. That whole process happens even if not a single counterprotestor shows up. He already knows that most of the world is against him.
\n\nIf there’s tangible, physical opposition, the nervousness is going to be more intense, but so is that gut-level lesson learned from a victory. So when we confront these things, we should recognize that we’re raising the stakes. I think groups like SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) fixate on that side of things when they try to discourage people from counterprotesting. I think their attitude is, we can’t do anything about these young men’s acculturation into hate groups, but we can deny them opportunities to really get hardened. Or maybe they think that acculturation happens in internet forums, not torch marches. I don’t know. I think anarchists sometimes understand this process better than sociologists, because we’ve been through something similar, in subcultural spaces or street marches or whatever.
\n\nAlso we’re not static. Even when we take a loss that strengthens the movement we’re fighting against, it can strengthen us too. Friday night seriously shook people, but it probably made us more determined and smarter on Saturday. I almost want to say wiser. We knew exactly what kind of victory we needed to deny them, and we knew we would have to do it without the advantage of physical superiority. If no one had showed up to oppose them on Friday, maybe we would have made worse mistakes the next day, against a sharper adversary. There’s no way to know.
\n\nWhy were anti-fascists not as prepared to respond on Friday night? Can you say anything about the motivations of those who still chose to confront the torchlit march?
\n\nThe details of that march were announced much later, that’s the main thing. Also I think some kinds of counter-protestors are always going to stay away from a nighttime event like that, because it’s more likely to be crazy. Some people were prepared, but it was just different situations.
\n\nI do think Friday highlighted one weakness we have right now, which is that we don’t share much common culture around assessing our group capacity in the heat of the moment. I’ve seen this at other events too. Some of us are used to quietly running the numbers when we’re in a crowd, asking ourselves, you know, what are the odds we can successfully unarrest people if there are issues with the police? Or what are the odds we can physically prevent this group of white supremacists from reaching their destination? That kind of thing. And adjusting the approach accordingly. Other people, maybe people who aren’t drawing on the same kinds of street experience or think of their goals differently, seem to approach those questions morally rather than situationally. Like, we must not let them reach their destination, therefore we shall not let them reach their destination.
\n\nI’m not saying there’s one single correct way to look at it, but if we’re not having those conversations constructively outside of these crisis moments, it’s not good. Those conversations are part of building a strong movement culture.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/5.jpg\")
No dignity in fascism.
\nOn Saturday, it appeared that counter-demonstrators were outmatched by fascists in terms of muscle mass, equipment, numbers, and terrain. It was a terrifying situation. Yet anti-fascists did unexpectedly well in the confrontations. What do you attribute this to?
\n\nYou mean we did unexpectedly well, right? I think antifascists had a deeper understanding of diversity of tactics. The presence of counterprotestors with a personal commitment to nonviolence was important, I think, and so were the diverse approaches of those who did use physical force, I mean as far as acting more offensively or defensively.
\n\nUnite the Right was all about image. They wanted three things: look like victims of antifa/”SJW” aggression, look like friends of the police, and look like they were winning the physical battle in the streets. I think all those wires got crossed in Charlottesville because of the diversity of their opposition.
\n\nSide note, we made a conscious decision not to do Saturday in black bloc. I think that helped in the specific circumstances.
\n\nSo diversity of tactics, yeah. A lot of these alt-right people are scared of confrontation, even though they fantasize about power. You could tell that made it hard for them to psychologically switch gears; by the time they figured out how to deal with one kind of counterprotestor, the situation had changed and they had to go back to square one. They had to think too hard. They didn’t know if they were going to get punched or prayed at. And the whole time they’re getting pelted with paint balloons, and they just look silly.
\n\nThen you had macho types who reacted to that paralysis by just going ham, charging in swinging by themselves. That was scary, because these were big dudes who understood violence, but it didn’t really serve their larger goals, and they lost fights because we would surround them and beat them back. It didn’t help those guys that their official rally was up a hill behind barricades.
\n\nFinally, there were the guys in full-on riot gear, plexiglass shields and clubs and face-shields, stuff like that. They had a hard time early in the day, marching into the park, because they couldn’t figure out what kind of confrontation they were in; they wanted to beat us up but they wanted it to look like our fault, and they came out worse on both counts. Later, they regrouped, and it seemed like they were ready to crack some skulls in a more paramilitary style–charge out of the park in formation and just trample whoever was in their way. I think that would have happened more if the rally had gone on longer, because they were starting to give up on the whole image thing. We should have had more tools to obscure their vision and keep them at a distance. But the cops dispersed the rally before it went there. I think we can take some credit for that.
\n\nThis sounds weird, but I think anarchists might have better discipline than Nazis, at least in this kind of situation. Fascists had the advantage when things were really scripted, and a lot of them would have had the advantage in a one-on-one fight, but they were just clumsy when it came to navigating a complex situation. I guess I mean self-discipline. But it has this real communal aspect to it, because we actually care about each other and pay attention to each other, like not just our cliques and affinity groups, but also strangers. You can’t fake that. You can’t squeeze that out of an authoritarian ideology.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/4.jpg\")
Fascists were better equipped than counter-protestors in Charlottesville, yet failed to gain the upper hand.
\nSome have reported that it was very important that there were guns on the anti-fascist side of the conflict, to discourage fascists from escalating past a certain degree of force. Others have expressed concern about whether guns can be a useful tool in struggles for liberation. Coming away from Charlottesville, what is your impression?
\n\nI don’t know if guns were an important deterrent as the day wore on. Maybe they were early on before things really started, when we were just milling around several blocks away. Realistically, if a Nazi had started shooting later in the rally no one would have had a clear shot before he emptied his clip, and once that gunfire started the crossfire would be hellish. So I guess it depends what kind of threat you think was deterred. Probably the deterrent effect was a factor in the open areas where more one-on-one fights happened—you might not pull a knife in the open if you think there’s a chance you’re being covered. But on that topic, the possibility of getting stabbed makes you pretty careful too. We were all thinking about Sacramento.
\n\nI can see an argument that the possibility of handguns mixed in the crowd would discourage the guys with shields and clubs from rushing in too aggressively. Maybe it put more pressure on them to stay in very tight formation, which limits how aggressive you can get with a club. I’m just speculating here, I still think the concern with image was a bigger factor for them. Anyway, that’s different from the militia style, open carry rifles.
\n\nI guess I did see a neo-Confederate man in the front lines reach for his pistol and then change his mind when we yelled that he had a gun. He settled for an extendable baton instead. So that’s an example where knowing that you can be identified and targeted will convince you to keep your own weapon holstered. That deterred him from brandishing a gun, though. He really did have a self-defense mentality, even if it was a racist, delusional one, and he was going to pull his gun to “deter” the mob he was facing. It would have been very different if his primary goal was to kill people.
\n\nAs soon as you start talking deterrence, you’re talking about an arms race. I think that’s a danger whether it’s guns, knives, or plexiglass shields. You lose the social character of the struggle and you lose the diversity of tactics. I don’t mind being around assault rifles, but I do mind the paramilitary mentality. We’re susceptible to that mentality when fear clouds our thinking.
\n\nIf you get into an arms race with a bunch of scared people who have little or no experience of gun violence—I’m talking about antifascists as well as the alt fascists, we’re scared too—you’re creating an extremely volatile situation. All it takes is one jumpy person pulling a trigger.
\n\nProbably the only thing you can do is think very concretely about what you’re trying to deter. Reflect. It has to be based in experience, yours or a mentor’s or something, and it has to be real about the big picture. Otherwise, you’ve just got a very risky security blanket.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/ACLUVA/status/901572207079555073\n \n
Do you have any thoughts about what approaches we should expect fascists to take in the wake of Charlottesville?
\n\nIt’s a dangerous time. They’ve already lost the battle to look like victims, so some of them will be happy to look like successful aggressors. That could certainly mean they go in the direction of clandestine attacks, but it could also mean they show up at these things looking like Roman legionnaires and they rush us first, hard. Our best defense is numbers, which maybe we have now. Obviously, there are tactical questions for us too.
\n\nOn the other hand, some of them may try to move back toward a mass movement, and away from the fringe. They might stick to being the “pro-white bloc” at Trump rallies.
\n\nWhat do the events in Charlottesville mean for the strategy of Richard Spencer, who seeks to popularize a new “respectable” white supremacy?
\n\nHe lost. His strategy lost. The president tried running interference for him, but it didn’t work. I mean, these suit-and-tie Nazis can’t change their character overnight, so they’ll keep trying the same rhetoric, but it’s going to be a dwindling audience.
\n\nOn the other hand, that rhetoric does enable young alt-right recruits to remain in denial about what they’re signing up for. For the most part, they think they’re the Freikorps, but not the Final Solution. We should also remember, again, that clashes like the ones we’ve been seeing can harden these kids. So the ones who don’t drop out because of fear or shame are becoming a more dangerous kind of cadre. The respectability strategy is basically over, but the same individuals can now go about consolidating their gains.
\n\nCan anti-fascists take credit for the ouster of Stephen Bannon? Will his return to Breitbart and the grassroots far right embolden fascists and give them more momentum? Beyond the obvious strategy of “no platform for fascists,” what role should anti-fascist activity play in our struggle against the state, the chief implementer of totalitarian measures?
\n\nThat’s a lot of questions! Bannon? I don’t really care who takes credit for his career change, but I don’t really see it emboldening the far right. You know, the Democrats want to tell it like Charlottesville got Bannon kicked out, because that shifts the focus back to the Oval Office and out of the streets. It might have. I don’t know. I’m glad he’s out, but it’s not my focus. I’m not sure he cares whether he’s directing his movement from inside the institutions or from outside.
\n\nWhat I anticipate is that he’ll try to create a home for all the young people who don’t want to go to Nazi rallies anymore, he’ll push this “alt-left” nonsense, basically he’ll try to do a better version of Richard Spencer’s strategy. That means no Nazis, no Klansmen, just nice Midwestern church people who wouldn’t mind seeing the police gun us down. I’m not sure the momentum is with him now, but we’ll see.
\n\nOkay, about the state… We’re still in the midst of an authoritarian backlash in the broader culture, alongside the white backlash. Trump draws on it, but so do his opponents. If you’re trying to get a popular mandate for authoritarian governance, you present yourself as the only force able to contain irreconcilable, violent conflicts within society. That’s what Trump was doing when he talked about the “many sides” of violence in Charlottesville, and I’m sure that’s what his centrist opposition will do when they try to replace him.
\n\nThere’s two ways to respond as an anti-authoritarian. You can double down on the irreconcilable social conflicts, and say it’s our job to bring them out into the open and fight consciously from the side of the exploited, you know, refuse an oppressive social peace. Or you can dispute the state’s claim that it can resolve people’s conflicts better than we can resolve them on our own. Who does it serve when we perceive our conflicts as irreconcilable, and why do we have to listen to those voices?
\n\nRight now, people like Bannon are pushing a vision of a society threatened by deep, irreconcilable conflicts, but they’re not the conflicts a leftist would talk about. They’re citizen vs. alien, West vs. Islam, and so on. We can push for a different way of seeing the structural divisions in our society, and put our bodies on the line for those beliefs, but if that’s all we do we’re giving a lot of ground to authoritarians who want to be the neutral party. I’m talking about mom-n-pop authoritarians, not just the deep state. So I think we have to bring the idealist side of anarchism with us too, don’t just challenge the analysis of our society’s real conflicts, but challenge the state’s claim to protect us from each other. Challenge the belief that we have always needed protection from each other, and always will.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/2.jpg\")
We must not let clashes like the one in Charlottesville confirm the right-wing narrative that mutually beneficial coexistence is impossible.
\nIn Europe, one of the anarchist critiques of antifascism has been that it obscures the necessity of struggle against the state, capitalism, and other forms of domination. Do you see this as a risk in the US? Why or why not?
\n\nWhat do you mean “obscures the necessity of struggle”? Like we imagine that as soon as the last Nazi is killed, capitalism and the state will come crumbling down of their own accord, and trans women won’t have to worry about getting randomly murdered for their gender? I don’t see that risk. If you just mean that antifascism can tie down anarchists and keep them from prioritizing the work they really believe in, well of course it can. It’s a defensive struggle. Defense only works if you’re poised to counterattack, and our best counterattack will always be liberatory social movements.
\n\nWhat I do see is that our experiences of struggle deeply shape our imagination. That’s true whether your experience is rioting, or community organizing, or fighting Nazis, or just daily survival in a world that wants to erase you. You start to imagine the whole revolution as just whatever struggle you’re used to, but on a larger scale. And then maybe you’re just limited by your learned instincts and the culture you build up around them.
\n\nThat may be a problem for the generation that’s been radicalized in the Trump era. There’s the potential for a kind of creeping authoritarianism on the left, the revolutionary left I mean. You know, that whole mythology of the militant… it can obscure the necessity of struggle against—not the state of today, but the state of tomorrow.
\n\nBut you know, we have a choice about that. We don’t have to be determined by our experiences, even if we’re shaped by them. We can have a more expansive vision of struggle. We can choose what we’re struggling for.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/1.jpg\")
The site of Heather Heyer’s death.
\nClearly, it takes a lot of courage to physically confront armed fascists. What does courage mean for antifascists? What kind of courage should we be trying to cultivate? What are the risks of focusing on courage as a value?
\n\nCourage is being willing to die for the sake of victory. That’s a straightforward definition. And that is exactly what happened in Charlottesville. One of us died, and we had a victory. That might sound inspiring to some people, but to me it’s fucking nauseating, it makes me want to cry. I mean, I didn’t know Heather, I don’t know if she was preparing herself for the possibility of death. She’s not around to tell us if she wants to be a hero. I do know that some of us entered that weekend consciously accepting that we might die, or that our comrades and loved ones might die. When you take on that kind of mindset, it leaves some scars. I just can’t think about this question in an abstract way.
\n\nSome people talk about courage like it’s just a matter of inner righteousness or integrity or something. I disagree with that idea. You can be a person of great integrity, ready to go through the fire for your beliefs, but when it comes time to use the weapons at your disposal you’re too hesitant to make a contribution. Our understanding of courage should capture that readiness to step forward and act without guarantees. That’s why I say it’s about victory.
\n\nThis isn’t about violence versus nonviolence. Some of the most courageous people I saw in Charlottesville were not throwing punches; they were dressing wounds, or praying, or standing solitary in front of a line of advancing riot cops. Those people were all using the weapons at their disposal.
\n\nI guess the risk is that courage alone can’t guide you. I mean, courageous soldiers can fight imperialist wars, but that doesn’t make them right. Honor and sacrifice can fuel a spiral of meaningless violence. Sometimes the things that make you hesitate when you shouldn’t are also the things that make you reassess your direction when really you should.
\n\nIf you want to back way up and look at it, courage is a warrior value, and anarchism is a peace movement. I mean that in the very simple sense that it’s about people treating each other right without being forced to. That’s peace. Obviously, there’s fighting involved too. I’m just not convinced that the things that make us strong in the face of adversity are always the things that make us good to one another, or that being ready for war makes you ready for peace. Maybe that just comes back to making sure that your vision of victory is really worth dying for.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/09/04/3.jpg\")
People in Oakland rallying in solidarity with those who fought fascism in Charlottesville.
\nFollowing the clashes in Charlottesville and the massive anti-fascist demonstrations afterwards in Durham, Boston, and the Bay Area, the struggle against fascism has arrived in the consciousness of the general public. Tens of thousands of people are realizing that the fight against fascism didn’t end in 1945—that today, as increasingly authoritarian governments collude with ascendant fascist movements, this battle is more pressing than ever.
\n\nIt’s worth taking a moment to review what anti-fascists have accomplished since Trump was elected. Despite harassment and attacks from fascists and law enforcement, what was initially a few hundred people without financial resources or sponsors has grown into the foundation for a massive social movement. On April 15, fascists rampaged through Berkeley, recording video footage of themselves beating people to use for recruiting purposes. On Sunday, August 27, the same fascists attempted to hold another rally in Berkeley. In response to the murder of Heather Heyer during a fascist rally in Charlottesville two weeks prior, thousands of people converged to make the fascist demonstration impossible.
\n\nImagine if the “Unite the Right” rally had taken place without resistance, and a thousand white supremacists had been able to march around Charlottesville unopposed. In that scenario, emboldened fascists could have presented themselves as a legitimate part of the political spectrum, while preparing the way for more murders like the ones in Charleston and Portland. In that case, the government with Trump at the helm would be able to present itself as the only possible solution to fascist violence, and the general public would be forced to seek assistance from the very authorities that are already implementing most of the white supremacist agenda. We should be grateful that long before Charlottesville, forward-thinking anti-fascists were doing the thankless work of monitoring fascists and mobilizing against them.
\n\nBut now that the struggle against fascism has arrived on a massive scale, it’s time to come to grips with the limitations the movement faces today. Every victory generates new challenges. Let’s explore the obstacles that the anti-fascist movement will have to overcome to succeed in creating a world free of authoritarianism.
\n\nThis article is available as a zine you can print out and distribute in your community.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/1.jpg\")
Not your grandfather’s anti-fascism.
\nThe Washington Post titled their coverage of Sunday’s demonstration “Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley.” It is not surprising when Fox News publishes barefaced propaganda describing the organizer of far-right demonstrations that have included at least one fascist murderer as a “prayer activist,” but it is more unsettling to see fascist talking points parroted by supposedly liberal outlets.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/4.jpg\")
Scaremongering from the corporate media.
\nThe image at the top of the Washington Post article shows a right-wing demonstrator apparently being shoved by an anti-fascist with a shield. Yet several videos show the same far-right demonstrator pepper-spraying anti-fascist demonstrators without provocation and then pepper-spraying people at random immediately before the photo was taken. If you look closely, the attacker is wearing a shirt that celebrates Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet for murdering dissidents by dropping them out of helicopters. If you look closer, you can see that the anti-fascist in the picture has a stick, but is choosing not to use it, instead simply using a shield to block the fascist with the pepper-spray from carrying out further attacks. In fact, the Washington Post chose to use a photo in which the assailant’s right hand is not visible, so readers would not see the pepper spray he holds in it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/7.jpg\")
Take a closer look.
\n\nhttps://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/901910367239938048\n\n\n
When the Washington Post portrays such fascists as “peaceful,” suggesting that they are victims even as they attack people and glorify mass murder, this gives them legitimacy, securing space for them to recruit and to promote and organize further attacks. Why would liberal media outlets do this?
\n\nJournalists often determine the substance of their story in advance, and it appears that media outlets across the spectrum had determined in advance to report the anti-fascist demonstration in Berkeley as an expression of violent excess even before it happened. In the event, the demonstration was largely peaceful; even the worst clashes were considerably less violent than the fighting on April 15. Despite this, corporate media outlets that had ignored April 15 altogether devoted considerable space to a few isolated incidents in which anti-fascists scuffled with fascists or other Trump supporters.
\n\nThe intention was clearly to impose a limit on the amount of popular legitimacy anti-fascists would be permitted to accrue after the events in Charlottesville. Two weeks of positive coverage of anti-fascists, during which various members of the clergy came forward to praise their efforts, were deemed to be too much. Heather Heyer’s murder had taken corporate media by surprise, interrupting their conventional narratives and proving that the threat anti-fascists had supposedly been blowing out of proportion was all too real. It took corporate editors two weeks to regain control of the discourse. As soon as they did, they reimposed their old stereotypes as if Heather had never been killed.
\n\nThis should put an end to any illusions we might have had that corporate media could side with anti-fascists. Outlets like the Washington Post aspire to position themselves against both Trump and his adversaries in the streets—to occupy what some call “the extreme center.” They are gambling that the current polarization of society is temporary, that they can be the beneficiaries of disillusionment with both sides.
\n\nAnti-fascists have to strategize about how to organize and legitimize our efforts to the general public without the benefit of positive media coverage. This is no easy task. At the minimum, it will demand our own grassroots media, at the same time that this media is under systematic assault from right-wing trolls.
\n\nThis challenge is symptomatic of the larger phenomenon of polarization, which is worth examining separately.
\n\nUS society has been splintering and polarizing for years now, since the recession of 2008 if not before. The movement against police and white supremacy that burst onto the national stage in Ferguson in 2014 as Black Lives Matter generated a far-right backlash, which inspired a resurgence of anti-fascist organizing. In response, fascists gave angry liberals and anti-fascists a central place in their strategy, seeking to provoke them into reactive behavior that could be used to further mobilize the right-wing base. Milo Yiannopoulos used this strategy until it blew up in his face last February, when a black bloc of hundreds shut down his event in Berkeley.
\n\nVarious fascist and fascist-friendly organizers also used this approach, baiting leftists and anti-fascists with a series of “free speech” rallies in Berkeley, Portland, and elsewhere around the country that won the nascent fascist movement notoriety and momentum. This movement appeared fully formed for the first time in Charlottesville—but the shockwaves of that debut drew many more people into the movement against fascism, changing the balance of power once again. The “free speech” rallies scheduled afterwards in Boston and the Bay Area were total washouts for the fascists.
\n\nIn each of these cases, when the pendulum of polarization swung to one side, the opposing side was able to use the specter of that victory to draw more sympathizers into action. With the media narrative coming out about Berkeley, the pendulum has again swung away from anti-fascists to benefit the right-wing reaction.
\n\nSo long as this pattern persists, every anti-fascist victory will produce an even greater threat from the far-right and the government. To break out of the pattern, anti-fascists have to strike blows in ways that don’t enable fascists to cash in on the resulting fear among right-wingers, or else to find a way to draw in large swathes of the population more rapidly than their competition on the right. We can offer a few hypotheses about how to accomplish this.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/2.jpg\")
Anti-fascists in Dallas, Texas.
\nThe allegation that fascists and anti-fascists are equally bad has been advanced most famously by Donald Trump himself in his response to the events in Charlottesville. He suggested that the problem was an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides,” refusing to say a word about the fascists who murdered Heather Heyer. This should tell us something about those who describe fascists and anti-fascists as symmetrical.
\n\nTo equate those who fight for freedom and equality with those who want an autocratic state to enforce hierarchies is to reserve all legitimacy for the state alone—which is itself an autocratic position. It means celebrating the legalism of passive spectators over the heroes who fought the rise of dictatorships in Italy, Germany, Spain, Chile, Greece, and a hundred other nations. It means congratulating those who keep their hands clean while their neighbors are rounded up and imprisoned, deported, or killed.
\n\nWe have to become adept at spelling out the ethical differences between fascism and anti-fascism, and all the justifications for forms of direct action that can actually be effective in this struggle. We need allies from many different walks of life who can help us make this case to the public at large.
\n\nUnfortunately, we can’t count on everyone on the Left to behave responsibly. In “How ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right,’” the same Chris Hedges who assisted the state in dividing and repressing the Occupy movement reappears to perform the same service in relation to the movements against fascism and the Trump administration.
\n\nThe irony of a war journalist perennially accusing others of being driven by a lust for adrenaline should not be lost on anyone. It is worse still that Hedges, as a journalist, arrogates himself the right to pass judgment on the events in Charlottesville from a distance rather than deferring to people like Cornel West who were actually there putting their bodies on the line. But the true irony here is that Hedges purports to be warning against precisely the problem that he himself is creating. “By brawling in the streets,” Hedges alleges, “antifa allows the corporate state… to use the false argument of moral equivalency to criminalize the work of all anti-capitalists.” Actually, it is Hedges who is equipping the state to do this, by attributing “the same lust for violence” to anti-fascists that he believes motivates fascists. He could just as easily use his soapbox to debunk this moral equivalency, but he lacks the moral courage—he simply cannot resist performing the same kind of “self-advertisement for moral purity” that he accuses others of.
\n\nIn 2012, when the authorities needed a narrative with which to isolate the ungovernable elements of the Occupy movement, Hedges provided that narrative, and the FBI subsequently parroted it verbatim in their efforts to justify a series of entrapment cases. Now Hedges is providing Trump’s government exactly the same service, equipping them to declare “antifa” a terrorist organization, as many on the far right have already been demanding. Already, the mayor of Berkeley is calling for “antifa” to be designated as a gang—imagine if everyone who opposes the rise of fascism is classified as a gang member, or a terrorist!
\n\nHedges needs to understand that it is not anti-fascists gaining ground that brings about fascist attacks and government crackdowns. If anti-fascists were not gaining power in the streets, fascists would still be taking advantage of the despair and resentment of poor whites, and the government would still be developing more means of repression—there would simply be no social movement to protect us from them. It is fundamentally paranoid, disempowering, and ahistorical to understand these developments as the result of anti-fascist activity. On the contrary, it is imperative that we build the capacity to act effectively in the streets before the fascists outstrip us and the government is able to centralize enough power to establish tyranny once and for all.
\n\nAll that said, we also need to avoid offering our enemies on the Left and Right alike the opportunity to present us as a mirror image of our fascist adversaries. Let’s explore some ways we can go about this.
\n\nOn one hand, it has been extremely useful for people in the US to learn from anti-fascist movements in other parts of the world. At the same time, the wholesale uncritical introduction of European models has created problems, chief of which is the containment of the struggle against fascism within a discrete identity, “antifa.” It has been a tremendous boon to the far right that they can describe anti-fascists without having to spell out the entire word “fascist”—it helps them to avoid the question of why anyone would oppose resisting fascism.
\n\nIn German, abbreviations are common: national socialist becomes Nazi, anti-fascist becomes antifa. But in English, especially to those not familiar with the history of German anti-fascist struggles, the word antifa can appear alien and off-putting. At its worst, the German antifa movement has tended towards subcultural insularity; this is the last thing we need in the US, locked in a massive struggle with fascists and the government itself—a struggle we can only hope to win if ever-wider segments of the population are drawn over to our side of the barricades.
\n\nIdentity is fundamentally about distinguishing oneself from others. Anti-fascism, however, is for everybody. We should be careful not to insulate it within a particular demographic with a specific dress code and lingo. This is paramount because the far right are scrambling to depict antifa as a monolithic, hostile, alien organization. Our task is not just to build a network of groups, but to create an anti-fascist momentum that will spread contagiously throughout society at large, along with the critiques and tactics necessary for this fight. Specific antifa groups and the cultural cache of “antifa” itself can be useful in that project, as can black bloc tactics, provided we evaluate them as tools for achieving particular objectives rather than expressions of identity or belonging.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/3.jpg\")
One of countless European solidarity demonstrations in memory of Heather Heyer, who was murdered in Charlottesville.
\nAs the conflict between fascists and anti-fascists intensifies, we are seeing more and more guns in the streets. Some people who were in Charlottesville reported that it was good that there were guns on both sides: it discouraged fascists from escalating physical conflicts past a certain point. Others report that most of the anti-fascists openly bearing arms were located some distance from the clashes. Some people who were in Ferguson at the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement say that without the threat of gunfire from the locals, the police would never have permitted the demonstrations to happen. Others who experienced the trauma of having their loved ones shot before them counsel that the consequences of bringing guns into street conflict are weightier than most people can imagine.
\n\nParticipants in the Syrian revolution report that for the first several months, the revolt created an open space of debate and possibility in which many people of different walks of life participated. Later, after the conflict escalated, power among the rebels accrued in the hands of religious fundamentalists, as they were the only ones who were able to consistently acquire military supplies—and from that point on, the horizon of liberation and transformation was closed. Sometimes, such escalation is inescapable, even if it closes the door to future possibilities; in any case, it is better to prepare for it now than to be suddenly caught flatfooted. But if our goal is to carry out a revolution rather than to fight in a civil war, we should not hurry the process of escalation—we should drag it out as long as we can. Most of the social changes we want to see cannot be brought about by guns.
\n\nLikewise, we should not imagine that coercive force can solve everything, nor permit fascists and state repression to put us so on edge that we see enemies everywhere we look and begin to attack people when it is not strategic. In the words of an elder anti-fascist veteran from Germany, fascist violence aims to exterminate, while anti-fascist violence aims to educate. We should not hurry to put fascist martyrs in the ground next to Heather Heyer. We must never risk coming across as bullies. It must always be clear that we are here to protect the public at large, not to assert our own authority. When we are compelled to use coercive force, we must make sure that the ways we do so don’t centralize power or legitimacy within our own movement.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/5.jpg\")
Anti-fascists in Berkeley on Sunday behind a banner reading “Avenge Charlottesville / Defend your community.”
\nIn the wake of Heather Heyer’s murder, signs appeared at vigils and rallies reading “White Supremacy is Terrorism.” While it is understandable that people wish to condemn her murder in the strongest possible terms, it is dangerous to use the language of terrorism to do so.
\n\nThe framework of terrorism is constructed by the state to define who has the right to employ violence and who doesn’t. When we denounce white supremacists as terrorists, we mimic the verbiage of Senator Cory Gardner, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Paul Ryan, Republican Speaker of the House.
\n\nTerrorist is used to designate those who are beyond the state’s control and cannot be brought into political alignment with the state. This explains why Heather’s murderer has not been charged with terrorism, while many anarchists who did not so much as scratch someone have received terrorism charges over the past decade and a half.
\n\nUsing the rhetoric of the state reinforces frameworks and narratives that the authorities will ultimately use against us. This is dangerous to our movements and constitutes a betrayal of comrades engaged in struggles we’re often aligned with. Palestinians are labeled terrorists to delegitimize their struggle against the Israeli state. Like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, the YPG and YPJ in Rojava have been labeled terrorists. The language and ideology of the “war on terror” were carefully introduced into US political discourse in order to prepare the ground for the catastrophic invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
\n\nThe word terrorism comes to us from the Jacobin government’s brutal and merciless rule in France in the 1790s—the term was invented to describe their “reign of terror” during which thousands were executed. Even though the word was coined for the Jacobins and they wore it proudly as a badge, some historians today argue that the Jacobins weren’t terrorists because they were a state entity with legitimate power. This should give us a sense of the extent to which the discourse of terrorism serves to give the state carte blanche while delegitimizing all who stand against it.
\n\nSunday’s far-right rally in Berkeley was promoted under the slogan “No to Marxism in America.” As with the far-right “March against Sharia,” there is no danger of the United States coming under a Marxist government any time soon. Like all totalitarians, fascists desperately need enemies even more oppressive than themselves to point to in order to convince people to join their ranks. There is an ominous symmetry between groups like ISIS and Western fascists, some of whom openly fantasize about a “White Sharia.” This explains their obsession with authoritarian Marxism.
\n\nIn fact, the fiercest opposition to contemporary fascist organizing has not come from authoritarian Marxists, but from anarchists who oppose state power itself. This is inconvenient for many fascists in the US, who still need to present themselves as enemies of “big government” in order to appeal to US Libertarians and traditional conservatives.
\n\nIf fascists are eager to paint all their domestic opponents with the broad brush of Marxism, we should not hasten to assist them. Yes, authoritarian Marxists have historically played a role in the fight against fascism, but they have hardly played it honorably. They began by betraying and undermining other social movements as early as 1871. If Stalin hadn’t sabotaged anti-fascist participants in the Spanish Civil War and other movements around Europe and then concluded a pact with Hitler, the Second World War would have unfolded much differently, and it might not have taken decades afterwards for grassroots liberation movements to recover.
\n\nBoth fascism and authoritarian Marxism are experiencing a small resurgence today. Much of this is taking place among people who grew up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, who are too young to have grandparents who lived through the Second World War. For many in the United States, totalitarianism is abstract, something to joke about on the internet. Some people on the Left see the hammer and sickle the way many right-wingers see the swastika: as a provocative meme rather than a blood-drenched symbol of oppression. Yet Stalin, too, carried out ethnic cleansing, as have many other authoritarian Marxist regimes.
\n\nOne cannot consistently oppose fascism without opposing all forms of authoritarian government. This is not to say that rank-and-file members of authoritarian communist organizations can never be comrades in this struggle. Many of them are sincere people with the best of intentions—and clearly we need all the comrades we can get when we are facing down Nazis with guns. The point is that anti-fascists should oppose the leadership of authoritarian Marxist parties for many of the same reasons that we oppose fascists and other authoritarians. If you care about a member of an organization like the Bolshevik Party, you can express that care by making sure that his organization never comes to power—for if history is any guide, he will be the next up against the wall after you.
\n\nWe must make it clear to the general public that we do not intend to impose a new dictatorship, but only to open and preserve spaces of freedom. There is no statist solution for tyranny.
\n\nUnfortunately, Heather Heyer is not the first person to be taken from us by fascist violence, and she will not be the last. In addition to being wary of the discourse of terrorism and the tendency to militarize our struggles, we should be wary of the discourse of martyrdom and tendency to celebrate death in battle. We need to find ways to remember people above all for who they were, for what their lives gave to the world, not for how they died or what their deaths meant to the struggle. We should not begin to regard ourselves or each other as playing pieces to be exchanged for strategic gains.
\n\nWe live in a society in which aging and death are concealed from most of us. If this struggle continues to intensify, more and more of us will be forced to learn what it is like to spend hard weeks in the hospital, to meet at funerals as well as outside jails and courtrooms. We should approach this as another opportunity to come to know ourselves and each other better, to recognize what is beautiful and worthwhile in life—the things for which we are fighting in the first place. We should not subordinate ourselves to the struggle, but recognize it as one of the ways that life pours forth abundantly within us.
\n\nThe vast majority of the anti-fascist struggle does not take place in street confrontations. It takes place in how we raise our children; it takes place in the hard conversations at workplaces and family dinners; it takes place in the ways we relate to our neighbors, the ways we understand togetherness and belonging. To triumph, we have to make it possible for people of all genders and ethnicities and religions to work together to survive the ordeals of capitalism; we have to create movements that can offer everybody more than the fascists ever could.
\n\nUltimately, a thoroughgoing anti-fascist movement should not focus on targeting fascist groups that are so marginal that they stick out from the rest of the political spectrum, but take on the infrastructure through which any authoritarian program will be enacted. That is to say, it should focus on the state itself. If we simply fight defensive battles, the fascists will eventually gain the initiative. We should take the experiences of fighting together that we can experience in anti-fascist struggle and use those as points of departure to work together to solve all of the problems that we have. This is the way to take the offensive and move on to confronting the fundamental sources of oppression.
\n\nSome believe that life will go back to normal soon enough, and fascism and anti-fascism will once more be things of the past. But we fear that we have yet to see how far these conflicts will go, and that we have to invest ourselves in confronting them head on. The only way out is through. Double or nothing.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/29/8.jpg\")
\nOver the past two years, the right wing has declared war on protest in the United States. They’ve fought this struggle from the top down with police, courts, and legislatures—and from the bottom up with militias, fascist groups, and lone extremists. These strategies work in tandem to threaten social movements. This is what connects the fascist murder in Charlottesville last weekend to over 200 demonstrators arrested at Trump’s inauguration on January 20 who were all charged with eight identical felonies just for being on the same city block. This connection is all the more obvious after August 15, when Trump attacked anti-fascists and disingenuously denied that the fascists who chanted Nazi slogans in unison were all white supremacists. The White House stands solidly on the side of those promoting and orchestrating far-right violence.
\n\nHow do state and autonomous right-wing attacks reinforce each other? Why is the right escalating its campaign to repress dissent? And how can we counter this repression?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/18/4.jpg\")
The fascist attacks in Charlottesville last weekend were just the latest installment of a two-pronged assault on dissent.
\nWhile it’s nothing new for the state to repress protest, the past two years of legal and legislative attacks represent a substantial escalation against resistance movements. Since the uprising in Ferguson forced national attention onto racist police violence, the idea of Black communities, poor people, and radicals becoming ungovernable has inspired some and terrified others. Protestors inspired by Ferguson have blocked highways, occupied police departments, sabotaged pipelines, shut down airports, and disrupted Trump rallies.
\n\nBut defenders of the economic and racial status quo have taken advantage of this to stoke white working-class resentment and suburban fears of disorder. Trump’s image as “the law and order candidate” capitalized on the racialized concerns stirred up by this wave of protest.
\n\nFrom day one, the new administration made good on its promises to crack down on protest. On January 20, over two hundred counter-inaugural demonstrators were trapped in a kettle and mass arrested. Rather than receiving citations or misdemeanors, they now face the prospect of decades in prison simply for being caught on the street during a march. Meanwhile, hundreds of cases from Standing Rock clog the North Dakota courts, where water protectors face fines and prison terms for their efforts to prevent private companies from profiting on the poisoning of Sioux people’s water supplies.
\n\nIn addition to maximizing repression through the current legal system, politicians are expanding the law to further criminalize demonstrations. Nearly twenty state legislatures introduced anti-protest bills this year that range from troubling to downright bizarre. Arizona politicians attempted to allow the state to seize the assets of people arrested for protesting, while North Carolina legislators tried to invent something called “economic terrorism” and to force protestors to pay the cost of police efforts to repress them. North Dakota’s legislature passed a litany of new bills fed to them by the pipeline industry, from allowing police to use weaponized drones against demonstrations to increasing the legal penalties for a wide range of activity. This legislation went directly into effect against hundreds of water protectors.
\n\nFinally, this year, legislators in Florida, North Dakota, and Tennessee have attempted to pass bills allowing drivers to run over protestors without legal consequences. This is especially chilling in the aftermath of Charlottesville.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/18/1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/18/2.jpg\")
Two of countless available screenshots from fascist social media leading up to the Charlottesville demonstrations confirming that the discussed “hit and kill” bills emboldened fascists to commit murder that weekend.
\nEvery one of these laws emerged as a direct response to protests that were effectively disrupting the status quo. The sponsors of North Carolina’s failed anti-protest bill specifically cited the ferocity of resistance in Charlotte after the police murdered Keith Lamont Jenkins as their inspiration for the new law. The spread of highway blockades during anti-police rebellions prompted a wide range of legislation targeting the obstruction of roads, including the aforementioned “hit and kill” bills. In response to widespread indigenous and ecological resistance to pipeline construction, several new state laws would advance penalties specifically tied to disruption of energy infrastructure. These efforts by politicians to protect the interests of their corporate cronies and police attest to the threat that our movements pose.
\n\nBut the state isn’t confident that legal methods alone will be enough to stem the tide of popular resistance. Enter the autonomous fascists, stage right.
\n\nWhere police and legal restrictions haven’t sufficed to suppress demonstrations, the armed right-wing has stepped in. Beginning in states such as Arizona that have open carry laws and widespread gun culture, right-wing demonstrators had already been appearing at their own rallies visibly armed; yet until recently, they had rarely appeared at the protests of their political opponents. In 2014, members of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, appeared in the streets of Ferguson toting assault rifles. While most politicians and law enforcement officials outwardly condemned this challenge to the state’s monopoly on violence, in some places the state began openly partnering with the grassroots extreme right. In June, the Multnomah County, Oregon Republican Party voted to allow Three Percenters to provide anti-protestor “security” for them at events.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/18/6.jpg\")
On January 20, bootlickers welcomed the arrival of tyrrany.
\nMeanwhile, the alt-right and other fascists have slowly but surely escalated from online threats to violent attacks. The massacre that Dylan Roof perpetrated at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 failed to spark the race war he intended, but the following year, the election of a president who openly courted white nationalists provided the catalyst for increasing extreme right violence. Numerous media outlets reported an immediate rise in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim activity after Trump’s election, from graffiti to verbal harassment to physical assaults. Bigots have ramped up attacks on mosques from Minnesota to Tennessee, while a man spouting Islamophobia stabbed two people to death on a train in Portland, Oregon this spring.
\n\nWhile many of these attacks served as general intimidation against marginalized groups, protests against oppression have become a particular target for fascists. In 2015, heavily armed right-wingers fired into a Black Lives Matter occupation in Minneapolis, injuring five protestors; a bystander noted that they “were using police tactics.” During the Trump campaign, Trump supporters frequently carried out violent attacks on protestors; white nationalist Matthew Heimbach faced criminal charges this spring for physically attacking a young Black woman at a campaign speech. At a Seattle protest against Milo Yiannopolis in January, a right-wing Milo fan shot an anti-racist protestor in the stomach after threatening online to “start cracking skulls” of “snowflakes.” Yet antifascists and anarchists remained the villains in the discourse spread by politicians, police, and media pundits, even as right-wing attacks continued to escalate. This underscores that their goal is neither peace nor law and order, but maintaining their power against all who threaten it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/18/7.jpg\")
Police protecting fascists in Berkeley last April.
\nThe murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville is the latest event in this crescendo of hate and violence. We must understand her death in the context of the right-wing war on protest. It has been building inexorably towards this outcome for years.
\n\nIf right-wing citizens hadn’t taken the initiative to begin threatening and injuring protestors, politicians in North Dakota wouldn’t have introduced legislation to protect them. The growing Three Percenter and militia movements aim to use force to secure the stability of Trump’s rule in the face of widespread resistance. The stories we’ve heard from the streets of Charlottesville—like so many other cities—show that the police are happy to let fascists do their bloody work for them on the streets.
\n\nAnd if the fascists go too far and provoke a popular backlash, as the murder of Heather Heyer has, politicians will attempt to use that to their advantage, too. By framing fascism and anti-fascism as symmetrical forces of chaos and disruption, as Trump explicitly did in his initial response, they present the state as the only force capable of restoring order—through more police, surveillance, and control. Whether they tacitly support or openly condemn vigilante violence, right-wing politicians aim to come out ahead either way.
\n\nMake no mistake: the people who want us to accept white supremacy, environmental destruction, and police murder are working together to keep us out of the streets. They’re using every tactic they can—from mass arrests to new laws to outright murder—because they’re afraid of our power.
\n\nThey are going to such lengths because all over the world, people are coming together to threaten their privileges and profits. Countless thousands of us have clogged the arteries of capital, affirmed the value of Black lives against the brutality of the police, confronted pipelines and power plants, shielded our neighbors from deportation, stood watch against bigots at mosques, defended reproductive freedom, and organized across the borders they attempt to impose on our land and in our hearts. They know that unless they can terrorize us back into submission, their days in power will be numbered.
\n\nIn short, the right declared war on protest because we have the power to take them down. It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy, but it is possible, and they know it. They’re trying to raise the costs of resistance so high that we’ll listen to Governor McAuliffe and hide out at home while they continue impoverishing us, scapegoating immigrants and Muslims, brutalizing people of color, subjugating women, poisoning the earth, militarizing the borders, and escalating police surveillance and control.
\n\nThe options are clear: take the streets to fight together, or hide at home while they come for us one by one. The choice is yours.
\n\nTo learn how to support the J20 defendants, visit their support page.
\n\nTo donate funds to assist with the legal and medical costs of those who stood down the fascists in Charlottesville, contribute to the Dre Harris Medical Fund, Memorial fund by the Democratic Socialists of America, Heather Heyer’s Family, #DefendCville Med Fund, VA Youth Rally Victims; Help Queers Defend Cville, SolidarityCville, Natalie Romero Medical Fund, Alexis and Noelle Morris Medical\nFund, Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, Black Student Alliance at UVA,\nTracye Redd, The Women’s Initiative Cville, and Allie’s Fund.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/17/why-we-fought-in-charlottesville-a-letter-from-an-anti-fascist-on-the-dangers-ahead", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/17/why-we-fought-in-charlottesville-a-letter-from-an-anti-fascist-on-the-dangers-ahead", "title": "Why We Fought in Charlottesville : A Letter from an Anti-Fascist on the Dangers Ahead", "summary": "I am one of the thousands of people who confronted Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend. This is what would have happened if we hadn't confronted them.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/17/header1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/17/header1.jpg", "date_published": "2017-08-17T16:11:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:34Z", "tags": [ "Charlottesville", "fascism", "resistance", "antifascism", "antifa" ], "content_html": "I am one of the thousands of people who confronted Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend. I am a blue-collar person, with a job, family, and responsibilities. I would have preferred to do other things with my weekend. However, I had to ask myself: If these people are allowed to run roughshod over this town, what will they do next?
\n\n\n\n\n“We would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the antifascists… They saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that.”
\n\n \n
No, I did not behave peacefully when I saw a thousand Nazis occupy a sizable American city. I fought them with the most persuasive instruments at hand, the way both my grandfathers did. I was maced, punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks, but I gave as good as I got, and usually better. Donald Trump says that “there was violence on both sides.” Of course there was. I might add that there were not murderers on both sides—but that’s not really my point.
\n\nI would like to ask a different question. What would have happened if there had not been violence on both sides? What would have happened if there had only been violence on one side?
\n\nOn the night of Friday, August 11, 2017, I saw something that I never thought I would see, and that I hope I never see again: 500 Nazis and white supremacists marching across the campus of the University of Virginia while police did nothing, surrounding 30 counter-demonstrators who were holding hands around a statue of Thomas Jefferson, and beating them with torches while calling them “nigger” and “boy.” By the end of the night, it was clear to me that the “Unite the Right” march had been organized for the express purpose of killing people on Saturday.
\n\nPermit me to quote a post from a clergyperson in Charlottesville at length, because it correctly explains what happened on Saturday morning, and why. There are countless other narratives like it online.
\n\n\n\n\n“A note on the Antifa:
\n\nThey are the reason Richard Spencer did not speak today. They are the reason the “Unite the Right” march didn’t happen. They strategically used violent tactics to incite the Nazis to violence, such that the governor declared a state of emergency before noon. Before the “Unite the Right” rally was scheduled to begin.
\n\nOne could argue this meant Nazis dissipated into the streets faster making it less safe, but let’s be real: Nazis have been making these streets less safe for a long time. They would have been out and about soon enough with or without the antifa.
\n\nI was with a group of clergy committed to non-violence today. We did our part. We bore witness to the pain and hatred in this city. We provided pastoral care/support as needed, especially during traumatic violent acts. This was our determined role going into today. Yes, some clergy risked injury and arrest to stop the Nazis. They formed a blockade at the entrance, but they were overpowered by the Nazis. The police did not view us as threatening enough to shut things down, because again, we were not there to threaten.
\n\nThe antifa strategically incited enough violence before noon to make the police declare it illegal to gather in Emancipation Park. Through this strategic violence they effectively made a previously legally permitted Nazi rally, illegal.
\n\nWe may not agree with each others tactics. We may have had different goals, but if you’re looking to praise people specifically for shutting down the “Unite the Right” rally, praise/thank the antifa. Not the clergy and not the police.”
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/17/2.jpg\")
The man who murdered Heather Heyer being taken into custody.
\nI do not want it to be soon forgotten that American anarchists and anti-fascists shut down the largest Nazi and white supremacist gathering on US soil in decades. We accomplished this despite being outnumbered, underequipped, and literally fighting up a hill—at great personal risk and at a terrible cost.
\n\nWhat if things had gone differently? What if we had done as the mayor recommended and stayed away from Emancipation Park, so as not to “feed into a cycle of violence”? What if the rally had proceeded as planned? What if Nazis and white supremacists had been able to build momentum into the night? Based on what I saw Friday and Saturday, there is no doubt in my mind what would have happened next: they would have terrorized the city of Charlottesville. They would have left their leadership a degree of plausible deniability, broken into smaller groups, and killed and injured any number of people in decentralized locations throughout the city. It was to be their Kristallnacht, their burning cross, their triumphant return.
\n\nInstead, they had to leave town in disarray in fear of us, the people of Charlottesville, and the police—in that order. They sent twenty people to the hospital and murdered Heather Heyer.
\n\nIt could have been much, much worse.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/17/1.jpg\")
Flowers where Heather Heyer was hit.
\nThese are dark and dangerous times. Nazis and white supremacists have shown that they are ready to kill and able to mobilize in great numbers, and they have the blessing of the President of the United States. They are well on their way to solidifying their position as the paramilitary arm of the Trump administration. These groups hope to be to Trump what ISIS is to Erdogan and what the Taliban is to the government of Pakistan: terrorist auxiliaries that provide strategic depth against enemies of the state.
\n\nOn the other hand, Nazis and white supremacists discredited themselves completely in the eyes of millions of American people this weekend, as did their President by emboldening and defending them. The names and faces of many of those who participated in the “Unite the Right” rally are being broadcast on twitter feeds such as “yes, you’re racist,” and more extensive doxxing is undoubtedly soon to come. It seems a stressful and rather lonely moment for our opposition.
\n\nOn the government side, Steve Bannon has lost his job, but he is back at his old post at Breitbart, preparing to catalyze another wave of grassroots nationalism. As always, Trump is either on the ropes or on the verge of pulling off an authoritarian coup. It is time for Americans of good conscience to resume the offensive, before this match made in hell has time to regain its footing and to consolidate further.
\n\nDonald Trump was elected head of state through the democratic process, of course, as was Adolf Hitler. He has the support of millions of people; so did Adolf Hitler. His government is in bed with people who dream about carrying out a second Holocaust and reinstating slavery, among other things. We have every right to topple this government if we can. It would be unfortunate to look back on this moment with regret, realizing that we missed our chance.
\n\nIn my opinion, the high-water mark thus far of resistance to the Trump regime was the wave of airport occupations at the end of January, which set in motion a course of events that ultimately led to Steve Bannon being iced out of the foreign policy sphere by the few remaining adults in Trump’s circle. Unfortunately, they left Bannon the domestic sphere as his playpen, and the Deep State doesn’t care very much. No one is coming to save us.
\n\nWhat would it take to rise to this occasion? We would have to mobilize large crowds nationwide to shut down government infrastructure, prioritizing everything nearest and dearest to Bannon and his faction. Something like that might work. I don’t think it’s too late.
\n\nOf course, after Charlottesville, all such crowds will be considered soft targets by fascist murderers. We will have to demonstrate that we are able to exert deadly force to deter such attacks, as Redneck Revolt did admirably in Charlottesville.
\n\nIf Americans of good conscience push hard enough, we may be able to force Trump to abandon Bannon and Bannonism. We might be able to topple Trump entirely. But under no circumstances will anyone with any self-respect ever submit to governance by Nazis. This government and its fascist allies should think carefully before they choose their next move.
\n\nIn the spirit of Robert Grodt, who fought fascism in Raqqa, and in the spirit of Heather Heyer, who fought fascism in her own hometown—
\n\nAn anarchist
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/15/when-you-topple-the-statues-dont-forget-to-uproot-the-pedestals-the-promise-of-direct-action", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/15/when-you-topple-the-statues-dont-forget-to-uproot-the-pedestals-the-promise-of-direct-action", "title": "When You Topple the Statues, Don't Forget to Uproot the Pedestals : The Promise of Direct Action", "summary": "In Durham, protestors showed how anyone can tear down the legacy of white supremacy. Uprooting the base—the root causes of white supremacy & powerlessness over our own lives—demands the same approach.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/15/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/15/header.jpg", "date_published": "2017-08-15T15:15:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:34Z", "tags": [ "Durham", "statues", "Charlottesville" ], "content_html": "Courageous demonstrators pulled down a Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina yesterday. In the face of state indifference and racist backlash, they took matters into their own hands; within minutes, they had demolished a century-old symbol of oppression. Now that the statue is down, what will it take to uproot the foundation it stood on? What can this defiant gesture tell us about how to take on all the other problems we face?
\n\nIn Durham, protestors showed what anyone can accomplish with a ladder, rope, a few friends, and courage. Uprooting the base—the root causes of white supremacy and our powerlessness over our own lives—will take longer, but it demands the same fundamental principle.
\n\nToppling the statue in Durham.
\nWhy had the statue stayed up for so long in Durham, a liberal city in which nearly half the population is Black? A local government spokeswoman cited a state law prohibiting them from altering memorials, saying, “I would assume that the only thing possible are steps to reverse the law.”
\n\nIf you believe in the legitimacy of the state—if you believe the only way to make change is through representatives and laws—then yes, that’s “the only thing possible.” In that model, our country will remain as entrenched in white supremacy as our rulers decide it should be. What could illustrate our powerlessness better than being forced to see a symbol of our degradation every day, unable to imagine a way to change it ourselves?
\n\nBut as anarchists, we believe that all of us deserve to determine our own destinies. We believe that there is nothing inherently legitimate about the actions of those who hold state power, nor anything inherently illegitimate about defying the government. We don’t accept that the only way to dismantle the physical legacy of white supremacy is to wait for the state legislature to do it. If we possess any sort of freedom today in this society, it is the result of all the times people defied and overthrew governments, not because of the times they were obedient. If not for disobedience, we would still be living under the rule of kings. This is why we believe that the best way to make lasting change is by taking direct action to bring about the world we wish to live in.
\n\nThis is true for any change we wish to make, from toppling a statue to toppling a president.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/15/1.jpg\")
Demonstrators in Atlanta on Sunday, August 13.
\nIn response to their courageous action, the North Carolina governor tweeted,, “The racism and deadly violence in Charlottesville is unacceptable but there is a better way to remove these monuments.” That seems unlikely, considering that after nearly a century of begging politicians, the statue remained in place—representing the very same racism and deadly violence we saw in Charlottesville. In Durham, even with a Black mayor and a majority-Black city council, the statue stood just as solidly as it had during the Jim Crow era of all-white government.
\n\nThere are two ways to change an unjust law. You can ask lawmakers to amend it, or you can break it together in a way that makes it unenforceable. Which approach is more empowering? The former concentrates power in the hands of a few; the latter disperses it to everyone. The former frames leaders as the only agents of change; the latter enables all of us to determine the shape of our lives and our communities.
\n\nWe can apply this logic of direct action to all the problems we face.
\n\nRather than hoping that law enforcement will protect us from fascists, when all evidence suggests their complicity, we can organize networks to defend ourselves against both right-wing attacks and police violence.
\n\nRather than begging Trump—or Obama, who oversaw more deportations than any previous US president—to adjust immigration policies, we can defend our neighbors against raids, establish sanctuaries, and tear down borders.
\n\nRather than pleading for a leader to appoint a liberal judge to make decisions about our bodies for us, we can take control of the knowledge and infrastructure we need for reproductive health care and bodily autonomy.
\n\nWhat all of these approaches have in common is a commitment to struggling for freedom using methods that spread power rather than concentrating it. As former Black Panther and anarchist Ashanti Alston put it, we need “all power to the people and all power through the people.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/15/3.jpg\")
The slippery slope to freedom: cans of cooking spray that the defenders of the old order apparently used in an unsuccessful attempt to keep demonstrators from coming to grips with the statue.
\nWe shouldn’t wait for presidents, governors, or bureaucrats to give us permission to change the world. We shouldn’t defer to authority figures. From the civil rights movement to the Stonewall Rebellion, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Gezi Park in Istanbul, freedom has always begun from the point at which courageous people broke the law and took their lives back from their rulers. The chief obstacle to these movements has not been the violence of the state, but the passivity and compliance of other citizens.
\n\nAnarchists desire for everyone to be free to decide how to live and relate with one another on their own terms, without coercion or enforced centralization. We want to tear down the oppressive legacies of the past to build a future based on autonomy and mutual aid. This means taking on Trump at the inauguration and fascists in Charlottesville; it means responding to disasters with grassroots aid; it means supporting prisoners, organizing solidarity as workers and tenants, and operating community centers. All of these activities are already going on all around the world.
\n\nAs people rise up to tear down statues around the country, let’s strategize about how to tear up the foundations of the system that prevents us from making the most of our lives. Direct action, without laws or representatives, isn’t just a more effective way to win immediate victories like removing monuments commemorating a racist history. It can be the foundation for a free world beyond white supremacy, capitalism, and the state.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/15/2.jpg\")
\nOn August 12, a fascist murdered one person and injured dozens more by driving a vehicle into a crowd of anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fascists had been calling for violence in advance; they made it very clear that this would happen. We are calling for solidarity actions to take place around the country in response—to support the bereaved, to encourage those who courageously stood up to fascist murderers, to reach out to our communities about this situation, and to show that we will not stand for this. Here, you can find a list of solidarity demonstrations and a PDF of a flier you can print and distribute to inform others about this situation.
\n\nWe are updating this page continuously.
\n\nPlease send updates about solidarity demonstrations to us via @crimethinc or rollingthunder@crimethinc.com.
\n\nAtlanta, GA: Hyatt Regency, Downtown Atlanta, 6:45 PM.
\nBaltimore, MD: Penn-North Metro Station, 8 PM. More event info →
\nBuffalo, NY: Lafayette Square, 8 PM. More event info →
\nChicago, IL: Trump Tower, 7 PM. More event info →
\nCleveland Heights, OH: Peace Park, Coventry Rd, 9 PM.
\nColumbia, SC: 1100 Gervais St, 8:30 PM. More event info →
\nEl Cajon, CA: 701 Broadway, 8 PM. More event info →
\nHarrisonburg, VA: Court Sq, 7 PM. More event info →
\nHillsboro, OR: 150 Main Street, Hillsboro Civic Center, 3:30 PM. More event info →
\nIowa City, IA: 21 North Clinton St, 5 PM. More event info →
\nKalamazoo, MI: Bronson Park, 2:30 PM. More event info →
\nLondon, UK: Trafalgar Square, 12 PM.
\nLos Angeles, CA: LAPD Headquarters, 7 PM. More event info →
\nOlympia, WA: Percival Landing Park, 7 PM. More event info →
\nNew Orleans, LA: Lee Circle, 7 PM. More event info →
\nNew York, NY: Union Square, 5 PM. More event info →
\nOakland, CA: Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th and Broadway, 7 PM. More event info → Facebook
\nPhiladelphia, PA: Downtown, happening now. More event info →
\nPortland, OR: Pioneer Courthouse, 5 PM. More event info →
\nSanta Ana, CA: Ross and Santa Ana Blvd, 6:30 PM. More event info →
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/Toasterhase/status/896503835266613248\n \n
Alexandria, VA: Old Town Farmers’ Market, 6PM. More event info →
\nAsheville, NC: In front of Vance Monument, 7 PM.
\nAtlanta, GA: Woodruff Park, 7 PM. More event info →
\nBaton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Capitol, 7 PM. More event info →
\nBirmingham, AL: Five Points South Fountain, 6:30 PM. More event info →
\nBlacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech, Henderson Lawn, 2 PM. More event info →
\nBloomington, IN: Monroe County Courthouse, 7 PM. More event info →
\nBordeaux, France: Consulat des Etats Unis d’Amérique, 7 PM.
\nBremerton, WA: Evergreen Park, 7 PM. More event info →
\nBridgeport, CT: McLevy Green, 6 PM. More event info →
\nChapel Hill, NC: Silent Sam Statue, 7 PM. More event info →
\nChicago, IL: Millennium Park, 6 PM. More event info →
\nChico, CA: MLK and 20th Street, 9 AM. More event info →
\nCincinnati, OH: Cincinnati City Hall, 5 PM. More event info →
\nColumbus, OH: Columbus State House, 8 PM. More event info →
\nConcord, NC: Rotary Square & Market, 111 Union St S, 7 PM. More event info →
\nCrescent City, CA: S. Curve, 1:00 PM. More event info →
\nDanbury, CT: Danbury Library, 6 PM. More event info →
\nDenver, CO: City Park, 2 PM. More event info →
\nDetroit, MI: Philip A. Hart Plaza, 5 PM. More event info →
\nFayettesville, NC: 215 Myrover St, 6 PM. More event info →
\nFort Collins, CO: Oak Street Plaza at 2 PM.
\nFredericksburg VA: Hurkamp Park, 8:30 PM.
\nGallup, NM: Safeway, W. Jefferson ave. and Highway 491, 12 PM. More event info →
\nGeneva, NY: Bicentennial Park, Exchange St and Lake St, 6 PM.
\nGrand Rapids, MI: Rosa Parks Circle, Grand Rapids, 5 PM. More event info →
\nGreensboro, NC: Greensboro Governmental Plaza, 7 PM. More event info →
\nHarrisonburg, VA: Court Sq, 7 PM. More event info →
\nHouston, TX: Houston City Hall, 7 PM. More event info →
\nKalamazoo, MI: Bronson Park, 2:30 PM. More event info →
\nLancaster, PA: Penn Square, 6 PM. More event info →
\nLansing, MI: Michigan State Capitol, 110 N Capitol Ave, 6 PM. More event info →
\nLondon, England: Trafalgar Square 12 PM. More event info →
\nLouisville, KY: 3208 W. Broadway, 3 PM. More event info →
\nMadison, WI: Wisconsin State Capitol, 8 PM. More event info →
\nMiddletown, CT: South Green (old Church St.), 6 PM. More event info →
\nMissoula, MO: The XXXX’s to Higgins St. Bridge, 6 PM. More event info →
\nMontreal, QC: Phillips Square, 7 PM. More event info →
\nMorgantown, WV: WVU Mountainlair Student Union, 1550 University Ave, 8 PM.
\nMunich, Germany: Marienplatz, 7:30 PM. More event info →
\nNew Haven, CT: Church St and Chapel St, 6 PM. More event info →
\nNew York City, NY: Union Square, 4 PM. More event info →
\nOrlando, FL: Lake Eola Park, 8 PM. More event info →
\nOttawa, ON: Canadian Tribute to Human Rights, 7 PM. More event info →
\nParis, France: Place de la Nation, 7 PM.
\nPhoenix, AZ: Phillips Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, 4 PM. More event info →
\nPittsburgh, PA: Schenley Plaza, 4100 Forbes Ave, 7 PM. More event info →
\nRaleigh, NC: CCB Plaza, 201 N Corcoran St, 6 PM. More event info →
\nRussellville, AR: Courthouse, 4:30 PM.
\nSacramento, CA: City Hall 7:30 PM. More event info →
\nSacramento, CA: 1315 10th Street, 7 PM.
\nSan Francisco, CA: 24th and Mission, 2 PM. More event info →
\nSan Francisco, CA: City Hall, 7 PM. More event info →
\nSanta Barbara, CA: SB Museum of Art on State Street and Anapamu. 5 PM.
\nSanta Cruz, CA: The Clock Tower at N. Pacific and Water St, 7 PM. More event info →
\nSanta Rosa, CA: Courthouse Square, 4 PM.
\nSeattle, WA: 100 Dexter Ave N, 1 PM. More event info →
\nSyracuse, NY: Clinton Square, 2 S Clinton Sq, 5 PM. [More event info →]https://facebook.com/events/160817107820223)
\nTacoma, WA: Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park, 1741 N Schuster Pkwy, 7:30 PM. More event info →
\nTampa, FL: Hillsborough County Clerk’s Office, 7 PM. More event info →
\nToronto, ON: US Consulate Toronto 360 University Avenue, 7 PM. More event info →
\nTucson, AZ: Hotel Congress, 311 E Congress St, 4:30 PM. More event info →
\nWashington, DC: Old Town Farmers’ Market, Alexandria, VA 6 PM. More event info →
\nWest Hartford, CT: Farmington and Main St, 12 PM. More event info →
\nWest Palm Beach, FL: West Palm Beach Waterfront Park, 100 Clematis St, 8 PM. More event info →
\nWillimantic, CT: Jilson Square Park, 4 PM. More event info →
\nWorcester, MA City Hall, 6PM. More event info →
\nSouth Bend, IN: Jon Hunt Memorial Plaza, 7 PM.
\nWaynesville, NC: Haywood County Courthouse, 5 PM. More event info →
\nBaiona, Iparralde: Town Hall, 6:30 PM.
\nBilbao, Basque Country: Elkarretaratzea, Plaza Arriaga, 1 PM. More event info →
\nFort Myers, FL: Centennial Park, 5 PM. More event info →
\nUppsala, Sweden: Olof Palme Place, 6 PM.
\nAlbuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Bookstore, 6PM. More event info →
\nColorado Springs, CO: Colorado Springs City Hall, 4 PM. More event info →
\nFind more Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville at Indivisible.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/charlottesville-fascists-are-murdering-us-now.jpg\")
\nOn August 12, an alt-right fascist murdered a person and injured dozens more by driving a vehicle into a crowd of anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia. We are calling for solidarity actions to take place around the country to respond to this.
\n\nIf we allow the alt-right and neo-Nazis to organize in our communities, the consequences will be fatal. Charlottesville is just the beginning. If the alt-right can get away with murder there, none of us will be safe. We have to stand up to white supremacists, we have to shut down and chase out these bigots every time they try to organize, or else they will kill more people.
\n\nYou are a target. These bigots target people of color, women, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people, immigrants, radicals, liberals, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them—not just with words, but with violence. Emboldened by Trump’s election, alt-right and fascist bigots have already shot and wounded protestors against racism in Minneapolis and Seattle, stabbed bystanders to death in Portland for intervening against Islamophobia, and sowed hatred and discord across the country. We are betraying our friends and neighbors if we don’t take a stand.
\n\nThe police will not protect us. They murder over a thousand people every year in this country, and infiltrate and attack our demonstrations when we stand up against alt-right terror. We have to organize to defend ourselves.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/nyc.jpg\")
New York City, New York
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/bay-area.jpg\")
Bay Area, California
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/chicago.jpg\")
Chicago, Illinois
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/sf.jpg\")
San Francisco, California
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/asheville.jpg\")
Asheville, North Carolina
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/bure.jpg\")
Bure
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/alexandria.jpg\")
Alexandria, Virginia
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/copenhagen.jpg\")
Copenhagen, Denmark
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/solidarity-rallies/helsinki.jpeg\")
Helsinki, Finland
\nOn Friday, August 11, a wide range of far-right groups from around the US gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia for a march the night before their “Unite the Right” rally. Hundreds of them carrying lit torches paraded across the town with very little visible police presence. The streets were largely empty, thanks to a request from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. When the march arrived at the foot of the statue of Thomas Jefferson ringed by a few dozen counterprotesters, the men with torches surrounded it and attacked them.
\n\nFascists attacking counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville. This is what they will do to you, too, unless we stop them together.
\nUntil now, some of the participants have been coy about their politics. Now that they have all joined in explicitly fascist chants like “blood and soil” while many of them raised their arms in the Nazi salute, it is clear that all of them—the so-called Alt Right, the Proud Boys, and all the militiamen and Oathkeepers and basement-dwelling trolls who keep them company—are openly endorsing fascism. They aim to create a situation in which they can terrorize and murder with impunity in order to create an even more white supremacist, even more totalitarian state.
\n\nWith this march in Charlottesville, the far right has crossed a threshold. Until now, they appeared to be a motley array of online groups, most of which lacked the courage to identify unironically with fascism. Today, they have arrived as a social movement that can pull together hundreds of people to carry out organized acts of violence while the police look on. They hope to weaponize the ignorance and insecurity of the precarious white working class to trick poor white people into serving once again as cannon fodder for their own oppressors.
\n\nBut it’s not too late—not yet, anyway. The fascists are coming to prominence before they have the numbers or legitimacy in the public eye that they need to defend their new position. If we act swiftly and decisively—giving them neither legitimacy nor quarter—there is still time to stop them before they move the clock from 2017 to 1933.
\n\nRemember last November, when Donald Trump was elected and it seemed like the entire US was about to veer into a far-right dictatorship? While liberals were immobilized by shock, anarchists immediately went on the offensive in order to destabilize the Trump regime before everyone got accustomed to a new level of tyranny. We recognized that the far right had come to power too early, before they could build a broad consensus in favor of their agenda, and that this put them in a vulnerable position. By acting decisively against the inauguration and the Muslim ban, we helped to show that there could be no business or politics as usual under Trump, and this created fractures within the halls of power.
\n\nIf not for these immediate, massive expressions of defiance, judges might not have dared to block the Muslim ban, or White House employees to leak information. Imagine the US right now if Trump were ruling with the full apparatus of the state united behind him! Instead, today, the US government seems more dysfunctional than ever. That may explain why Trump is threatening war to shore up his position, while fascists are no longer counting on his government to carry out their agenda under cover of normalcy.
\n\nNow we have to use the same strategy to forestall the threat of a new widespread fascist movement in the US. We have to respond immediately, cutting its oxygen supply and blocking its growth. But how do we do that?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/12/1.jpg\")
The aspiring shock troops of a new barefaced totalitarianism.
\nFirst, we can’t accord fascists any legitimacy. One network described them as “white activists” last night. Such euphemisms are inappropriate for people giving the Nazi salute. It must be clear to everyone that they are not attempting to participate in a dialogue, but rather seeking to start a war.
\n\nBy the same token, we must not look to the police or any other aspect of the state for deliverance. The complicity of the police in supporting one fascist undertaking after another is well-established by now. Besides, anything the state does against the far right, we can be sure it will do to us twice as hard. It would be a mistake to give anyone the impression that state intervention could solve this problem without creating even bigger problems. If history is any guide, whatever power the state is accorded will eventually end up in the hands of fascists.
\n\nWe also can’t defer to authorities like Governor McAuliffe when they tell us to respond to the situation by hiding indoors. In effect, this means ceding the streets to the fascists, in which to do whatever they want to whomever is still out there. Recommending this strategy makes Governor McAuliffe complicit in the rise of fascism. Sticking our heads in the sand will not make this situation go away.
\n\nLikewise, it won’t help to gather in churches, as some did in Charlottesville last night, congratulating ourselves on how nonviolent we are while fascists patrol the streets. Last night, when the church locked its doors, many were trapped outside, dramatically outnumbered. This kind of behavior is also complicity.
\n\nIt’s essential to build fighting formations capable of facing down far-right violence. Fascists love to portray themselves as victims in order to claim the right to do violence to others; their entire narrative is built around the contradiction that they are simultaneously master race and underdog, victorious and persecuted. They treat any resistance to their program as an affront to their dignity and a violation of their safe space. Nonetheless, we have to be able to stop them in their streets, because they are in the business of purveying revenge fantasies. Any footage they can record of successful attacks, however cowardly, will help them recruit from their base of bullies and sadists. Because of this, it is preferable not to enter into conflict with them except when fully prepared—but at all costs, we must not let them attain control of the streets.
\n\nMost of this is not a matter of physical confrontation. We need people to put up posters; we need people to hand out handbills, and form local organizations, and coordinate neighborhood response teams. We need to organize legal support for those arrested fighting fascists and institutions like the US border that are already accomplishing their stated goals. We need people to infiltrate their groups; we need to set up fake online accounts with which to monitor them or spread disinformation and strife. We need to identify the fault lines along which their alliances can be split, and open gulfs between them and the rest of the right wing. One can do a great deal to fight fascism without ever entering a gym.
\n\nAs in our efforts against the Trump administration, we can’t take on fascism alone. We have to make sure that we are part of a much broader movement, yet that our efforts are not diluted or reduced to some lowest common denominator.
\n\nAbove all, we have to popularize another set of values, so that the cheap victim narratives and fantasies of authority that fascists offer can gain no traction among the general public. We have to show how fulfilling it is to treat each other as equals, rather than serving simultaneously as a peon and a petty tyrant in a chain of command. We have to distinguish true self-determination from supposed self-determination for “nations” or “peoples,” which always boils down to being bossed around by someone of your own ethnicity or religion. We have to foster a sense of self-worth that is not based in membership in invented categories, but in our personal relationships and values and accomplishments.
\n\nIn the growing popularity of fascism, we can see the failure of guilt-based liberal anti-racism and anti-sexism. Mere privilege politics have failed us; we have to show what everyone stands to gain from the abolition of whiteness and patriarchy, and to present this as a positive program rather than as nothing more than the elimination of unfair advantages. However unfair an advantage is, someone is bound to want to keep it—we have to convey that there’s nothing whiteness or male domination can offer that is worth having in the first place, compared to the genuine intimacy and care that are possible when we approach each other as equals, without borders or abstract criteria of belonging.
\n\nThis is the opposite of pandering to the supposed ignorance or self-interest of “the white working class,” as if that were a single entity. On the contrary, it means appealing to what is wisest and most honorable in all people.
\n\nAnarchism is one of the most thoroughgoing forms of opposition to fascism, in that it entails opposition to hierarchy itself. Virtually every framework that countenances hierarchy, be it democracy or “national liberation,” enables old power imbalances like white supremacy and patriarchy to remain in place, hidden within the legitimacy of the prevailing structures. Under democracy, white supremacy has not disappeared; it has just disguised itself. If we want to be done with fascism once and for all, we have to cut to the root of things.
\n\nIn that regard, we can see the struggle ahead of us as an opportunity to challenge everything about our society and ourselves, not just the violence of a radical fringe group. As society polarizes and things escalate, we should not simply be drawn into a violent grudge match with our opposite numbers on the far right, but look for escape hatches through which all humanity might escape from this long nightmare.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/xshularx/status/896200110945730560\n\n\n" } ] }
![Pinochet shirts](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/08/06/3.jpg\"){kind=link}
![“blood and soil”](\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_Soil#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H1215-503-009,_Walther_Darr%C3%A9_bei_einer_Kundgebung.jpg\"){kind=link}