tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136226222024-03-17T23:02:39.772-04:00threewayfightAN INSURGENT BLOG ON THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE STATE AND FASCISMMatthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.comBlogger497125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-25072091376943112872024-02-28T18:47:00.000-05:002024-02-28T18:47:34.846-05:00Three Way Fight book announcement and excerpt<p>We are publishing a book! <i>Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism</i> is forthcoming from <a href="https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1586" target="_blank">PM Press</a> and <a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/three-way-fight-revolutionary-politics-and-antifascism?_pos=1&_sid=e74db6462&_ss=r" target="_blank">Kersplebedeb Publishing</a> in May 2024. The book is edited by Xtn Alexander and Matthew N. Lyons, with a foreword by Janeen Porter and an afterword by Michael Staudenmaier. Here’s the description from the publishers’ websites:</p>
<blockquote>
What’s the relationship between combating the far right and working for systemic change? What does it mean when fascists intensify racial oppression and patriarchy but also call for the downfall of economic elites or even take up arms against the state? <br /><br />
Three way fight politics confront these urgent questions squarely, arguing that the far right grows out of an oppressive capitalist order but is also in conflict with it in real ways, and that radicals need to combat both. The three way fight approach says we need sharper analysis of far-right movements so we can fight them more effectively, and we also need to track ongoing developments within the ruling class, including liberal or centrist efforts to co-opt antifascism as a tool of state repression and system legitimation. <br /><br />
This book offers an introduction to three way fight politics, with more than thirty essays, position statements, and interviews from the Three Way Fight website and elsewhere, spanning from the antifascist struggles of the 1980s and 1990s to the political upheavals of the twenty-first century. Over fifteen authors explore a range of topics, such as fascist politics’ relationship with patriarchy and settler colonialism, Tom Metzger’s “Third Position” (anticapitalist) fascism, conflict within the business community over the 2016 presidential election, and the Trump administration’s shifting relationship with the organized far right. Many of the writings address issues of political strategy, such as tensions between radicals and liberals within the reproductive rights movement and the George Floyd rebellion, video gaming as an arena of political struggle, and the importance (and challenges) of approaching antifascist organizing in ways that are militant, community based, and nonsectarian.</blockquote>
<p>Like the Three Way Fight website, this book is intended to promote discussion and debate to strengthen radical antifascist analysis and strategy. To help do this, in the coming months we’ll be putting together a series of events with the book as focal point.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The origins of three way fight politics (book excerpt) <br /></h2>
<p><i>The following excerpt from the introduction to </i>Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism<i> outlines the major political developments in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s that helped bring three way fight politics into being.</i></p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSk7y1oCQu9RsMyAmcpAYSylQdjen4qvDDT8nP1ZapbKqNy9FAtb8mTBNu5PkzHyReUTgIeIHggIDv3CoNVDGiEbx4lYJcHMl85150BU68ZshiKPmLX7d4qigAMRC7UaLTUG6tPK-SNNQPs6MR1CE7BeTUqsjBfGj84q2nV8MzbvdR5XgV_PlN/s1000/threewayfight_cover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="666" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSk7y1oCQu9RsMyAmcpAYSylQdjen4qvDDT8nP1ZapbKqNy9FAtb8mTBNu5PkzHyReUTgIeIHggIDv3CoNVDGiEbx4lYJcHMl85150BU68ZshiKPmLX7d4qigAMRC7UaLTUG6tPK-SNNQPs6MR1CE7BeTUqsjBfGj84q2nV8MzbvdR5XgV_PlN/w266-h400/threewayfight_cover.jpeg" width="266" /></a></div>As a concept and a political project, three way fight (3WF) was shaped by earlier developments in the U.S. left, in large part by two organizations: Anti-Racist Action (ARA) and, even earlier, the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO). Anti-Racist Action was a large, decentralized network of local groups focused on a physical, direct action approach to combating fascist and far-right organizing. ARA, which was founded around 1987 and reached its greatest extent and level of activity in the 1990s, emerged from skinhead and punk subcultures but grew beyond these scenes to become a broader, more diverse youth-led movement. While most ARA members were nonaligned ideologically and joined the movement simply to organize and fight the fascists and far right, a significant number of members were anarchist or antiauthoritarian in orientation. However, Marxist, feminist, and other perspectives were also represented and showed ARA’s organizational nonsectarianism. Unlike liberal “anti-hate” organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, ARA explicitly rejected relying on the police or the courts, and some of its chapters organized against racist police violence and state repression as well as the far right. While ARA did not take a position on capitalism or the overall political system, it included a number of currents that advocated a more radical and at times comprehensive revolutionary anticapitalist and antisystem analysis and approach to struggle.<p></p>
<p>Unlike ARA, STO was a relatively small Marxist organization, and it was active from 1969 to about 1985. It was an offshoot of the New Left based primarily in the Chicago area. STO developed a distinctive form of independent Marxism—influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois, Antonio Gramsci, and C.L.R. James, among others—that emphasized working-class agency and targeted racial oppression as a key contradiction within the US working class. STO practiced a rare combination of revolutionary politics and public openness about internal debates and disagreements. STO also developed a concept of fascism that sharply challenged both Stalinist and Trotskyist assumptions, arguing that while fascism has “intimate connections with the needs of the capitalist class,” it also “contains an anti-capitalist ‘revolutionary’ side that is not reducible to simple demagogy.” Although it was always a small organization, STO influenced a number of later leftist organizations, and former STO members have been active in a variety of campaigns and projects.</p>
<p>Other currents have also contributed to the development of three way fight politics. A notable example was the loose network of independent revolutionaries that included J. Sakai (best known as the author of <a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/settlers-the-mythology-of-the-white-proletariat-from-mayflower-to-modern?_pos=1&_sid=ff4c03278&_ss=r" target="_blank"><i>Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat</i></a>), Butch Lee (contributor to <i>Bottomfish Blues</i> and co-author of <i><a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/night-vision-illuminating-war-and-class-on-the-neo-colonial-terrain?_pos=1&_sid=ebd185f80&_ss=r" target="_blank">Night-Vision: Illuminating War & Class on the Neo-colonial Terrain</a></i>) and Bromma (author of <i><a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/exodus-and-reconstruction-working-class-women-at-the-heart-of-globalization?_pos=1&_sid=0ff755c1c&_ss=r" target="_blank">Exodus and Reconstruction: Working-Class Women at the Heart of Globalization</a></i>). Influenced by Maoism but applying it in unorthodox ways that even many anarchists engaged with, these writers have, since the 1980s, put forward sharp and original critiques of modern capitalism’s changing landscape with a strong emphasis on white supremacy and male supremacy both in the structure of society and within political movements.</p>
<p>Another early influence on three way fight politics was the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), which was active from about 1972 to 1989. The RSL’s politics evolved from Trotskyism to anarchism, and several of its former members helped found the Love and Rage anarchist organization in 1989. In parallel to STO, the RSL identified far-right and fascist forces as an organizing—and terrorizing—force within working-class communities, and it sought to build a diverse multi-racial, militant and working-class opposition to the Ku Klux Klan. The RSL promoted an early “them, them and us” approach that saw antiracist forces as being in a struggle against the KKK and nazis on one side and the police and the state on the other. While the RSL’s positions on fascism have received little attention in recent decades, and its writings on the issue are difficult to locate, its approach to antifascist organizing has had a lasting impact.</p>
<p>During this same period, some investigative journalists began to study the emerging rightist movements in ways that would directly inform three way fight analysis. Of particular note were Sara Diamond, who broke new ground in studying the Christian right as a well-organized, politically autonomous mass movement, and Chip Berlet, whose work included both anti-nazi organizing and investigation of police and FBI repression, and who helped found the antirightist think tank Political Research Associates in 1981. Berlet’s 1994 report Right Woos Left warned against far-right infiltration of the antiwar movement and the spread of conspiracist ideology in sections of the left. Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons coauthored <i><a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Right-Wing-Populism-in-America/Berlet-Lyons/9781572305625" target="_blank">Right-Wing Populism in America</a></i> (published in 2000), which traced the long history of US movements that have combined antielitism with efforts to intensify social oppression.</p>
<p>The growth of ARA in the 1980s and 90s was part of a broader upsurge of confrontational “antifa” organizing across much of Europe and North America. In 1997, Minneapolis ARA and the Toronto-based Anti-Fascist Forum helped found the International Militant Anti-Fascist Network. The new network was weakened by deep political disagreements at its founding conference and lasted only a few years, but its launch statement declared, in terms that helped further revolutionary currents within ARA,</p>
<blockquote>
We stand for the physical and ideological confrontation of fascism, and we are not fighting to maintain the status quo. We see the challenges facing us as a three cornered fight, between the militants, the fascists and the state. We recognize that the ultimate guarantee against the far right penetrating the mainstream, is a strong politically independent working class movement.</blockquote>
<p>Around this same time, increased focus on clinic defense and an ongoing internal debate led ARA in 1998 to add a commitment to “abortion rights and unrestricted reproductive freedom for all” to its Points of Unity. The new language reflected a struggle against sexism within ARA, but also many militant antifascists’ developing understanding that the far right encompassed Christian rightists as well as neo-nazis and that the fight against patriarchy must be at the forefront together with the fight against white supremacy.</p>
<p>Two events around the turn of the millennium—the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001—highlighted the need for fresh thinking on the relationships between far-right politics, the capitalist state, and the left. The Battle of Seattle was a series of militant mass protests against the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in November and December 1999, and it marked the rise of the “antiglobalization” movement as a broad-based challenge to transnational corporate power. Politically, antiglobalization was all over the map, from the anarchist-oriented “black bloc” forces who targeted capitalist property and any symbols of power, through reformist NGOs and labor unions at the center, to hard-line nationalists and far rightists. Many ARA activists and other antifascists rallied to the movement’s militant, anticapitalist wing, where they found themselves confronting not only global corporations and intergovernmental bodies but also both procapitalist liberals and fascists—as well as the wider spread of fascistic ideas such as antisemitic conspiracism—within the movement’s own ranks. Part of this struggle is documented in the 2000 book <i><a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/my-enemys-enemy-essays-on-globalization-fascism-and-the-struggle-against-capitalism?_pos=1&_sid=3ae7b5b7d&_ss=r" target="_blank">My Enemy’s Enemy: Essays on Globalization, Fascism and the Struggle against Capitalism</a></i>, which was compiled by the Anti-Fascist Forum and included an essay by Sakai.</p>
<p>Less than two years after Seattle, the September 11 attacks showed even more dramatically that global capitalism’s enemies could be found not only on the radical left but also on the far right. In destroying the Twin Towers and damaging the Pentagon, al-Qaeda struck at prominent symbols of Western imperialism and capitalism. But these attacks, which killed some three thousand people, were carried out in the service of a political vision that was profoundly authoritarian and reactionary. The United States responded with the decades-long “War on Terror,” increased repression both at home and abroad, and a wave of racist attacks against people of color, particularly Arabs and Middle Easterners. US fascist groups both fueled these fears and looked for ways to take advantage of them. Radical antifascists found themselves forced back on the defensive, yet they began to analyze the attacks, the responses to them, and their wider implications.</p>
ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-53071523853697223492024-01-11T19:30:00.000-05:002024-01-11T19:30:07.764-05:00Trump’s Gospel: A Review of Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQgZTKx7nlrTbJYqayxX0MHWwvpdeEYviRuWIak49OFROkkMUSxKfQef1y4koKA5fe47UPh5x9Am461MPOJlgTWZ6d1xRl0Gfg0IEcfFFXTg2HA5zNlRSaXKw-9V8W8qejVihswgbV7Z2G8GWgq_Mt7ThTCIbF0HR6DF-VTd8nszmPn1ACU5Hi/s404/Untertow_cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Book cover of The Undertow, showing a jackknife and a church" border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="263" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQgZTKx7nlrTbJYqayxX0MHWwvpdeEYviRuWIak49OFROkkMUSxKfQef1y4koKA5fe47UPh5x9Am461MPOJlgTWZ6d1xRl0Gfg0IEcfFFXTg2HA5zNlRSaXKw-9V8W8qejVihswgbV7Z2G8GWgq_Mt7ThTCIbF0HR6DF-VTd8nszmPn1ACU5Hi/w208-h320/Untertow_cover.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>Jeff Sharlet, <i><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324006497" target="_blank">The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War</a></i><br />
New York: W. W. Norton Company, 2023<br />
363 pages; ISBN: 978-1-324-07451-9<p></p>
<p><b>Review by Jarrod Shanahan</b></p>
<p>So much has been already said about Donald J. Trump, Trumpism, and the amorphous mass known as his “base” that it hardly seems worth revisiting the topic almost eight years after his fateful descent down Trump Tower’s golden excavator. Just as the 2016 election seemed to confirm everything that virtually everyone had already been saying about US politics for years, so too does Donald Trump today seem self-explanatory. A living Rorschach test, Trump has made a career out of appearing exactly as people want him to be. The billionaire champion of the everyman; the hedonist defender of traditional values; the criminal warrior for law and order; the antichrist and the messiah rolled into one. Trump is all these things, but more fundamentally, Trump just is. What’s the point of even talking about it anymore? </p>
<p>Journalist Jeff Sharlet has been on the Trump beat since 2015, crisscrossing the country to attend Trump rallies, MAGA churches, men's rights convergences, memorials for January 6th martyr Ashli Babbitt, and other symptoms of what he calls “a season of coming apart.” Sharlet’s new essay collection <i>The Undertow</i> (Norton, 2023) attempts to sketch in broad strokes, inlaid with baroque detail, the unstable social terrain he traversed, a society careening toward catastrophe, an apocalypse already underway, “the gravity drawing men with guns to the center.” The result is a poetic and deeply pessimistic assessment of the American present and near future, which manages the difficult feat of saying a few original things about Trump, Trumpism, and the zeitgeist in which this madness makes any sense to anyone. </p>
<p>A primary setting of <i>The Undertow</i> is the grotesque jubilee of the Trump rally. Shoulder to shoulder in the thronging crowds of 2015, Sharlet beheld a perverse kind of community in utero, rooted in Trump’s unique blend of “not just anger but rage; love and yes, hate; fear, a political commonplace, and also vengeance,” fused with a scarcely concealed erotic glee in communal transgression. “Liberals giggle over the innuendos of Trump,” writes Sharlet, “but the believers are more sophisticated, they embrace not just the manufactured hope of a political rally but also the lust, the envy, the anger of our bluntest selves,” transformed by Trump into “something greater.” Even in the painful ritual of waiting up to eight hours before the man appears, Sharlet found “deep pleasure… derived not just from the speech to come but from a budding sensation of togetherness, rolling vibrations of solidarity and giddiness and anticipation.” </p>
<p>The Trump rally has been the most prominent manifestation of Trumpism and a key site of investigation for those of us trying to figure out, as Trump would say, what the hell is going on. “For the most part, the crowd isn’t all that interested in what Trump thinks,” <a href="https://hardcrackers.com/show-might-stop/" target="_blank">wrote John Garvey</a> in 2019, “they’re more interested in what he represents—a rejection of all the ‘norms’ that the liberal media never tire of passionately embracing. He says things that you’re not supposed to say and they get to share in the excitement that goes along with getting away with something.” Sharlet provides much evidence of this communal sense of transgression, which Garvey deftly compares to the medieval carnival, a ritual through which hierarchies are jovially upended, albeit temporarily, in the name of preserving power relations in the long term. “We all want to punch somebody in the face,” one rally goer told Sharlet, “and he says it for us.” Beneath the pure negation of Trumpism, and beyond the spectacle of his rallies, however, run an important thread of continuity to the more orthodox politics of days past. </p>
<p>Sharlet’s most valuable contributions to understanding the long history of Trumpism traces its relationship to Christianity, through the mediation of “Trump’s gospel.” Here <i>The Undertow</i> benefits immensely from Sharlet’s experience chronicling religious fundamentalism in America, dating back to his work in <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-family-jeff-sharlet?variant=32205819379746" target="_blank"><i>The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power</i></a> (Harper Collins, 2008). Whereas this earlier work chronicled the <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2010/08/bringing-elite-to-jesus.html" target="_blank">shady work of religious fundamentalists in the halls of power</a>, <i>The Undertow</i> traces the diffusion of this theology throughout Anytown, USA, with an emphasis on its remarkable syncretism. After encountering Sharlet’s colorful litany of “MAGA pastors,” QAnon sermons, and Christian faithful discarding the cross (a symbol of weakness and defeat) for the sword (strength and victory), it seems absurd to call anything “fundamentalism” which adapts so readily to political and cultural expediency as does evangelical Christianity. </p>
<p>Where many secular commentators, myself included, were stumped by the seeming contradiction of the profane Trump’s sacred status among so many Christians, Sharlet invites us to look closer. “What Trump is describing” in his unhinged rants about his many enemies in the Deep State and throughout the social fabric, argues Sharlet, ”is no more nor less exotic than the evangelical concept of spiritual war, the conflict thought to be raging always, around us and within, between believers and ‘principalities’ and ‘powers,’ according to Ephesians; or demons, in the contemporary vernacular.” In short, Trump “fused his penchant for self-pity with the paranoia that runs like a third rail through Christian conservatism, the thrilling promise of ‘spiritual war’ with dark and hidden powers,” forces both real and plucked from the highly-imaginative demonology of QAnon. Trump, who grew up studying pioneering televangelist Billy Graham, might not be such an unlikely religious leader after all. </p>
<p><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Trump’s gospel revolves around the worship of power, the denial of responsibility to others, the denial of history, and above all, the denial of any objective standard of truth.”</span></i></p>
<p>It is certainly a role he has stepped into with great aptitude since 2015. In the process, Sharlet argues, what began as a kind of modern day Crusades, the quest to return American “greatness” in 2016, shifted in 2020 to a much darker battle with shadowy Deep State, and stands today as nothing short of a looming Armageddon, secularized in the phrase, recurring throughout the book, of a coming “civil war.” How did a man so famously averse to watching a film start to finish, much less reading a book, pull this off? It is tempting to recall C.L.R. James’s description of the Marcus Garvey movement: “It was pitiable rubbish,” James writes, “but the Negroes wanted a leader and they took the first that was offered them… desperate men often hear, not the actual words of an orator but their own thoughts.” But just as there was likely more to Garvey than James would concede, so too, Sharlet illustrates, can we sell Trump short. </p>
<p>Here Sharlet makes considerable use of a little-known fact about Donald J. Trump: his veneration of the “applied Christianity” of Norman Vincent Peale, author of <i>The Power of Positive Thinking</i> (Prentice Hall, 1952) and friend of the Trump family. Peale’s theology inverted the relationship between humanity and God found in most faiths: the point of Christianity, he argued, is to serve the believer. And how can this be measured? Through material success. Transmitted orally to the young Trump, who is famously averse to reading, Peale’s philosophy has gained popularity around the “prosperity gospel” of Joel Osteen and other megachurch pastors who flaunt the wealth they accrue from their flocks as both a testament to their own righteousness and a portent of the affluence coming to those who give. At the same time, applied Christianity sanctifies the world as it presently exists, beatifying the wealth and power of capitalist society in the eyes of the Lord. </p>
<p>In the present, Sharlet argues, the “prosperity gospel, secularized” that Trump offers presents a double incentive to his flock. First, they are free to pursue their own deep desires: the lust for power, status, conquests, sexual and otherwise, flaunted by Trump, who liberates them by allowing them to let go of their shame in the name of “greatness.” At the same time, he also frees them from the guilt of inhabiting a world divided by class and race. In the world of Trump’s gospel, anyone can be saved, through their own initiative; the small group of non-white MAGA influencers who ride Trump’s coattails are case in point. Trump’s gospel is bootstraps ideology sacralized and then re-secularized. It enables the kind of deniability found at Trump rallies: when Trump speaks of bad Mexicans, he of course does not mean the Latinos who migrated “legally,” started businesses, and today support Trump — any more than his remarks about “black crime” refer to law-abiding African Americans who seek law and order. In fact, anyone who tells you any differently is the real racist! </p>
<p>A far cry from the socialist hippiedom of the New Testament, Trump’s gospel revolves around the worship of power (winners are holy, losers are profane), the denial of responsibility to others, the denial of history, and above all, the denial of any objective standard of truth. Here again, in Trump’s oft-mocked penchant for outrageous hyperbole and outright fabrication, Sharlet finds a more profound continuity that eludes secular observers. Trump, he argues, speaks “spiritual truths,” a modern heir to Gnosticism, “a form of exclusive knowledge reserved for the faithful, a ‘truth’ you must have the eyes to see.” This way of knowing is at odds with the vulgar earthly methodology of experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, so reviled by the Trump faithful. It is an epistemology in which “doing your own research” means watching homemade YouTube videos full of wild, unsubstantiated assertions, and finding them to reflect reality satisfactorily enough to risk one’s life in their name. As philosopher Martin Heidegger might say, the Trumper is “in the truth” by virtue of their social being, and has no need for empirical standards beyond this. </p>
<p>Gnosis, Sharlet argues, thrives on paradox, which adherents believe contains deeper truths than formal language can convey. The gnostic devotee gains access to a world beneath the one seen, and to debate the world of appearances on its own merit denotes a shallow spiritual understanding. Considered gnostically, then, Trump’s immorality on display alongside his professed righteousness is no cause for alarm; reconciling the two, however artificially, is a sign of enlightenment and denotes status above those who cannot move beyond the obvious fact that this foul-mouthed, philandering huckster seems to claim to be the voice of God. This is equally true of the forces of darkness. “Secret murders everywhere,” one of the book’s many enterprising MAGA pastors tells Sharlet, speaking in ominous shorthand. “Pedophiles, and evil.” One need not prove these claims empirically, and attempts to do so, such as the popular conflation of the amount of children who are reported missing each year (often for a very short time) with the number who vanish permanently at the hands of a stranger (a puny fraction of the former) cannot be fact-checked. It is true on the spiritual level, even if some egghead wants to tell you that Comet Ping Pong, the Washington D.C. pizza parlor widely believed to harbor a Democrat-run child sex dungeon in its basement, does not, in fact, have a basement. Such is the theology of QAnon. </p>
<p>After the failure of QAnon’s main prophecies — including the arrest of Trump’s enemies in a day of judgment called the “Storm” — and the apparent removal of Trump from office, most nonbelievers would be happy to consign this crowd-sourced demonology to the historical dustbin. But while the so-called "Q drops" on 4chan and other seedy corners of the Internet have since gone silent, Sharlet demonstrates that much of the movement’s paranoid cosmology remains alive and well in a stunning fusion of QAnon, Trumpism, and evangelical Christianity. This goes for core beliefs of the Q movement—wildly exaggerated figures of child abduction and trafficking, Satanic pedophile rings run by Democrats, and a subterranean battle between light and darkness at the center of the American state. More importantly, however, the paranoid “research” practices, free-associational construction of complex narratives, and breathless fabrication out of whole cloth that constitute the methodology of QAnon, which most closely resembles a collective descent into schizophrenia, have instead been almost completely normalized in rightist politics. </p>
<p>For example, at one rally Sharlet notices a smattering of t-shirts bearing the phrase “Trump’s Tweets Matter,” and speaks to the ringleader. He learns they are not simply an effort to own the libs—in fact, this slogan’s overlap with Black Lives Matter seems to be the only coincidence conceded by any of Sharlet’s Q-addled informants. The deeper meaning, the shirt’s maker insists, points to the obsessive hermeneutic popularized by QAnon, the notion that Trump is a “a five-dimensional chess player,” and that his every malapropism, typographical error, and errant capitalization (especially this) is in fact a profound expression of hidden truth knowable by the elect. In the distinctly occult practice of numerology, these followers cull Trump’s tweets, counting capital letters, searching for patterns. </p>
<p>Even known facts can be turned into cryptic questions. “Who killed Ashli Babbit?” runs a popular Trumpist meme. Never mind that the answer, Lieutenant Michael Byrd of the Capitol Police Department, has long been known. The question itself, suggesting the intrigue of a deep state coverup, persists, even posed by Trump himself. Sharlet argues it is a mistake to dismiss such practices. Reflecting on one such believer, he writes: “Diane was not fringe. She might have been closer to the new center of American life than you are.” </p>
<p><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">“The liberal democracy that Sharlet mourns is inseparable from the white supremacy and settler colonialism he rightfully decries.... But the present crisis is, as Sharlet correctly diagnoses, a time of great danger, when an alternative must be posed to the fascist barbarism represented by Trumpism and its ilk.”</span></i></p>
<p>While Sharlet chronicles a wide variety of conspiracy theories in the so-called Trumpocene, the people he speaks to are unified by a sense that “civil war” is either imminent, or already underway. The subtitle of <i>The Undertow</i> is “Scenes from a Slow Civil War,” the case for which is not made directly but impressionistically, through a series of grim narratives punctuated with the testimony of others. In more explicit moments, Sharlet cites vigilante killer Kyle Rittenhouse’s first lawyer, who claimed the young gunman would go down in history as having fired the first shot in “A Second American Revolution.” Some people he speaks to believe that the shuttering of churches in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic was an effective declaration of civil war, which has, again, already begun. But most of his informants believe the civil war is coming, just around the corner, and they will be forced to draw upon their ample supply of guns to defeat the forces of darkness. </p>
<p>Many of those who desire “another 1776,” of course, recently had their chance, and it didn’t go so well. Sharlet captures the sense of demoralization among those who were flummoxed by January 6th. “All the good, the patriots, the people who really care,” another MAGA pastor tells him, “they made a huge surge to do the right thing. And then we were told to all go home. It’s over.” In response, Sharlet finds, some have created a world in which it is not over, in a double sense. The first is the creation of a fantasy world where Hillary Clinton has already been executed, Trump is in fact still president, and all will be revealed in an orgy of violence not unlike the “Day of the Rope” in the white revolutionary call to arms <i>The Turner Diaries</i> (National Vanguard Books, 1978). The second, and more widespread, is the amassing of material force sufficient to make this day happen, regardless of whether the rest of it proves to be true. </p>
<p>From one vantage, we can say Sharlet chronicles the fusion of Christianity with a psychotic culture of white settler violence, armed to the teeth with high-tech weaponry and the Biblical verses sufficient to justify its indiscriminate use against the forces of darkness, literal and figurative. On the other hand, we can say that he simply shows that American Christianity always was this. The same goes for white supremacy; the presence of armed white racists all across the US is not new, nor would this be news to most people who suffer their oppressive presence in public space. But Sharlet has proven the unmistakable novelty of ideological and organizational forms around the increasing hybridization of rightist subcultures, and their redoubled presence in the American mainstream. </p>
<p>In either case, in the words of revolutionary scholar Dave Ranney, who recommended <i>The Undertow</i>, Sharlet “focuses on people who could well become a mass base for a real fascist movement.” Sharlet largely abstains from judgment on whether his subjects are “fascist,” opting instead to let them speak for themselves. What emerges from his account, nonetheless, is a distinctly American brand of rightism that is purportedly anti-establishment but not anti-capitalist, opposes liberal democracy not for its exclusion but its inclusion, and craves “autonomy,” understood as the freedom from responsibilities to others and the freedom to perpetuate existing dynamics of race, class, and gender with force. Add a strongman leader and a whole lot of guns, and it is difficult to not reach Ranney’s conclusion. </p>
<p>But as Ranney would insist, we cannot simply slap the label “fascist” on these people and act as if we already know everything we need to about them, as many social media pundits argued against the need to theorize the “alt-right” as a new historical emergence. Instead, for those who can stomach it, attention is due to the peculiar blend of ideologies and practices which constitute Trump’s base, with an eye to both understanding the enemy, and crafting a leftist praxis that can spare as many people as possible from joining their ranks. This is especially important for the left as so much of Trumpism hinges on the appearance of being anti-system. This terrain cannot be ceded to the right. For serious leftists, the rise and continuing appeal of Trumpism calls not for defense of liberal democracy but the articulation of a coherent anti-system leftism, that speaks to the widespread disgust people feel with their society and offers solutions that point toward actual human liberation. Surely many Trumpers will die on the hill of white supremacy and settler colonialism, unable or unwilling to move beyond it. But just as QAnon sometimes appears as a kind of vulgar Marxism on LSD, so too must leftists imagine that many anti-system rightists can be won over to liberatory anti-state politics, and a vision of inclusive autonomy, for all. </p>
<p>Sharlet’s fidelity to the stories his informants tell about themselves is the book’s strength as well as its weakness. He offers the book as a promising reflection on “grief and its distortions, how loss sometimes curdles into fury and hate, or denial, or delusion.” But, amid conspiracy theories and sermons of bloody deliverance, the actual object of grief, a central motif of <i>The Undertow</i>, remains woefully undefined. “Just as White people took the land from Indigenous people and then named themselves their victims,” writes Sharlet, “so, too, has Whiteness always been a means of claiming the suffering it inflicts on others as its own.” Sharlet heaps scorn on such “White grievance,” but is careful to spend little time enumerating any grievances that aren’t easily laughed off by his readers. It is a dangerous wager, and one that has not worked well for liberals of recent decades, who have virtually forfeited the terrain outside major cities. Leftists, for their part, who offer no anti-system alternative to these grievances, have done the same. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, a coherent anti-system rightism is coming into focus. Trumpers, Sharlet writes, are “drawn together not by Whiteness but by that of which it is made. By their belief in a strongman and their desire for an iron-fisted God and their love of the way guns make them feel inside and their grief over Covid-19 and their denial of Covid-19 and their loathing of ‘systemic’ as a descriptive of that which they can’t see, can’t hold in their hands and weigh, and their certainty that countless children are being taken, stolen and raped, or if not in body then in spirit, ‘indoctrinated’ to ‘hate themselves.’” This is a poignant observation. But why, at this moment in time, are these people compelled to act this way? And what is the alternative being offered to them? </p>
<p><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">“This is a deeply honest book, but this comes at the expense of emphasizing promising developments in the present that countervail the rise of the radical right of which Sharlet is correctly afraid.... Roughly 1.4 million people attended Trump rallies during the 2016 campaign, but upwards of 26 million people took to the streets in George Floyd’s name four years later.”</span></i></p>
<p>One very conspicuous absence in Sharlet’s view of Trumper grievances is America’s economic decline, the notorious “economic insecurity” thesis so successfully attacked in 2016 by partisans of the Clintonite view that “America is Already Great.” The denial that anything is wrong with American capitalism that cannot be fixed by diversity initiatives, applied to the advancement of a small set of select individuals, has subsequently become an important plank of Bidenism’s prophets of a new Gilded Age. While Sharlet (perhaps wisely) stays away from this hornet’s nest, a notable exception comes when a white man drinking at a bar near a Trump rally expresses his ambivalence about Trump’s racist views, before a few more drinks give him the courage to shout: “I don’t care if you’re racist! If you’ll just bring back one fucking steel mill!” </p>
<p>Sharlet might be correct to wager that the world does not need another printed sentence about how deindustrialization or the downward slope of wages, benefits, and quality of life for most Americans contributed to Trumpism. But the absence of this material dimension relegates the malaise he documents to a spiritual plane, where it risks getting lost in the haze of ideological abstractions, or worse yet, winds up bespeaking something like the innate characteristics of the people who Sharlet meets. </p>
<p>When Sharlet does attempt to engage with the materiality of the movement he chronicles so deftly, he succumbs to the very eschatology he has ridiculed for hundreds of pages, albeit in secular form. “We say we are in crisis,” Sharlet drones ominously. “The crisis of democracy—the gun—the crisis of climate—the fire, the water, the rain—the crises of our own little lives—debt and Twitter and rage, and most of all the ordinary losses of love and loved ones that feel too vast. But that word, crisis, supposes we can act. It supposes the outcome to be determined. The binary yet to be toggled, a happy ending or a sad one, victory or defeat. As if we have not already entered the aftermath.” </p>
<p>Similarly, <i>The Undertow</i> decries the violent and suicidal project of whiteness, and adorns its travel narrative with indigenous tribe names land acknowledgments in a good faith gesture toward reckoning with settler colonialism, though neither is neatly integrated into the book’s analysis. In fairness, they really can’t be. It is impossible to take white supremacy and settler colonialism seriously, as enduring historical phenomena as well as important contours of the present, while still defending the sanctity of American liberal democracy. And this is what <i>The Undertow</i> is really up to, even if Sharlet can only muster a eulogy.</p>
<p>All the while, Sharlet risks succumbing to the very notion he critiques with such fervor: nostalgia for a return to the underlying oneness that is America—the thing Sharlet believes is “coming apart,” rather than a myth that never really existed at all. Plumbing the quasi-supernatural metaphor that gives the book its title, Sharlet ponders: “And if we make it to the shore?” But who are we? When has there ever been a unified America? And what is the shore? The politics of the early twenty-first century? And while Sharlet is correct that the apocalypse might be upon the US, this doesn’t change the fact that for many people in the US and the nations it plunders, it never hasn’t been. </p>
<p>The hopelessness that emerges from <i>The Undertow</i> is an honest testament to an author grappling with the terrifying terrain of American politics, while watching his own political paradigm become a thing of the past. It is to Sharlet’s great credit that he has embraced this vulnerability, rather than staging a hollow performance of hope or determination. This is a deeply honest book, and ought to be taken seriously as such. But this also comes at the expense of emphasizing promising developments in the present that countervail the rise of the radical right of which Sharlet is correctly afraid. Just as one can read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book-length meditation on the death of Michael Brown, <i>Between the World and Me</i> (Spiegel and Grau, 2015), without learning that Brown became a household name due to the courageous rebellion waged in his name, which forever transformed the political landscape in the United States, so too does the death of George Floyd, which catalyzed the largest multi-racial movement in US history, characterized by countless acts of heroism and solidarity across the lines of so-called races, only emerge as a reflection of white ignorance and black victimization in Sharlet’s pages. </p>
<p>The unfortunate chasm between Sharlet’s incisive political observations and <i>The Undertow</i>’s prophecies of doom serve as yet another reminder that grief and mourning are not the basis for a positive political vision. They can only tell us what we already know, distorted through a lens of pain and helplessness, and keep us trapped in an unending loop of what we have already suffered. This is an inherently reactionary political orientation, which must be overcome. Consider an alternative narrative: roughly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rallies_for_the_2016_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign" target="_blank">1.4 million people attended Trump rallies</a> during the 2016 campaign—a staggering figure for sure. But this figure pales in comparison to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html" target="_blank">upwards of 26 million people</a> who took to the streets in George Floyd’s name four years later. </p>
<p><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">“The rise of Trumpism calls not for defense of liberal democracy but the articulation of a coherent anti-system leftism, that speaks to the widespread disgust people feel with their society and offers solutions that point toward actual human liberation.”</span></i></p>
<p>Toward the end of his travels, Sharlet winds up keeping company with a quartet of high school age girls who organize an <i>ad hoc</i> demonstration against the overturning of <i>Roe</i> in their small Wisconsin town. Protests like this, in red counties where everybody knows everybody, abounded in 2020, and were actually more remarkable—and one might argue, courageous—than the familiar sight of looting and black blocs in large blue cities. But having already denied the honorific to Ashli Babbit, Sharlet struggles with whether these young women deserve to be called “heroes,” noting their lack of “unalloyed virtue.” Sharlet is never forthcoming about his strange unease with the zoomers. Perhaps the reasons are political. Note the following exchange between three white teenagers in suburban Wisconsin: </p>
<blockquote>“Personally,” said Theta, “I am for some kind of revolution. I think people should be prepared to arm themselves, because it’s been shown to women that we can’t trust our government to protect us.”<br /><br />
“Not at all,” said Karsen. <br /><br />
“Sometimes I take a Malcolm X approach to it,” said Theta. <br /><br />
“I heart Malcolm X,” agreed Karsen. <br /><br />
“Like,” said Theta, “if they’re showing violence to us, or not caring about violence that’s happening to us, why not reciprocate that?” <br /><br />
“My take,” said Karsen, who was Navy-bound, “is I plan on using the government to my full advantage. If we do get into a civil war.” …<br /><br />
Katie, Theta’s mother, clarified that, to her, ‘arming’ meant with knowledge. Peyton clarified that to her it meant guns. Her family had them and she’d known how to shoot since she was a girl…<br /><br />
“‘It’s not that I’m I’m like ‘Oooh, yeah, war,’ said Theta. “It’s like, we need a different system. As soon as possible. Because the planet is literally dying.”</blockquote>
<p>At this, Sharlet reminds the girls of the armed men who stalk the pages of his book, sweaty palms pawing justificatory Bible passages, ready for just this moment, their excuse to at last visit sadistic wrath on the forces of darkness. Their response? </p>
<p>“The kids said they weren’t scared of them,” he reports. “Climate? That’s scary. Trump is scary. The Supreme Court, they agreed, is very scary.” As for the soldiers of Christ? “‘You know,’” said Theta, ‘it’s either we fight against them, we possibly get killed in a civil war—or we suffer like this, our rights stripped away from us by the minute. And I don’t know if that’s a life worth living.’” </p>
<p>I have as little interest in the kind of macho posturing that downplays the threats posed by Sharlet’s “men with guns who said they might ‘have no choice’ but to draw them soon,” as I do arguing with people who are afraid of them. I was standing in the direct line of fire of Kenosha vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse and witnessed firsthand the horrors these people are capable of. Throughout my reading of <i>The Undertow</i>, I often reflected on this traumatic memory, and couldn’t help but wonder if some of Sharlet’s informants, or thousands just like them, were the future executioners of myself or my loved ones. I refuse to believe, however, that all is lost, just because American society seems to be “coming apart.” </p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRju1kLmJF4KRjwCVef6bVsYrP_WicRifQ_uhJYRkoErK53BB6OGasoNQep13Ytof41K3dYZlTyirE-1yKO6ecLfnfs55TaCvrnRejCAX5riIvf9ykg0F049TNrd0h683P4VqQwr282-ZzbY1-ax41JkaqjDPjwHk58GQgUabAlOZVMCVwyARR/s640/Donald_Trump_flag_(27726979536).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="American flag with Trump's face and "Make America Great Again! Donald Trump" superimposed" border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRju1kLmJF4KRjwCVef6bVsYrP_WicRifQ_uhJYRkoErK53BB6OGasoNQep13Ytof41K3dYZlTyirE-1yKO6ecLfnfs55TaCvrnRejCAX5riIvf9ykg0F049TNrd0h683P4VqQwr282-ZzbY1-ax41JkaqjDPjwHk58GQgUabAlOZVMCVwyARR/w400-h268/Donald_Trump_flag_(27726979536).jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Built on slavery and genocide, sustained by ruthless imperialism, and riven by intrinsic antagonism that constantly erupts into seemingly senseless violence, American society was always going to come apart; the wondrous thing is how long it has lasted. The liberal democracy that Sharlet mourns is inseparable from the white supremacy and settler colonialism he rightfully decries. The end of America is nothing to be sad about; the indefinite perpetuation of the American state as it has existed for two and a half centuries would simply be a continuing humanitarian and ecological disaster, on a global scale. This is not a hot take, it is an indelible fact from which politics must proceed. But the present crisis is, as Sharlet correctly diagnoses, a time of great danger, when an alternative must be posed to the fascist barbarism represented by Trumpism and its ilk. But despair is not a serious option. In fact, Trumpism thrives on its opponents’ sense of hopelessness, while salving that of its devotees. “Despair,” argues Werner Herzog “must be kept private and brief.” Politics imagines victory in the future or it concedes defeat in advance. <p></p>
<p>Ultimately, Sharlet’s tale of terror is not simply an American story; liberal democracies around the world are buckling under the irreconcilable contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, class society, and the violent hierarchies they require. In response, the weird ideologies and clumsy political experiments seen in recent decades represent a grappling toward articulation of a new politics adequate to the future. In response, the present conjuncture calls for people who can imagine it not as the end, but as the prehistory of a new society. Anybody who smugly pretends to have all the answers is probably best ignored. But those who claim that all is lost risk being even more dangerous—they offer what might just become a self-fulfilling prophecy. </p>
<h3>Bio</h3>
<p>Jarrod Shanahan is the author of <i>Captives</i> (Verso, 2022), co-author of <i>States of Incarceration</i> (Reaktion/Field Notes, 2022), an editor of <i>Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity</i> (Verso, 2022) and an editor of the publication <i>Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life</i>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Photo credit</h3><p>Flag at rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Phoenix, Arizona, 18 June 2016. Photo by Gage Skidmore (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_flag_(27726979536).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br /></p>
ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-40668371593534254842024-01-04T15:56:00.008-05:002024-01-05T10:57:39.389-05:00SHUT IT DOWN! Mass mobilization for Palestine cancels the first day of the 2024 California State Legislature<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqSDHfLeDDvClWp4oOVUbqIcWIXnOYcF4QIZsZ9sgA-xzWEr8IOzXazhKm_VLzIzkUv-q160VriRW2REtTUF41CLt4kz1Thw3vF-eNbuIIzcvYgZYP5NjaSOoHu5dOP-p3iX5IZncGSyzFgMkEJN_65gl8GJygTtcJHDSIH-Xz0prS-dxEoDocQ/s4032/698B73CA-2C96-4F97-A775-21FD4470D13D_1_201_a.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqSDHfLeDDvClWp4oOVUbqIcWIXnOYcF4QIZsZ9sgA-xzWEr8IOzXazhKm_VLzIzkUv-q160VriRW2REtTUF41CLt4kz1Thw3vF-eNbuIIzcvYgZYP5NjaSOoHu5dOP-p3iX5IZncGSyzFgMkEJN_65gl8GJygTtcJHDSIH-Xz0prS-dxEoDocQ/w640-h480/698B73CA-2C96-4F97-A775-21FD4470D13D_1_201_a.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">By Xtn Alexander <br /><br /><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>SHUT IT DOWN!</i></span></b><br /><br />For Palestine, hundreds of people took over the California State Capitol on January 3, 2024. The first day of the state’s legislature for the new year, or should we say, the attempted first day. The takeover forced the cancellation of the legislature’s session.<br /> <br /><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">NO BUSINESS AS USUAL!</span></i></b><br /> <br />A coalition, organized in large part by Jewish folks saying <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/notinourname/">#NotInOurName</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/shutitdown4palestine/">#ShutItDown4Palestine</a> brought together a determined and diverse mass of people to escalate the efforts to stop the attacks and genocide on Palestinians.<br /> <br /><b><i><span style="font-size: medium;">MAKE IT UNGOVERNABLE!</span></i></b><br /> <br />The takeover was a display of direct action. It is part of the wave of walkouts, strikes, blockades and street mobilizations. These actions vary in tactics – some peaceful, some more militant. This flexibility in approach must be supported.<br /> <br />Folks associated with Three Way Fight had the ability to network and join in with this takeover and to help shut it down!<br /><br /><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jvpbayarea/" target="_blank">@jvpbayarea</a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ifnotnowbayarea/" target="_blank">@ifnotnowbayarea</a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/bayarea4palestine/" target="_blank">@bayarea4palestine</a> </span><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jewishantizionistnetwork/" target="_blank">@jewishantizionistnetwork</a><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvqb-HL4hA7Mb376B8HXIQzuU_TdW8AcfhUKTur5EKZKUCVAoqE1shPyYg4Zq92d_mBF7S-rRHna-yvdpUUqE2o8IxowPoY5vTiSjQ8-KnWku7eui2GKut31l4tlZIMLOXJp3HCvl-7JG3fCWjXgIvrTC5QAYVVjllDf54EgQjM5T2eMPB_R5Cg/s4032/32EF0978-A9F8-4540-BFA1-34E3476E48B5_1_201_a.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvqb-HL4hA7Mb376B8HXIQzuU_TdW8AcfhUKTur5EKZKUCVAoqE1shPyYg4Zq92d_mBF7S-rRHna-yvdpUUqE2o8IxowPoY5vTiSjQ8-KnWku7eui2GKut31l4tlZIMLOXJp3HCvl-7JG3fCWjXgIvrTC5QAYVVjllDf54EgQjM5T2eMPB_R5Cg/w640-h480/32EF0978-A9F8-4540-BFA1-34E3476E48B5_1_201_a.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;">Photos by 3WF</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-15734575012851220262023-12-18T08:42:00.010-05:002024-01-04T15:58:20.552-05:00Genocide Joe and the Second Nakba<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcZ42LNgKI2tued8qd2rVVBtGgPxrpLc6L4EbR4Xb_bevry1duVgEqr4JfnxzBR-NgkT3qof1WbpzMwc29K1TlIcjw-IMZndb2iva95xWNAwj86TesvSUWM2eiOVhLC3gJCdJCx6hDEdj-ZGs-kTP4CTfi3tpPJY0N6v8rbBGgaIz5dpm3JlJ0cA/s1868/GenocideJoe.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1868" height="494" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcZ42LNgKI2tued8qd2rVVBtGgPxrpLc6L4EbR4Xb_bevry1duVgEqr4JfnxzBR-NgkT3qof1WbpzMwc29K1TlIcjw-IMZndb2iva95xWNAwj86TesvSUWM2eiOVhLC3gJCdJCx6hDEdj-ZGs-kTP4CTfi3tpPJY0N6v8rbBGgaIz5dpm3JlJ0cA/w640-h494/GenocideJoe.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">By Xtn Alexander <b> </b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">First, it’s gotta be said that the masses taking to the streets against the war on Gaza and the Palestinians is righteous. It is an angry and determined righteousness. Lockdowns and street blockades. Walkouts and strikes. All are happening on a global level. New layers of folks, largely youth from a wide and varied background, have made it a priority to disrupt and resist this war and to challenge the narratives of the U.S and Israeli ruling classes. Supporting this new movement, being a part of it, and helping it develop confidence and capacity to become a broader resistance is what’s needed. Highlighting this as we move forward will be crucial.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But, for now this article is not that and instead it’s a focus on a main source of contempt and disgust: Genocide Joe.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Total number of Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip since 7 October at more than 18,000 including 8,697 children and 4,410 women (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs 12/6/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">50,594 Gazans injured with 7,780 Gazans missing/unaccounted for (Aljazeera 12/14/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">63 Journalists and media workers, mostly Palestinian, killed (Committee to Protect Journalists 12/14/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">1.7 million (81%) of Gaza’s population displaced; Israel intelligence drafted initial plans to have the entire 2.1 million Gazans pushed into the Egyptian Sinai (Rand Corp 12/4/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">305, 000 residential units destroyed (over half of Gazan’s homes); 339 educational facilities damaged (Aljazeera 12/14/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Functioning hospitals have dropped from 36 to 18; 203 attacks on hospitals, ambulances, medical supplies, and the detention of health-care workers; bed occupancy rate at operational hospitals stands at 171%, while in the intensive care units the occupancy rate is up to 221% (World Health Organization 12/4/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">$130 billion in U.S. military funding to Israel since its founding; 80% of Israel’s weapons imports have come from the U.S. (Axios 10/4/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Biden administration using emergency authorization to sell 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional oversight via the U.S. State Department’s Arms Control Act to an amount of $106.5 million (Guardian 12/10/23)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Israel’s assault, named the Swords of Iron, has shown an unprecedented level of killing of Gazans through aerial bombardment (Haaretz 12/9/23)</span></li></ul><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">We are seeing what Palestinians are calling, A Second Nakba (Catastrophe).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Don’t believe the U.S. state and Democratic Party propagandists that Biden and his administration are somehow the moderates or taking some kind of productive approach. While the Israeli state is acting on its own initiative, Biden and company have at every moment supported this assault.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">When it emerged publicly (NYT 11/14/23), that hundreds of political appointees and staff members of the U.S. government - including the State Department – had made criticisms of U.S. policy supporting Israel’s war on Gaza and the Palestinians, within a day, pro-Biden forces including top advisors, longtime policy makers and leading Democratic Party officials signed a counter letter in support of Biden and the U.S. policy of supporting the war against Gaza and the Palestinian people. The letter opens with, “As former Biden and Obama administration officials and campaign staff, we are writing to express our deep appreciation for your moral clarity, courageous leadership, and staunch support of Israel” and “We support your request for an unprecedented $14.3 billion in U.S. security assistance to Israel”. It further reads, “we agree with you that a ceasefire is not possible at this time” (CNN 11/14/23). Even by this time thousands of Palestinians in Gaza had been murdered and IDF forces backing Israeli settlers were carrying out attacks and ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank. In regards to the scale and brutality of the attacks against Palestinians there was no ambiguity.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reality makes clear that these signatories aren’t just engaging in Democratic Party apologetics in support of Biden. These are members of the political class, architects of modern U.S. policy, strategy and intervention. Biden may be the head but these people are the rotten body and brain. They should be treated as criminals and enemies of humanity.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2022, Biden gave his </span>Independence<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Hall speech, the basis of which was his and the Democratic Party's</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> continuing "battle" to save “the soul” of America and democracy stating that “violence… can’t be normalized in this country”. That was Biden and the Dems in 2022. Coming after several years of government by Scumbag POTUS 45 and the rise of militant, popular and often murderous insurgent far-right and fascist forces, Biden used opposition to the threat of fascism as his administrations primary political plank. Biden and the Democratic Party were developing what we should see as a ruling class antifascist approach – mobilizing support and crafting a broad coalition to oppose Scumbag 45, MAGA and the assorted far-right (both its legal and extra-legal forms). The Democratic Party approach would be a defense of the system in the face of Rightist threats.</span></div><div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now in 2024, Biden and company show exactly what the soul of America is. They’ve helped unleash a general barbarism against the Palestinians, they’ve made common cause on strategic and tactical grounds with the far-right and even self-proclaimed fascists of Israel’s government. While here on the home front supporters of Biden and U.S. policy rally with known anti-Jewish Christian Nationalist forces building politically contradictory coalitions whose primary point of agreement is to wage war on Gaza and the Palestinians.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Genocide Joe and his accomplices have shown exactly what their system is and what it does to people.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Almost two and half months of war on Gaza and Palestinians as a whole, and with a death toll likely to exceed twenty thousand, Biden and the United States government is still supporting this assault. The language may be shifting. There is a developing public critique of Israeli war policy, even an attempt at creating some kind of distance from aspects of the Israeli war. But Genocide Joe and the United States will remain the primary backers of this war against Gaza and the Palestinian people.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">We can’t forget this.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">No matter what developments arise, we must remember that Biden, the Democratic Party and the entirety of the U.S. political class in all its hues, categories, party affiliations or pretensions share in the horrible responsibility for this Second Nakba.</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-16908649173245932792023-11-29T20:56:00.000-05:002023-11-29T20:56:58.331-05:00Contending with the Present and Building a Future for Antifascism in the Pacific Northwest<p><b>By Shane Burley</b></p>
<p><i>This essay is adapted from a talk delivered at the Territories of White Supremacy: Opposing the Far Right in the Pacific Northwest and Beyond conference in Eugene, Oregon on October 13th, 2023.</i></p>
<p>Before I talk about major updates that are happening for antifascists in the Pacific Northwest, I want to introduce three questions to help guide not only that discussion but all broad discussions of the future of antifascist organizing. The first question is what actually stops the far right, presuming that is our goal. There are a lot of tactics and strategies whose proponents say that they are capable in the fight against fascism, but this is always a matter of debate. What is provable, however, is that the tactics that work are ones that disrupt the functionality of far-right organization. This means tactics that break down the ability of a far-right group or movement to meet its goals, to reproduce itself, and to make gains. This can come in a number of forms, from canceled events, protests that disrupt meetings, or deplatforming. No matter which one we are talking about, the fulcrum of the tactic is the disruption since the presumption is that a far-right movement needs some continuity to have any degree of growth or victory. So the question of how we beat the far right is a question of how they are disrupted. </p>
<p>The second question is why we are fighting the far right. What are the values or vision for the world that leads us to want to see the far right fail? If we have a vision of a liberated world it necessitates fascists losing. But what is that world? What other features does that world have? </p>
<p>The third question, the more complicated one, is how question two relates to question one: how do our tactics to disrupt the far right help us to win a more liberated world? There are many ways to push back on the far right, many methods of disruption, but when activists pick tactics and strategy they are deciding more than just what works. Instead, they are trying to create a tactical set that is ethically and strategically sound for the larger questions of which antifascism is just one piece. </p>
<p>So, for example, it's quite likely that a police raid or FBI investigation and string prosecution can disrupt the far right. We saw this across the 1980s and 1990s as the FBI and ATF went after far-right compounds and groups, and even saw it more recently in the very severe sentencing handed down to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. But does increasing police funding, doubling up on FBI investigations, initiating severe penalties or terrorism sentencing enhancements get us to a more liberated world? The ways that antifascists take on the far right must be put in line with the why of the work: how do the decisions they make now lead to the world they hope to win? This should guide everything, from how and when tactics like “no platform” are applied to how their organizations function, how they build coalitions with other groups, and whether or not they prioritize care and mutual aid in the work. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“The ways that antifascists take on the far right must be put in line with the why of the work: how do the decisions they make now lead to the world they hope to win?”</i></span></p>
<p>When it comes to updates, there has been a lot of discussion of an alleged lull in far-right organizing and, subsequently, a delay in antifascist organizing. There have been fewer of the large, antagonistic rallies than we used to see frequently in cities like Portland, Oregon, but this does not indicate a decline on the far right’s side. Instead, this is a period of regrouping, rebranding, and reformation. This is similar to what was happening in many sectors of the white nationalist movement in the early 2010s where there were fewer incursions with antifascists, but this was also the time period in which people like Richard Spencer were building the alt-right. It was only in 2015 and 2016 that the increase really became visible, but this was after several years of base building. Those years of the alleged “lull” were where they made the peak of 2015-2017 possible. </p>
<p>A similar situation is happening now. The alt-right is largely dead, but certain organizations from that earlier generation have remained prominent. Patriot Front is the most important remaining one, which includes a heavy presence in Oregon. Because Patriot Front largely does flashmob style events or puts stickers up anonymously there has been less direct confrontation with antifascists, but there have been high profile releases of information when various Patriot Front chapters have been infiltrated by antifascists. </p>
<p>The groypers are, however, the largest inheritor of the alt-right’s energy, all centered on their leader, Nick Fuentes. Unlike the pseudoscientific and pagan infused alt-right, Fuentes has brought white Christian nationalism back into the hip center of the young far right. This has a tactical advantage for them since they are doing this at the same time as white Christian nationalism openly dominates the GOP. This has drawbacks and benefits: it allows them direct access to a whole new base of folks who are already a part of the larger conservative movement, but it also hinders their ability to differentiate themselves as a radical alternative. But they have done more than any other white nationalist movement in recent memory to win support in the Republican Party, particularly through their America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC). </p>
<p>Fighting the groypers has been a primary focus of antifascists, particularly on campuses in places like Florida, but the group has had somewhat less of a base in the Pacific Northwest. We have seen a sharp decline in the large public events from groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, with them diminishing steadily across events in 2020 and 2021. The last large attempt was in 2021 where a large antifascist coalition pushed them away from holding their rally in a city center and they ended up holding a small gathering in the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart at the edge of the city. </p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn028n_076PNUoA9VjHYjd12A6OeM5CvYZkUmoqCAGFPRaotj_CidaiI3dLVvVLHPDKPTnkFgAZ80UtTG6oWdYgUbgc7fjApCLXVNDkWMUrTImM8-9nWwcP5DevOqXJXa2jw4hRUs1LJ99366MakS_Afhno-wY5fymiJ9WApyVzeE-vEvn6ONC/s5048/June%2018th%20Proud%20Boys%20Oregon%20City-15.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Physical confrontation between two groups of men in a park, with one group holding an American flag" border="0" data-original-height="3606" data-original-width="5048" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn028n_076PNUoA9VjHYjd12A6OeM5CvYZkUmoqCAGFPRaotj_CidaiI3dLVvVLHPDKPTnkFgAZ80UtTG6oWdYgUbgc7fjApCLXVNDkWMUrTImM8-9nWwcP5DevOqXJXa2jw4hRUs1LJ99366MakS_Afhno-wY5fymiJ9WApyVzeE-vEvn6ONC/w640-h458/June%2018th%20Proud%20Boys%20Oregon%20City-15.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Antifascists confront Proud Boys, Oregon City, OR, 18 June 2021<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />What is increasing, however, is the continued threat of open neo-Nazism and accelerationist violence. Groups like the Goyim Defense League are growing in prominence across the country (but in Florida, in particular), the post-alt-right formation the National Justice Party is filling the gap left by the destruction of the Traditionalist Worker Party, and violent groups like the Rise Above Movement and the Evergreen Active club are offering a novel rebranding of neo-Nazi gang culture. Places like Goyim TV actually are getting more traction than originally thought, and social media sites like Rumble and Telegram are largely insulated from antifascist pressure and are building their brand on refusing to intervene on open racism. <p></p>
<p>All of these groups have been centered less on public displays of might and more on attempts to interfere with different events built around marginalized identities and institutions they hope to undermine. They have participated in the rapidly increasing protests against LGBTQ and Pride events, particularly any family friendly events or drag shows. This has given them the ability to intermingle with a new generation of activists who are organizing primarily through horizontal social networks on places like Facebook Groups or Telegram as opposed to formal organizations. The organizations that have formed emerged out of these networks and are looser than the top-down structure we saw with many Patriot groups, namely projects like Moms for Liberty and Gays Against Groomers/Trans Against Groomers. While they publicly repudiate white nationalism, their relationships with the far right are extensive and they act as the bridge point where explicit white nationalist and neo-Nazi factions are able to step into the public, participate in larger political expression, and recruit from a potentially friendly right-wing base. This has been the strategy in places like Vancouver, Washington; Oregon City, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; and other places that are not quite as large as Portland or Seattle and have a less developed antifascist culture. </p>
<p>Reflexively, much of the antifascist movement has pivoted to community self-defense, helping to block attacks on queer events, trans healthcare facilities, abortion clinics, and even libraries and schools. These will remain the focal point for far-right attention, so this is driving the reaction from antifascists in the Pacific Northwest. This fundamentally changes the point by which the community is called in and what kind of protest they are called in to do, but it does little to alter the underlying ask: asking supporters to come out and raise the capacity of the actions that use large masses of supporters to defend a particular space. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Many antifascists have not sought law enforcement solutions for dealing with fascist threats, because when you increase the presence of police, courts, and district attorneys, you also extend the racial and other hierarchies and disparities that are structurally embedded in those systems.”</i></span></p>
<p>The second thing that antifascists in the Pacific Northwest are dealing with is something that is also likewise reverberating across the country. Since Trump’s inauguration there have been excessive police crackdowns on left-wing protesters and, in particular, excessive charges and potential sentences given out to those attending demonstrations. The first high profile instances of this were the nearly 200 people arrested for participating in the January 20th, 2017 Inauguration Day protest in Washington D.C., where the police “kettled” protesters to get a huge sweep of attendees into handcuffs and then charged them for the behavior that other, unaffiliated protesters engaged in. The argument was that the protest was inherently a type of criminal conspiracy and so anyone in attendance (and, by accidental arrest, some people who weren’t even in attendance) was aiding and abetting those who took illegal actions like breaking windows and lighting dumpsters on fire. While these charges were ultimately dropped, the kind of felonies that were being leveled at them and the potential sentences attached were draconian enough that they sent shockwaves through antifascist circles. </p>
<p>This trend continued, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where clashes between antifascists and far-right militants often left the left-wing demonstrators in custody while the right only faced charges for the most egregious acts of violence (and often, not even then). These cases have continued, and there is even one set for the fall in nearby Clackamas County, where an independent journalist was <a href=" https://www.reddit.com/r/PortlandOre/comments/rdd627/clackamas_district_attorney_charges_antifa/" target="_blank">charged with felonies</a> for allegedly defending herself from an attack by a Proud Boy.</p>
<p>These types of charges and sweep arrests defined the 2020 racial justice uprising, where “snatch and grab” arrests were used, as mass charging of serious offenses with little-to-no evidence, and there were frequent attempts to turn those being arrested into informants by offering plea deals weighed against astoundingly long potential sentences. </p>
<p>At the same time, civil litigation may present an even bigger threat. There have been high profile cases of right-wing figures suing antifascist activists, or at least people they believe to be antifascist activists, often with huge sums of right-wing money and countless far-right organizations providing them ample support. The most obvious example of this was this year’s case brought by right-wing media figure Andy Ngo, who was allegedly assaulted while covering <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/portland-anti-fascist-coalition-shows-us-how-we-can-defeat-the-far-right/" target="_blank">an antifascist demonstration in 2019</a> and who then brought a lawsuit against an assortment of activists, many of whom say they had no role in Ngo’s conflict and were selected seemingly at random. While the case was thrown out for a number of defendants, including all alleged members of Rose city Antifa (which the court said was not an entity that would have legal standing to be sued), several defendants remained when it was time to go to trial. Two ultimately did, John Acker and Elizabeth Richter, who <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/right-winger-andy-ngo-lost-his-suit-why-are-defendants-on-the-line-for-damages/" target="_blank">won their trial</a> by showing the claims had no merit. While this was cause for celebration, the reality is that they still owed tens of thousands of dollars in court costs, something that Ngo’s team undoubtedly knew would be the case and was part of their strategy. <br /></p>
<p>Even more shocking, however, is that three defendants were ultimately found civilly liable simply because they did not respond to the charges. Those accused said that they often heard about the accusations very late, had no money or resources to find legal representation (which is not guaranteed in a civil case), and had many other issues that prevented them from actively fighting the charges (such as experiencing homelessness). Now they are on the hook for $100,000 each, showing that the courts will simply award a sufficiently well-funded accuser despite having little evidence of guilt. </p>
<p>These issues only seem to be getting more severe, as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/17/san-diego-antifa-trial-also-scrutinizes-right-wing-media-andy-ngo/11482238002/" target="_blank">a recent case in San Diego</a> shows. In what has been labeled the "San Diego 11," defendants were accused of engaging in conspiracy to riot and other felonies for participating in a protest action at Pacific Beach on January 9th, 2021. The court's claims of conspiracy hinge on the fact that different antifascist demonstrators, who claim they did not know each other or have any coordination, had all engaged with the same social media post. Six of these defendants subsequently took plea deals, which themselves validate the legal repression offered by the district attorney by ensuring that at least some consequences stem from the spurious accusation, but five others remain set on taking this to trial.</p>
<p>There are further developments in the Pacific Northwest that inject additional problems into the mix, and this time it comes largely from progressive politicians. Two “anti-doxxing bills” were introduced in Oregon and Washington, respectively, which criminalize anything deemed as “doxxing,” the release of personal information. Doxxing is a common tactic amongst antifascists, who use it to put pressure on institutions to pull their relationships with white nationalists, thus raising the cost of entry into the white nationalist movement and making it unattractive for new recruits. The far right has tried to do the same thing to antiracist protesters, so liberal legislators brought forward these bills in the name of defending marginalized communities. Despite these intentions, the opposite is likely to be the case. This is part of why many antifascists have not sought law enforcement solutions for dealing with fascist threats, because when you increase the presence of police, courts, and district attorneys, you also extend the racial and other hierarchies and disparities that are structurally embedded in those systems. With the bill close to passage in Washington and now law in Oregon, the ability of antifascists to actually win campaigns will be seriously hindered by this intervention. It looks like groups like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which is often criticized for supporting conservatives more frequently than the left, seems positioned to try and challenge these laws in court. </p>
<p>All of this has a cumulative chilling effect on demonstrators, particularly those who simply attend protests rather than organizing. Many of these court cases targeted not the key organizers of a particular event, but just an attendee. What this could do is siphon off participation in the large coalitions and protests that make antifascist demonstrations successful. It could also create internal division, whereby some participants are even more concerned about any potential unlawful civil disobedience or direct action taken by other attendees. The answer to this is likely to establish a larger connection with legal institutions like the ACLU, FIRE, or the National Lawyers Guild, and to win a few high profile cases so that the message will be sent that this is not a viable tactic to use against antifascists. Many activists are noting, however, that the courts are not balanced in their favor, so any strategy based on the idea that they can win numerous court cases may be flawed. There are some efforts to increase what is called “security culture,” such as using pseudonyms or encrypted chat apps like Signal, but it is unclear whether these tools will actually stop a real investigation by state authorities. </p>
<p>On the more positive side, it’s important to acknowledge the incredible strides made by antifascists across the country, but especially in the Pacific Northwest. The reality of the various far-right rallies that happened starting in 2016 is that it forced the left in these cities, like Seattle and Portland, to create the coalitions necessary to respond. Trump has helped to make the case that the threat of the far right is directly attached to the attacks on unions, the environment, tenant rights, and so on. This has helped to create relationships between different organizations and social movements, and those relationships don’t just end when a protest is over. So this has helped build up the tacit coalitions in the area that can respond to issues more quickly and more effectively than they once were. While there has been a decline in large-scale antifascist actions, the capacity is higher than it ever was before. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Trump has helped to make the case that the threat of the far right is directly attached to the attacks on unions, the environment, tenant rights, and so on. This has helped to create relationships between different organizations and social movements, and those relationships don’t just end when a protest is over.”</i></span></p>
<p>Lastly, it’s important to acknowledge the profound changes that we have seen in the tactical self-conception of antifascist organizers. Since the rise of antifascism across the U.S. since 2016, we have seen an astounding amount of violence directed at protesters. For example, in 2020 alone there were well over a <a href="https://www.mic.com/impact/how-cars-became-a-deadly-anti-protest-weapon-53291831" target="_blank">hundred car attacks on protesters</a>, which took the form of cars plowing their way into demonstrators. These happened in Portland, as well as shootings, pipe bomb attacks, and extensive violence at protest events. These frightening episodes happened along with a <a href=" https://truthout.org/articles/conspiracy-theories-by-cops-fuel-far-right-attacks-against-antiracist-protesters/" target="_blank">relative indifference (or, in some cases, participation) from police</a>. For example, on August 20th, 2020, a Back the Blue rally was staged in front of the same Justice Center that had seen so many demonstrations against police violence. The police had been heavy-handed with the daily protests for weeks, except on this day they stayed blocks away from the crowd. The far right, including the Proud Boys and people bearing shields, batons, and firearms, attacked the antifascist counter-demonstrators without pause. The police said that protesters should “police themselves,” refusing to intervene on what became a brutal street beating. Later that night, the police returned to their invasive strategy, using batons on protesters themselves. This has sent a clear message to antifascists in the Pacific Northwest: you have to protect yourself. (There was, ultimately, accountability for some of the perpetrators of the August 20th violence, including a <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/leaked-video-helped-lead-to-the-conviction-of-a-far-right-proud-boy/" target="_blank">prosecution of the lead instigator</a>.) <br /></p>
<p>The effect this has had has been to revive the question of armed community self-defense. At a recent defensive action I attended outside of a drag queen event in Vancouver, Washington, of the 200 demonstrators who attended nearly a third appeared armed. This included semi-automatic weapons staged on the roof of the venue, security teams patrolling with tactical gear, and an open acceptance that firearms would be necessary for (trained) security volunteers to keep the venue safe. All across the country there are armed groups like Yellow Peril Tactical, the John Brown Gun Club, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, Socialist Rifle Association, Trigger Warning, and others who are employing firearms as part of their defensive mission, the same mission that antifascist mass demonstrations often have had. The use of mass tactics has always had a protective element, and in Portland this was explicitly the mission of groups like Pop Mob, which used really mass protests and marches as a way of ensuring the safety of participants while disrupting the far right. Armed community self-defense, while similar in mission, has a different set of tactics and thus a smaller number of active participants. This has taken on a special importance in the Pacific Northwest given the recent string of far-right assaults, police in action in response, and then a climate and legal framework that is largely friendly to firearms (though that may be changing). </p>
<p>This is by no means a new development, but instead a revival of a well-established one. Armed groups have a long American history amongst marginalized communities fighting against attacks from what we would today consider white nationalists, fascists, or the far right. This took the form of the joint NRA/NAACP chapter led by Robert F. Williams in Monroe, North Carolina, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and Jewish defense squads led by organizations like the Jewish Labor Bund. The goal is the same as what we are seeing from antifascist groups that stage defensive demonstrations at locations and community events targeted by the far right, but the mechanism is different: in these cases it is armed members that deflect the far right’s advances rather than simply overwhelming masses of people. </p>
<p>There are obvious and defensible reasons for this development, and there are complications introduced by it as well. It will create some difficulty in building the coalitions that have been established over the past several years, most of which were built on an ostensible commitment to strategic non-violence. While armed self-defense groups are not involved in offensive violence, their presence still could be concerning for some partners. This simply means that more community conversations will be necessary to address any conflicted responses and to reestablish the trust necessary to maintain the coalition. </p>
<p>This brings us back to our three questions: what stops the far right, why do we want to stop the far right, and how do our methods lead to our larger goals? By having a vision of the world we want to win we can pick a path to more immediate victories that can act as stepping stones to more systemic change. These are the questions that are guiding the more radical wing of the antifascist movement and will help to determine not just their own future, but the future of the left itself. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Photo credit</h3>
<p>Photo by <a href="https://www.danielvmedia.com/" target="_blank">Daniel V. Media</a>. Used with permission.<br /></p>
ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-47524552216675217062023-11-14T21:08:00.000-05:002023-11-14T21:08:26.538-05:00Burn the foundation and all that it upholds: an antifascist review of “Tell Me I’m Worthless” by Alison Rumfitt<blockquote>“The House spreads. Its arteries run throughout the country. Its lifeblood flows into Westminster, into Scotland Yard, into every village and every city. It flows into you, and into your mother. It keeps you alive. It makes you feel safe. Those same arteries tangle you up at night and make it hard for you to breathe. But come morning, you thank it for what it has done for you, and you sip from its golden cup, and kiss its perfect feet, and you know that all will be right in this godforsaken world as long as it is there to watch over you.” <br /><br />
—Alison Rumfitt, <i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i></blockquote>
<p>Alison Rumfitt, <i><a href="https://tornightfire.com/catalog/tell-me-im-worthless-alison-rumfitt/" target="_blank">Tell Me I’m Worthless</a></i><br />
New York: Nightfire, 2023<br />
272 pages; ISBN: 9781250866233</p>
<p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR61pVY30Hewkvn14TJGzP4MrOBqs40RNn59HqmMwlC23Hhgw3LdUYB9fm-EnV0GMxwAJ_ud2qC0F_jBr0w-dTzBr4Wc-32zBDFKz0ScOdTUYw6ladf74dRY82GOVuY5n1qCUFQnmg7yKthLKHPqnVPISQ-KO2L1MThLBHJ_lPNhBRSmkcgMZX/s2474/Tell-Me-Im-Worthless.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Book cover of Tell Me I'm Worthless" border="0" data-original-height="2474" data-original-width="1609" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR61pVY30Hewkvn14TJGzP4MrOBqs40RNn59HqmMwlC23Hhgw3LdUYB9fm-EnV0GMxwAJ_ud2qC0F_jBr0w-dTzBr4Wc-32zBDFKz0ScOdTUYw6ladf74dRY82GOVuY5n1qCUFQnmg7yKthLKHPqnVPISQ-KO2L1MThLBHJ_lPNhBRSmkcgMZX/w260-h400/Tell-Me-Im-Worthless.jpg" width="260" /></a></b></div><b>Review by Tucker</b>
<p></p><p>The first time I encountered Anti-Racist Action (ARA) and antifascist organizing was as a teenager at punk shows. I remember the small punk girl who talked about beating up nazis and my 13 year old self was amazed that someone small and not a man could do that. It would be more than a decade til I would find myself in my first face-to-face street confrontation with fascists. Since my teens and early 20’s, we have seen an emboldening and surfacing of fascist hate groups and politics in the US, as well as around the world. My friends and I, so used to dealing with cops and the state, had to learn how to engage in the three way fight, defending our towns from the far-right hate groups that came to terrorize marginalized communities while simultaneously resisting the state and its oppressive and repressive tactics. It has been crucial in our fights to understand that the state and the fascists are distinct enemies, both of which require a militant and uncompromising struggle. Unlike the liberals who turn to a violent and racist state to protect, or the unprincipled and dangerous tendencies that side with the far right in the name of “the working man,” it is imperative to understand that we must fight both the state AND fascism to their deaths. </p>
<p><i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i> is a deeply queer story about a haunted house, Albion (meaning white land, also a romantic and historical way to refer to Britain), which is the embodiment of colonial and fascist England. The very foundation of this historic haunted house is toxic and seeps into the walls through stains and haunted posters. We learn about the horrific things which have been done throughout time by the various inhabitants of this house, the colonial, imperial and fascistic violence that occurred within these walls, and these atrocities spread out to the present. No matter what is done to the house, the foundation is the same, and infects what is built upon it and those who live within it and breathe inside its walls: </p><p></p>
<blockquote>“<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/9/3/463/319364/Fascist-FeminismA-Dialogue?redirectedFrom=PDF" target="_blank"></a>Angles that indicate the building you are in is not even a building, that no human could have possibly thought of this when building it, that this house simply came into being from contact with the pure, violent terror that can only exist in the very worst examples of humanity. And that horror is transmitted through you, a little thing inside the heart of the place. It cuts its way into your body, or uses somebody else to cut its way into your body. I have a scar on my forehead to attest to that, and Ila has a scar on her stomach. And Hannah. Something happened to Hannah. The place, it worms into your brain and your heart. By the time I got out, I was different” (Rumfitt, 14).</blockquote>
<p><i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i> is the story of 3 friends: Ila, Hannah and Alice, and their relationship to the house. Upon entering the house their relationships to each other are forever changed. </p>
<p>This book is not developing an analysis of fascism but is rather dealing with affect and ethics; how these ideologies play out on an emotional and ethical level—and what people do in fascism’s wake. </p><p> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Let </i>Tell Me I’m Worthless<i> help us all be very clear: our
identities will not protect us from our own choices to turn towards
fascism, and we must all be on guard for the ways reactionary hateful
ideologies and authoritarianism emerge in the spaces we inhabit.”</i></span> </p>
<p>Hannah, Alice and Ila have complicated and intimate relationships with one another and the various marginalized as well as oppressive identities they embody. Alice is a white trans woman who is complicit in racism and xenophobia. Ila is a Jewish-Pakistani child of immigrants who becomes a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist). The third friend, Hannah, is a white cis straight woman who ultimately becomes a mutilated swastika stuck on the wall of the house, completely seduced by the fascism of Albion. Inside of the house the three friends turn on each other as the house speaks to them, filling them with racist, transphobic and xenophobic thoughts that they enact upon each other in violent, intimate and political ways. As the house attacks, the novel shows the way the path of least resistance will often be the path that marginalizes another, and is complacent if not outright actively violent toward the other. Here no identity is immune to the creeping tide of the hateful ideology and fascism, and this is an important nuance that <i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i> breathes through its pages. </p>
<p>Traditional leftist narratives around fascism have often focused on an idealized figure of the fascist imaginary, a white male nazi, locating fascism solely within the scope of specific identities. This portrayal and understanding of fascism is somewhat a-historical as there is a long history of other identities that are neither white nor male flirting with and engaging fascism and advancing its deadly objectives. Certain currents within feminism have historically and continue this horrifying engagement of fascism (see Sophie Lewis and Asa Seresin’s “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/9/3/463/319364/Fascist-FeminismA-Dialogue?redirectedFrom=PDF" target="_blank">Fascist Feminism</a>”) as well as various gay subcultures throughout history (see Jack Halberstam’s <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-queer-art-of-failure" target="_blank"><i>The Queer Art of Failure</i></a>). Currently we see fascism emerging in places outside of the white, straight male sphere (though certainly there as well) again as TERF feminist groups move to cement their alliances with white supremacists to further their bigoted and genocidal anti-trans ideologies; organizations such as “gays against groomers” emerge to further attack trans folks; and Black, Asian and Latino men are active in the Proud Boys and enacting white supremacist violence in the name of Western chauvinism, to name a few examples. </p><p>The essentialist idea of fascism being sequestered to the sole domain of a certain group of white men leaves many surprised and fumbling when these dangerous ideologies turn up in other places. Let <i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i> help us all be very clear: our identities will not protect us from our own choices to turn towards fascism, and we must all be on guard for the ways reactionary hateful ideologies and authoritarianism emerge in the spaces we inhabit. For the fascists, always, will be happy to have us collaborate in the extermination of our friends and communities. </p>
<p>Alice’s relationship to sex work is another point of great interest to me, and is one of several condemnations this novel makes against liberals and their politics. Through web camming, Alice engages with the transphobic and racist desires of her (presumably cis, white male) clients. She chooses to engage with scenarios that are cringe to read, however anyone who has done sex work will recognize that where one draws the line for the types of scenarios one will play out when negotiating with clients is an uncomfortable process at best. “But if they ask for it, when they send me money for the video, I make sure to include it. I’m not in a position to say no” (Rumfitt, 64). </p>
<p>While I do not take a strong ethical position on what people choose to engage with in the bedroom or the dungeon, I do think what taboos and societal horrors we are willing to engage in the sexual sphere is a complicated affair. Liberal conceptions of sex work posit us, the workers, as either the liberated heroines or the exploited victims, however here yet again the novel complicates and destroys fantasies of the purity of these categories. Fascism creeps into desire, and into the lives of sex workers who are paid to engage these desires. The choices Alice makes to entertain her client’s fantasies are not likable or easy to read. This is her job and how she makes her money. What happens when work and desire merge? The sex industry is a complicated place with no simple narrative. Often an overtly racist and sexist industry, where many workers market ourselves in ways that play off of the fetishization of our identities. Sex workers, as a stigmatized and criminalized work force, face a three way fight of our own, against the violence of Johns and SWERFs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists), as well as the violence of the state and incarceration. In the novel, Alice’s clients’ desire to be made to feel worthless and humiliated in their fantasy for a forced feminization or queer encounter later haunts us in a passage when Alice is being fucked by her TERF ex and demands “tell me i’m worthless.” There is no heroine/victim dichotomy here, as within the entire novel. The characters are complex and unlikeable, yet we know them. I have met Alice, Ila. I bet you have, too. </p>
<p>Finally, there is the haunted Morrissey poster, perhaps one of my favorite features of the book. He hangs on the wall of Alice’s room with his eyes blacked out and haunts Alice and the space, as well as the women she brings home. The poster was meant to cover the spot on the wall where a fascist stain always seems to protrude, yet the poster itself is racist, attacking with its nauseating stance of “England for the English.” I can remember the Smiths playing on the tape deck at a punk house I lived at in 2011. How does fascism creeps in if we are not on guard against it and its blood running through the foundation? What happens when we allow it in in small ways? Does it matter what one band member said? Does it cover the stain on the wall? Does it allow it to fester and grow? </p>
<blockquote>“<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/9/3/463/319364/Fascist-FeminismA-Dialogue?redirectedFrom=PDF" target="_blank"></a>Alice is entirely undone, but she tried to lift herself up, her insides sliding out around her. Look at me, she says. <i>This is the most honest I have ever been with anybody. This. My body. My insides. I’m bearing it all. I did this for you, Ila. Not for Hannah. I don’t care about Hannah anymore. She was a victim of this ideology that corrodes our lives. I’m talking about me and you, Ila, you and I, we were best friends, we loved each other, and now we hate each other, and I did this because I do still care about you, because I want you to like me</i>” (Rumfitt, 251). </blockquote>
<p>In the end, the friends must face the house (i.e., Britain, fascism, white supremacy and nativism), and stand together in solidarity against all that the house stands for. They must confront the fascism within its walls and hear the hate that it spews while not allowing it to tear them apart. In the end, solidarity wins. </p>
<p>This visceral and haunting narrative shows us the ways fascism seeps into our relationships, how no identity is immune to its creeping, and how while the foundations of (imperial, colonial) societies are built upon violent and oppressive histories and ideologies nothing built on top will ever heal what lays beneath. The foundation itself must be destroyed. This novel is an antifascist argument against reformist and liberal politics, and reminds us that the only way to win is through solidarity and the destruction of it all. <i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i> makes the reader feel the pain and horror of fascism in the most extreme and interpersonal as well as societal sense, and reminds us of the small and large ways it can infiltrate our lives and undermine solidarity. While much antifascist and anti-authoritarian writing focuses on the theory and strategy of fighting fascism, this book describes the embodied and emotional horror of life within it. It crawls through one’s skin. It sits uncomfortably below the surface. A true haunting. </p>
<h3>Works referenced:</h3>
<p>Halberstam, Jack. <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-queer-art-of-failure" target="_blank"><i>The Queer Art of Failure</i></a>. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. </p>
<p>Lewis, Sophie, and Asa Seresin. “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/9/3/463/319364/Fascist-FeminismA-Dialogue?redirectedFrom=PDF" target="_blank">Fascist Feminism: A Dialogue</a>,” <i>Transgender Studies Quarterly</i>, vol. 9, issue 3 (1 August, 2022): 463-479. </p>
<p>Rumfitt, Alison. <a href="https://tornightfire.com/catalog/tell-me-im-worthless-alison-rumfitt/" target="_blank"><i>Tell Me I’m Worthless</i></a>. New York: Nightfire (Tor Publishing Group), 2023. </p>
<p></p><p></p>ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-19014673316142459142023-11-07T16:44:00.000-05:002023-11-07T16:44:12.073-05:00Reading Adam Shatz on the war in Gaza<p><b>by Matthew N. Lyons</b> <br /></p><p>How do we forcefully make the case to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza against Israel’s increasingly genocidal assault, and also honor the conflict’s heartbreaking contradictions? This is a question I’ve been grappling with for the past month. Adam Shatz’s essay “<a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies" target="_blank">Vengeful Pathologies</a>” gets at the challenge better and more fully than anything else I’ve read so far. In this post I will use short excerpts from Shatz’s essay to highlight some of his key points, in many cases pairing them with links to related articles and other resources. (Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes below are from “Vengeful Pathologies,” which is archived <a href="https://archive.ph/2023.10.20-224104/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSup2PzdlIEKhBdkBcUTVIphmxKO5YH7HCMTLJu_bivQwSEOIJ3ZcoL6iXEdq5t7RAArkut2Urh4ZT5EEY2la4zpoRRXliNhjj7mq1QWNzN5naWuBH-1hJvpYoX5g64l6J6N3Y9A1jNG3BzsVaEqK-itjHfHcSPLouYqzlRDL8hMBOeJwFARQ_/s1599/Gaza_-_an_Open_Air_Prison_(53254996781).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Woman man hold signs that read “Gaza and Palestine / 75 years of occupation” and “Gaza / an open prison with / no electricity / no water / no journalist reporting the crimes.”" border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1599" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSup2PzdlIEKhBdkBcUTVIphmxKO5YH7HCMTLJu_bivQwSEOIJ3ZcoL6iXEdq5t7RAArkut2Urh4ZT5EEY2la4zpoRRXliNhjj7mq1QWNzN5naWuBH-1hJvpYoX5g64l6J6N3Y9A1jNG3BzsVaEqK-itjHfHcSPLouYqzlRDL8hMBOeJwFARQ_/w640-h426/Gaza_-_an_Open_Air_Prison_(53254996781).jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Shatz spells out the systemic and massively greater violence Israel has imposed on Palestinians for generations, and he also refuses to sugar-coat the gruesome nature of Hamas’s October 7 attack, contextualizing both in the long, bitter history of colonialism and anti-colonialist resistance in Palestine and elsewhere. He recognizes how, for many Jews, October 7 touched deep-rooted fears of annihilation, and he underscores that Israel has long misrepresented its opponents (including Hamas) as Nazis in order to hide its own crimes and massive military power. He calls out the Biden administration’s active complicity in mass murder, the growing demonization of Palestinian solidarity, the surge in attacks on Arabs and Muslims in the US (including the murder of 6-year-old <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/18/wadea-al-fayoume-six-year-old-palestinian-boy-killed-hate-crime-illinois" target="_blank">Wadea Al-Fayoume</a> near Chicago), and he also calls out Hamas’s admirers among western leftists and those who misread Frantz Fanon to uncritically celebrate all anti-colonialist violence. Shatz’s approach to Hamas is to neither romanticize nor demonize it, but contextualize it as an Islamic nationalist organization that feeds on despair, that is unpopular among many Palestinians because of its authoritarian rule yet also has strong roots in Palestinian society and cannot be destroyed by military force. <p></p>
<p><i>See also:</i><br />
“<a href="https://www.thenation.com/podcast/world/sms-shatz-israel-hamas/" target="_blank">Adam Shatz on Israelis, Palestinians, and Hamas</a>” (Podcast)<br /></p>
<h3>Israel’s control over Gaza</h3>
<p></p><blockquote><p>“In the words of Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist who spent many years reporting from Gaza, ‘Gaza embodies the central contradiction of the state of Israel—democracy for some, dispossession for others; it is our exposed nerve.’ Israelis don’t say ‘go to hell’, they say ‘go to Gaza.’... After the conquest of Gaza in 1967, Ariel Sharon, then the general responsible for Israel’s southern command, oversaw the execution without trial of dozens of Palestinians suspected of involvement in resistance (it’s unclear how many died), and the demolition of thousands of homes: this was called ‘pacification’. In 2005, Sharon presided over ‘disengagement’: Israel withdrew eight thousand settlers from Gaza, but it remained essentially under Israeli control, and since Hamas was elected in 2006 it has been under blockade, which the Egyptian government helps enforce…. The people of Gaza—it’s not accurate to call them Gazans, since two-thirds of them are the children and grandchildren of refugees from other parts of Palestine—are effectively captives in a territory that has been amputated from the rest of their homeland.”</p></blockquote><p>Of course, Gaza is just one region within Israel’s overall system of oppressive rule over Palestinians, a system that <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/" target="_blank">Amnesty International</a> and even a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/06/israel-imposing-apartheid-on-palestinians-says-former-mossad-chief" target="_blank">former head of Mossad</a> (among many others) have identified as apartheid.</p>
<p><i>See also:</i><br />
Mohammad Matar, “<a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-settlers-can-do-whatever-they-want-with-us" target="_blank">The Settlers Can Do Whatever They Want With Us</a>” (on anti-Palestinian violence on the West Bank) <br /></p>
<h3>Israel’s current mass killing in Gaza</h3>
<p></p><blockquote>“Israel’s disregard for Palestinian life has never been more callous or more flagrant, and it’s being fuelled by a discourse for which the adjective ‘genocidal’ no longer seems like hyperbole. In just the first six days of air strikes, Israel dropped more than six thousand bombs, and more than twice as many civilians have already died under bombardment as were killed on 7 October. These atrocities are not excesses or ‘collateral damage’: they occur by design. As Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, puts it, ‘we are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.’... Since Hamas’s attack, the exterminationist rhetoric of the Israeli far right has reached a fever pitch and spread to the mainstream. ‘Zero Gazans,’ runs one Israeli slogan.”</blockquote><p></p><p>Shatz’s essay was published on October 20. As of November 6, the IDF's campaign in Gaza has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pressure-israel-over-civilians-steps-up-ceasefire-calls-rebuffed-2023-11-06/" target="_blank">killed over 10,000 people</a>, including more than 4,000 children, and the numbers keep rising.</p><h3>U.S. complicity</h3>
<p></p><blockquote>“In the days since the Hamas attack, the Biden administration has promoted policies of population transfer that could produce another Nakba. It has backed, for example, the ostensibly temporary relocation of millions of Palestinians to the Sinai so that Israel can continue its assault on Hamas….To aid its assault, Israel has received further weapons shipments from the US, which has also dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean, as a warning to Hamas’s chief regional allies, Iran and Hizbullah…. On the CBS news programme <i>Face the Nation</i>, Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, defined ‘success’ in the war as ‘the long-term safety and security of the Jewish state and the Jewish people’, without any consideration of the safety and security—or the continuing statelessness—of the Palestinian people.” </blockquote><p></p><p>The United States’ continued military aid to Israel led State Department official Josh Paul to <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/josh-paul-resignation-interview/" target="_blank">resign</a> in protest on October 18. That same day, lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights issued a <a href="https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/rights-lawyers-release-legal-analysis-us-complicity-israel-s" target="_blank">report</a> arguing that Israel is attempting to commit or is committing genocide in Gaza and that the U.S. is legally complicit.<br /></p>
<h3>Exploiting the history of anti-Jewish violence</h3>
<p></p><blockquote>“That Jews, both in Israel and the diaspora, have sought explanations for their suffering in the history of antisemitic violence is only to be expected. Intergenerational trauma is as real among Jews as it is among Palestinians, and Hamas’s attack touched the rawest part of their psyche: their fear of annihilation. But memory can also be blinding. Jews long ago ceased to be the helpless pariahs, the internal ‘others’ of the West. The state that claims to speak in their name has one of the world’s most powerful armies – and a nuclear arsenal, the only one in the region. The atrocities of 7 October may be reminiscent of pogroms, but Israel is not the Pale of Settlement.” </blockquote><p></p>
<p>Israel and its supporters have long used the legacy of Nazi genocide in Europe to get people to uncritically support the State of Israel and its policies. I wrote about this in 2014, during a previous Israeli war in Gaza, in a piece titled “<a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2014/08/mythologizing-holocaust.html" target="_blank">Mythologizing the Holocaust</a>.”</p>
<p><i>See also:</i><br />
Natasha Roth-Rowland, “<a href="https://www.972mag.com/never-again-gaza-war-holocaust/" target="_blank">When ‘Never Again’ Becomes a War Cry</a>”</p>
<h3>Suppression of Palestinian solidarity</h3>
<p></p><blockquote>“In Europe, expression of support for Palestinians has become taboo, and in some cases criminalised…. France has banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and the French police have used water cannon to disperse a rally in support of Gaza in the place de la République. The British home secretary, Suella Braverman, has floated plans to ban the display of the Palestinian flag. The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, declared that Germany’s ‘responsibility arising from the Holocaust’ obliged it to ‘stand up for the existence and security of the state of Israel’ and blamed all of Gaza’s suffering on Hamas.” </blockquote><p></p>
<p><i>See also:</i><br />
Céline Cantat, “<a href="https://lefteast.org/we-asked-how-is-the-suppression-of-palestinian-solidarity-unfolding-in-france/" target="_blank">We asked: How is the Suppression of Palestinian Solidarity Unfolding in France?</a>” <br />
Ansar Jasim, “<a href="https://lefteast.org/we-asked-how-is-the-suppression-of-palestinian-solidarity-unfolding-in-germany/" target="_blank">We asked: How is the Suppression of Palestinian Solidarity Unfolding in Germany?</a>” <br />
Chris McGreal, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/21/israel-hamas-conflict-palestinian-voices-censored" target="_blank">Pro-Palestinian views face suppression in US amid Israel-Hamas war</a>” <br /></p>
<h3>October 7 attack</h3>
<p></p><blockquote><p>“The motives behind Al-Aqsa Flood, as Hamas called its offensive, were hardly mysterious: to reassert the primacy of the Palestinian struggle at a time when it seemed to be falling off the agenda of the international community; to secure the release of political prisoners; to scuttle an Israeli-Saudi rapprochement; to further humiliate the impotent Palestinian Authority; to protest against the wave of settler violence in the West Bank, as well as the provocative visits of religious Jews and Israeli officials to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem; and, not least, to send a message to the Israelis that they are not invincible, that there is a price to pay for maintaining the status quo in Gaza. It achieved a grisly success... Never has Israel looked less like a sanctuary for the Jewish people.” </p>
<p>“The fighters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad—brigades of roughly 1500 commandos—killed more than a thousand civilians, including women, children and babies. It remains unclear why Hamas wasn’t satisfied after achieving its initial objectives. The first phase of Al-Aqsa Flood was classic—and legitimate—guerrilla warfare against an occupying power: fighters broke through the Gaza border and fence, and attacked military outposts…. The second phase, however, was very different. Joined by residents of Gaza, many of them leaving for the first time in their lives, Hamas’s fighters went on a killing spree. They turned the Tribe of Nova rave into a blood-drenched bacchanalia, another Bataclan. They hunted down families in their homes in kibbutzes. They executed not only Jews but Bedouins and immigrant workers…. As Vincent Lemire noted in <i>Le Monde</i>, it takes time to kill ‘civilians hidden in garages and parking lots or sheltering in safe rooms.’ The diligence and patience of Hamas’s fighters were chilling.” </p></blockquote><p></p>
<p>Shatz has cautioned <a href="https://www.thenation.com/podcast/world/sms-shatz-israel-hamas/" target="_blank">elsewhere</a> that there’s a lot we still don’t know about October 7, such as the extent to which the attackers were following or not following orders. Some people have noted that the delineation between killing soldiers and killing civilians is blurred in a context where many soldiers are reservists and armed settlers function as a vigilante extension of the state. The Israeli newspaper <i>Haaretz</i> presented <a href="https://new.thecradle.co/articles/what-really-happened-on-7th-october" target="_blank">evidence</a> suggesting that on October 7 some Israelis may have been mistakenly or recklessly killed by the IDF. But when all that is taken into account, Hamas’s October 7 attack remains an atrocity.</p>
<p><i>See also:</i><br />
“<a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2023/10/09/gaza-blockade-hamass-tragic-attack-a-response-to-longterm-and-escalating-immediate-violence/" target="_blank">Gaza blockade: Hamas’s tragic attack a response to longterm and escalating, immediate violence</a>” <br />
“<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/18/israel/palestine-videos-hamas-led-attacks-verified" target="_blank">Israel/Palestine: Videos of Hamas-Led Attacks Verified</a>” <br /></p>
<h3>Romanticization of October 7</h3>
<blockquote><p>“And then there are Hamas’s admirers on the ‘decolonial’ left, many of them ensconced in universities in the West. Some of the decolonials… seem almost enthralled by Hamas’s violence and characterise it as a form of anti-colonial justice of the kind championed by Fanon in ‘On Violence’, the controversial first chapter of <i>The Wretched of the Earth</i>…. Others suggested that the young people at the Tribe of Nova festival deserved what they got, for having the chutzpah to throw a party a few miles from the Gaza border.” </p>
<p>“As the Palestinian writer Karim Kattan wrote in a moving essay for <i>Le Monde</i>, it seems to have become impossible for some of Palestine’s self-styled friends to ‘say: massacres like those that took place at the Tribe of Nova festival are an outrageous horror, and Israel is a ferocious colonial power.’ In an age of defeat and demobilisation, in which the most extreme voices have been amplified by social media, a cult of force appears to have overtaken parts of the left, and short-circuited any empathy for Israeli civilians.” </p><p>“But the radical left’s cult of force is less dangerous, because less consequential, than that of Israel and its backers, starting with the Biden administration.”</p></blockquote><p> <i>See also:</i><br />“<a href="https://theshalomcenter.org/shalomreport/israeli-progressives-speak-out-on-war" target="_blank">Israeli Progressives Speak Out on War</a>” <br /></p>
<h3>Shatz’s conclusion</h3>
<p></p><blockquote>“The inescapable truth is that Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance by violence, any more than the Palestinians can win an Algerian-style liberation war: Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are stuck with each other, unless Israel, the far stronger party, drives the Palestinians into exile for good. The only thing that can save the people of Israel and Palestine, and prevent another Nakba – a real possibility, while another Holocaust remains a traumatic hallucination – is a political solution that recognises both as equal citizens, and allows them to live in peace and freedom, whether in a single democratic state, two states, or a federation. So long as this solution is avoided, a continuing degradation, and an even greater catastrophe, are all but guaranteed.” </blockquote><p></p>
<p>Whether the catastrophe Shatz refers to can be avoided is unclear. What the State of Israel is doing–in Gaza, in the West Bank, and within its 1948 borders–is utterly appalling, and it’s unclear what kind of pressure, if any, can make them stop. But there’s some hope offered by the large and growing protests we’ve seen in <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-protests" target="_blank">the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/thousands-join-pro-palestinian-protest-london-demand-gaza-ceasefire-2023-10-28/" target="_blank">many countries</a>, the acts of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/protesters-shut-new-yorks-grand-central-seeking-gaza-ceasefire-2023-10-28/" target="_blank">mass civil disobedience</a>, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belgian-unions-refuse-handling-arms-shipments-israel-hamas-conflict-2023-10-31/" target="_blank">workers refusing to load weapons</a> onto ships. This is a moment when we need broad-based action to defend the people of Palestine against forced displacement and mass murder. And this is also a moment to go deeper, to try to understand the conflict’s complexities–not to weaken calls to action but, on the contrary, to ground them in historical understanding and acknowledgement of pain. As a proponent of three way fight politics I’m skeptical of simple “us-versus-them” models of socio-political conflict. As an anti-Zionist Jew I identify with the words offered by the group <a href="https://www.ifnotnowmovement.org/press" target="_blank">IfNotNow</a>, which for the past month (and longer) has been one of the groups at the forefront of Palestine solidarity actions by American Jews: </p>
<blockquote><div><i>“It seems like you have two choices: Justify the abduction and mass murder of Israelis by Hamas? Or ‘stand with’ the Israeli government's starvation and vengeance on 2 million Palestinians, most of them children, caged in an open air prison? No….<br /><br />
“Both: Apartheid is an abomination. Every day it continues is a blight on the lives of millions, and a moral stain on the rest of us. And: Abducting children and murdering families is an atrocity. We fight for a future worth living in for everyone, not a parade of corpses.”</i> <br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
* * *<br /></div><div>
<i>“Our pain is not your weapon. Our grief is not your excuse. Stop using Jewish pain to justify Israeli massacres of Palestinians. War crimes do not justify more war crimes. Revenge is not a strategy for safety for anyone.”</i></div></blockquote>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Photo credit<br /></h3><p>Solidarity protest for Palestine in London, 9 October 2023, photo by <span class="mw-metadata-lang-value">Alisdare Hickson (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gaza_-_an_Open_Air_Prison_(53254996781).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br /></span></p>
Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-90603230679596908452023-10-14T19:48:00.000-04:002023-10-14T19:48:10.008-04:00Israel, Palestine and the Contradictions of Nationalism<p><b>Guest post by Plotnikov</b></p>
<p><i>Editors’ Note: The following guest post is intended to offer some helpful context for understanding and discussing the current war between Israel and Hamas—and the broader war between Israel and the people of Gaza. We believe our primary responsibility in this situation is to oppose the forced displacement and mass killing of the Palestinian people. At the same time, we also have a responsibility to attempt an honest assessment of the conflict overall. We reject efforts (by both supporters and opponents) to equate the Palestinian people with Hamas; we also reject claims that any criticism of Hamas’s ideology or tactics helps Palestinians’ oppressors and murderers, or that any attack on Israel (or on U.S. imperialism) is a blow for liberatory politics.</i></p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_DLZkz56qP1SZ80qvqFuuCapWC63l_cR86i7rZgr_hBiRJGwJ6pI_z5QgoGM73WsTl5t5S-XNjfMeyhS99gXII5lAG3jpIxlcVtY9olggJ83shnIcx0fhh3_AJPLOOw7EimqZB2eknwmeDnbnHDiRWQ4DcrGE9JOiSXraM9qKY3E8EVn1_BaO/s2400/Damage_in_Gaza_Strip_during_the_October_2023_-_14.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2400" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_DLZkz56qP1SZ80qvqFuuCapWC63l_cR86i7rZgr_hBiRJGwJ6pI_z5QgoGM73WsTl5t5S-XNjfMeyhS99gXII5lAG3jpIxlcVtY9olggJ83shnIcx0fhh3_AJPLOOw7EimqZB2eknwmeDnbnHDiRWQ4DcrGE9JOiSXraM9qKY3E8EVn1_BaO/w640-h426/Damage_in_Gaza_Strip_during_the_October_2023_-_14.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Palestinians sift through rubble of apartment building destroyed by Israeli air strikes<br />Gaza City, 8 October 2023<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I’ve been asked by several friends now what my take on the war in Palestine/Israel is. It’s “critical support for Palestinian liberation,” but that’s a term that bears a lot of explanation and nuance, because I take the “critical” in “critical support” seriously.<p></p>
<p>Israel is a settler colonial project which has taken the long-ago historic and religious claims of the Jewish people to Palestine and the presence of a Palestinian Jewish community there as the grounds to settle huge number of other Jewish people from around the world there, and to drive out the Palestinian Arabs living there in an ethnic cleansing known as the Nakba. Since the Nakba, Israel has maintained a repressive and violent state over and against the Palestinians, who have been in desperate straits as a refugee diaspora or living under occupation since the founding of Israel. Israel has aspired to be a liberal democracy, but also a Jewish ethno-state. The violent logic of its existence, its need to repress the native people of the land it has taken, and the need to forcibly keep the country demographically Jewish have all helped to ensure its slide into greater authoritarianism, and Bibi’s government is the most violently authoritarian and fundamentalist yet. The Israeli government holds over a thousand Palestinians in administrative detention without charges or trial. It starves the people of Gaza of basic humanitarian and construction supplies. It slowly is eating away at remaining Palestinian territory in the West Bank, where it maintains a police state to protect settlers. It practices collective punishment against the Palestinians in retaliation for acts of resistance.</p>
<p>Israel in its existence and actions presents a challenge to left thought on nationalism. One of the thought-ending clichés that many activists use is some variation of “Nationalism is oppressive, but the nationalism of the oppressed is liberatory.” This is an overly simplistic formulation that falls apart quickly. Zionism was the nationalist movement among Jews, who have undeniably been an oppressed people, and was a direct response to their oppression. Yet, by seeking to set up a state on land already occupied by others, it immediately became an oppressive force—in a more dramatic way than many nation states, which in their formation often displace or forcibly assimilate those outside the nation. In addition to trying to set up a nation state on already-occupied land, Zionism also ran into the other problem that national movements face: They are extremely broad fronts which contain different classes and power structures within the nation and the different interests and political tendencies inevitable in such a broad coalition. So, Zionism contained both the socialist Labor Zionism, and more liberal conceptions of Zionism, and ethno-nationalist and religious fundamentalist conceptions of Zionism. The latter have become dominant in Israeli politics, but even Labor Zionism is the left wing of a colonial project.</p>
<p>National liberation (or in Israel’s case, national foundation) movements almost always have these separate tendencies. The Irish Republican movement saw syndicalists, anarchists, and Marxists in the Irish Citizens Army fighting alongside religious conservative Gaelic nationalists, future fascist blueshirts, and guerrillas who relied on keeping good relations with rich landlords for strategic purposes in the war, and these tensions contributed to the Irish Civil War and to many political conflicts within the Republican movement since then. American Black nationalism has tendencies which are socialist, internationalist, and pan-Africanist and also tendencies which are extremely gender conservative, subscribe to reactionary biological race ideology, and emphasize black capitalism. Indian nationalism had such adherents as the revolutionary Bhagat Singh and other anti-colonial revolutionaries, but also the entire far right movement of Hindutva. It’s not as simple as the nationalism of the oppressed being liberatory. Oppressed people, in fighting against the oppression of their nation, historically find themselves forming broad fronts in which some forces have a very liberatory vision for the future and others a deeply conservative one. On the whole, post-colonial nations have tended to pull towards the Right and towards being dominated by local power structures and pressure from neo-colonialism, not too long after the revolutionary period starts to wind down.</p>
<p>All of which brings us to the state of the Palestinian liberation movement today. During the Cold War, when subscribing to Marxism could get a decolonization movement backing from the USSR (unless they were trying to decolonize themselves from the state-capitalist bureaucrats in Moscow), most national liberation movements described themselves as revolutionary socialists, with varying degrees of sincerity. The left-wing parties of the Palestinian liberation movement, today, make up the parties in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which has power mostly in the West Bank and not in Gaza. The left of the Palestinian struggle has been more open to negotiating with their colonizer and trying to move towards a two-state solution since decades of insurgency and revolts have not brought about liberation. This more conciliatory stance has lost them some support among those facing daily Israeli violence. This is not an unusual dynamic in colonial struggles; it happened in Northern Ireland in the beginning of the Troubles, when the IRA’s caution in responding to state and Loyalist terror led to the splitting off of the Provisional IRA, which was initially smaller but grew larger as it gained support for its active resistance.</p>
<p>In fact, it bears wondering if the heyday of left-wing nationalism as a dominant force in anti-colonial movements is behind us now that the broader network of such struggles is dwindling and no longer has the geopolitical backing of, and incentive to orient to, the Cold War era USSR. The People’s Republic of China has not been a replacement fostering left-wing anti-colonial struggles, and left nationalists in colonized nations really have no great power offering them support. Right-wing nationalisms and the internationalism of religious fundamentalism have become more common in such movements. Anti-colonial movements today still gravitate towards choosing the backing of one empire or another against the empire they’re trying to break free from. Note, for example, Ukrainian or Kurdish willingness to get US military aid, or the enthusiasm of a good base of people in the Sahel countries for switching from a client relationship with France to one more aligned with Russia. Palestine, unfortunately, really has no great power backing it—just the regional power of Iran. While the western imperialists back Israel and have for decades, the eastern great powers like Russia and China now see more advantage in courting Israel (which has lots to offer international partners especially in terms of arms technology) than in supporting Palestine, though they are less hostile to Palestine than the western powers.</p>
<p>Hamas is a religious fundamentalist force which has gained support (and repressed its political rivals) as it has sustained armed resistance to Israel. For Palestinians facing ongoing colonization, state violence, incarceration, discrimination, economic blockade, etc etc, this gains them a good measure of respect. This is generally how far-right forces can win mass support—by putting themselves at the front of a fight to defend the nation from a colonizing or oppressing force. It’s the gambit that the Ukrainian far right made during the Maidan and after it, seeking to be very visibly the militant vanguard of the struggle against Russian domination in hopes it would win them greater support and legitimacy among the people. Hamas played this gambit well and has cemented a base of power (insofar as a rebel army of the colonized can have power) in the open-air prison that is Gaza.</p>
<p>One can, and I think must, be able to support a struggle against colonization while being critical of (or just outright against) specific forces and actors within that struggle whose aims or methods are reactionary. Hamas are a reactionary force, even when they are fighting for a cause that is very worthy of support. Their own violence towards their fellow Palestinians, their aims as fundamentalists, and their tactics including the targeting of civilians are all enough to put them outside of the circle of forces worth supporting. None of which is to excuse at ALL the Israeli state, which in this war is going to wreak horrific suffering and death on the people of Gaza far above and beyond the gut-wrenching suffering inflicted on Israeli civilians in the last several days. But we in the west won’t see most of that suffering, unless we specifically seek out news that shows it. We are shown the horrifying and true images of what Hamas death squads have done to Israeli civilians, but the cameras will gloss over the atrocities the Gazans have suffered through before this escalation, and the atrocities they now face at the hands of that death squad the IDF.</p>
<p>I don’t have actionable steps to take here, other than that westerners should oppose our governments arming Israel, and should support campaigns such as BDS to pressure Israel into ending its violent apartheid against Palestinians. I intend to continue supporting the Palestinian liberation movement, and to continue as I always have done, seeking to support those sections of the movement which align with humanist, anticapitalist values and not with religious fundamentalism.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Photo credit:</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Photo by <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2915969" target="_blank">Wafa</a> in contract with a local company (APA Images) (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Damage_in_Gaza_Strip_during_the_October_2023_-_14.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>. Original description: Palestinians inspect the ruins of Aklouk Tower destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 8, 2023.</p>
ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-50869821898242076542023-09-30T20:21:00.000-04:002023-09-30T20:21:20.185-04:00Revisiting “Antifascism Against Machismo”<p>Tammy Kovich, <i><a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/antifascism-against-machismo?_pos=2&_sid=0e2941060&_ss=r" target="_blank">Antifascism Against Machismo</a></i><br />
With an introduction by El Jones and commentary by Butch Lee and Veronica L. <br />
Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2023<br />
153pp.; ISBN: 9781989701232</p>
<p><b>Review by D. Z. Shaw</b></p>
<p>In 2019, Tammy Kovich published, under the pseudonym of Petronella Lee, the short pamphlet <i><a href="https://north-shore.info/2019/10/03/anti-fascism-beyond-machismo/" target="_blank">Anti-Fascism Against Machismo: Gender, Politics, and the Struggle Against Fascism</a></i>. Her essay is an important contribution to antifascist literature, which highlights how misogyny is a “fundamental pillar” of contemporary fascist movements, while making a compelling argument that gender liberation must be “a non-negotiable component of anti-fascism” (70). </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpOfBv5MRVPZzog5g-MeDEfJN29NKFyxFdSpVYaqnrtyIOY2n3JWvSsC5-4qM3jByw1VIffmImkrPBl9NSfq0LkTbNRmLrzDQQTCqSXaq5qbgQcQt8ae4lQZBAmEw3xbBnTg2rS4KmzMA3RNaWEteCaj6MzJV7bYBrj6-DwRRp-8nkKyAIKfcz/s547/AFAM-COVER1_360x.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="360" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpOfBv5MRVPZzog5g-MeDEfJN29NKFyxFdSpVYaqnrtyIOY2n3JWvSsC5-4qM3jByw1VIffmImkrPBl9NSfq0LkTbNRmLrzDQQTCqSXaq5qbgQcQt8ae4lQZBAmEw3xbBnTg2rS4KmzMA3RNaWEteCaj6MzJV7bYBrj6-DwRRp-8nkKyAIKfcz/w264-h400/AFAM-COVER1_360x.webp" width="264" /></a></div><p>When it was first published, Kovich’s reflections on militant antifascist organizing spoke to problems that many organizers had difficulty articulating. It is easy to dismiss critics who accused antifascist groups of being <i>merely</i> angry, blocked-up white dudes looking for a fight, because plenty of our experiences show otherwise. Antifascism is not about the optics, and if critics, the police, and fascists are on the wrong track identifying who antifascists are, who wants to correct them? But dismissing characterizations from outright opponents does not bring clarity to another, more difficult problem. Stanislav Vysotsky points out in <i><a href="https://www.routledge.com/American-Antifa-The-Tactics-Culture-and-Practice-of-Militant-Antifascism/Vysotsky/p/book/9780367210601" target="_blank">American Antifa</a></i>, his auto-ethnographic study of two antifascist groups (in two different cities) conducted between 2002–2005 and 2007–2010, that there was gender parity in both groups, as well as a high representation of individuals who identify as LGBTQ. (See pages 52-53.) Even if we acknowledge that an increased participation in antifascist organizing after the very public rise of the Alt Right in 2016 shifted the demographics of antifascist groups, I would argue that they remained relatively closer in composition to Vysotsky’s snapshots than the stereotyped, unsympathetic public perceptions. However, the persistence of machismo in these circles becomes even more difficult to untangle. Hence my <a href="https://www.thesocialjusticecentre.org/blog/2020/1/5/fighting-fascism-with-feminism-a-review-of-petronella-lees-anti-fascism-against-machismo" target="_blank">first review</a> of <i>Antifascism Against Machismo</i> (published in January 2020) focuses on Kovich’s critique of, and her proposals to overcome, machismo in antifascist organizing, and I believe her observations remain relevant today. (Three Way Fight also published a <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2019/10/review-of-anti-fascism-beyond-machismo.html" target="_blank">review</a> of Kovich’s original pamphlet, by Matthew N. Lyons.) </p>
<p>Given the impact of the original pamphlet in antifascist circles, I greatly appreciate the publication of a new edition of Kovich’s <i>Antifascism Against Machismo</i>, which collects previously published commentaries by activists Butch Lee (from 2019) and Veronica L. (from 2020), with a new introduction by poet and abolitionist El Jones. By gathering these voices together, this new edition takes on an explicitly broader scope than the original, often shifting registers between a critique of the far right and of North American iterations of settler-colonial capitalism. <i>Antifascism Against Machismo</i> is a genuine discussion document, much like the multi-author text <i>Confronting Fascism</i> (also published by Kersplebedeb), opening new paths to militant organizing while challenging widely held or sometimes dogmatic assumptions shared on the left. As with any genuine discussion, not all questions are resolved, and thus we’ll circle back to a few at the end of this review. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>
<p>The catalyst for the present review is Butch Lee’s commentary on Kovich’s essay. Lee is known for a handful of underground movement texts that work in and through an unorthodox Marxism-Leninism to develop a theory and praxis of revolutionary gender liberation, texts such as <a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/night-vision-illuminating-war-and-class-on-the-neo-colonial-terrain?_pos=2&_sid=c2ecaab22&_ss=r" target="_blank"><i>Night-Vision: Illuminating War and Class on Neo-Colonial Terrain</i></a> (co-authored with Red Rover), <i><a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/jailbreak-out-of-history-the-re-biography-of-harriet-tubman-the-evil-of-female-loaferism?_pos=1&_sid=bc79d1c17&_ss=r" target="_blank">Jailbreak Out of History: The Re-Biography of Harriet Tubman and “The Evil of Female Loaferism,”</a></i> and <a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/the-military-strategy-of-women-and-children?_pos=1&_sid=43aa1cb67&_ss=r" target="_blank"><i>The Military Strategy of Women and Children</i></a>. Her work has had an under-recognized influence on the three way fight approach, perhaps due to the fact that her analyses had not yet honed in on contemporary fascism and far-right movements. Until now. </p>
<p>From the start, Lee transgresses the narrow, pressing questions for antifascist work that animate Kovich’s original analysis. Lee moves between recollections of her early (and by her own account naive) activism, the patriarchal structure of capitalism, and neo-colonialism, surveying the terrain that gives rise to contemporary fascism. As Lee recounts, the problem of fascism first emerged as an urgent political issue within the Black liberation movement in the 1960s, epitomized by the Black Panther Party’s United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland in July 1969. At the time, fascism was conceived as a form of widening and intensified political repression which nonetheless was “something not as different from but similar to ‘Americanism’ itself” (82). She suggests, without separating which is which, that analyses of the era “had both XL size insights and XL size misunderstandings”; now, “fascism/antifascism alike, there’s a new deal in the cards” (82–83). </p>
<p>Conventional leftist concepts of antifascism were cast in the late 1960s—not only when they draw from Black liberation movements but also when they characterize far right movements based on clichés from what Lee calls the “second-wave fascism” of George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. System-loyal, “patriotic” groups that “fixated on anti-Black race hatred job one” (83). Groups which she characterizes as “tactically dangerous” (because of the threat of racial violence) but which were generally considered cosplaying outliers within their white racist American society. Theories of fascism that focus exclusively on state repression or dismiss street-level far-right movements as anachronistic sideshows completely miss the threat of contemporary fascism. </p>
<p>Contemporary, or what Lee calls “third-wave,” fascism is qualitatively different from the second-wave fascism of the 1950s and 1960s. It is system-oppositional and prioritizes both racial oppression <i>and</i> gender oppression. In contrast to the patriotic sentiments of the George Lincoln Rockwells of the bygone days of Segregation, third-wave fascism was born out of “Vietnam defeats, forced integration, and man-abandoning feminism,” and seeks to overthrow the U.S. government in order to reconstitute a white-settlerist, patriarchal society (86). And whereas second-wave fascism focused on anti-Black oppression, the new far right is “built heavily around woman-hating that joins their formative race hatred they are better known for” (90–91). Here, Lee commends Kovich for being “light years” ahead of conventional, mainstream accounts of far-right misogyny and misogynistic violence. First, Kovich shows that the “manosphere,” an online subculture of misogynistic discourses, overlaps with and functions as a pipeline toward fascist recruitment. Second, she outlines a spectrum of forms of fascist sexism from patriarchal fascism to misogynistic fascism. Finally, she catalogs how the far right now explicitly venerates violence against women. Lee concludes that supposedly individual or isolated attacks on women presage “targeting us eventually as an entire gender class” (87). (Though I feel like it is redundant to add, it is worth mentioning that for Lee those targeted for “gender class” violence under patriarchy include women, children, and LGBTQ+ communities.) She argues that women are “the first proletariat, the first conquered colony” of euro-capitalism, socially imprisoned and pressed into the labor of social reproduction (an argument made in more detail in her <i>Military Strategy of Women and Children</i>). Fascism seeks to revive the patriarchal recolonization of women’s bodies (101–103).
</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p></p><p>Lee challenges a common but unexamined assumption among antifascists: that militant antifascism engages in a limited or temporary struggle for community self-defense against street-level organizing by far-right movements; when this threat passes, the immediate tactical necessity for militant antifascist organizing dissipates, and the various individuals and groups who make up a local united front return to other types of radical political work. Both Kovich and Veronica L. make observations along this line, and on this point they are no different than other authors such as Mark Bray, Shane Burley, or myself. Sometimes these observations take on a more critical edge, but generally the cycles of antifascist organizing seem inevitable. Lee would certainly be familiar with variations on this theme during earlier cycles of antifascist organizing as well, for example, during the decline of Anti-Racist Action. So there must be something to this final verse before Lee has “sung [her] song” (115). </p>
<p>In my view, Lee makes two arguments to challenge the idea that antifascist organizing is a limited form of political work. First, Lee argues that the sexism and misogyny expressed by fascists are a small part of a much larger, growing and explicit, mass shift toward white right reaction (104–105). In other words, the confrontation with the far right doesn’t end in the streets. I think most militant antifascists would agree; indeed, we were critical of liberal antifascists when they decided to log off after Trump was deposed from power. However, I think Lee’s argument draws its political force from a second, largely implicit, line of argument. She writes: </p>
<blockquote>What [Kovich] isn’t afraid to explore, is that women should lead our fight against fascism. Draw our own wider strategies. Make our own diversely talented groups. Because fighting fascism is a woman-centered struggle for our lives now. Antifascism is crucially about gender as well as race. (87–88) </blockquote>
<p>The idea that militant antifascists return to their other militant political projects when the immediate threat of far-right movements taking to the streets abates, rests on a number of unexamined assumptions. Most importantly, we tend to assume that the politics of antifascist work parallels the politics of our “home” political circles, whether those are Marxist or anarchist, whether parties, affinity groups, or reading groups. However, what if gender liberation is truly integrated as “a non-negotiable component of anti-fascism” as Kovich justly demands? If fighting fascism becomes “a woman-centered struggle”? What home political circle can match this commitment to gender liberation, when the history of militant and revolutionary movements carries so much patriarchal baggage? Lee challenges a widely held assumption about the dynamic of struggle in order to point to a new political possibility for women-centered antifascist work. (J. Sakai recounts, from a different angle, what Lee considered a missed opportunity from an earlier period of political struggle in <i><a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us/products/the-shape-of-things-to-come-selected-writings-interviews?_pos=1&_sid=ec8c38b78&_ss=r" target="_blank">The Shape of Things to Come</a></i> [Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2023] 359ff.)
</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p></p><p>By way of conclusion, I would like to highlight two issues that suffuse the discussions in the new edition of <i>Antifascism Against Machismo</i>: they concern the differing concepts of fascism and settler colonialism evoked by the participants. These problems are partially sketched in Veronica L.’s contribution and I would like to briefly revisit them here. First, none of the contributors puts a full definition of fascism on the table. Generally, the authors tend toward discussing fascist or far-right movements as types of white supremacy, but sometimes the discussion wavers. For example, near the conclusion of her essay, Kovich notes that “Black liberation and decolonial movements have either explicitly or implicitly been engaged in fighting against fascism for hundreds of years” (71). Such a claim, aside from the anachronism, confuses rather than clarifies the relationship of fascism and settler colonialism. It’s worth noting that Lee, who touches on the historical legacy of Black liberation movements’ antifascism while also sketching a sequence of historical waves of fascism, glosses Kovich’s claim with a subtle but important caveat that “Black people and Indigenous peoples and many others had been fighting <i>something like</i> fascism here from the start” (80, my emphasis). That something, of course, is white settler colonialism. </p>
<p>Through this discussion, a second problem emerges, when it becomes clear that the different participants in this intergenerational dialogue adhere to (at least) two different views of settler colonialism. Lee applies a Leninist anti-imperialist concept of colonialism to settler colonialism. Imperialism divides the world into oppressor nations and oppressed nations; settler colonialism differs from “classical” European colonialism (which maintained distance between the metropole and periphery) insofar as the colonies of settler-colonial states are internal colonies. According to this ‘old school’ paradigm of settler-colonialism all internal oppressed nations have a right to self-determination, and as we have seen above, Lee argues that women are an “internal colony” analogous to the situation of the New Afrikan nation. Veronica adheres to a ‘new school’ concept of settler colonialism (we are both writing within the Canadian settler-colonial context where this concept is current among activists), which draws its core distinction between settlers and Indigenous peoples, the latter which have the right to national self-determination. </p>
<p>Neither concept of settler colonialism entirely satisfactorily resolves questions raised by anticolonial struggle, and I believe there are difficulties translating the political demands made by one into the political language of the other. On the one hand, the new school concept, focused on the settler/Indigenous binary, encounters difficulties ‘placing’ the self-determination claims of a New Afrikan nation. On the other hand, Veronica questions the implications of an autonomous (white) women’s movement’s claim to “space” or land, a claim grounded in the old school concept, “in an anti-Black settler state that has from its beginning involved white women enforcing its hierarchies and advancing its settlements” (125–126). Indeed, if we widen the lens to a broader left’s organizational initiatives, squatting, occupying, or building commons are not inherently emancipatory or anticolonial in the settler-colonial context. The point of this comparison is not to adjudicate between the two concepts of settler colonialism, but rather, as Veronica notes, to highlight the ongoing work that needs to be done—even in the seemingly unrelated context of gender liberation and antifascist struggle. </p>
<p><i>Antifascism Against Machismo</i> raises pressing questions about antifascism, feminism, gender liberation, and settler colonialism, through a genuine wide-ranging discussion between its participants. It is required reading for those interested in new directions for advancing militant antifascist work. </p>
ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-77203805987391354302023-08-20T11:07:00.002-04:002023-08-20T11:07:56.603-04:00Review of "The Rise of Ecofascism" by Sam Moore and Alex Roberts<p>Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, <a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-rise-of-ecofascism-climate-change-and-the-far-right--9781509545377" target="_blank"><i>The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right</i></a><br />
Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2022<br />
160 pages; paperback $19.95, ISBN 9781509545384; hardback $59.95, ISBN 9781509545377</p>
<p>Review by Matthew N. Lyons</p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0jWVDPZJMgVkk_CpKepwQqqvw6FDFa_rAyUYUZ0dtQisAJcGfuOoQc5fL6gH3lz3bBwSfnLyEyGtP-pHku_NyiY8FguH0A3h1lrZ6-SVmCWfebsHpC3Sy14nj99bJfs_T4Htptzbr_7eFoNBdDK3bRys4ziZp-gyTAhi6wGxt_kB8H0oS-ArQ/s470/RiseOfEcofascism.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Book cover of The Rise of Ecofascism, with photo of forest fire in background" border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0jWVDPZJMgVkk_CpKepwQqqvw6FDFa_rAyUYUZ0dtQisAJcGfuOoQc5fL6gH3lz3bBwSfnLyEyGtP-pHku_NyiY8FguH0A3h1lrZ6-SVmCWfebsHpC3Sy14nj99bJfs_T4Htptzbr_7eFoNBdDK3bRys4ziZp-gyTAhi6wGxt_kB8H0oS-ArQ/w255-h400/RiseOfEcofascism.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>How are far rightists responding to the global climate crisis? Denial of climate change has long been an ingrained reflex among rightists far beyond the reach of fossil fuel industry propaganda. This is starting to shift as devastating heat waves, draughts, fires, and floods make the reality of global warming increasingly obvious–not as an impending danger but as a catastrophe that’s already well underway. Increasingly, sections of the right in North America and Europe are embracing environmental concerns but using them to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/21/climate-denial-far-right-immigration" target="_blank">bolster racism and exclusionary nationalism</a>, tapping into traditions going back to the <a href="http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html" target="_blank">Nazis’ blood and soil ideology</a> in Germany and the <a href="https://www.uuworld.org/articles/problem-wilderness" target="_blank">early conservation movement’s settler-colonialist underpinnings</a> in the U.S. The racist mass murderers in Christchurch and El Paso four years ago both invoked environmental rationales, with the <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-christchurch-massacre-and-fascist.html" target="_blank">Christchurch shooter</a> declaring himself an “eco-fascist.” Racist environmentalism may or may not clash with climate change denial, and some right-wingers, notably <a href="https://heated.world/p/tucker-carlsons-toxic-environmental" target="_blank">Tucker Carlson</a>, have promoted both. One way or another, how far rightists address environmental issues is only going to become more important in the coming years, but what positions they will take and what impact it will have is not obvious.<p></p>
<p>An excellent entrée to this topic is <a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-rise-of-ecofascism-climate-change-and-the-far-right--9781509545377" target="_blank"><i>The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right</i></a>, by Sam Moore and Alex Roberts. This is one of the best books on far right politics that I’ve read in years. It offers an insightful overview of far right positions, past and present, on climate and environmental issues, and traces how conceptions of nature inform and underpin far right politics overall. Looking toward the future, <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> outlines several grim but believable scenarios for how far right environmental politics—and its relationship with capitalist interests—is likely to develop. The book honors the complexity of its subject without overwhelming the reader, and offers brief but helpful comments on the implications of the climate crisis for antifascist strategy. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“</i>The Rise of Ecofascism<i> offers an insightful overview of far right positions on climate and environmental issues, traces how conceptions of nature inform and underpin far right politics overall, and outlines several scenarios for how far right environmental politics—and its relationship with capitalist interests—is likely to develop.”</i></span></p>
<p>Moore and Roberts are well positioned to contribute to this discussion. From 2019 to 2022 the two of them hosted the UK-based radical antifascist podcast titled <a href="https://soundcloud.com/12rulesforwhat" target="_blank"><i>12 Rules for What</i></a> (a play on <a href="https://itsgoingdown.org/an-anarchist-response-to-far-right-professor-jordan-peterson/" target="_blank">Jordan Peterson</a>’s <i>12 Rules for Life</i>), several of whose episodes have focused on environmental politics. Sam Moore left the podcast in 2022; since then, Alex Roberts has continued it solo. <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> is the second book they have co-authored. In 2021 Moore and Roberts published <a href="https://www.dogsection.org/product/post-internet-far-right" target="_blank"><i>Post-Internet Far Right: Fascism in the Age of the Internet</i></a>, which explores how the far right has changed in the era of online politics and culture. </p>
<p><i>Post-Internet Far Right</i> set the stage for <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> in a number of ways. Both books demonstrate a wide-ranging familiarity with fascist and quasi-fascist politics, and both are written in a style that is intricate but clear and engaging. Both books also treat their subjects as arrays of multiple currents that interact dynamically and in complex ways. The following passage from <i>Post-Internet Far Right</i> encapsulates this approach and also highlights the thematic relationship between the two books: </p>
<blockquote><div>“The types of far-right thought and action developing in the wake of the internet are much more varied and complex than these labels [“Nazi” and “fascist”] seem to indicate, and the type of thought and action that will predominate in the long-run has yet to be settled. The far right is in a state of productive diversification. It has yet to cohere around a new stable formulation; however, it almost certainly will, and we must be ready for it.”<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
* * *<br /></div><div>
“The various political forms [the far right] takes … are in tension with one another. Particularly, there is a tension between movement-building and deadly violence, or fascism in its ‘identitarian’ form and ‘blackpilled neo-Nazism. But this tension is not eternal. And the conditions under which these two halves might come back together and now also emerging, in the form of an ‘ecofascist’ politics that utilises global climate breakdown to justify murder. This ecofascism is not a homogenous movement, nor can it be, for it contains contradictory ideas of its own. Particularly, it will struggle to articulate the contradictions between ecology, ethnonationalism, and economic imperatives, like its historical forebears did. These contradictions are handles that anti-fascists can grasp to destroy it, but the scale and tactics of anti-fascism must be rethought…” (10-11). </div></blockquote>
<p>In other ways, however, Moore and Roberts’s two books are quite different. <i>Post-Internet Far Right</i> was published by Dog Section Press, a small “anti-profit” anarchist publisher, while <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> was put out by Polity, an established academic press whose books are distributed by Wiley. Much of <i>Post-Internet Far Right</i> reads like an extended thought piece, with thought-provoking and often original analysis but little supporting documentation, while <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> delves into more specifics and cites a wide-ranging set of primary and secondary sources. <i>Post-Internet Far Right</i> focuses on explicating the far right’s dynamics, such as the radicalization process, use of memes, evolving organizational forms, and the complex relationships between leaders (or “influencers”) and the rank and file and between online politics and street activism. <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i>, by contrast, focuses less on movement dynamics and more on the content and implications of far right ideas. </p>
<p>Despite its title, <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> isn’t just about a distinctive “ecofascist” movement or ideology but rather a broader range of racist and authoritarian environmental currents. Here and elsewhere, the book carries forward <i>Post-Internet Far Right</i>’s emphasis on multiplicity. After surveying an “episodic and disparate” history of far right environmentalisms, Moore and Roberts tell us that “the far right has diversified its nature politics once again, splintering into parts more or less accepting of the problem, more or less mystified, more or less ambivalent about the possible end of industrial modernity” (4). For example, some within the far right deny climate change altogether, some pay lip service to its reality but oppose constructive measures to address it, and some recognize the enormity of the climate crisis but want to solve it through authoritarian, supremacist, or genocidal means. Moore and Roberts trace these and other divergences across several sectors of the far right: governmental figures such as Donald Trump or Jair Balsonaro; political parties such as France’s National Rally or India’s Bharatiya Janata Party; non-electoral movements such as Italy’s Casa Pound, Identitarianism, and various offshoots of the alt-right; and individuals and groups that plan for or carry out acts of mass killing. </p>
<p>As in their first book, Moore and Roberts show a keen eye for complex dynamics. For example, while some on the left have simplistically presented neoliberalism and the far right as harmonious partners or branches of the same project, Moore and Roberts emphasize the contradictions involved: </p>
<blockquote> “The dominant currents of contemporary far-right ecologism…work in a complex relationship to neoliberalism. They object to neoliberalism’s tendency towards international cultural homogenization, understood as social liberalization and the redress of structural disparities, as well as the homogenization of ‘nature.’ However, in response, they propose little else than the further radicalization of neoliberalization’s underlying drive toward privatization, this time lodged firmly at the scale of the national. We might suggest, given the seeming irreversibility of capitalism’s internationalization, that this is impossible. It is in facing this impossibility that the tendency towards violence might scale up” (51-52). </blockquote>
<p>In <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i>, the theme of multiplicity doesn’t only apply to the political realm but also the environmental one: just as the far right encompasses many distinct political threats beyond fascism, climate systems breakdown goes far beyond global warming to encompass a host of ecological problems, each interwoven with an array of societal causes and effects. The COVID-19 pandemic, which exploded just as Moore and Roberts started writing this book, is a prime example of an eco-crisis that can’t be reduced to global warming, and it shows some of the multi-sided ways that climate crisis plays out for human beings: </p>
<blockquote> “Long imagined in disaster-movie style as a series of blazing hot summers and polar bears adrift, all punctuated by the occasional cataclysmic wave, it suddenly seemed to us that climate systems breakdown might actually look much more like the pandemic did: mass death events, sudden stresses on global supply chains, abrupt and previously unthinkable changes to everyday life, massive discrepancies in vulnerability across class and racial groups, a generally increased anxiety, racially displaced blame, the tightening of surveillance regimes… unprecedented measures that suddenly seem entirely necessary, the sudden collapse of livelihoods for billions of the world’s poor, and a deep economic shock worldwide” (2-3). </blockquote>
<p>Being broader than the pandemic, Moore and Roberts note, “climate change [also] contains other kinds of crises: extreme weather events, migration crises, chronic and acute food and water shortages, climate-related conflicts and the like” (3). </p>
<p><i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i>’s core argument, presented on Page 1, is that “the escalating climate crisis [will] provide opportunities to all parts of the far right.” This thesis is essentially predictive, and the book’s last chapter explores how environmental politics is likely to affect the far right’s future development and potential rise to power. In the coming years, Moore and Roberts argue, large numbers of mainstream rightists, particularly in the United States, will be forced to confront the fact that their leaders have lied to them about climate change, but rather than turning them into leftists, this realization is likely to drive many of them toward the far right through a combination of two reactions: “a revolt against those who have got us into this mess <i>and simultaneously</i> an attempt to hold on to what some people already have, either as individuals or, more worryingly, as racial groups” (5-6). Here Moore and Roberts are describing a double-edged anger which, <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/the-far-right-regards-human-inequality-as-natural/" target="_blank">I’ve argued elsewhere</a>, is a key element fueling far right politics in general: people’s fear that their relative privilege or power is being challenged by oppressed groups below, coupled with a sense of being beaten down by political, economic, or cultural elites above. </p>
<p>In the context of multi-sided climate-fed crisis, Moore and Roberts envision the rise of large-scale nativist movements encompassing “a whole complicated mess of groups: conspiracists, authoritarians, denialists, nostalgists, China-hawks and admirers, cultural reactionaries and racists, anti-migrant activists and so on” (103). These movement could seek power in various ways, which the authors simplify down to three possible “projects” or “futures”: </p>
<ul>
<li>“Fossilized Reaction” – the nativist movement aligns with the fossil fuel wing of capital around a program of intensified climate denial and intensified militarization of society.
</li><li>“Batteries, Bombs and Borders” – the movement aligns with a broader array of capitalist interests that want to mitigate climate change by developing green energy technologies; to control the necessary resources (such as rare earth minerals) they pursue a new Cold War against China, boost authoritarianism at home, and deepen global inequities.
</li><li>“Climate Collapse Cults” – sizeable fractions of the nativist movement embrace a “logic of killing” that is currently espoused only by small fringe groups, and try to use mass murder to either end modern society or create enclaves cut off from it. </li></ul>
<p>These scenarios will all have devastating consequences, but in different ways and with different implications for antifascist practice. The “Batteries, Bombs and Borders” scenario is particularly tricky, as it could attract large-scale support from liberal environmentalists. </p>
<p>Moore and Roberts discuss antifascist strategy in the book’s Conclusion. Echoing some of the arguments in their previous book, they urge antifascists to embrace tactical and strategic heterogeneity and to identify and exploit tensions and contradictions within the far right, for example “between the rural and the urban, statecraft and mass shootings, nihilism and spirituality, the needs of capital and the projected needs of the <i>Volk</i>” (129). Additionally, in a context where “all politics will, in one way or another, be climate politics” (128), antifascists and environmentalists need to learn from each other and embrace each others’ principles. But since environmentalism itself is a politically contested space, we need to “oppose ecologies of domination with ecologies of liberation” (136). That involves “resist[ing] those ideas of nature that are hierarchical, parochial, tied to a certain race or divided into essentially killable and unkillable parts” (130), but it also means challenging ideas of a common humanity that blame all humans equally for climate crisis or reduce solutions to individual responsibility, thereby masking systems of power. </p>
<p><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Since environmentalism itself is a politically contested space, we need to ‘resist those ideas of nature that are hierarchical, parochial, [or] tied to a certain race,’ but also challenge ideas that blame all humans equally for climate crisis or reduce solutions to individual responsibility, thereby masking systems of power.”</span></i></p>
<p>Given the authors’ solidly radical, anticapitalist perspective, it’s striking that they argue, echoing Christian Parenti, that “a resolution to the climate crisis must be built through the institutions that currently exist, because no others are possible to construct in sufficient time” (135). It’s hard for me to fault the logic here, but I would suggest a crucial caveat: any hope that existing institutions will craft a sustainable climate strategy depends on militant, independently organized popular pressure forcing them to do so. </p>
<p>My criticisms of this book are few. First, there is no index or bibliography, which makes the book harder to use because of the many political players discussed and works cited. Second, building much of the argument around political predictions, as Moore and Roberts do, risks making the book dated quickly, as events so often take unexpected turns. Maybe the point is to focus not so much on the specifics of the scenarios offered as on the insights that inform them: far right environmental politics (and capitalist responses to the climate crisis) could develop in a number of different ways, so we need to pay attention to multiple political currents, complex dynamics, and the dangers of trying to mitigate the crisis within the existing geopolitical framework. </p>
<p>A different kind of limitation is that the authors only address rightist currents whose politics centers on some form of racism or ethno-nationalism. This is customary in discussions of the far right but leaves out important religious-based movements, notably the Christian right, whose supremacist politics arguably centers on gender and sexuality rather than race. The Christian right is weak in Britain, but in the United States it’s huge, and major sections of it advocate a social and political transformation more sweeping than what many ethno-nationalist far rightists call for. Extending Moore and Roberts’s approach to look at how the Christian right relates to climate/environmental politics would be crucial for developing a comprehensive analysis and strategy. </p>
<p>Despite these issues, <i>The Rise of Ecofascism</i> is an outstanding contribution to discussions of both the contemporary far right and climate politics. It’s also testimony that some of the most thoughtful and nuanced analysis of fascism and related currents comes not from academia but from our movements. </p>
Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-25385507118268986602023-07-09T22:13:00.005-04:002023-07-11T09:53:03.010-04:00Hindu nationalism in the United States: Challenging racial subordination from the far right?<i>A growing U.S. network of Modi supporters mixes Hindu supremacism with MAGA politics. The result could stretch the boundaries of who is white.</i>
<p><b>by Matthew N. Lyons</b><i> <br /></i></p><i></i><p>Even mainstream media <a href="https://time.com/6289932/the-biden-modi-meeting-was-a-failure-for-democracy/" target="_blank">noted the disconnect</a> when Joe Biden lavishly welcomed Narendra Modi to Washington after claiming the defense of democracy was a cornerstone of his presidency. The prime minister of India heads an authoritarian (and arguably fascist) political party firmly rooted in Islamophobia and mass murder. Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/usa-biden-and-modi-must-address-grave-human-rights-concerns-during-summit/" target="_blank">called out</a> Modi’s government for overseeing a “rapid deterioration of human rights protections...including increasing violence against religious minorities, shrinking civil society space, and the criminalization of dissent.” So when Biden <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-modi-india-state-visit-human-rights-5e4bc32e679ad6bae7225a28f7f6334d" target="_blank">celebrated</a> the U.S.-India relationship as “more dynamic than at any time in history” and his administration announced multibillion-dollar deals to build semiconductors and high-tech weaponry in India, it was a lot more about geopolitics and fear of China than anything to do with democracy. </p><p>But Modi’s Hindu nationalist movement doesn’t just run India; it’s also a growing force in the United States, and in the years ahead its U.S. branch could help reshape not just the political landscape but even the U.S. racial order. Indian Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, increasingly visible politically, whose members include Vice President Kamala Harris and two of the current Republican presidential contenders (Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley). Within the Indian American community, Hindu nationalism’s bid for dominance is sharply contested by liberal and radical South Asians. </p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKl24cSiSvvuwzzdgTx7uLLefQIydimIOLqKGmsB5YbjRT-uPtV0f4OMmNf5lnIPnwZP2EqQC9G3zQ8bxHhpmgjyxarNCMMzrynIiVBk5LxvN9q4gYH20zC-_oQ_QSuruQYRvwws313iziC7JTvSfyuCrNaUTL6OMHTwG0FxnTMzx3t51WvJfN/s640/Howdy,_Modi!_(48783742533).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Modi and Trump holding hands and waving to crowd at stadium" border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKl24cSiSvvuwzzdgTx7uLLefQIydimIOLqKGmsB5YbjRT-uPtV0f4OMmNf5lnIPnwZP2EqQC9G3zQ8bxHhpmgjyxarNCMMzrynIiVBk5LxvN9q4gYH20zC-_oQ_QSuruQYRvwws313iziC7JTvSfyuCrNaUTL6OMHTwG0FxnTMzx3t51WvJfN/w640-h428/Howdy,_Modi!_(48783742533).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prime Minister Modi and President Trump at "Howdy Modi" rally in Houston, 22 September 2019<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />There are a lot of good critiques and exposes of the Hindu nationalist movement both in India and beyond. A recent discussion that I find particularly helpful is Maia Ramnath’s essay “The Other Aryan Supremacy: Fighting Hindu Fascism in the South Asian Diaspora,” in the 2022 collection <a href="https://www.akpress.org/no-pasaran.html" target="_blank"><i>¡No Pasaran! Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis</i></a>, edited by Shane Burley. Ramnath’s analysis stands out to me for several reasons: (1) she provides a good overview of Hindu nationalist politics and ideology, with an emphasis on the movement’s organizing in the United States; (2) she highlights the need for antifascists of all backgrounds to become familiar with Hindu nationalism, and for non-South Asians to join in solidarity with the many South Asian organizations that are actively combating this supremacist movement; and (3) she offers insights beyond anything I’ve seen elsewhere into the complicated relationship between Hindu nationalism and U.S. racial politics. In this essay I will use “The Other Aryan Supremacy” as a particular reference point, together with a February 2023 interview with the author on <i>Final Straw Radio</i>, “<a href="https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2023/02/19/maia-ramnath-on-resisting-hindutva/" target="_blank">Maia Ramnath on Resisting Hindutva</a>.” (All page number references below are to “The Other Aryan Supremacy.”) <p></p>
<h3>Overview of Hindutva</h3>
<p><a href="https://dkiapcss.edu/Publications/Ocasional%20Papers/OPHinduNationalism.pdf" target="_blank">Hindu nationalism</a> is a right-wing authoritarian movement that seeks to impose Hindu political and cultural dominance on India. Hindu nationalists have perpetrated some of the most <a href="https://soc.culture.tamil.narkive.com/86D98eF2/the-struggle-for-india-s-soul-1" target="_blank">horrific political violence</a> of recent decades, including <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/751541321/this-is-it-im-going-to-die-indias-minorities-are-targeted-in-lynchings" target="_blank">lynchings</a>, torture, gang rape, and mass killings of Muslims, as well as periodic violence and persecution against <a href="https://acleddata.com/2016/10/18/caste-violence-in-india-sparks-dalit-protests/" target="_blank">Dalits</a> and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/2/india-christians-church-hindu-groups-bjp-conversion" target="_blank">Christians</a>. Hindu nationalism’s predominant form, also known as Hindutva (“Hinduness”), centers on the <a href="https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-rashtriya-swayamsevak-sangh-rss/" target="_blank">Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh</a> (National Volunteer Organization, or RSS), an all-male cadre organization that promotes a paramilitary ethos and sets the ideological direction for the movement as a whole. Surrounding the RSS is an extensive network known as the Sangh Parivar (Sangh family), which includes dozens of organizations with tens of millions of active members. There are organizations for workers, students, farmers, women, youth, and business professionals, as well as groups focused on education, religion, media, social services, and so on. Over the past seventy years, Hindu nationalism has moved from marginality to become the dominant political force in India and, arguably, the largest right-wing movement in the world. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Hindu nationalists have perpetrated some of the most horrific political violence of recent decades, including lynchings, torture, gang rape, and mass killings of Muslims as well as periodic violence and persecution against Dalits and Christians.”</i></span></p>
<p>The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Sangh Parivar’s political wing, has headed India’s national government since 2014 and <a href="https://english.newsnationtv.com/election/lok-sabha-election/2019-vs-2014-how-much-votes-bjp-and-congress-got-here-is-the-comparison-225589.html" target="_blank">received</a> 229 million votes (37%) in the most recent (2019) parliamentary elections. Prime Minister <a href="https://thewire.in/politics/narendra-modi-rss-pracharak-politician" target="_blank">Modi</a> has been an active RSS member throughout his adult life. Modi was chief minister of the Gujarat state government from 2001 to 2014 and is widely considered to be <a href="https://thewire.in/communalism/bbc-documentary-gujarat-riots-modi-directly-responsible" target="_blank">complicit</a> in the <a href="https://soc.culture.tamil.narkive.com/86D98eF2/the-struggle-for-india-s-soul-1" target="_blank">2002 Gujarat pogrom</a>, when Hindu nationalist gangs armed, “in some cases, with printouts from government computer databases listing the names and addresses of Muslims and Muslim-owned businesses…embarked on a rampage of looting, arson, rape, torture, and murder that left thousands dead and many more thousands homeless.” In response several countries, including the United States, instituted travel bans against Modi. (The U.S. rescinded its ban in 2014 when Modi became prime minister.) Since the BJP-led national government took power, both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremacists-nationalism-tearing-india-apart-modi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks" target="_blank">vigilantes</a> and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/07/india-surge-summary-punishments-muslims" target="_blank">police</a> have intensified anti-Muslim violence and persecution. The government has also passed a new <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/30/india-citizenship-act-caa-nrc-assam/" target="_blank">citizenship law</a> that discriminates against Muslims, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/india-muslims-marginalized-population-bjp-modi" target="_blank">stripped</a> the Muslim-majority Kashmir region of its formal autonomy, and <a href="https://southasiantoday.com.au/article-9159-settler-colonialism-from-kashmir-to-palestine-details.aspx#" target="_blank">increased</a> colonialist repression of Kashmiris.</p>
<p>Hindutva is at least closely related to fascism, although the exact relationship is a matter of definitions. As many critics have emphasized, the early Sangh Parivar drew both <a href="https://sabrangindia.in/article/hindutvas-fascist-heritage/" target="_blank">inspiration and ideas</a> from European fascism, and many Hindu nationalists today still <a href="https://muslimmirror.com/eng/hitlers-hindus-the-rise-and-rise-of-indias-nazi-loving-nationalists/" target="_blank">admire Nazism</a>. Although cautioning that many Indians consider it “intellectual colonialism” to apply a Western political label to this distinctly South Asian ideology and movement, Ramnath argues that recognizing Hindutva as a form of fascism helps illuminate “international connections, convergences, and parallels” (255-256).</p>
<p>To help clarify both the extent and limits of those parallels, I’ll compare Hindu nationalism with four defining elements of fascist politics that I proposed in a <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2019/07/some-thoughts-on-fascism-and-current.html" target="_blank">talk about the U.S. far right</a> a few years ago. First, like fascism, Hindu nationalism involves a <i>totalizing effort to transform society</i>, in that it seeks to reshape all societal spheres along authoritarian corporatist lines. This transformation is based on a myth of “palingenetic ultranationalism” (which historian <a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/resources/griffin-staging-the-nations/" target="_blank">Roger Griffin</a> considers fascism’s core feature)—the idea that the nation’s organic, transcendent unity is under deadly attack and must be reborn by purging alien threats—in particular, Muslim “invaders.” Second, Hindu nationalists have set out to achieve their goals through an <i>independent, organized mass mobilization</i>—not just controlling people, but energizing and activating them through an extensive, autonomous network that includes a large paramilitary wing. Third, Hindutva shares fascism’s <i>contradictory relationship with the established order</i>: on the one hand, it promotes intensified oppression and violence based on religion, caste, gender, and class and speaks to those (notably <a href="https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/revolt-upper-castes" target="_blank">upper-caste Hindus</a>) who feel threatened by oppressed groups rising up, but it also uses populist appeals to the resentments of those who feel <a href="https://www.populismstudies.org/how-has-hindutva-populism-blurred-the-line-between-caste-and-religion-in-indian-democracy/" target="_blank">excluded or beaten down</a> by political, cultural, or economic elites. <br /></p>
<p>Yet Hindu nationalism differs from fascism’s fourth defining element that I proposed for a U.S. context: <i>rejection of the existing liberal democratic political system</i>. The Hindu nationalists of India’s BJP have not done this, at least not overtly. In this respect, the BJP can be compared with the <a href="https://www.psa.ac.uk/psa/news/matteo-salvini-giorgia-meloni-and-%E2%80%98post-fascism%E2%80%99-political-logic" target="_blank">“post-fascist” Brothers of Italy</a> party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. As a related point, current-day U.S. fascists are consistently at odds with the capitalist ruling class, whether or not they want to call capitalism as a system into question, but India’s Sangh Parivar has forged a <a href="https://jacobin.com/2019/09/modi-houston-rally-hindu-nationalism" target="_blank">cordial working relationship</a> with economic elites both domestically and internationally. Rather than treat these differences as definitive, I see them as highlighting fascism’s varied nature and capacity to adapt to different circumstances in different ways.</p>
<p>India’s Hindutva-led governments have pursued close ties with U.S. administrations both Republican and Democratic. Donald Trump of course <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/when-donald-trump-called-pm-modi-father-of-india-1602819-2019-09-24" target="_blank">admired</a> Prime Minister Modi’s Islamophobia and authoritarian leadership, but it was Barack Obama who ended the Bush administration’s visa ban on Modi by inviting him to visit the White House and who, in <a href="https://prospect.org/world/barack-obamas-legacy-is-narendra-modi/" target="_blank">one commentator’s words</a>, “chose to rehabilitate [Modi’s] image on the world stage.” Following this shift, the Obama administration designated India as a “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/07/joint-statement-united-states-and-india-enduring-global-partners-21st" target="_blank">Major Defense Partner</a>,” giving the nuclear-armed state exceptional access to U.S. military technologies. These overtures reportedly reflected both Obama's interest in <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1693641/us-president-barack-obamas-india-trip-message-china-say-analysts" target="_blank">using India as a strategic lever</a> against China and his hopes to <a href="https://prospect.org/world/barack-obamas-legacy-is-narendra-modi/" target="_blank">expand opportunities in India for U.S. businesses</a>.<br /></p>
<p>Hindu nationalists have also developed a strong relationship with the State of Israel and with right-wing Zionism, fueled partly by a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-israel/netanyahu-says-israel-india-both-face-threat-from-radical-islam-idUSKBN1F51Y7" target="_blank">shared hatred</a> of “radical Islam” and partly by Hindu nationalists’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-indias-hindu-nationalists-worship-israels-nation-state-model-111450" target="_blank">admiration</a> for the Zionist project. Israeli settler colonialism over Palestinians has <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/qa-india-israel-azad-essa/" target="_blank">provided lessons</a> for BJP policy in Kashmir, and Zionism’s false claim that criticism of Israel equals antisemitism has <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-hindu-nationalists-using-the-pro-israel-playbook" target="_blank">offered a blueprint</a> for the false claim that criticism of Hindutva equals “Hinduphobia.” </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwzw-crBCXipNaVykp4SjA73iL3i6H50kKMtH95hWjnw5CkRFrW7OiHhykJcEIKM7J06DewaEi5M2TsWQ82w8l59JES7pnEqDekBX27V-stRUqzOqmRuKo9F9oojWrNlHVGg-em7qMy4AFGgRWqa3FCnmqmWetmf28aeIYKPy8Zf_NFPvCjPk1/s640/Path_Sanchalan_Bhopal-1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Group of men in matching brown pants and white shirts, carrying sticks and red flags, marching in the street" border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwzw-crBCXipNaVykp4SjA73iL3i6H50kKMtH95hWjnw5CkRFrW7OiHhykJcEIKM7J06DewaEi5M2TsWQ82w8l59JES7pnEqDekBX27V-stRUqzOqmRuKo9F9oojWrNlHVGg-em7qMy4AFGgRWqa3FCnmqmWetmf28aeIYKPy8Zf_NFPvCjPk1/w640-h428/Path_Sanchalan_Bhopal-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Members of the RSS, Hindu nationalist cadre organization, marching in Bhopal, 23 October 2016</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<h3>Hindutva organizing in the United States</h3>
<p>Hindutva is not only the dominant political force in India, but has also built extensive, powerful networks within the global Indian diaspora, including the large ethnic Indian communities in the United States, Britain, Canada, and elsewhere. The RSS’s U.S. counterpart, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), has 222 chapters in 32 states, according to a 2022 <a href="http://www.sacw.net/article14915.html" target="_blank">report</a> by South Asia Citizens Web, which details a wide range of activities by Sangh-affiliated organizations in the United States—a network that Vijay Prashad has dubbed “<a href="http://commons.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2018/02/Prashad_The_Karma_of_Brown_Folk.pdf" target="_blank">Yankee Hindutva</a>.” For example, the Hindu American Political Action Committee funds electoral candidates; groups such as the Hindu American Foundation and the Uberoi Foundation undertake efforts to influence public schooling and university education; while the India Relief and Development Fund, Sewa International, and other ostensibly charitable organizations funnel millions of dollars toward Hindu nationalist projects in India. Many of these groups conceal their political beliefs and affiliations. In addition, Hindu nationalists in the U.S. often use public <a href="https://religiondispatches.org/north-america-has-a-hindu-nationalist-problem-and-scholars-are-on-the-frontlines-of-these-right-wing-attacks/" target="_blank">smear campaigns and lawsuits</a> to pressure and intimidate opponents.</p>
<p>Many of these activities center on efforts to shape public discourse around India, Indians, and Hinduism. Maia Ramnath comments that Hindu nationalists intervening in the U.S. educational system are “not just advocating for India’s inclusion in the curriculum; they’re trying to take control of <i>how</i> India is represented in the West, claiming sole authority for a brahminist, Aryan supremacist narrative—as if those representations and narratives were not heavily contested <i>within</i> India and South Asian diasporic communities” (247). Hindu nationalist groups such as the Hindu American Foundation have also been at the forefront of opposition to initiatives banning caste discrimination, including a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/us/seattle-bans-caste-discrimination-cec/index.html" target="_blank">Seattle ordinance</a> passed in February 2023 and a <a href="https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/caste-discrimination-california/" target="_blank">bill</a> currently before the California state legislature.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Many Hindu nationalist groups in the U.S. conceal their political beliefs and affiliations. In addition, these groups often use public smear campaigns and lawsuits to pressure and intimidate opponents.”</i></span></p>
<p>Hindu nationalists have taken a growing interest in U.S. electoral politics. In recent years, Hindutva’s leading congressional ally was <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/05/tulsi-gabbard-2020-hindu-nationalist-modi/ " target="_blank">Tulsi Gabbard</a>, who served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021 as its first Hindu (but not Indian American) member, and who ran briefly in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Although she backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, Gabbard is <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tulsi-gabbard-president-foreign-islam/" target="_blank">no leftist</a>, and her hostility to “radical Islam” and affinity for dictators like Hafez al-Assad have won praise from <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/428962/tulsi-gabbard-neo-nazi-white-nationalist-support/ " target="_blank">alt-rightists</a> and MAGA commentators such as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-homophobic-history-defended-tucker-carlson-glenn-greenwald-2019-1" target="_blank">Tucker Carlson</a>. But Ramnath notes that Gabbard is exceptional in that Hindu nationalists usually support Republicans (233). Chicago-based industrialist and avid Modi supporter Shalabh Kumar was a <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/indian-american-tycoon-shalabh-kumar-biggest-donors-donald-trump-election-campaign-346924-2016-10-17" target="_blank">leading contributor</a> to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Kumar also founded the Republican Hindu Coalition, which later <a href="https://www.news18.com/news/india/republican-hindu-coalition-offers-to-raise-25-billion-for-trumps-wall-to-protect-our-children-1773407.html" target="_blank">offered</a> to raise $25 billion to fund Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall. An <a href="https://www.epw.in/engage/article/trump-%E2%80%98howdy-modi%E2%80%99-and-diaspora-do-indian" target="_blank">article</a> by Anu Mandavilli and Raja Swamy highlights the contradictions underlying the RHC’s approach:</p>
<blockquote>“In February 2018, the RHC organised a rally in Washington DC in support of Trump’s immigration policies.... Invoking Trump’s promise of a ‘merit-based’ immigration system, participants in the rally asked for quicker processing of green cards for the ‘skilled’ and the ‘best and brightest’ applicants (evidently referring to applicants such as themselves).... [The RHC’s] rhetoric derives from a model minority discourse that claims that hard-working immigrants and good capitalist subjects such as themselves ought to be exempted from anti-immigrant policies on account of ‘merit.’ Tellingly, this posture is also wholly consistent with the politics of class- and caste-privileged Indian immigrants who oppose affirmative action/reservations on the grounds of merit in India.” </blockquote>
<p>Mandavilli and Swamy add that, despite the RHC’s hopes, the Trump administration made it harder even for privileged, “skilled” immigrants to get visas. They note that “the RHC is unable to acknowledge, let alone address Trump’s repeated and openly expressed racist contempt for immigrants and minorities, the broader legitimisation of white supremacist ideology, or the long history of racist violence against immigrants in the US.” </p>
<h3>White nationalism and Hindutva</h3>
<p>Despite their ideological affinities with Nazism, as far as I can tell Hindu nationalists in the U.S. have focused their political attentions on the MAGA movement and the Republican Party, not any formations to the right of the GOP. For their part, white nationalists have devoted little attention to Hindutva, but when they do comment on it, it’s usually with respect and admiration. Donald Thoresen <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150715112325/https://counter-currents.com/2015/07/the-marxist-attack-on-hindu-nationalism/" target="_blank">wrote</a> in 2015 on the alt-right website <i>Counter-Currents</i> that white nationalists could </p>
<blockquote> “take some small comfort in the knowledge that we are not alone in our fight against Leftist cultural hegemony and that there are groups of people on the other side of the world who are actually making some very real progress in this long, uphill battle. ...the specific concerns of Hindu nationalists are not our concerns, but they are sufficiently analogous to warrant study.”</blockquote>
<p>In 2020, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/03/04/emails-reveal-identity-longtime-white-nationalist-propagandist-onetime-conservative-insider " target="_blank">Kevin DeAnna</a> (“James Kirkpatrick”) <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200301143511/https://vdare.com/articles/india-stripping-illegals-children-of-citizenship-hope-trump-noticed" target="_blank">wrote</a> on <i>Vdare</i>: </p>
<blockquote> “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is implementing common-sense citizenship laws to protect India’s national identity. Much like China, India is consolidating itself as an empire with a solid ethno-religious core. Its laws provide a model for how a nationalist American government could undo at least some of the damage from decades of out-of-control immigration.”</blockquote>
<p>DeAnna’s article expressed the disappointment felt by many alt-rightists with Trump’s opportunism and failure to implement even harsher immigration policies: “Unfortunately, rather than taking inspiration from PM Modi’s laws, President Trump and his advisers apparently just see an opportunity to win the Indian-American vote.” </p>
<p>If white nationalists draw inspiration from Hindu nationalists, the reverse is also true. The alt-right’s effective use of online harassment and intimidation against political enemies (most notably during the 2016 presidential campaign) may have helped embolden Hindu nationalist <a href="https://religiondispatches.org/north-america-has-a-hindu-nationalist-problem-and-scholars-are-on-the-frontlines-of-these-right-wing-attacks/" target="_blank">campaigns</a> in recent years against North American scholars studying Hinduism and South Asian history, which have included disinformation, smears and personal attacks, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/09/death-threats-sent-to-participants-of-us-conference-on-hindu-nationalism" target="_blank">threats of death and sexual violence</a>, and stalking.</p>
<p>Going much further, within India itself the Western alt-right has inspired a whole <a href="https://scroll.in/article/1023250/plotting-a-hindu-rashtra-inside-the-hate-filled-world-of-indias-trads" target="_blank">subculture</a> along Hindutva’s rightward edge. Calling themselves “<a href="https://thewire.in/communalism/genocide-as-pop-culture-inside-the-hindutva-world-of-trads-and-raitas" target="_blank">trads</a>” (short for traditionalists), an informal online network of young people has coalesced around the use of ironic memes, violent supremacism and misogyny, and terms and symbols adapted from the alt-right. </p>
<blockquote> “Trad ‘humour’ is deliberately provocative, and designed to ‘trigger’ marginalised communities with shockingly violent ‘humour.’ They include memes depicting the beheading of Muslims, caricatures of Muslims being mowed under their cars, Dalit ‘cockroaches’ being gassed, Muslims being murdered inside concentration camps, or rape victims (Muslims/ Dalits) being urinated upon by a saffronised Pepe the Frog.” </blockquote>
<p>Trad posts often depict sexual violence against Muslim women, and in both 2021 and 2022, trads organized <a href="https://scroll.in/article/1023250/plotting-a-hindu-rashtra-inside-the-hate-filled-world-of-indias-trads" target="_blank">mock online auctions</a> in which scores of prominent Muslim women were offered for sale. But Hindu women who don’t submit to male authority are often targeted as well, with trads declaring that girls should be married young and not educated, and that feminists should be killed. All this is comparable to alt-right online misogyny in the United States, but in India the threats arguably carry additional weight, because organized Hindu nationalist gangs really have carried out <a href="https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/one-thing-was-distinctly-rotten-about-2002-gujarat-riots-use-of-rape-as-a-form-of-terror/225511/" target="_blank">gruesome sexual violence</a> against many women within the past quarter century. </p>
<p>Much as <a href="https://politicalresearch.org/2017/01/20/ctrl-alt-delete-report-on-the-alternative-right#sthash.ODAzReRw.dpbs" target="_blank">alt-rightists</a> took aim at the “cuckservatives” of the Republican establishment, India’s trads express scathing contempt for the BJP, RSS, and other mainstream Hindu nationalists, who they call “raitas,” for being too moderate in their pursuit of Hindu supremacy. As Hindutva grows and becomes more established in the United States, it may be a matter of time before some of its supporters start emulating India’s version of the alt-right, further fueling the movement’s violent, supremacist, and misogynist tendencies.</p>
<h3>Hindutva and the U.S. racial order</h3>
<p>In recent decades, the U.S. right has broadened its racial base through significant <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2019/09/multiracial-far-right-conversation-with.html " target="_blank">multi-ethnic organizing</a>, as seen in relatively small groups such as the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-young-men-of-color-are-joining-white-supremacist-groups " target="_blank">Proud Boys</a> as well as enormous ones such as the <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2021/09/create-fire-in-you-to-fight-injustice.html" target="_blank">New Apostolic Reformation</a> movement. The growth of Yankee Hindutva contributes to this trend but also pushes past it into new territory. Formations such as the Proud Boys and NAR have brought people of color into predominantly white, predominantly Eurocentric contexts. But U.S. Hindu nationalism is not only rooted in a community of color and an Asia-based ideology; it also represents a branch of an organized network that is older, larger, and more successful than almost anything else on the U.S. right. It’s unlikely that this rising force will be content to be junior partners in a movement dedicated to “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54352635" target="_blank">Western chauvinism</a>” or the equivalent.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Yankee Hindutva involves an implicit bid not just for model minority status, but for membership in the United States’ racially privileged group.”</i></span></p>
<p>Hindutva’s engagement with race in the United States isn’t just a question of how it relates to specific racist policies or political movements, but also how it relates to the structures and dynamics of U.S. racial oppression as an overall system. That engagement involves an encounter between two complex realities: (1) conflict and hierarchy within India and the Indian diaspora along lines of religion, caste, class, and political beliefs; and (2) the ambiguous, contested role of South Asians relative to the United States’ white-black binary.</p>
<p>On one side, Hindu nationalism identifies Hindus not just as practitioners of a religion but as a superior ethnic group, who collectively are entitled to cultural and political dominance over others, especially Muslims. Reinforcing this ideology, as Ramnath notes,</p>
<blockquote> “Hindutva has its base of overseas support in the most affluent segment of the South Asian diaspora—those most likely to align themselves politically with the elite, which in the US means claiming adjacency to white status, unlike those less-advantaged members of the diaspora who are more likely to align themselves in solidarity with other racialized immigrant and minority groups” (231). </blockquote>
<p>On the other side, in the United States Hindutva encounters a system that defines people of Indian descent, whether Hindu or not, as a racially subordinate group subjected to racist discrimination and violence, but also as a “model minority”—i.e., as a group supposedly more capable and successful than other communities of color. In <a href="https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2019/12/red-white-and-saffron-why-american-anti-fascists-must-combat-hindu-nationalism/" target="_blank">Sarang Narasimhaiah’s words</a>, “the American state has constructed Asian Americans, including South Asians, as a model minority precisely to pit them against other racially marginalized populations, above all else Black people.” Hindu nationalism intensifies this dynamic, as Narasimhaiah notes:</p>
<blockquote>“By encouraging its followers to consolidate their political, economic, and cultural supremacy by any means necessary…Hindutva multiplies the unjust spoils promised by model minority discourse to diasporic South Asians. In doing so, it deepens South Asian American complicity in Black oppression and racialized class warfare against other oppressed peoples in the USA.”</blockquote>
<p>Ramnath takes this a step further, arguing that Yankee Hindutva involves an implicit bid not just for model minority status, but for membership in the United States’ racially privileged group, or as she puts it, “adjacency to white status.” Here Ramnath points to the historical reality that the model minority construct isn’t fixed —in the same way that the whole made up, biologically arbitrary system of race categories isn’t fixed. Like many other immigrant groups in the United States, South Asians’ racial status has been a subject of uncertainty, conflict, and change.</p>
<p>U.S. legal history reflects this. In 1790, naturalized U.S. citizenship was limited to “free white persons”; in 1870, during Reconstruction, it was extended also to people of African descent. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, federal courts heard a series of cases adjudicating the racial status of other ethnic groups. In 1920, Indian immigrant Bhagat Singh Thind petitioned for citizenship, arguing that (a) Indians were classified as “Caucasians” under standard anthropological nomenclature, (b) “Caucasians” were by definition “white,” and (c) as an Indian he was therefore white. Although four lower courts had previously ruled that Indians were white, and although the U.S. racial order was supposedly based on objective, scientific reality, the Supreme Court ruled in 1923 against Thind, declaring that the definition of whiteness was <i>not</i> a matter of science but of “common understanding, by unscientific men.” As a result of this ruling, the federal government stripped many Indian Americans of their citizenship. (Ramnath cites the <i>Thind</i> case in “The Other Aryan Supremacy,” page 235, but I’m relying here on the fuller account in <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814736944/white-by-law-10th-anniversary-edition/" target="_blank"><i>White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race</i></a> by Ian F. Haney López, Chapter 4.)</p>
<p>But the U.S. racial order has never been static, and there’s no reason to think that South Asians’ non-white status is immutable. In 1923, many southern and eastern Europeans were widely considered racially inferior and subjected to systematic discrimination and exclusion, but that changed within a few decades, as these groups were integrated into the white racial category. Something similar could happen in the 21st century to a number of Asian and Latinx groups, and Hindutva makes “Hindu Americans” prime candidates for such a shift. Hindu nationalism, Ramnath argues, bolsters elitist attitudes that drive wedges “not only between South Asians and other Black and brown minority groups, but <i>within</i> the South Asian diaspora—between those most likely identified as Indian, Hindu, <i>savarna</i>, middle class, white collar, educated, affluent, and those who are most likely lower caste, working class, minority, Muslim, or Dalit.” This elitism embodies a grievance against the U.S. racial order, but it’s a “resentment at being misclassified as nonelite,” not an objection to racist categories themselves (232).</p>
<p>Ramnath continues,</p>
<blockquote> “New immigrant groups can try to gain admittance into the charmed circle of whiteness but, to do that, they have to prove their eligibility through certain benchmarks of economic success, educational attainment, and cultural assimilation: one of the ways to demonstrate assimilation is to perform the requisite racism against designated groups and embrace the structures of white supremacy” ( 232). </blockquote>
<p>Ramnath elaborates this point further in her <a href="https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2023/02/19/maia-ramnath-on-resisting-hindutva/#TheOtherAryanSupremacy" target="_blank"><i>Final Straw</i> interview</a>: </p>
<blockquote> “Two of the things today that you need to do to get admission into the dominant group, into the in-group, you have to perform anti-Blackness, and you have to perform Islamophobia…. For Indian immigrants who subscribe to Hindutva…and who want to be considered superior, not inferior,…it’s really easy for them to mesh into U.S. right-wing movements and US racial politics. They are already very Islamophobic, so that’s not even a stretch for them…. Anti-Blackness fits in very well with their attitude to caste. It’s very compatible with the ways they think in terms of the caste structure inside India.”</blockquote>
<p>The idea of fascists (or their close cousins) pushing to make the U.S. racial elite more inclusive might seem self-contradictory, but there’s a historical precedent. In the 1930s U.S., many non-Protestant Christians faced systematic discrimination, racist immigration laws barred most southern and eastern Europeans, and the Ku Klux Klan hated Catholics almost as much as it hated Black people. Yet the largest and most dynamic branch of the fascist movement, led by Roman Catholic priest Charles Coughlin, rejected Protestant supremacy and welcomed white Christians of all denominations (while vilifying Jews). Coughlin actually started doing radio broadcasts, which became his chief propaganda vehicle, in defiance of a Klan cross-burning on his lawn. Like the elitism Ramnath describes among relatively privileged South Asians, Coughlin’s movement expressed, not an objection to racism itself, but a “resentment at being misclassified as nonelite.” (Chip Berlet and I discuss Coughlin’s movement and its context in our 2000 book <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Right-Wing-Populism-in-America/Berlet-Lyons/9781572305625/contents" target="_blank"><i>Right-Wing Populism in America</i></a>, Chapter 7.)</p>
<p>To be clear, Hindu nationalists aren’t openly calling for greater racial privilege. Like most of their MAGA allies, Hindu nationalists in the U.S. disavow explicit racism, and race categories no longer carry the same legal imprimatur as they did when Bhagat Singh Thind petitioned the government to be recognized as white. In any case, it’s too early to say whether some fraction of Indian Americans will see their racial status rise, but several factors make the possibility easier to envision, including Hindu nationalism’s growing organization and influence, the Indian American community’s dramatic growth and relatively high overall economic status, and the fact that white people as currently defined are projected to become a minority of the U.S. population within a couple of decades. If this racial shift does happen, it also remains to be seen to what extent European American rightists will accept it and to what extent it will fuel tensions and conflicts with racial traditionalists and hardliners.</p>
<h3>Challenges for antifascists</h3>
<p>The rise of Hindu nationalism in the United States poses several challenges for radical antifascists. For non-South Asians such as myself, there’s a need to act in solidarity with the South Asians who have born the brunt of exposing and combating Hindutva, and who, as Sarang Narasimhaiah <a href="https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2019/12/red-white-and-saffron-why-american-anti-fascists-must-combat-hindu-nationalism/" target="_blank">writes</a>, “could use some backup.” That solidarity, Narasimhaiah continues, requires educating ourselves about the politics and communities involved, “sensitivity when interacting with diasporic South Asian youth who buy into Hindutva,” and “rigorous dialogue” with those already on the front lines of this struggle. Ramnath’s <i>Final Straw</i> interview <a href="https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2023/02/19/maia-ramnath-on-resisting-hindutva/#TheOtherAryanSupremacy" target="_blank">cites</a> several organizations that are fighting Hindu nationalism in the U.S., such as S<a href="https://www.southasiacollective.org/" target="_blank">outh Asia Scholar Activist Collective</a>, <a href="https://southasiasolidarityinitiative.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">South Asia Solidarity Initiative</a>, <a href="https://www.equalitylabs.org/" target="_blank">Equality Labs</a> (a Dalit feminist civil rights organization), and several others.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“For non-South Asian antifascists, there’s a need to act in solidarity with the South Asians who have born the brunt of exposing and combating Hindutva.”</i></span></p>
<p>More broadly and for all of us, there’s a need to foreground the interconnectedness of struggles. Narasimhaiah calls for “a joint undertaking that confronts Hindu nationalism as a transnational project inextricably connected with American capitalism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and imperialism.” Similarly, Ramnath calls for uniting the struggles against fascism and colonialism, caste and white supremacy, and emphasizes that it’s important to confront “colonial structures and racial supremacist logics wherever they appear, and whoever carries them out” (255). <br /></p>
<p>Elaborating on that last point, there’s a need for many of us to rethink old assumptions about what fascism looks like, what faces it wears, and who it serves. Otherwise, as has been pointed out more than once, we’ll be fighting 21st century battles with 1930s weapons. </p>
<h3>Photo credits:</h3>
<p>1. President Donald J. Trump holds hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India as they take a surprise walk together Sunday, September 22, 2019, around the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead (public domain), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Howdy,_Modi!_(48783742533).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.
</p>
<p>2. Path Sanchalan Bhopal by Rashtriya Swam Sevak Sangh, October 23, 2016, photo by Suyash Dwivedi (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Path_Sanchalan_Bhopal-1.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.
</p>
Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-83110826933219387272023-06-24T18:00:00.001-04:002023-06-24T18:01:04.264-04:00On the dangers of liberal antifascism: A reply to Robert Reich<p style="text-align: left;"><i>Longtime antifascist Paul Bowman criticizes liberals who collapse the difference between fascism and right-wing populism to score electoral points. </i><br /></p><h3>By Paul Bowman <br /></h3><p>This is a response to Robert Reich’s piece in the Guardian of Saturday 17th June, entitled “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/17/trump-republican-party-fascism" target="_blank">Trump and the Republican party exemplify these five elements of fascism</a>.”
As Robert Reich and most of the Guardian readership are not regular
readers of Three Way Fight blog, obviously this is not a direct response
in the sense of hoping to reach the same audience as that article. But
as militant anti-fascists we need to be aware of, and have theoretical
and ideological counters to, the attempts by establishment liberals to
weaponise anti-fascism for their own agendas.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Color-distorted close-up of Joe Biden's face with the words "We Are Living Through a Battle for the Soul of This Nation."" border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="1557" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXftwcJEaNWLk_MeXb7K37e3WtBuWhZili2nHY-L5_0DHWKPEzsGQX0p6dDChxGPnHsVeOcVQEVJUAAwCsjoEpaWlnp2kzaLGPYVa7iDnyZfnI01HXhUpyR7R-1uwEj6w6APyY-OcKgnPMaDKJ0oykbB3GxRZ1gFVaQpLcd9hmgEtMooaYwoqX/s600/evil_Biden.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="600" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joe Biden’s 2022 “Battle for the Soul of this Nation” speech used<br />antifascism to help win elections and reassert system legitimacy.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<h3>Reich’s five points</h3>
<p>Reich’s professed goal is that the mainstream US media (he uses the <i>Washington Post</i> as an example) should stop calling Trump an authoritarian and start calling him fascist. “Professed,” because it’s unlikely that Reich is dumb enough to think that the legal departments of WaPo and co are actually going to green light that particular change to the paper’s stylebook. Instead Reich’s “transitional demand” is really a political ploy to create yet another grievance for liberals to harp on about. But if his “ask” of the media is a ploy, he is by contrast absolutely sincere in wanting to re-define fascism in a way that suits his agenda. To this end he puts forward five points that define the difference between the merely authoritarian and the genuinely fascist. He does so by means of a “compare and contrast” between the two, which we’ll come back to in a minute. </p>
<p>Point 1 – <i>“The rejection of democracy, the rule of law and equal rights under the law in favor of a strongman who interprets the popular will.”</i> There’s two parts to this. The first is illiberalism generally. The second is the specific role of the charismatic leader who leads, not by tail ending public sentiment via opinion polls, but in Reich’s words by being “the <i>means</i> of <i>discovering</i> what society needs.” Reich implicitly concedes that the first element is not unique to fascists, as authoritarians also share this. But he counterposes the fascist form of illiberalism as based on the transcendent role of the providential leader, come to embody the will of the common man. </p>
<p>Point 2 – <i>“The galvanizing of popular rage against cultural elites.”</i> Here Reich baldly asserts that authoritarians don’t do this and fascists do. This is the point where he really gives the whole game away because no reasonable person can read that heading and not think of populism. </p>
<p>Point 3 – <i>“Nationalism based on a dominant ‘superior’ race and historic bloodlines.”</i> Having fumbled the ball so badly on the previous point, Reich attempts a recovery with a point which is a lot more reminiscent of fascism. He tries to create a dichotomy between a supposedly non-ethnic “authoritarian” nationalism (presumably like an illiberal version of liberal “civic nationalism”) and an ethno-nationalism unique to fascism. It’s true that there are versions of fascism that put race above nation, but if Trump had stopped talking about “the American People” and just gone with “the White Race,” he would have never been elected in the first place. </p>
<p>Point 4 – <i>“Extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.”</i> Like point three, this is, on the surface of it, more familiarly fashy. Reich waxes lyrical: <i>“For the fascist, war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors.”</i> Which is fine, for Mussolini or Hitler, true enough. But we’re talking about Trump here. The man who sacked John Bolton for his mania for starting a war against Iran. Although his claim to be the first post-war US president to not start a new war is the usual untrue exaggeration (see Reuters’ <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-modern-us-presidents-new-wa-idUSKBN2A22SN" target="_blank">fact check</a>), it is true that he didn’t initiate the kinds of military actions that Clinton and Obama did. Reich has gotten carried away with his own rhetoric here.</p>
<p>Point 5 – <i>“Disdain of women and fear of non-standard gender identities or sexual orientation.”</i> Reich opens by saying that authoritarians believe in hierarchy and order. And then goes on to say that “<i>by contrast</i>” [!] fascists believe in heterosexism and male supremacy. As if every conservative didn’t? Reich argues for a uniquely fascist heterosexist male chauvinism by tying it back to the previous point, saying <i>“Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexual, transgender and queer people because they are thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.”</i> But as we already discussed, Trump presents himself as a cosmic warrior against corruption and generalised evil, not a martial supersoldier. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><span>“We need to ideologically confront the racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic lies and propaganda of the authoritarian ethno-populist right, while also being ready to physically confront the street politics of fascist combat organisations through direct action and our own counterpower. We need to make clear the different challenges and different tactics required to confront these two distinct phenomena.”</span></i></span></p>
<h3>Hiding the populists behind a strawman “authoritarian”</h3>
<p>To sum it up, the fundamental theoretical sleight-of-hand that Reich is trying to pull off in his five points is setting up a false dichotomy between “authoritarians” and fascists. Upon closer inspection, the figure of the “authoritarian” is a faceless cypher, an a-historical strawman whose only function is to act as a foil to Reich’s “fascist.” When we look around the world today, from Italy’s recently departed Silvio Berlusconi, to Hungary’s Orbán, Turkey’s Erdoğan and many more besides, we see actually existing authoritarian right-wing populists who immediately give the lie to Reich’s strawman dichotomy. Do these populists present themselves as providential men of destiny who can embody the will of the common man? Check. 2 – Do they galvanize popular rage against “the elites”? Well, duh! 3 – Is their nationalism ethno-nationalism not the “civic” kind? Absolutely. (Check out Erdoğan’s “Karaturk” rhetoric or Orbán’s Magyar supremacism.) Right-wing populism and ethno-nationalism are so tightly entwined, we should really just call it ethno-populism. 4 – Do they extoll brute strength and martial values? Have you seen what the Turkish army is up to, lately? 5 – Do they rejoice in machismo and male chauvinism and demonise and openly call for the extinction of LGBT folks? Just take a look. All the way down the list of the five points, actually existing authoritarian ethno-populists do all the things that Reich says that authoritarians don’t do and is the true marker of the fascist. In other words, any right-wing populist politician is a supposed fascist, in Reich’s five-point schema. </p>
<h3>Where’s the harm?</h3>
<p>OK, so liberals gonna liberal, so what? I see two main dangers in the attempt by the Democratic liberal centrist establishment to instrumentalise anti-fascism. The first being a matter of narrow self-interest—i.e., the effects of this tendency on the militant anti-fascist movement itself. The second being the wider self-interest context of the social effects overall. </p>
<p>First a bit of history. This is not the first time a post-war centre-left political party has attempted to instrumentalise anti-fascism. In the early 1980s a number of large demonstrations against racism and fascism took place across France. These initial demonstrations were mainly self-organised by second-generation North African youth. The Parti Socialiste (PS) was in power under the presidency of François Mitterand (in office 1981-1995). Although elected on a wave of leftist optimism, Mitterand had ditched all the radical social-democratic elements of the 1981 electoral manifesto and now had little positive to offer the PS electorate. The PS seized on these organic anti-fascist and anti-racist demonstrations as an opportunity to create a negative reason for voting for them—<i>“Vote for us, or the Front National gets in!”</i> Mitterand modified the electoral system at the local, municipal, and regional levels (but not the crucial national one) to allow the FN to build a base and raise Jean Marie Le Pen up as a credible threat. The PS funded and supported an astro-turf anti-racist organisation “SOS Racisme” under the unaccountable despotism of a PS stooge, Harlem Désir. The French militant anti-fascist movement then came under attack from all sides for not submitting to the direction of this PS front and not limiting their tactics to the ineffective pacifist mass demonstrations of SOS Racisme. While the PS tactics hindered the militant anti-fascist movement and promoted the growth of the FN as a credible electoral threat, it ultimately failed to sustain support for the PS, which is today practically defunct. </p>
<p>So, in the present day, in the American context, the effort of Robert Reich and associated Democratic party faithful to instrumentalise anti-fascism against Trump in particular, and the GOP in general, risks replaying many of the same problems the Parti Socialiste imposed on the French militant anti-fascist movement. These are, in brief, the sowing of confusion in the minds of those sections of the public concerned about the rise of fascism and wanting to find an effective way to take part in the struggle; contributing to the criminalisation of militant anti-fascist direct action tactics; and the recentring of political attention on the passive, indirect action of electoralism. We could go into more detail on any of those aspects, but I think readers of this blog will be familiar with this territory. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><span>“If the Democratic party ideologues make fascism into a party-political slur for electoral purposes, then the word will lose all concrete meaning.”</span></i></span></p>
<p>So much for the “narrow self-interest” issues. The wider issues are the ideological and political effects of labeling Trump supporters and the Trumpist tendency within the GOP as fascist. Here we risk doing the fascists’ work for them. The likes of Steve Bannon and other far-right ideologues that target the GOP grassroots in order to convince them that there's no ideological or political difference between their <i>“Make America Great Again”</i> values and those of the far-right and fascist groupings proper. They trade in slogans like <i>“Not far right, just right so far.”</i> If the Democratic party ideologues make fascism into a party-political slur for electoral purposes, then the word will lose all concrete meaning. Like the boy who cried wolf, the ability of the militant anti-fascist movement to mobilise for direct action against the rising genuinely fascist combat organisations will suffer. In short, anything that drives the followers of right-wing populism into the arms of the fascists, from a leftwards direction, builds fascism, rather than fighting it. </p>
<p>As militant anti-fascists we need to make clear that we are for making use of our free speech rights (such as they are) to ideologically confront the racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic lies and propaganda of the authoritarian ethno-populist right. While also, at the same time, being ready to physically confront the street politics of fascist combat organisations through direct action and our own counterpower. We need to make clear the different challenges and different tactics required to confront these two distinct phenomena not only within our own existing ranks of committed militant anti-fascists, but also to the wider audience of anybody who cares about the rise of hate in America. Being able to explain what’s wrong in accounts like Robert Reich’s piece is a start in that direction. </p>
<p><i>Paul Bowman was a founding member of Leeds Anti-Fascist Action in 1986, remaining active within it until its self-dissolution in 2004. He has <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2023/01/on-fascism-and-three-way-fight-guest.html" target="_blank">contributed previously</a> to Three Way Fight.</i></p>
<br />ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-15213174267133550762023-06-13T20:30:00.022-04:002023-06-16T13:33:37.832-04:00Editors' note<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The article previously in this space has been taken down from Three Way Fight because controversy surrounding the article is beyond our capacity to address. We encourage readers to check out our previous publications about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including the articles “<a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2023/01/their-anti-imperialism-and-ours-guest.html" style="color: #954f72;">Their Anti-Imperialism and Ours</a>” by Linda Mann and “<a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/06/no-longer-gendarme-for-west-simon.html" style="color: #954f72;">No longer a gendarme for the West: Simon Pirani on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine</a>” by Matthew Lyons, as well as the list of “<a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/03/antifascist-resources-on-ukraine.html" style="color: #954f72;">Antifascist Resources on Ukraine</a>.” </span></i></p><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-69437195869399624562023-06-03T21:31:00.000-04:002023-06-03T21:31:43.559-04:00Revolutionary trans politics and the three way fight: an interview with rowan<p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisWEnOwcPktM8v1dyr7Zr92HPKm-lEBW9REbz7YjXG3dxh00vDtkKRTHZuts9FBfeGhm0B6YhlFnXnwvxpoVn0Su1Br_Ne24yDcwGJDFg1lmXwPbJAc0hfPqfbtPVah-jL6UQKB9yElHzk1Fm3jLaNo988EUhdPCX34rbBUNZJLS08lrf4f8M/s640/Stop_killing_my_trans_siblings.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="People holding signs at a trans rights rally; at center is person wearing a pink balaclava with sign that reads "Stop killing my trans siblings."" border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisWEnOwcPktM8v1dyr7Zr92HPKm-lEBW9REbz7YjXG3dxh00vDtkKRTHZuts9FBfeGhm0B6YhlFnXnwvxpoVn0Su1Br_Ne24yDcwGJDFg1lmXwPbJAc0hfPqfbtPVah-jL6UQKB9yElHzk1Fm3jLaNo988EUhdPCX34rbBUNZJLS08lrf4f8M/w640-h360/Stop_killing_my_trans_siblings.jpg" width="640" /></a></b></div><b><br />3WF: Trans and other gender-nonconforming people have become a major target of right-wing political attacks in recent years, and they continue to be major targets of systemic oppression and physical violence in U.S. society. How do you apply a three way fight framework to help us understand the contending forces in this situation? </b><p></p>
<p>Rowan: It feels important to start this out by speaking to the seriousness and urgency of this moment. Transgender people I know (particularly trans women) are panicking. Trans people are fleeing Republican-controlled states, and even trans women in Portland, Oregon, are considering and planning how to leave the United States. Parts of the country controlled by the right are passing laws that make it impossible for us to live as trans people, criminalizing our healthcare and our families. In some ways it seems that the kind of fascistic polarization that liberals were panicking about under Trump is occurring now for trans people, often without a peep from the liberals. The stakes are high, the moment is desperate, and this hardly feels like an academic discussion. This is a trans woman, the mother of a trans child, trying to think and to strategize about how we fight for our lives. </p>
<p>That said, clear thinking, beyond moralism and desperation, is essential if we are to survive this moment, let alone build movements for trans liberation that not only defend us, but fight for total liberation. I think this current moment of struggle around trans lives is a place where the three way fight analysis is incredibly useful. </p>
<p>The past decade has witnessed a real cultural transformation around gender in the United States. From <i>Time</i> magazine’s declaration of “the Transgender Tipping Point'' in 2014, to the widespread use of pronoun go-arounds in liberal social and business contexts, to Portland Public Schools implementing gender-neutral bathrooms, transgender people are more visible than ever, and in certain contexts more welcome and accepted. Whereas previous generations of trans people (and in particular trans women) were forces to live as outlaws, doing sex work or other criminalized labor to survive, today there are trans politicians and CEOs. The liberal ideological assumptions of trans liberalism tend to assume that being transgender is an inherent, innate, inborn, and immutable (perhaps even genetically determined) characteristic, that trans people are “born this way,” and that given that our condition is not our fault, we ought to protected by civil rights legislation and incorporated into the project of capitalist democracy. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“We need to build a politics and practice that doesn’t seek assimilation into this society, but seeks the destruction of patriarchy and heterosexism. Rather than acting as a small minority political constituency for the Democratic Party, we need to build alliances with other oppressed people as we attack the systems that hurt all of us.”</i></span></p>
<p>In response to these changes, the right (Republican, Christian theocratic, and fascist) has come together to push back hard against the emergence of trans people as a force in society and against the room that we’ve won to survive. The backlash has been fast and fierce. Ideological and legislative attacks on trans young people have sought to keep them out of sports and from accessing gender-affirming medical care. These attacks have of course escalated, where now some states are for all intents and purposes banning medical transition altogether, teachers are being forced to out trans and gender-nonconforming kids to unsupportive parents, and the families of trans kiddos are being investigated by child protective services. The right is explicitly seeking, through legislation and media demonization, the elimination of transgender life. In the wake of the Black uprisings and the defeat of Trump, the right is seeking to scapegoat trans people. The right, the gender fascists, understand transness as being an ideology and a social contagion. They believe that if this transgender trend continues, sex/gender roles will come undone and western civilization will be overrun by gender anarchy. (Some anti-trans feminists oppose trans life based on a different framework that we’ll deal with later.) </p>
<p>So again, with the current struggle around trans lives we have on the one hand a sort of liberal defense of multicultural capitalist democracy, sometimes with an eye toward making it more equitable. In this moment of exterminationist anti-trans politics, I do think it’s probably worth distinguishing between transgender liberals, who are fighting for their (or their kids’) survival, but are doing so within a horizon of assimilating into capitalism, and the cis political establishment, which may be willing to give lip service to trans people, but, as of right now, seems pretty willing to throw us under the bus in order to compromise with the right and protect stability. On the other hand we have a right-wing coalition united around eliminating us, forcing us from public life, preventing us from accessing what we need to survive, and reducing us to a state of constant terror in order to force us back to our assigned sexes and assigned roles in reproducing capitalist patriarchy. </p>
<p>Our task is to build a radical pole that fights for trans liberation against fascism and capitalism. Let’s think about this as being a politics of revolutionary trans leftism, though it will certainly not include all transgender people and certainly not all leftists. We need to build a politics and practice that doesn’t seek assimilation into this society, but seeks the destruction of patriarchy and heterosexism. Rather than acting as a small minority political constituency for the Democratic Party, we need to build alliances with other oppressed people as we attack the systems that hurt all of us. While liberals argue that trans folks are born this way, and fascists say we’re mentally ill, we reject the violence of asking why we are the way we are in the first place, and we celebrate the beauty of trans life and of its potential to burn this world down. </p>
<p><b>3WF: In the <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2021/05/a-demand-that-radicals-tell-truth-on.html" target="_blank">interview</a> we did two years ago, you also talked about the three way fight as “an ethical stance toward political struggle” and “a demand that radicals tell the truth.” How do you see that playing out with regard to transphobia and anti-trans oppression? To put it another way, what kinds of ethical dangers do leftists face in relating to this struggle? </b></p>
<p>Rowan: I think part of what I was getting at in that earlier interview was the way that the three way fight framework not only helps us understand our world and the contending forces within it, but can also help us understand and clarify our own values, politics, and tasks as leftists and as radicals. </p>
<p>So I think that the first ethical mandate of this moment, for leftists, is that we must take a side. In this moment where the right is pointing the spearhead of reaction at trans people, and seeking our extermination, standing aside is not an option. The survival of trans people, most of whom are working class, is not some kind of culture war distraction from the real work of class struggle. Any left that seeks to ignore this struggle is ethically and politically bankrupt. To ignore the attacks on trans people is to conciliate and enable them.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“The survival of trans people, most of whom are working class, is not some kind of culture war distraction from the real work of class struggle. Any left that seeks to ignore this struggle is ethically and politically bankrupt.”</i></span></p>
<p>This kind of position seems to be most popular among Marxists, particularly social democrats and Marxist Leninists (so called “tankies”). It is associated with a class-centric dismissive view of so-called “identity politics.” This ranges from social democrats dismissing trans people and our lives as identitarian distractions from the real class struggles to some “communists'' allying with transphobic feminists (and others) in their denunciations of trans existence as neoliberal or a conspiracy of the pharmaceutical industry. </p>
<p>It is certainly true that feminist, anti-racist, and queer politics are increasingly recuperated and defanged by capitalism and incorporated to defend the ruling class and its system of exploitation, and we need to be critical of this. Our commitment to liberating oppressed people must always be about building fighting bonds of solidarity for the freedom of all people, and that means the destruction of capitalism. But to use this reality to ignore or even oppose trans folks’ fight for our survival is reactionary and puts you in the camp of the enemy. </p>
<p>It is my sense that building some limited alliances with liberals is probably necessary in order to defend trans survival. If trans people are prevented from being out, from transitioning, from accessing medical care, from surviving, every other political task will be harder. We must build broad and popular movements to defend trans life and push back against and defeat the gender exterminationist right. Some of those people are going to be liberals, or otherwise hold pro-systemic politics that we reject. </p>
<p>That said, we need to go into building alliances with our eyes wide open. The reality is that too often, building alliances with liberals, whether we describe it as a coalition, a popular front, a united front, or whatever, means subordinating ourselves to them. The Democratic Party and reformist nonprofits tend to have power, resources, and sometimes a clarity of vision that often revolutionaries lack. Lacking these things, but engaging in joint struggle with our more powerful “lesser evil” enemies, tends to work out in practice as radicals functioning as the foot soldiers of other people's politics. </p>
<p>None of this is to suggest that we should content ourselves with the most radical political critique in a moment of crisis and urgency. Purity and sectarianism are hardly things we can afford in this moment of trans extermination. While the particulars of concrete struggles are best left to activists on the ground, it is certainly likely that we will need to build alliances with liberals in order to push back anti-trans attacks and to make and defend space to survive. The point is that when we, as radicals, enter into these alliances, we must do so as radicals. We should be building our own independent collectives, organizations, and projects. We should prioritize, and push for, forms of action, particularly direct action and militancy, that cultivate popular power and agency, not dependence on politicians and professionals. We should engage in political education that develops and promotes revolutionary visions of, and strategies for, trans liberation. We should never throw the most marginalized under the bus in order to win short-term reforms for the benefit of a few. </p>
<p>No matter what particular strategic and tactical decisions we make to defend ourselves and our communities, we need to be clear about what our politics are and about our critiques of trans-inclusive liberalism. Like most liberalism, pro-trans liberalism hopes to defend a more democratic and equitable version of existing capitalist society and its institutions from the insurgent right. </p>
<p>We need to avoid the liberal tendency to defend the institutions of official society from right-wing attack, whether in the streets or the legislature. We need to build capacity to engage in direct action to protect trans kids from being removed from their families. But we need to do so in ways that don’t act as if child protective services is an otherwise wholesome institution that is being corrupted or misused by the gender fascists. Rather we need to oppose these attacks in ways that expose the longtime white supremacy of these institutions and (particularly for those of us who are white) to use this opportunity to build solidarity with Black and Indigenous folks who have always been under the gun of these agencies. </p>
<p>At this moment, the right is attacking the standards and agreements for medical best practice. This does not mean, however, that the medical system and establishment in the U.S. has been historically, or always will be, somehow “on the side of trans people.” Certainly there are real victories that trans people have won in the realm of healthcare, but those are a result of struggle against stigmatization and gatekeeping, not of the fundamentally enlightened nature of these institutions. </p>
<p>Finally, the transphobic right has been really good at framing this as a “debate” as a grounds for dialogue and discussion. As someone who spent a lot of time in leftist political organizations I can appreciate the necessity of developing a comradely culture where we think through differences together to seek understanding and clarity, rather than vilification of our opponents.</p>
<p>But this is a fundamentally idealist misunderstanding of what’s
happening. Fundamentally we’re not struggling over abstract questions of
“What is a woman” and whether I should be considered one. We’re
struggling for access to medical care, public space, and the right to
care for our kids. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“We need political clarity that the forces trying to exterminate us are our enemies, even if they claim allegiance to feminism. At the same time, gender politics are shifting rapidly in ways that can feel confusing and disorienting for many who must be won over to gender liberation and a feminism that fights for all of our freedom. Striking a skillful balance between fierce clarity and nuance and care is always an important task for anti-fascists and other revolutionaries.”</i></span></p>This is not a debate. Fundamentally our task is not to convince people to change their minds and recognize trans people's humanity. We are fighting a war for the survival of our people. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have hard conversations with our friends, family, and comrades about trans life and liberation and seek to transform their perspectives. But we should never confuse that with a strategy of debating bigots and fascists instead of defeating them.
<p><b>3WF: The relationship between pro-trans politics and feminism has gotten really complicated. On one hand, there’s an organic connection between trans liberation and women’s liberation, as different dimensions of a struggle against gender-based oppression, and in the ways that right-wing anti-trans campaigns are closely intertwined with attacks on reproductive rights. On the other hand, there’s a section of the feminist movement, many of whom refer to themselves as “gender critical feminists” and opponents often label as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” or TERFs, who argue that a lot of trans-affirming measures actually bolster gender oppression and represent an attack on the women’s movement. Many (but not all) TERFs have even collaborated with right-wing forces around campaigns to demonize trans people and limit their rights. Without going into all the dimensions of this conflict, what are some guideposts you use to navigate this messy situation? </b></p>
<p>Rowan: I do really feel that feminist politics are so precious and necessary. If our movements are not centering women’s liberation and targeting male supremacy, then we are engaged in patriarchal reformism, not radical struggle. The rich, diverse, and often contentious theory and history of radical, socialist, and revolutionary feminisms is an essential toolset for us, and one that trans people today are at the forefront of developing and pushing forward. </p>
<p>I appreciate you linking the right’s attacks on trans people with their attacks on other forms of bodily and reproductive autonomy, particularly the right to abortion. These efforts feel very much connected, as attempts to mandate a very narrow vision of white patriarchal heterosexuality and to punish and try to exterminate any deviations from it. This is gender fascism. </p>
<p>The reality is that liberatory feminism today must be a struggle for trans liberation, and in this moment must center the struggle for trans survival, as we fight for the end of patriarchy and for the liberation of all women, trans and cis. It’s my sense that in the U.S. (and Canadian) context this is pretty clear to most people, even if our feminisms must always be pushed in more revolutionary directions as we resist cooptation. </p>
<p>And yes, there is the reality that some feminists are viciously anti-trans, in particular, the so-called “gender critical movement” (often referred to by their opponents as TERFs). I’m not going to go deep here, doing a holistic or deep analysis of gender critical politics. Instead, I’ll just mention a few ways that the three way fight framework is helpful in understanding our struggles against them. </p>
<p>In our previous interview I talked about how three way fight politics demands we tell the truth, to ourselves and to each other, even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable. I think that in the struggle for trans rights and against gender fascism, we must also heed and uphold Amilcar Cabral’s call to “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories. Hide nothing from the masses of our people.” </p>
<p>I think that too often, trans people and our allies suggest that TERFs are not real feminists. That by virtue of their bigotry, and their participation in gender fascism, that their claims to care about women are lies. Gender critical feminists are feminists. They often have deep and organic roots within the radical wings of the women’s liberation movements of the 1970s, particularly within lesbian feminism. This means coming to terms with the fact that feminism is not, in fact, simply a synonym for “good politics.” Instead the women’s liberation movements were in themselves ideological battlefields, where millions of women (including some trans women) came together to figure out how to dismantle patriarchy and get free. Debates raged around sexuality, race, militancy, and capitalism, as well as biological essentialism and the participation of transsexual women. Feminism has always included the most vicious forms of white supremacy and middle class careerism as well as the most precious tools for total liberation. We cannot simply dismiss bigots like Janice Raymond, Mary Daly, Redstockings, and Adrienne Rich from the ranks of feminism. Rather, we need to understand building political unity and clarity as an always ongoing process. Our movements always face the danger of growing reactionary politics within them, and the only way to resist this danger is constant vigilance, self-reflection, and political education, not simply self-righteous denunciations of our enemies. </p>
<p>The reality is that some TERFs are building alliances with the right in order to attack trans people. It does often seem to be the case that the more these feminists center opposition to “transgender ideology” in their politics, the further they go from their left origins. This seems to be another example of leftists switching sides, or perhaps more accurately demonstrating that the line between friend and enemy is not eternal, but is a historical process, always in a state of transformation. The three way fight helps us understand the need to oppose anti-fascist researchers who become counter-extremism experts for CIA backed think tanks. It gives us a framework to understand and oppose anti-imperialist activists who become agents of Russian imperialism. In the same way it can help us understand (as our enemies) feminists who move toward a kind of emerging gender fascism, out of their commitment to “protecting” (cis) women. </p>
<p>As with any other right wing forces, we ought to regard hardcore gender criticals as our enemies, while recognizing that their arguments and assumptions are far more widespread. Challenging transphobia and transmisogyny within our movements and social milieus is a part of fighting it in the society, though different kinds of contradictions require different methods of struggle. </p>
<p>I’m honestly not sure what the best ways are to struggle against the GC movement. I think we need political clarity that the forces trying to exterminate us are our enemies, even if they claim allegiance to feminism. At the same time, it is true that gender politics are shifting rapidly in this period in ways that can feel confusing and disorienting for many who must be won over to gender liberation and a feminism that fights for all of our freedom. Striking a skillful balance between fierce clarity and nuance and care is always an important task for anti-fascists and other revolutionaries, particularly in a moment where political alliances and political categories themselves are in such a state of flux and instability. </p>
<p>The gender critical TERF movement are often the anti-trans bigots that we have the most proximity with. They are often the folks we’re most likely to encounter online or in LGBTQ community. But, at least in the United States, they are hardly the driving force behind anti-trans legislation and violence. They are at most junior partners, or perhaps a token radfem ladies auxiliary to the real power on the right, which is driven by Christian nationalism and male supremacy. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t oppose and defeat them, but in doing so we should not confuse proximity with power. </p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisIMt0p8cMlBKylHPmclqQUfKend3p2l7kb1PN2Xcss1_OOna_L-Voz4Edz8N4X1MkAEd1fQTzTB4FtLgn8MqeBp4Dga_XoyMKGqIujmWqZmnCZHYd3pJYQoF53mpilTJOhzKfgSHzvvJm_vZCc0l7VDf2ENSrSnud2d7lx5JVIQZ0Yu8rBy8/s640/Orgullo_Madrid_2016.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisIMt0p8cMlBKylHPmclqQUfKend3p2l7kb1PN2Xcss1_OOna_L-Voz4Edz8N4X1MkAEd1fQTzTB4FtLgn8MqeBp4Dga_XoyMKGqIujmWqZmnCZHYd3pJYQoF53mpilTJOhzKfgSHzvvJm_vZCc0l7VDf2ENSrSnud2d7lx5JVIQZ0Yu8rBy8/w640-h428/Orgullo_Madrid_2016.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Madrid Pride 2016. Banner translates as “We choose our bodies, we conquer our rights.”<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />In a lot of ways the most important rebuttal to gender critical bigotry was developed long before “the Transgender Tipping Point.” The work of radical Black feminists like Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, bell hooks, Pat Parker, and so many others was a fierce critique of white feminists' delusions of universal sisterhood and the natural solidarity of shared girlhood. Instead, Black feminists (and other feminists of color) understood that women were divided in many ways, some of which made meaningful political solidarity impossible. Feminist solidarity comes not from a given unity of experience, certainly not a biologically essentialist one, but instead comes from the difficult but necessary work of building coalitions and new subjectivities, where we can struggle together across differences for the liberation of all of us. <p></p>
<p><b>3WF: Who are some trans radicals—writers or organizers—who are making particularly valuable contributions to revolutionary left trans politics? Are there particular books, articles, or websites that are helpful in this regard? </b></p>
<p>Rowan: There are so many amazing trans radicals out there, doing amazing work organizing their workplaces, doing mutual aid, street-fighting with the police, teaching each other to shoot, and simply helping each other survive. It’s really my sense that so many movements and struggles in this period are led by trans people in ways that weren’t necessarily true when I was first getting radicalized. I am so deeply inspired by young trans rebels and radicals, and folks should recognize that the attacks on trans people are not simply attacks on trans people but also attacks on the possibility of a future radical politics. </p>
<p>There are also a lot of amazing trans radicals thinking and writing right now, whose work has shaped my own thinking. Honestly, I’ll probably only be able to mention a few here. </p>
<p><a href="https://genderhorizon.com/" target="_blank">M.E. O’Brien</a> is a communist trans woman who writes a lot about gender politics, family abolition, and “communizing care.” She’s also the co-author of an amazing communist speculative fiction novel, and is an editor of <a href="https://pinko.online/" target="_blank"><i>Pinko</i></a> magazine. Her work is probably one of the biggest influences on my own politics around gender and trans liberation. </p>
<p>Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke’s anthology <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341668/transgender-marxism/" target="_blank"><i>Transgender Marxism</i></a> is a really valuable attempt to think through the relationship between gender liberation and anti-capitalist politics in this moment, and Gleeson has written a number of great <a href="https://viewpointmag.com/2017/07/19/transition-and-abolition-notes-on-marxism-and-trans-politics/" target="_blank">essays</a> exploring these connections. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jgillpeterson.com/" target="_blank">Jules Gil-Peterson</a>’s thinking about trans identity and state violence is a really precious resource in trying to think through a liberatory path that can challenge both gender fascism and “pro-LGBTQ” liberalism. She’s written a <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/histories-of-the-transgender-child#:~:text=Histories%20of%20the%20Transgender%20Child%20uncovers%20a%20previously%20unknown%20twentieth,and%20all%20sex%20and%20gender" target="_blank">book on the history of trans children</a> and is a host on the <a href="https://www.deathpanel.net/" target="_blank">Death Panel</a> podcast where she consistently says smart and radical things. </p>
<p>Vicky Osterweil, author of <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vicky-osterweil/in-defense-of-looting/9781645036678/?lens=bold-type-books" target="_blank"><i>In Defense of Looting</i></a>, is very smart, and whenever I’ve read articles by her or heard her on podcasts I’ve been inspired by her politics. </p>
<p><a href="https://missmajor.net/" target="_blank">Miss Major</a> is a <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/2787-miss-major-speaks" target="_blank">Black radical trans woman</a> who has participated in organizing trans women sex workers and prisoners for survival and liberation since her involvement in the Stonewall rebellion. </p>
<p>Val Travesti is a trans woman who is coming out of Maoist politics, who uses some of the thinking developed by J. Sakai and Butch Lee to try to develop a revolutionary anti-imperialist and radically feminist politics of trans liberation [for example <a href="https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/transsexuals-against-empire-trans-women-and-the-fracturing-of-whiteness/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/peoples-army-or-womens-army-mens-communism-and-its-dissidents/" target="_blank">here</a>]. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.deanspade.net/" target="_blank">Dean Spade</a> is a radical trans writer and lawyer whose work is helpful in understanding the limitations of reformism and the necessity of militant community organizing. </p>
<p><a href="https://birdsbeforethestorm.net/" target="_blank">Margaret Killjoy</a> works mostly as a cultural worker, writing science fiction and making heavy metal music. She’s also a brilliant thinker who ties anarchism, anti-fascism, and trans liberation together in compelling ways. </p>
<p><a href="https://kaichengthom.com/" target="_blank">Kai Cheng Thom</a> is a writer, poet and activist in Canada who writes a lot about interpersonal violence and community care and healing from a radical perspective. </p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/" target="_blank">Leslie Feinberg</a> was and remains a huge influence on me. They were one of the folks who was really foundational in developing trans politics in the 1990s, and always did so in a way that was rooted in building solidarity against all oppression (even if I don’t entirely share their particular brand of Marxist-Leninist politics). </p>
<p><b>3WF: Is there anything else you want to add that we haven’t covered already? </b></p>
<p>Rowan: To cis leftists: Now is the time to step up and defend trans people from right-wing attacks. This is absolutely an ethical and moral obligation in this moment of history. We will all be remembered for how we either stood aside or fought in this moment. The way to transform this struggle from being a “culture war” issue between gender fascists and LGBTQ liberalism is to put resources and energy into supporting the development of revolutionary trans politics. Also, so many of the most active and fiercest rebels and leaders in movements against capitalism and the state are trans people. From fast food workers organizing to rebellions against policing, transgender fighters are in the lead. To abandon them to those seeking their extermination can only weaken us all. </p>
<p>To trans people and our allies: We have no choice but to fight for our survival in this frightening moment. We do have a choice of how to fight. We can fight for a liberal politics of assimilating into this dying empire, throwing the most marginalized and vulnerable among us under the bus as we do so. Or we can fight for trans liberation in ways that prioritize trans people of color, trans workers, incarcerated trans people, trans sex workers, and that are guided by a vision of solidarity with all oppressed and exploited people and the total transformation of the world. </p>
<h3>Photo credits:</h3>
<p>1. Protest against anti-trans violence, 21 January 2023, London, UK, photo by Alisdaire Hickson (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stop_killing_my_trans_siblings.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br />2. Orgullo Madrid (Madrid Pride), 3 July 2016, photo by Arturo Yelmo (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orgullo_Madrid_2016_(27982982831).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br /></p>
ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-76368148551815151462023-04-24T20:24:00.008-04:002023-04-24T20:29:57.808-04:00Merci Montréal!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCSJnaaP2Il-AKQL9R2-L8cHWmtXnXaEprlE7T0Y4W0hLhnGFOoyCQXfRKmi4GWitgNSyWwkAf2BFv30LjVJIObwEqvU5iOmhERKkvcOVvcALDoL-FieylOas50__XUGt4zQ4bNZmYsCSpskG1OnzBxI8ZxLSurVQYuZCkv4BZ0CmIKLD44g/s1010/E4C30963-697C-44A3-A9E7-0EC455DCCBA7_1_201_a.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1010" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCSJnaaP2Il-AKQL9R2-L8cHWmtXnXaEprlE7T0Y4W0hLhnGFOoyCQXfRKmi4GWitgNSyWwkAf2BFv30LjVJIObwEqvU5iOmhERKkvcOVvcALDoL-FieylOas50__XUGt4zQ4bNZmYsCSpskG1OnzBxI8ZxLSurVQYuZCkv4BZ0CmIKLD44g/w400-h319/E4C30963-697C-44A3-A9E7-0EC455DCCBA7_1_201_a.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Members of Three Way Fight who were in Montréal this past weekend want to say MERCI! to our friends – old and new – who helped make our time there so memorable! <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdurerealite.wordpress.com%2F&h=AT3Bnl-b-51gu4w7ElijE1rTnOZLJu4c5kWdhV8E6-awEzOIwRkeIehaZXh9wYJBalyOdvXGFJlQQFDHFAWHQCsE3i4uMj5eGAZmaGTTwooAv4LVwnJAcEMixH5SSSUtsFdMy1rn-b0WUT1QR7C4kTazzkbEdQHT-nmbVstFeHM" target="_blank">Dure Réalité</a>, Mtl RASH (Red and Anarchist Skinheads), <a href="https://www.patreon.com/unionthugs" target="_blank">Union Thugs</a> – you all are always so gracious and inspiring and show what a revolutionary counter culture is and can be! We were also so excited and fortunate to connect with <a href="https://rebeltime.ca" target="_blank">Rebel Time Records</a>. Thanks for all that you have and continue to do! This weekend happened by you connecting all of us together around the new americas edition of the <a href="https://brigadafloresmagon.bandcamp.com/music" target="_blank">Brigada Flores Magon</a> album, Immortels!</p><p>We also want to say that the weekend was made even more special by the in-person book event for, <a href="https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1295" target="_blank">We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti Racist Action</a>. The books authors have made an important contribution to our movement’s histories! Big thanks as well to <a href="https://montreal-antifasciste.info/en/" target="_blank">Montréal Antifasciste</a>, Kersplebeded<a href="https://leftwingbooks.net/en-us" target="_blank">/Left Wing Books</a>, <a href="https://antifainternational.tumblr.com" target="_blank">Antifa International</a> and all the old comrades of A.R.A. who came in from across nord america to participate. So awesome!</p><p>The weekend was one of comraderie, conversations, catching up on the old and discussing what needs to be done in the present for the struggles. And we absolutely want to say Merci Beaucoup to Brigada for providing the soundtrack for the weekend!</p><p>In days that can seem so dark and full of crisis and evil doings at the hands of the forces of the system and the fascists, this weekend was a bright spot and a reminder that there can be living examples of revolutionary, alternative and liberatory movements!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='455' height='378' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz29hnRaeXS0p8wudWAu9UcGPwARjFwnEFM8qSSEIwAKUdFindYKcgOvt-ITJPzlFtFUOKfrjMGn3A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;">Video is Union Thugs and Brigada performing, Héros Et Martyrs</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">A tous nos camarades qui ne sont plus là</p><p style="text-align: center;">A ceux qui sont tombés une arme au poing</p><p style="text-align: center;">A ceux qui ont rêvé à plus d’égalité</p><p style="text-align: center;">A ceux qui en prison, ont payé leur affront</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">Héros Et Martyrs</p><p style="text-align: center;">Héros Et Martyrs</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">A ceux qui de l’Ukraine aux mines de cuivre chiliennes</p><p style="text-align: center;">Un jour se sont levés au cri de liberté</p><p style="text-align: center;">A ceux qui de Paname, au port de Liverpool</p><p style="text-align: center;">Un jour se sont levés en solidarité</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-53345604046858213332023-03-24T20:10:00.003-04:002023-03-24T20:13:37.164-04:00Review of "We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti Racist Action"<div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kdog reviews the new book, <i>We Go Where They Go: the Story of Anti-Racist Action</i></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><p> </p><blockquote><i>I spent a good part of my teens and twenties building ARA... It was my university... its rewarding to have the history treated as something significant, even crucial. More than giving props to the OG antifas tho</i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>what</i><i>'s really meaningful is that this book will help a new generation, confronting new forms of the fascist threat, find inspiration and lessons in both our successes and failures.</i></blockquote></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI1UjBQ2EzU3mh9ST0xL4-y5hR4UtAo7OQcO581V3NqDGLcFNSt5mBOcQuGXn7hrXr9VSMGYrlh6qisf9j-dA-5WNf4STgT_92Y4OKJ5HD4AUyKv3IWJv3xzDM7RE5C-E5yg2a9b195Ns8SRjYDJvVFKfrRYi9PvgRZf1DZHA_3IhmRqo5-4Q/s2048/IMG_6750.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1621" data-original-width="2048" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI1UjBQ2EzU3mh9ST0xL4-y5hR4UtAo7OQcO581V3NqDGLcFNSt5mBOcQuGXn7hrXr9VSMGYrlh6qisf9j-dA-5WNf4STgT_92Y4OKJ5HD4AUyKv3IWJv3xzDM7RE5C-E5yg2a9b195Ns8SRjYDJvVFKfrRYi9PvgRZf1DZHA_3IhmRqo5-4Q/w640-h506/IMG_6750.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In February I read the excellent new book <a href="https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1295" target="_blank"><i>We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action</i></a> written by Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier, with a cool graphic-style Foreword by Gord Hill<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>and published by PM Press. This is the first-ever in-depth history of the influential direct-action anti-fascist youth movement<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>and the authors do a great job of trying to organize that story into chapters covering the defining struggles and evolutions of the network<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>including the turf battles between anti-racist skins and nazi boneheads, the protracted struggle against the Ku Klux Klan's organizing efforts, ARA 's innovative and effective work in Canada, and the fierce opposition to both anti-choice fascists and sexism within our movement. The book is driven by interviews with over 50 ARA veterans, fellow travelers or first-hand observers who provide quotes, reflections, and war stories<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>often with a biting sense of humor.</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I spent a good part of my teens and twenties building ARA in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Detroit, Chicago and supporting other chapters across North America. It was my university. So it was fun and sometimes emotional to read stories of fights we were in or see quotes from friends who have put in the work and paid their dues in this movement. I always knew that what we did mattered<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>even if it wasn't often treated that way by the mainstream left<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>not to mention broader society. But I have to admit it<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>s rewarding to have the history treated as something significant, even crucial. More than giving props to the OG antifas tho<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>what<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>s really meaningful is that this book will help a new generation, confronting new forms of the fascist threat, find inspiration and lessons in both our successes and failures.</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few things off the top of my head that I thought the book did well were: </div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1.</b> Quantify the victories against the fash<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>a surprising number of fascist organizations went out of business after sustained campaigns by ARA<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>a material contribution to the fight against white supremacy</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2.</b> Deal openly and honestly and without hype with the question of political violence<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>both its efficacy and dangers</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>3.</b> Emphasize the role of culture (not just the bands<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>but yes the bands)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>the way the movement LIVED and FELT and WORKED</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>4.</b> Skillfully review the disagreements and controversies within the movement without trying to score points or dismiss points of view</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>5.</b> Argue for the need for movements that are both militant AND outward facing<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—r</span>adical AND popular</div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>6.</b> Letting the people speak! This isn't a book of academic citations or leftist rhetoric<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>it<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>s the voices of regular, mostly working-class people, mostly without college degrees sharing their thoughtful insights, compelling stories, and clever anecdotes </div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My criticisms of the book are really more criticisms of ARA. Did we really never articulate a thorough understanding of what fascism is? Or at least establish some solid competing positions? Did we never find a way to talk about strategy beyond the various direct action campaigns we were running? Did we never propose ways to further embed ARA within wider sections of the working-class<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>and especially relate to communities of color more consistently and systematically? Looking back, some of our short comings are embarrassingly obvious. </div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For me Anti-Racist Action was a real living example of a genuine
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">“</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>United Front<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">”</span><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>the concept of different groups, tendencies, and individuals working together and having each others<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span> backs in struggle DESPITE many real and important differences. A United Front does not mean everybody is all happy with each other all the time<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>quite the opposite, it means we<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>re all often annoyed, angry or arguing with each other<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>but we don't sulk away when we lose a vote or don<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>t get our way or face some criticism. We do appreciate what other folks are bringing to the table tho, we give them their respect, and we recognize the common goals we are fighting for<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>because those goals actually fucking matter. </div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other thing about ARA I<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>d like to highlight was the de facto method of leadership<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>the anarchistic <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">“</span>leadership by example.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"></span> Instead of a top-down structure where a few intellectuals dictate strategy and tactics on the larger mass<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>ARA chapters made their arguments by producing real world examples of what they were talking about. Think we should all do Cop-Watch patrols? Show me what that looks like. Convinced we need to make feminism a core part of our culture? Build a crew that exudes that vibe. Want economic demands as part of the program? See how we are doing it in our town, etc. etc. etc. </div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have a lot of love for the hundreds of young people who organized and fought for ARA; for the few elders from the 60s/70s generations who embraced ARA, helped build it and make it more sophisticated; or the bands that saw what we were doing and knew they could help by promoting the work on tour and on records. ARA was a militant movement<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>we took risks and took licks<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>and gave em back too. I remember once calculating how many arrests ARA had taken over the years and by my loose tally we were well into the many hundreds when I gave up counting. Many of us got stitches and casts, relationships got tested and burned, and two of us were murdered by nazis in the desert. Now in my 50s I'm still unsettled and angry about a lot<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>and I<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>m still active on a few fronts<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">—</span>will be til the day I die. But I have a calmness when I<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">’</span>m around my ARA homies with our jokes, arguments, scars, and PTSD. My people. </div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Love & Solidarity</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-19028192007405942232023-02-20T18:21:00.005-05:002023-02-27T06:50:23.605-05:00Gaming’s Three Way Fight: Why Antifascists Should Organize in and Around Video Games<p><b>A guest post by three antifascist gamers who are part of an emerging Abolitionist Gaming Network </b></p><p><b><i>[Text updated February 27, 2023.]</i></b></p>
<p>We’re all people who love to play video games. We’re also the kind of people who fascists want to run out of video games because we’re not straight white men. Recently, some cops and their academic allies have claimed they are going to save us from the fascists in video games; for example, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ax4n3/dhs-to-spend-almost-dollar700000-investigating-radicalization-in-gaming" target="_blank">the Department of Homeland Security awarded almost $700,000 in grant money to researchers who are studying how to confront “extremism” in gaming</a>, with a focus on stopping white nationalist recruitment in digital games and the online communities associated with them. We are abolitionists, people who want to abolish police, prisons, and related forms of oppression like digital surveillance, given their role in confining and controlling Black and Indigenous people, working class people, queer people, and to some degree the rest of society. Given that, we don’t think that the cops at the Department of Homeland Security will save anyone from fascists—they’re just gonna make the situation worse.<br /></p>
<p>Recently in Atlanta, the police and politicians have used this “confronting extremism” framework to raid and arrest abolitionist activists who are trying to <a href="https://stopcop.city/" target="_blank">defend the Atlanta forest</a> and stop the development of a militarized police training facility. Several protestors are facing domestic terrorism charges and one of them, Tortuguita, was <a href="https://www.them.us/story/tortuguita-shot-killed-atlanta-police-cop-city" target="_blank">murdered by the cops</a>. Antifascists should not support a “confronting extremism” political framework, in games or elsewhere, because it just adds more funding and legitimacy to this kind of repression.<br /></p>
<p>We need to imagine better ways to confront fascists in video games, which are a crucial space of social, cultural, and economic struggle. However, these spaces are mostly overlooked and often dismissed by abolitionists, antifascists, and other radical activists. We hope to change that.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Abolitionists should organize to oppose <b>both</b> fascist recruitment in games <b>and</b> capitalist policing of games. In doing so, we can also better leverage the radical histories and possibilities of video games as an arena of abolitionist organizing.”</i></span></p>
<p>We see the situation as a three way fight: a conflict between 1) the capitalist carceral state, 2) insurgent fascists challenging that state, and 3) abolitionists and other revolutionaries who need to challenge both the state and the fascists (as argued further <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/p/about.html" target="_blank">here</a>). The authors of the Three Way Fight blog point out, for example, that capitalist antifascism isn’t necessarily liberatory and “repression isn't necessarily fascist—anti-fascism itself can be a tool of ruling-class repression (as was the case during World War II, when anti-fascism was used to justify strike-breaking and the mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans, among other measures).“ We think that abolitionists should organize to oppose <b>both</b> fascist recruitment in games <b>and</b> capitalist policing of games. In doing so, we can also better leverage the radical histories and possibilities of video games as an arena of abolitionist organizing.</p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-27f7ace8-7fff-2d50-2ba9-353c84ea5f4e" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><span style="border: medium none; display: inline-block; height: 711px; overflow: hidden; width: 517px;"><img height="711" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/BR2zD8XmNwUu7oPgHSJW8W-At37PtUaUK8aUsIFx0gCrhzIqVlkzU0oLLlca166f7NIPyU43Jx43CN27fBM03_c599gYW73J81DS1_7j2Ztftoi5oZ9u_lC2z05ARWvSK60GZzM5SM7ESthM763TmxQ" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="517" /></span></span></p>
<h3>Why Focus on Video Games?</h3>
<p>Fascists and cops understand something that the majority of abolitionists and antifascists have not figured out yet: games are an important terrain of political conflict and organizing. As the <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/tvtpgrants" target="_blank">grant announcement on the Department of Homeland security website</a> puts it,<br /></p>
<blockquote>“Over the past decade, video games have increasingly become focal points of social activity and identity creation for adolescents and young adults. Relationships made and fostered within game ecosystems routinely cross over into the real world and are impactful parts of local communities…Correspondingly, extremists have used video games and targeted video game communities for activities ranging from propaganda creation to terrorist mobilization and training.”</blockquote>
<p>They are not wrong about the political importance of video games. They are just wrong in defining the problem as “extremism” and “terrorism” rather than as fascist mobilization, and of course their solution is just more surveillance and policing. That solution just adds to the problems, since, as we know, surveillance and policing always end up disproportionately targeting marginalized communities instead of fascists. </p>
<p>The left is the only part of the three way fight that’s (mostly) not taking games seriously; fascists and the state have both been using games to organize, surveil, etc. as they fight each other and as they fight us. Antifascists should take gaming seriously as a space for learning, organizing, building friendships, imagining liberated futures, practicing skills needed in these futures, and mobilizing both online and in the real world. If we don’t do it, the fascists and cops will use games against us. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“Antifascists should take gaming seriously as a space for learning, organizing, building friendships, imagining liberated futures, practicing skills needed in these futures, and mobilizing both online and in the real world.”</i></span></p>
<p>The left is currently preoccupied debating about Twitter, about whether or not it should be surveilled and controlled, and how to stop it from being a haven for white supremacist mob organization. Meanwhile, young people <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/" target="_blank">spend far more time on gaming platforms</a> than they do on Twitter. If the left is taking Twitter this seriously, they should be taking games and their related social media platforms even more seriously. Digital gaming has expanded rapidly during the pandemic, and it’s been a long time since it was a fringe subcultural phenomenon. At this point, calling oneself a gamer is <a href="https://www.ejinsight.com/eji/article/id/2280405/20191022-video-game-industry-silently-taking-over-entertainment-world" target="_blank">like calling oneself a music listener or movie watcher</a>. In their <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/not-game-how-steam-harbors-extremists" target="_blank">report on the rise of extremism in gaming</a>, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) asserts that “Gaming plays a huge role in American life: according to the Entertainment Software Association, 75% of American households include at least one gamer, and the video game industry generates more money annually than the film and music industries combined.” Among teens, a staggering <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/17/5-facts-about-americans-and-video-games/" target="_blank">97 percent of boys and 83 percent of girls</a> in the US play video games.<br /></p>
<p>Given this rapid expansion of gaming, it’s likely that many of the young people who participated in the 2020 George Floyd uprising against police violence probably play games and use them to think, imagine, learn, and socialize. Shouldn’t antifascists be trying to connect with them in these scenes and spaces? </p>
<h3>Fascists are Organizing in Games</h3>
<p>On the other two sides, mass shooters with fascist white supremacist ideologies have developed their ideologies and tactics in gaming-related platforms like Discord and Twitch. This includes <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/05/19/video-games-extremists-recruit" target="_blank">the white supremacist who opened fire</a> at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022, killing ten. The U.S. military is also increasingly <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-military-focuses-recruiting-efforts-on-video-game-playing-teenagers" target="_blank">focusing recruiting efforts on video game-playing teenagers</a>, uses video games for <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3244620/military-esports-how-gaming-is-changing-recruitment-morale/" target="_blank">training and morale-building</a>, and <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/203290/Americas_Army_Proving_Grounds/" target="_blank">developed a series of video games</a> over the last two decades “intended to inform, educate, and recruit prospective soldiers.”</p>
<p>Playing games and politics are more closely linked than they first appear, especially when people are using games to practice and train for real world activities. Given the relative lack of political moderation, fascists who used to organize on broader social media platforms are turning to games as a space to regroup after many of them got kicked off platforms like Facebook. Steam, for example, is the main platform used for buying PC games while also serving as a platform for gamer communities and game content creation with around 120 million monthly active players. The parent company, Valve, only employs around 360 people. It has very little moderation and so has ended up full of fascist-leaning or outright fascist individuals and groups, including those <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3w9ea/steam-is-filled-with-groups-that-celebrate-school-shooters" target="_blank">celebrating school shooters</a> and <a href="https://revealnews.org/blog/hate-report-gaming-app-has-173-groups-that-glorify-school-shooters/" target="_blank">neo-Nazis</a>, among other <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3dzvw/steam-is-full-nazi-racist-groups" target="_blank">racist, homophobic, and antisemitic content</a>. Even child-oriented games like <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/roblox-online-games-irl-fascism-roman-empire/" target="_blank">Minecraft or Roblox have become playgrounds for fascists</a>. <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/not-game-how-steam-harbors-extremists" target="_blank">One survey</a> found that among those who play online multiplayer games, 23% were exposed to extremist white supremacist ideology while playing. It is widely known that players with marginalized identities encounter <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/free-play-hate-harassment-and-positive-social-experiences-online-games" target="_blank">consistent hate and harassment within games and many gamer communities</a>.</p>
<p>Fascists go beyond sowing terror in online games. They also have lots of tactics for organizing within video games and their associated communities. Recruitment is sometimes done through creating new games or game content depicting fascist violence. These games might be stand-alone, modified versions of existing games (mods), or experiences within game-creation platforms like Roblox or Minecraft. Fascists also use mainstream games. For example, they join a chat, are deliberately provocative, see who responds positively, <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/05/19/video-games-extremists-recruit" target="_blank">then seek to recruit them</a>: <br /></p>
<blockquote>“You’ll often get a cell of extremists who will go into a gaming chat room or a party chat in Fortnite or a group in Call of Duty, for instance, and they'll use racial slurs or some other type of extremist content.… They'll monitor the people in those group chats and see who is responding positively with laughter, maybe asking questions about the certain use of these specific extremist terms. And then the people who respond well to that will be invited into a deeper group chat.”</blockquote>
<p>The discussions then move onto other platforms, often <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/04-gaming-report-discord.pdf" target="_blank">gamer-adjacent Discord</a>, in which young people are offered membership in a hierarchy—whites against all others—and quickly oriented towards blood-soaked ideology and action. Even when members are not recruited through games, gaming serves as a powerful common ground and reference point and gamified online harassment “raids” (semi-organized targeted harassment), a popular tactic of terror.</p>
<h3>Grassroots vs. Capitalist Antifascism</h3>
<p>This fascist organizing is being opposed in various ways. Historically, antifascism has been found in an array of grassroots movements associated with broader social dynamics. These have included Black liberation groups like the <a href="https://hcommons.org/deposits/objects/hc:40000/datastreams/CONTENT/content" target="_blank">Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army</a>, anti-colonial movements, insurgent and grassroots movements against U.S.-supported dictators, and class struggle organizations like the <a href="https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/the-iww-is-making-labour-anti-fascist-again" target="_blank">Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)</a>, along with anarchist, queer liberation, communist, and radical feminist movements throughout the world. Contrary to what Donald Trump and the far right say, antifascism (including antifa) is not an organization; it is an activity that people from many different backgrounds and politics (organized and unorganized) participate in. During the Trump years, antifa was a grassroots movement intertwined with rebellions against the system of racialized capitalism; for example, it was an expression of the George Floyd Rebellion against policing, when people in the streets defended themselves against fascists who attacked them. </p>
<p>While Trump called for violent repression of antifa, the Democratic Party and the liberal wing of the capitalist ruling class have been trying to coopt antifascist organizing, even as their cops, courts, and prisons still harm people when they actually fight fascists. These ruling-class forces have been trying to refashion themselves as people “defending democracy” from “far-right extremism,” asking people to imagine them as a new version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Democratic Party that fought the Nazis in World War II. We see this with Biden's speech in the fall of 2021, which framed Trump’s Make America Great Again movement as a fascist threat to democracy. We also see it in some of the rhetoric around the congressional and court investigations into the January 6th riots at the Capitol. In fall 2021, someone influenced by far-right ideologies attacked Democratic Party politician Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and in the wake of the attack, the liberal wing of the capitalist class has become more and more aggressive about stopping “domestic extremism.” </p>
<p>Many antifascists are trying to resist this cooptation by capitalist politicians. For example, the Three Way Fight blog has pointed out how this re-emerging capitalist antifascism can become its own form of authoritarianism. </p>
<p>Content moderation and surveillance measures on social media have become major points of political contestation within this emerging conflict between the fascists and the liberal capitalists. We see this of course with the debates over Twitter and calls for the federal government to step in to prevent far-right groups from using the platform to organize now that Elon Musk has allowed them back onto the platform. </p>
<h3>Grassroots vs. Capitalist Antifascism in Video Games</h3>
<p>This conflict over social media is now beginning to spill over into conflicts over video games. Several prominent researchers have received <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ax4n3/dhs-to-spend-almost-dollar700000-investigating-radicalization-in-gaming" target="_blank">grants from the Department of Homeland Security to “counter extremism” among young people in video games</a>. The goal seems to be to push the video game industry to implement some kind of content moderation system similar to what Meta has and what Twitter has but seems to be losing under Elon Musk. The far-right media outlet Breitbart wrote a piece calling this left-wing censorship, defending the legacy of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/20/20808875/gamergate-lessons-cultural-impact-changes-harassment-laws" target="_blank">Gamergate</a> (a coordinated far-right campaign against women in gaming, which gave the alt-right its blueprint for coordinated online harassment). <a href="https://www.ea.com/news/building-healthy-communities-summit" target="_blank">Game industry leaders are also discussing</a> how to improve content moderation systems based on player feedback and systems for reporting “toxic” behavior, and Maggie Hassan, a member of the Senate’s Homeland Security committee, recently <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy79na/senator-asks-gabe-newell-why-steam-hosts-so-much-neo-nazi-content" target="_blank">demanded that Valve address the neo-Nazi content</a> in its platforms. </p>
<p>Internationally, <a href="https://en.unesco.org/preventingviolentextremism" target="_blank">UNESCO views violent extremism as an issue in need of resolution</a>. Most important to our argument is UNESCO’s focus on the Internet and social media as solutions, given the ways we view gaming and game-related spaces as powerful social media platforms. While many people look to formalized organizations for guidance, specifically to combat “extremism” in social media (and in this case, video games and game-related spaces), we find their guidance lacking. UNESCO’s very own resources seem to point to 404 error pages, which is quite reflective of the ways games are discussed as solutions for fascism–the actual solutions are non-existent. UNESCO engages with video games as powerful tools, but its engagement is <a href="https://mgiep.unesco.org/article/video-games-for-peace-and-sustainability" target="_blank">towards “peace and sustainability”</a> or to <a href="https://mgiep.unesco.org/games-for-learning" target="_blank">highlight the learning possible</a>. While these arguments about games are important, so too is addressing the violence that can result from fascism present in games. Thus, video games should not just be about peace, given that this peace is already disrupted by fascism. They can and should be about disruptive combat, a direct tussle with fascism. Furthermore, we can learn alternative ways of combating fascism, particularly from abolitionist gamers, educators, and other antifascist efforts seen in pop culture history.<br /></p>
<h3>Problems with Capitalist Antifascism</h3>
<p>Researchers who want to be antiracists “doing the work” are suddenly rebranding themselves as “extremism” researchers. Do they realize the implications of what they’re getting into? </p>
<p>While it is good to see people taking the issue of fascist mobilization in gaming seriously, we are wary that these interventions could accelerate the surveillance and repression involved with capitalist antifascism. While many of the researchers and game industry leaders leading these efforts are experts in gaming, they are not experienced antifascists with an understanding of the three way fight dynamics outlined above, and they are intervening primarily on behalf of their funders, who want to maintain ruling-class interests: the funders’ goal is to secure the profitability of gaming platforms while stabilizing the US racial capitalist state. The researchers are inserting themselves into a potentially armed conflict between the far right and the state without the necessary training or preparation. As a result, they are likely to be manipulated by government and corporate interests who want to make a name for themselves through the grift, corruption, and public posturing associated with decades of War on Terror politics. Such <a href="https://illwill.com/clarifications" target="_blank">careerist maneuvering may play a role in the repression of the Atlanta forest defenders</a>, which has now escalated into an outright assassination of an environmental/abolitionist protestor. The consequences are matters of life and death.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i> “While it is good to see people taking the issue of fascist mobilization in gaming seriously, we are wary that these interventions could accelerate the surveillance and repression involved with capitalist antifascism.” </i></span></p>
<h3>The Role of AI in Surveillance and Content Moderation</h3>
<p>There’s a debate going on about whether such moderation and surveillance should be done by humans or by artificial intelligence (AI), not just in video games but across the tech industry. This is expressed in a Federal Trade Commission report to Congress: “<a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation%3B Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress.pdf" target="_blank">Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation</a>”: </p>
<blockquote>“Facebook reportedly uses AI, combined with manual review, to attempt to understand text that might be advocating for terrorism, find and remove terrorist “clusters,” and detect new accounts from repeat offenders. YouTube and TikTok report using machine learning or other automated means to flag extremist videos, and Twitter indicates that it uses machine learning and human review to detect and suspend accounts responsible for TVEC [Terrorism and violent extremism]. Moonshot (a tech company) and Google’s Jigsaw use the “Redirect Method,” which uses AI to identify at-risk audiences and provide them with positive, de-radicalizing content, including pursuant to Google searches for extremist content.”</blockquote>
<p>The FTC report points out that academics and government entities have raised concerns about potential invasions of privacy, lack of accuracy, and biased datasets involved in these tools. </p>
<a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=race-after-technology-abolitionist-tools-for-the-new-jim-code--9781509526390" target="_blank">Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist at Princeton</a>, has warned that people are essentially creating new forms of racist AI surveillance and algorithmic policing in the name of using AI to counter racism online. She argues it’s part of a transition toward decentralized incarceration, or policing through digital platforms and apps. The <a href="https://stoplapdspying.org/" target="_blank">Stop LAPD Spying Coalition</a> is similarly warning that the whole framework of “countering extremism” is being used against Black, Indigenous, and environmental activists, not just the far right. They’ve linked that to their organizing against the LAPD’s AI-based “predictive policing” model, which uses big data and machine learning to allocate where to send officers based on predicted crime patterns. They have shown how the algorithms are biased and racist. <p>The <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation%3B Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress.pdf" target="_blank">FTC report</a> reviews AI research showing that increases in racist speech in online forums in certain cities predicts racist violence in those cities. Some researchers and government officials consider this kind of research a possible use case for AI, allowing people to predict possible waves of real-world violence associated with online hate speech. However, the report ends up doing exactly what Stop LAPD Spying Coalition warns against: it treats anti-police protestors and abolitionists as creators of hate speech and violence, lumping them in with fascists and white supremacist groups who were threatening to kill protestors and sometimes carried out those threats through car attacks and gun violence:<br /></p>
<blockquote>“Internal Facebook documents show that analysts worried that hateful content on the platform might be inciting real-world violence in connection with Minneapolis protests occurring after the police killing of George Floyd. Although it is not clear what precise tools they used, these analysts discovered that ‘the largest and most combative demonstrations’ took place in two zip codes where users reported spikes in offensive posts, whereas harmful content was only ‘sporadic’ in areas where protests had not yet emerged.”</blockquote>
<p>That quote cites an <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/facebook-privately-worried-about-hate-speech-spawning-violence-1.1671386" target="_blank">article by Bloomberg</a> which says Facebook had a “heat map” of speech it flagged as offensive, and staffers watched as the map turned red in Minneapolis and then eventually turned red across the country as the protests spread. Yet at the same time, Facebook refused to prevent <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864818368/the-history-behind-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts" target="_blank">Trump from openly calling for the murder of protestors</a>, when he posted “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The attempt to equate the violence of protestors with the violence of the state and fascists who oppose them just plays into the violent repression of abolitionist organizing that Trump and others attempted.<br /></p>
<p>While digital gaming platforms are moderated by humans and algorithms, it seems they are not as strictly moderated as other social media platforms like Facebook. This might be because they are not yet widely seen as political spheres and forms of social media, even though they are. Most moderation is focused on improving or maintaining the quality of gameplay experience. It usually does this only for some players, leaving others, e.g. Black lesbian players, subjected to racist and homophobic interactions during multiplayer gameplay, as game researcher <a href="https://lsupress.org/books/detail/intersectional-tech/" target="_blank">Kishonna Gray</a> has documented extensively.<br /></p>
<h3>Towards Abolitionist Antifascism in Gaming</h3>
<p>At the grassroots level, gamers are already resisting fascism in various ways; for example, as <a href="https://lsupress.org/books/detail/intersectional-tech/" target="_blank">Kishonna Gray has documented</a>, Black and LGBTQIA+ players have organized themselves to play together in ways that shield each other as much as possible from racist, sexist, and homophobic attacks in multiplayer game forums. In Brazil, people <a href="https://journals.suub.uni-bremen.de/index.php/gamevironments/article/view/198" target="_blank">organized to deplatform a fascist gamer group</a> that openly shared contempt towards a Black Brazilian journalist for celebrating Black representation in Valorant. This opened up avenues of harassment by the fascist group’s fanbase, and ultimately led to the mobilization of gamers, journalists, and game developers around the goal of getting the group banned from platforms such as Twitch and Youtube. It’s important to note the strategies used, which included protesting in live streams on Twitch, using Twitter to post and share hashtags about the movement, and ultimately sending emails and complaints to the CEO of Xbox and the Brazilian Public Ministry.<br /></p>
<p>While these grassroots efforts are important, they need to go further, building autonomy from the state and capitalist antifascism. We encourage abolitionists and antifascists to engage with games in creative and strategic ways. Here are some possibilities we would like to propose. </p>
<p>Antifascists have a long history of seeing music scenes as important spaces for social and political life, spaces that must be defended and kept free from fascist appropriation and infiltration. For example, antiracist punks and folk fans have tried to run fascists out of their own scenes, and this has provided a sense of community that has enlivened broader antifascist organizing and mobilization in the streets. But if games are just as widespread as music these days, shouldn’t they also be contested in similar ways? For example, Anna Anthropy said that <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215174/rise-of-the-videogame-zinesters-by-anna-anthropy/" target="_blank">making indie games is the new form of zine-making</a>.<br /></p>
<p>Grassroots abolition efforts in fields like <a href="https://abolitionistteachingnetwork.org/" target="_blank">education</a> also highlight alternative pathways for abolitionist and antifascist coalition building. While the Abolition Teaching Network focuses on addressing the injustices in schools specifically, its guiding principles on <a href="https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/8d4b8aa7-b12e-4df8-9836-081a29841523/downloads/ATN Guide to Racial and Restorative Justice in.pdf?ver=1670533628461" target="_blank">Racial Injustice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning</a> help us imagine and think through tangible abolitionist practices in the classroom, which could be combined with educators’ growing efforts to <a href="https://doi.org/10.48783/gameviron.v17i17.196" target="_blank">use games as equipment for critical learning and teaching</a>. These efforts are more fruitful than, say, what UNESCO is trying to do.<br /></p>
<p>Anticapitalists can also make our own abolitionist and antifascist games and media, and can create spaces where more people—especially young people—can learn to do this. These could be video games, table-top games, theater games, etc. We can also modify (“mod”) existing games to play them in more abolitionist ways, e.g. playing pro-cop riot simulation games with the goal of making the cops lose. The games we make could prompt players to imagine and conjure unpoliced futures, like the abolitionist video game <a href="https://www.kaiunearthed.com/" target="_blank">Kai Unearthed</a>. Or they could be strategy games that simulate direct actions and ways of avoiding police repression, like the tabletop game <a href="https://outofordergames.com/blocbybloc/" target="_blank">Bloc by Bloc</a>. They could also help people practice skills needed in abolitionist organizing, including antifascist organizing. Augusto Boal said theater games are “rehearsal for revolution,” and the same could be said of video games and tabletop games. We should not make fun of people for LARPING (live action role playing) as revolutionaries, as long as they know when a situation is a game and when it is a real life conflict with life or death consequences (e.g. an actual riot or an actual street brawl with fascists). LARPing in low-stakes settings can be a way for people to practice and to learn from their mistakes so they’ll be more prepared to handle situations that are not games, where the consequences for failure are much higher.<br /></p>
<p>For example, a game could model and simulate the three way fight itself. There could be three teams: the capitalist state vs. revolutionaries vs. insurgent fascists. Each team needs to decide whether to get involved in conflicts between the other two or whether to sit back, observe, and learn from the conflict. Conflicts between each of the three sides can influence the outcome of conflicts between the other two. For example, the state winning against fascists might increase their capacity to win against revolutionaries. Revolutionaries winning against the state might create openings for fascists to practice fighting the state. Conflicts between revolutionaries and insurgent fascists might be used by the state as a pretext to criminalize and repress both. This is just one way that a game could model a revolutionary struggle against fascists and the state. </p>
<h3>Closing Thoughts</h3>
<p>Abolitionists and antifascists face a daunting task when it comes to the three way fight that is tearing up digital media, including games. Do we organize ourselves to transform existing corporate platforms, or do we build our own digital infrastructure? Do we try to de-platform fascists from these networks, and if so, how? How do we relate to AI in all of this? While these questions may be overwhelming for many, we don’t need answers to all of them right away, and we don’t need to be advanced hackers, coders, or expert designers to begin to take games seriously. Anyone can choose some games you and your friends like and organize an abolitionist game night, playing the games together in ways that prompt discussions about abolishing police and prisons. And with a range of free and increasingly accessible game design tools like <a href="https://twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twine</a>, <a href="https://unity.com/" target="_blank">Unity</a>, and <a href="https://www.figma.com/" target="_blank">Figma</a> now available, it is easier than ever to learn how to make your own abolitionist game that you can share with your friends. If enough people start doing this sort of thing, we can build robust abolitionist gaming networks that can reclaim games from both the fascists and the capitalists/cops. <br /></p>
<p>From games to the streets, fuck the police! </p>
<p>In solidarity, <br />
-Three antifascist gamers who are part of an emerging Abolitionist Gaming Network. <br />
(Please reach out to us if you want to connect: abolitionistgamingnetwork [at] gmail.com.) </p>ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-12901471837706012442023-02-07T19:30:00.003-05:002023-02-08T22:26:53.612-05:00Conference Report: "Anti-Fascism in the 21st Century"<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">A Report on <i>Antifascism in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century</i></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By D.Z. Shaw and Stanislav Vysotsky <br /></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.hofstra.edu/cultural-center/anti-fascism-21st-century/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="2992" data-original-width="2312" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_hzLwPftnvwFXpeC9lF1LojlIDTXD99jexj4-i1iLbwqqngL5gCGa1ifN7A81cpMaJUUDUbploILHOOl2OfxqWH0hwylpRQxJu6ZyzAJxdQ6fPvhOixIdJxGk1X_sfHD2xwU8M5sBPQQMIEnR5ewGb7wZJOHepRHuQsdIhC4B1GRIe1b89nE/w494-h640/Antifa21CentHofstraU.jpeg" width="494" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">On November 2<sup>nd</sup> and 3<sup>rd</sup>, 2022, Hofstra University hosted a conference on </span></i><i><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">“</span>Anti-Fascism in the 21st Century.</span></i><i><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">”</span> </span></i><span lang="EN-CA"><a href="https://www.hofstra.edu/cultural-center/anti-fascism-21st-century/" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.</span></i></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">For those who might not typically seek out academic conferences, they are of variable quality and subject to contingent factors: who applies to present, who is invited, the quality of their work, and the scope of the organizers’ vision. A conference topic like antifascism in the twenty-first century is lined with numerous pitfalls due to the fact that there isn’t, at the moment, a cohesive field of “antifascism studies” that the organizers can rely on to shape their program—and then due to the fact that the issues raised and the ideas developed at such a conference could have concrete ramifications when they are put into practice. For example, there is, in academia, generally an inbuilt bias against approaches that challenge the state’s claim to a monopoly on legitimate violence, and a bias towards approaches that frame themselves as policy recommendations. Such a bias could exclude certain theoretical and practical problems.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">At an antifascism conference, these biases manifest within the differences between militant antifascism (which upholds the diversity of tactics as a form of community self-defense against far-right organizing, and which ought to maintain a revolutionary horizon) and liberal antifascism (which, as Mark Bray notes, places its “faith in the inherent power of the public sphere to filter out fascist ideas, and in the institutions of government to forestall the advancement of fascist politics”).<a href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="color: #954f72;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a> To their credit, the conference organizers included a variety of papers from both perspectives; in addition, they included independent scholars and did some outreach with local organizers. Generally, though, the audience seemed to have been drawn from the local university community. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Nonetheless, there were oversights or omissions which would color the reception of the antifascism conference: Adolph Reed, Jr.’s keynote address may have been the most extensive discussion of class (and it was perceived that way), but his perspective is at odds with much of the militant antifascist and antiracist approaches to the relation of class and race. And while there were presentations on anticolonialism, none of them addressed settler-colonialism as a condition for fascism—an issue that has been a long-standing concern in discussions of the three-way fight. Finally, while both liberal and militant tendencies were represented, there was no forum for their respective advocates to bring the theoretical and practical contradictions between them to the forefront. It appeared that liberal approaches largely carried the day among the audience, if not many presenters. We cannot dismiss this as a product of academic bias, but rather the mood of the conference reflected the present uncertainty and discomfort with the direction of antifascist organizing: do we go “wide” within a popular front and risk liberal encroachment or capture, or do we go more “narrow,” with militant affinity work to undermine ongoing far-right organizing efforts? A conference which does not bring this conflict into the open may offer a chance for academic exchange between presenters, but it does not afford the opportunity to offer a cohesive alternative to liberal antifascist tendencies by challenging the underlying assumptions of the participants. If the conference becomes a recurring event, it would need to explicitly present a forum to bring theoretical and practical contradictions into the open.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">A Platform for Militant Antifascism<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxKvVYqN3fZbu2a4ND0VH8nv4nlobT_PEPQrl-sc-cwenmzyCcbd4_2dhBm42ZoKaMogH9vQDl4JPDsO2DCqQXLn8e2j8aA8JVAaGXx_hW36v8brPC3b9SuzHJe3qVZFCKkwFyzP4svMTxqeF_5Bko8eHgMKlgvW63eE_Lc5k7Ai09T22_E0/s1280/Antifa21CentHofstra_2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxKvVYqN3fZbu2a4ND0VH8nv4nlobT_PEPQrl-sc-cwenmzyCcbd4_2dhBm42ZoKaMogH9vQDl4JPDsO2DCqQXLn8e2j8aA8JVAaGXx_hW36v8brPC3b9SuzHJe3qVZFCKkwFyzP4svMTxqeF_5Bko8eHgMKlgvW63eE_Lc5k7Ai09T22_E0/w400-h225/Antifa21CentHofstra_2.jpeg" width="400" /></a></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Palatino; text-align: left;"> </span></b></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">This conference was unique in bringing together a truly interdisciplinary group of scholars studying historical and contemporary antifascist movements with an eye toward understanding the dynamics of contemporary antifascism. Much of the scholarship on antifascism tends toward historical analysis of the inter-war period and opposition to fascism in its original incarnations. By grounding the conference in the topic of antifascism in the 21st century, the organizers created a space for discussion of the movement in the present rather than reflections on the past. Panels that featured scholarship on militant antifascism presented on the practices of antifascism in Europe, the culture of antifascism, and antifascist strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Militant antifascism represents an “antifascism from below” that is organized organically by activists who both identify the immediate threat of fascism and frequently face it directly through political organizing or subcultural participation. This activism focuses on street-based fascist movements rather than political parties or the potential likelihood of state capture by the far-right. However, as antifascist movements mature, when their members come to participate in forms of institutionalized activism and activity, and when the cause of antifascism is taken up by more mainstream political actors, a series of contradictions occur. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">As Nils Schuhmacher points out in his presentation “Continental European Antifa: Why the 90s Matter (More Than You Might Think),” the institutionalization of antifascist activism in Germany led to the development of a “pop antifa” that increasingly focused on performative practices and institutional activities. This led to a watering down of the ideological and theoretical elements of antifa activism in favor of a kind of stylistic pose of resistance. “An antifa that includes everything struggles to reject anything, including the forces of oppression, racism and xenophobia that continue to affect vulnerable people.” As North American antifascists look to our European comrades for models of building an antifascist culture, we should be wary of the ways in which building a mass movement can lead to a watering down of principles or cooptation by institutional actors.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Ali Jones’s presentation, </span><span lang="EN-CA">“</span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">German Antifa and the Paradox of Ghostly Militanz” presents the outcome of this process of institutionalization whereby the righteousness of antifascist militancy has been lost as activists eschew public discourse even within radical publications and platforms for ideological debate. As Jones points out, “it might be easy when speaking to the choir to assume that the act of punching a Nazi to save a migrant doesn’t need a rationale, but this invocation of physical violence is based upon the assumption of the political justification that accompanies it and justifies it; and when that political aspect is silenced, the justification then seems to fade away.” The outcome of this dynamic has been the recent arrest of activists in Leipzig on charges of forming a criminal organization. Parallels to this dynamic can be seen in the United States, with calls to label “ANTIFA” a terrorist organization, and </span><span lang="EN-CA"><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/09/21/antifa-trial-pacific-beach-san-diego-california/10400301002/" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">prosecutors bringing criminal conspiracy charges against activists in San Diego in 2022</span></a></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">. However, while the justifications for antifascist militancy are widely circulated within left-wing (social) media, they have not penetrated into a public discourse that is dominated by right-wing media and a libertarian ethos.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Conditions of right-wing state and media capture do not necessarily stave off forms of antifascist resistance from below. In his presentation, </span><span lang="EN-CA">“</span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Anti-Fascism in Illiberal Democracy: An Eastern European Perspective,” Grzegorz Piotrowski demonstrates how the activity of an ultra-nationalist government in Poland sparked greater antifascist mobilization. The policies of the far-right government served as a catalyst to move antifascist activism from a subcultural sphere into the mainstream ostensibly without watering down the ideology or militancy of the movement. Piotrowski notes that the rightward turn in Polish politics led to a revival of formal antifascist groups and the emergence of new ones, increased intersectionality both within antifa groups and the broader left, and mainstream acceptance of aspects of militant antifascism. The last of these was evident in the mainstream press, which reprinted an antifascist pamphlet and published a feature that presented instruction on how to dress for a demonstration featuring a photo of a person in “black bloc” attire with suggestions for specific materials to avoid detection and harm. Respondents to a survey of attendees at an antifascist demonstration indicated that they were motivated to attend by the actions of the state as much as their direct opposition to fascist street movements.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Contemporary militant antifascism’s greatest appeal and success has generally been in the cultural realm. As Schumacher’s presentation indicates, part of the widespread appeal of antifascism in Germany came from cultural engagement which produced an aesthetic that had mass appeal. As James Tracy points out in his presentation, “Very Popular Fronts: Music and Anti-Fascism in the 1930s,” music is a key component of antifascist culture. Music provides a means of spreading antifascist messages to build a base of support for the movement as well as an expression of the antifascist sentiments of musicians. Tracy notes the ubiquity of the antifascist anthem “Bella Ciao,” which has been performed and recorded by hundreds of musicians, as indicative of the power of music to transcend time and space while conveying a message of resistance to fascism. At the intersection of music, subculture, and identity, Mariel Acosta-Matos’s presentation, “The Anti-Fascist Politics and Practices of NYC Latinx Punks,” reinforces antifascism as a focal concern of contemporary punk subculture. The antifascism of Latinx punks reflects a positionality of race, class, and subculture by drawing crucial internal distinctions within the local scene and external concerns of a society marked by right-wing politics predicated on xenophobia and racism against Latinx people. Punk lyrics, imagery, and practices demonstrate a militant antifascism that is not only resistant to the violence of the far-right within the subculture and society at large but that also has an ability to build ties with communities targeted by fascists. Performances outside of the traditional venues of bars and music halls such as community centers provide an opportunity for punks to build ties that are crucial for meaningful antifascist resistance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">No discussion of militant antifascism would be complete without addressing the strategy and tactics of the movement. In “Tactical Violence: Militant Anti-Fascist Movement Repertoires and Meaning,” Heather-Ann Layth presents an overview of the tactical repertoire of the antifascist movement including doxxing, black blocs, property destruction, and violence against fascists. Layth notes the importance of sarcasm and rhetorical subtlety when discussing more militant tactics as a means of shielding individuals from potential legal repercussions. The diversity of tactics deployed by antifascist activists is in service of a no-platform strategy that seeks to undercut fascist recruitment and mobilization.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">A key tool in the antifascist tactical repertoire is the use of force against fascist activists and mobilizations. Antifascist activists have relied on a distinct moral justification for their use of force that German activists call “militanz” (as discussed in Ali Jones’s presentation mentioned above). Jones notes: “in practice, this means that countering Nazi fascism and neo-Nazism, neo-fascism… can happen by whatever means necessary, up to and including the use of violence; but that violence must be limited very, very specifically against specific targets and only when connected to an explicit moralized justification.” Antifascist violence, therefore, must have a clear purpose which can be easily communicated to the public as discussed above. It must be clear that antifascist violence serves as a form of community self-defense in the absence of state protection and in the service of a direct-democratic vision of social organization. To that end, Stanislav Vysotsky’s presentation, “In-Sourcing Violence: Anti-Fascism, Anarchism, and Community Self-Defense,” theorizes that antifascist violence appropriates the role of community defense from the state as a reflection of anti-authoritarian or anarchist vision. Rather than relying on the state’s monopoly of force as a form of protection against fascist violence, a hallmark of the liberal antifascist position, antifascist activists in-source violence and become responsible for their own and their community’s security. Such actions inevitably challenge the state by undermining a key principle for its justification—the monopoly on the use of force. In doing so, <a>antifascists are clearly positioned in a three-way fight against the violence of the far-right and that of the state</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 8pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_msocom_1" id="_anchor_1" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_1" style="color: #954f72;">[ML1]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">.</span><span lang="EN-CA"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Critical Remarks on Liberal Antifascism</span></b><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">The conference organizers deserve credit for providing a platform for discussions of militant antifascism, for such discussions remain rare in academic forums. However, setting aside the question of the diversity of tactics, the discussions did not necessarily disambiguate the uses of the term <i>antifascism</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">We have already sketched some basic differences between militant and liberal forms of antifascism. At this point we may further differentiate the two around their respective theoretical and practical points of focus. Militant antifascism “goes where they go,” and arose to combat street-level or (potentially) mass organizing and recruitment by fascist groups. The three-way fight perspective, for example, rejects the characterization of fascist organizing as street-level shock troops commanded by an extreme faction of capitalists; instead, it defines fascism as a relatively autonomous, potentially mass insurgent social force. Whether or not they agree with the foregoing definition, militant approaches generally focus on the street-level, on-the-ground organizing of those groups. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Now, while liberal antifascists came to participate in united front or popular front actions in the last few years, the liberal perspective has a very different practical focus, which was evident at the conference: electoral strategies and policy. Antifascist theory must address the complex relationships between political parties and fascism as an insurgent (potentially) mass social force, but the differences between militant and liberal approaches shake out when we examine their practical answers to fighting fascism. Militant antifascism employs a diversity of tactics to combat fascism. The liberal antifascist discussions circled around electoral strategies and policies which have the potential for “challenging the appeal of fascism” (as one panel was called). And while militant antifascism has, or ought to have, a revolutionary horizon, liberal perspectives seek to salvage the American project, or, as they say, “build electoral power.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">For example, in her talk, “Neoliberalism and the Counter Resistance in the U.S.: Reflections on the Public Private Distinction,” Deborah L. Spencer <a>defends</a></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> a reformist type of antifascism that is not, as previous presenters asserted, “anticapitalist,” but “anti-free market capitalism.” She argues that the appeal of fascism would be undermined by a return to “managed capitalism” that was patterned on the social welfare state which has been largely dismantled under neoliberalism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">We recall scanning the audience and almost everyone in attendance was nodding in agreement. However, there remain numerous problems with the idea that the threat of fascism can be extinguished by implementing certain redistributive policies. First of all, fascism is not merely the product of economic policy. Second, Spencer’s analysis, by presenting social welfare merely in terms of policy choices, occludes the political and material conditions with which it co-existed, such as segregation and a military-industrial economy premised on expansive American imperialism. Drawing from more specific recent examples, she presents the <i>privatization</i> of the military or of prisons as symptoms of authoritarianism, rather than examining these institutions as themselves instruments of oppression and social control. Finally, she presents a schematic history of “ongoing resistance,” though resistance <i>to what</i> is unclear aside from a suggestion that it is resistance to neoliberalism. This supposed history spans from the 1950s, with General Electric “caring for employees,” through the Civil Rights movement <i>and</i> Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s, through the anti-war movement in the 1970s, to the Zapatistas! Yet these examples are not part of one cohesive arc of progress. The social movements Spencer cites were—or had significant radical factions that were—directly opposed to the American project that she seeks to salvage. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Spencer’s presentation represents a particular liberal antifascist tendency focused on public policy. Adolph Reed Jr.’s keynote address presents a tendency closer to a social democratic alternative that is to the left of the tendency represented by Spencer, but one which is still distant from the revolutionary horizons of militant antifascism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Reed defends an approach to race and class that is at odds with militant approaches, and within militant circles his work is not influential. However, </span><span lang="EN-CA"><a href="https://platypus1917.org/2022/12/01/popular-front-radicalism-a-review-of-adolph-reed-jr-s-the-south/" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">in a recent review of <i>The South</i></span></a></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> (Reed’s most recent book), John Garvey illuminates how Reed could have been considered as a candidate for the keynote. He characterizes Reed’s recent work as a form of “popular front radicalism.” But popular frontism is notoriously slippery; during the 1930s it was born of political expediency rather than principle, when the Communist International instructed communists of Western countries to form broad, mass-based antifascist coalitions against supposedly narrow, extreme factions of capitalists fomenting fascist movements. The risk in a popular front, then as now, is that radical initiatives are diluted within the defence of liberal democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Yet Reed remains to some degree a curious choice as a keynote speaker. The title of the address itself announces a shift of emphasis from <i>fascism</i> to <i>authoritarianism</i>: “How Serious is the Authoritarian Threat in the U.S., and What Can We Do About It?” (we rely on the text of the talk as reproduced </span><span lang="EN-CA"><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/12/how-serious-authoritarian-threat-us-what-can-we-do-about-it" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">here</span></a></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">). Though Reed immediately answers that the threat is indeed serious, his framework treats fascists as one group within a larger right-wing movement or fascism as a synonym for authoritarianism. Rather than clarifying what <i>fascism</i>—an already contested term—means, he reorients the audience toward a critical view of the development of electoral strategies within right-wing authoritarianism. The bulk of his argument involves a historical analysis that intertwines the development of right-wing authoritarianism along with the Democratic Party’s embrace of neoliberalism and (although the phrase does not appear in the text) identity politics. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Reed then concludes that in the midst of a crisis in neoliberal hegemony, “there are <i>only</i> <i>two</i> possible directions forward politically: one is toward social democracy and pursuit of solidaristic, downwardly redistributive policy agendas within a framework of government in the public good; the other is toward authoritarianism that preserves the core neoliberal principle of accumulation by dispossession by suppressing potential opposition” (We have placed emphasis on the dilemma that excludes the revolutionary horizon). To combat authoritarianism, he contends, the left must reconstitute a popular working-class movement which has been absent from the political terrain for decades. Here, indeed, is where popular front politics gets slippery and where the lack of clear definitions of terms like <i>fascism</i>, <i>working-class</i>, or <i>left movement</i> allow a broadly antifascist audience to read their perspectives into Reed’s argument. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">We will identify two major problems. The first concerns Reed’s treatment of class and race. We asked a few participants what they took away from Reed’s talk, and while their answers provide only anecdotal evidence, they generally understood Reed to have argued that leftist electoral strategies must be refocused on working-class issues rather than special interests.<a href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="color: #954f72;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a> That message, in a sense, is what Reed is known for; but there was also for some the implication that antifascist theory had not engaged in class analysis. However, while major liberal antifascist philosophical work on fascism (Umberto Eco or Jason Stanley) does not consider class in depth, class has been a concern for militant approaches, especially ongoing and long-standing debates within the three-way fight position, which seek to untangle how class and race are intertwined—how, for example, racism or sexism factored into the formation of a white, male, worker elite which has been mythologized in the image of the “average worker.” Hence, when conference discussions pivoted toward building a hegemonic block that appealed precisely to this unexamined “average worker,” the horizon of militant antifascism appeared as distant as the New York City skyline. We can’t get at a real class analysis without demythologizing this “average worker.”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Furthermore, while Reed upholds a strong leftist movement as the antidote to fascism, the scope of his strategy is far closer to liberal antifascism, and its electoralism and reformism, than the revolutionary horizon of militant antifascism. If we return to our initial definition of fascism, as a relatively autonomous, potentially mass insurgent social force, we should also recall that Don Hamerquist’s essay, “Fascism and Antifascism,” notes that the real danger of far-right movements is that “they might gain a mass following among potentially insurgent workers and a declassed strata through an historic default of the left.”<a href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="color: #954f72;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">While both Hamerquist and Reed acknowledge this historic default of the left, their perspectives share little practical ground. Hamerquist was referring to the default of the <i>revolutionary </i>left. By contrast, Reed sees the terrain as encompassing two competing visions that might forge a path beyond neoliberalism—but in his view they are competing for institutional hegemony within the American system. As a consequence, only in passing does he examine street-level far-right movements, and when he does, it is telling that he treats them as “rubes,” duped by an authoritarian elite—and thus his treatment is not far from the original popular front conception of fascist mass movements. Furthermore, Reed does not address militant antifascism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">Militant antifascism fights fascism on the ground because struggle at the street-level puts a cost on fascist organizing, a cost which is often high enough to undermine the far-right’s ability to normalize itself in existing social institutions. A few down election cycles will not defeat far-right social movements; at the moment, it appears they are reorganizing around politicizing the latent transphobia and misogyny that suffuse contemporary social life in the United States and elsewhere. Ultimately, though, the greatest distance between Reed’s popular front radicalism and militant antifascism lies in the scope of their respective practices. We have mentioned the revolutionary horizon several times. In his “Seven Theses on the Three-Way Fight,” D.Z. Shaw writes: “a </span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">revolutionary horizon is a necessary component to antifascist organizing; that is, there is no meaningful way in which fascism can be permanently defeated without overthrowing the conditions which give rise to it: capitalism and white supremacy, and in North America, settler-colonialism.”</span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> The revolutionary fight is not against merely one implementation of capitalism, such as neoliberalism, but capitalism itself; its strategy is not electoral strategy, but broader social struggle—while it may lack a mass base at the moment, it has shown that it can combat and undermine the strength of far-right organizing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Palatino;">To summarize: in our view, an underlying popular front radicalism guided the conversations at the conference and framed the reception of the various panels. Yet it was important to convene a conference dedicated to antifascism in the twenty-first century, so that participants could get a snapshot of what antifascism—and the challenges around organizing to fight fascism—looked like in late 2022. The next challenge is to examine the contested terrain of popular or everyday antifascism, by confronting the disagreements and contradictions between the two major schools of thought: liberal antifascism and militant antifascism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="ftn1"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="color: #954f72;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-CA"> </span><span lang="EN-CA">Bray, </span><span lang="EN-CA"><a href="https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/antifa/" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><i><span>Antifa</span></i></a></span></span></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">, 172.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="ftn2"><p class="MsoFootnoteText" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="color: #954f72;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-CA"> When supposed ‘working-class issues’ are left undefined, they default to the concerns of the putative average ‘white worker.’ As David Roediger points out, this recentering of whiteness is not far from conservative Democrats’ ideology (frankly, in other words, this recentering of whiteness defaults to the ideology of the American settler-colonial project): “In popular usage, the very term worker often presumes whiteness (and maleness), as in conservative Democrats’ calls for abandoning ‘special interests’ and returning the party to policies appealing to the ‘average worker’—a line of argument that blissfully ignores the fact that the ‘average worker’ is increasingly Black, Latino, Asian, and/or female.” See Roediger, <i>The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class</i>. Revised Edition (London: Verso, 1999), 19.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="ftn3"><p class="MsoFootnoteText" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8B953176-DBA3-4DF6-956F-1D58B2CE6C02#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="color: #954f72;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="vertical-align: super;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 10pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-CA"> Hamerquist, “Fascism and Antifascism,” in <i>Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement</i>. Second Edition (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2017), 29.</span></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-56133468055845501272023-01-17T21:43:00.002-05:002023-01-18T08:48:18.785-05:00On Fascism and the Three Way Fight (Guest Post)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Editors' note:</span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> <br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">The following is a guest post by Paul Bowman. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">The article comes from a much larger set of essays attempting to give some analysis and definition to modern fascism, the broader reactionary currents that fascism often emerges from</span></i><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>but can break from, too</span></i><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>and what kinds of thinking our side needs to develop a working practice of countering fascism. On this last bit, Bowman starts with a comradely review of the three way fight concept of revolutionary antifascism and builds on this with his own experiences, analysis, and estimates.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><i>Bowman came of age in the mid-80s and was a founding member of Leeds Anti-Fascist Action in 1986, remaining active within it until its self-dissolution in 2004 (folding into the 635 Group successor). Over that period Leeds AFA was involved in removing the fascist presence from the city center and at the Leeds United FC football ground, as well as founding the AFA Northern Network, which later became the format for the AFA National Network. Aside from militant anti-fascism he was also involved in groups such as the Class War Federation (UK) and Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland) and politically identifies as an anarchist of the especifista tendency.</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><i> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><i>* * * * * </i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.4px;"><span style="font-size: large;">On Fascism and the Three Way Fight</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">By Paul Bowman</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgukqc5iqmxaZpdvwBBd7UvjcmMkjW_csB6U0S8-xlxggfwAnb35GO8u9_0MQO36ylNEXmbkVvfilcfYRJEJheYR1at3kA6tcgDx0Q2ykof_Lbkeweq7UhQHOICvWPyU54W8HPt2GfAZJdwoKma52ac8pEiCYAXryYiY2C-my4eoCbOzghxw7M/s750/clashes_against_English_FarRight.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgukqc5iqmxaZpdvwBBd7UvjcmMkjW_csB6U0S8-xlxggfwAnb35GO8u9_0MQO36ylNEXmbkVvfilcfYRJEJheYR1at3kA6tcgDx0Q2ykof_Lbkeweq7UhQHOICvWPyU54W8HPt2GfAZJdwoKma52ac8pEiCYAXryYiY2C-my4eoCbOzghxw7M/w400-h266/clashes_against_English_FarRight.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span face="-webkit-standard">C</span><i style="font-family: -webkit-standard;">lashes between anti-racists, police and members of the neo-nazi National Front in Wales. <br />Photo is reproduced solely for educational uses.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">I want to thank <i>Three Way Fight</i> for reaching out to me to solicit this article. All the usual disclaimers about whatever you find disagreeable or wrong about it is my fault alone, and not the editors of this blog. I also want to start by saying I don</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">’</span>t believe that theory is either right or wrong in any absolute sense, independent of what practical use it is to us in guiding our practice. So I don</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">’</span>t think that there is an objectively </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>correct</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> definition of fascism, simply more or less useful ones. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Because this article is extracted from a chapter of <a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/ideology-and-practice-43a7e512f0f7" style="color: purple;">a much longer draft work</a><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">[i]</span></sup></sup></a> I</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">’</span>m going to start, however jarringly, with a brief list of points that summarise the ideas or themes of the longer text in the hopes that this will make what follows less puzzling than it might otherwise be. In no particular order then, the summary points of the broader theoretical framework of </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>Ideology and Practice</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> are as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">1. A social materialist outlook which rejects idealism and the conceit that ideologies can be separated from practices and social situation</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>a conceit that follows the template of capitalist separation of mental and physical labour. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">2. Methodological collectivism</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>which is not the symmetrical inversion of methodological individualism, as collectives are composed of individuals</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>which holds that the object of study is the dynamics of collectivities. This has certain implications, such as the rejection of psychologising fascism, amongst other things.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">3. A three-dimensional distinction of collective processes and shared </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>commons</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> into ideological, political, and cultural categories. And that much of what is commonly called </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>politics</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> is in fact ideology and vice versa. (This is without a doubt the most contentious bit, because it means challenging the generally accepted meaning of common terms, which as a rule is to be avoided like the plague, but sometimes needs must).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">4. A historical materialist appreciation of the upside down view of the dominant superstructural or </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>ideological classes,</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> that the ideas and actions of the political, legal, religious, police, military, and philosophical/academical leaders and institutions are the main agents of social change</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>the superstructure as </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>protagonist</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> of history. The contrary historical materialist view being that the real origins of social change are within the so-called </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span></span>base</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> of society, specifically the class struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">5. The so-called </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>political</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span></span> field of bourgeois democratic societies can be categorised into far left, centre left, centre right, and far right. And that logically these four categories all mutually rely on a working definition of centrism as an actual social process, rather than a casual slur.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">6. A fundamental distinction between power and counterpower as being not only quantitatively but qualitatively different. The liberal concept of </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>civil society</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span></span> made up of organisations that are neither an extension of the superstructure and bourgeois class rule, nor organs of counterpower, is a delusion.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">7. A consequent difference in strategic orientation between </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>protagonistic</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span></span> and </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>antagonistic</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span></span> models of social change, left and right. Centrists being protagonistic more or less by definition and far left and right divided between protagonistic, antagonistic, and confusionist tendencies.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">8. That the </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>antagonistic</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span></span> strategy of counterpower is not exclusive to anarchists or the revolutionary left in general, but can be adopted even by radical reformists. In other words, the </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>antagonist left" and </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>revolutionary left</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span></span> are not synonyms because there are ideologically self-identifying revolutionary leftists who are protagonistic or confusionist in strategic orientation, and there are reformists who are antagonistic in their strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">9. That militant anti-fascism is a strategy of counterpower and thus an element of the antagonistic left, even if not all participants are necessarily revolutionary leftists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">10. That fascism is a combination of far right ideology with an insurgent politics of counterpower. Not all far right movements are necessarily fascist. A distinction that cannot be made or acted on without properly distinguishing ideology from politics.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">That final point is the main job of this article to outline and support as best possible. Again, my apologies for front-loading the article with a litany of abstractions, but hopefully it will illuminate some of what follows. </span></p><h3 style="break-after: avoid; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24.5333px; margin: 0.25in 0in 6pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Three-way fight concept as opposed to the two-way perspective</b><o:p></o:p></span></h3><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><i><span style="font-size: large;"></span></i></span><blockquote><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The [Popular Front] line, albeit a U-turn from the disastrous Third Period ideology, still persist[ed] in framing fascists as a simple tool or instrument of the bourgeoisie, with no autonomy of their own. In other words, this was </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">also</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> a two-way fight perspective. Significantly, although dressed up in economistic language — the necessity of siding with the “good capitalists” of the manufacturing and “progressive” national bourgeoisie, and their liberal middle class supporters, against the “bad” finance capitalists — effectively aligned Popular Front anti-fascism along the same line as liberal "subjectivist" anti-fascism.</span></span></i></blockquote><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">As this article will be published on the <i>Three Way Fight</i> blog, I</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">’</span></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">m going to take familiarity with the concept (as outlined in the </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>About" statement <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/p/about.html" target="_blank">here</a> and the associated basic texts list) as a given. The aspect of the three-way concept I want to focus on is that the struggle between anti-fascists and fascists and the state cannot be conceived as a two way fight, on a political (as opposed to ideological) level. This needs a little unpacking.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Schematically speaking, liberal anti-fascism sees the struggle against fascism as a two-way fight between the defenders of liberal democracy and the fascists and far-right forces that would overthrow it. The reluctance of the police and other state forces to properly repress the enemies of democracy may be seen as a problem (even denounced as “fascist pigs” in the more radlib variants), but essentially the struggle is seen as between the partisans of liberal, anti-racist, egalitarian democracy, against the forces ranged against it. In other words, the struggle is seen primarily as an ideologically motivated one, in which class conflict and capitalist crisis play no agential role. This is the liberal two-way fight perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">So far, so orthodox, from a class-conscious leftist perspective. The second paragraph here really spells out the heterodoxy of the three-way fight concept compared to an orthodox Marxist perspective. <a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/a-history-of-confusion-part-2-marxism-and-ideology-b49796cb8da0" style="color: purple;">Elsewhere</a><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">[ii]</span></sup></sup></a> I related the story of the disastrous Third Period where the consensus of the Communist parties following the Comintern line was that fascism was simply a violent adjunct or auxiliary to the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. That is, the problem or challenge of fascism was subsumed under the two-way fight of the class struggle, as seen through the orthodox Marxist lens. If the Third Period was on the threshold of a new revolutionary period, then all defenders of capitalism — i.e. non-Communists — were equally “fascist,” and those claiming to do so in the name of the workers, i.e. the hated Social Democrats, were the biggest threat of all, before even the Nazis.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">After the Nazis came to power and liquidated the German Marxist movement, the Comintern belatedly realised the need to make a drastic U-turn and drop all the “social fascist” BS. The new line, in preparation for coming Popular Front policy, was expressed by the then Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov in the following formulation that “<i>Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of finance capital</i>.” Which is often since referred to as the “Dimitrov line.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">However, the new line, albeit a U-turn from the disastrous Third Period ideology, still persists in framing fascists as a simple tool or instrument of the bourgeoisie, with no autonomy of their own. In other words, this was <i>also</i> a two-way fight perspective. Significantly, although dressed up in economistic language — the necessity of siding with the “good capitalists” of the manufacturing and “progressive” national bourgeoisie, and their liberal middle class supporters, against the “bad” finance capitalists — effectively aligned Popular Front anti-fascism along the same line as liberal "subjectivist" anti-fascism. In the post-war period, this aspect of popular frontism has been criticised at times by the radical left as reformist and opportunist. But these are functionalist or even ad hominem arguments, compared to recognising the structural effect of viewing a three-way fight through two-way fight blinkers. A perspective that constrains you to choosing one side as the “main enemy” and allying with the other as the “lesser evil.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">The failure of the economistic dogmatic doctrine of official Marxism in 1930s Germany led some thinkers, particularly individuals associated with the Frankfurt School, like Wilhelm Reich or Erich Fromm, to retry an analysis of Nazism and fascism by switching to a psychoanalytic framework instead. But in many ways this was a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire, metaphorically speaking, as psychoanalysis was no less of a totalising discourse than the economic determinism of Comintern doctrine. Wilhelm Reich’s <i>The Mass Psychology of Fascism</i> is recognised as a classic of the genre. But it has to be said that despite its seminal role in forming the problematic of “how did the masses come to turn to their own repression,” his proposed answer boils down to sexual repression, which is frankly absurd. Admittedly not as dementedly self-annihilating as the KPD’s “<i>Nach Hitler, uns!</i>” perspective. But that’s a very low bar. Not to mention Reich’s post-war spiral into orgone accumulators and other such woo nonsense. Fromm’s more existential <i>Escape from Freedom</i> has stood the test of time better, but is ultimately no more convincing as an analysis of the causes of the rise to power of Nazism in Germany than Reich’s sexual repression thesis.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">If we can now appreciate the relative novelty of the three-way fight perspective, that doesn’t mean that the concept in itself presents a finished analysis. It is a political starting point that demands the elaboration of a worked out strategic, ideological, and theoretical analysis. So I’m going to propose an analytical framework in that general orientation.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtdhcqib7jiHzxoxgTjAZuGRNktQDLIZ5dXIgOk_27-nkT2NlLAlRJ2Z8juX6BJyp-7bMmXlALqmrdhgZFnYzywxrpQo8yNX89OuFkqqGyRZStan49YELvFS5U4Zpi9eVh2XnD7wrnpZiNENmQNXnhSGL2S7TA9lsRWUuBAfiBxho4r9DejiM/s900/antifa-2-getty.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtdhcqib7jiHzxoxgTjAZuGRNktQDLIZ5dXIgOk_27-nkT2NlLAlRJ2Z8juX6BJyp-7bMmXlALqmrdhgZFnYzywxrpQo8yNX89OuFkqqGyRZStan49YELvFS5U4Zpi9eVh2XnD7wrnpZiNENmQNXnhSGL2S7TA9lsRWUuBAfiBxho4r9DejiM/w400-h266/antifa-2-getty.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Antifascist mobilization. Photo is reproduced solely for educational uses.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><h3 style="break-after: avoid; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24.5333px; margin: 0.25in 0in 6pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Towards a multi-dimensional analysis of fascism</b></span></h3><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: large; line-height: 18.4px;"><i></i></span><blockquote><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 18.4px;">The conservative believes that the traditional order is under threat from subversion and “society must be defended.” The fascist believes that the conservative is too timid to face the truth that there's nothing left worth defending and </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 18.4px;">“</span>society</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> can only be re-established by violent insurrection.</span></span></i></blockquote></div><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">My proposed model is a “portable” definition</span><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;" title=""><sup><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">[iii]</span></sup></sup></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">, in that we don’t restrict fascism to a historical phenomenon specific to the 1920–1940 period. The model recognises the significantly protean nature of fascism in its ideological flexibility in terms of perceived main internal enemy, which has historically ranged from anti-communist, anti-Jewish, anti-Black, anti-Islam, you name it, conspiracies of enemies & “traitors.”</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">The first question of any multi-dimensional model is how many dimensions? Clearly, in order to properly reflect the distinction between ideology and politics, a minimum of two dimensions is required. But I propose that it is impossible to grasp the specificity of fascist energies without including a cultural dimension. "Culture" is a hopelessly ill-defined word and my attempts to give it a more specific meaning here (the collective commons of socially-constructed shared <i>hedonic practices</i></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span></i>music, food, fashion, sex, sports, dancing, gaming, anything a subculture can be defined by) are obviously arbitrary. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Let’s start with the big one. Griffin and liberal anti-fascism may be erring in making this the sole dimension, but there’s no denying that it’s a major one.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><h3 style="break-after: avoid; color: #434343; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21.4667px; margin: 16pt 0in 4pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Dimension 1 — Ideological</b><o:p></o:p></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></h3><h3 style="break-after: avoid; color: #434343; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21.4667px; margin: 16pt 0in 4pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">-</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b> Far right/anti-centrist/anti-populist</b><o:p></o:p></span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Despite occasional bad faith attempts to pose as being “neither left or right,” fascism is both determinedly outside and against the political centre ground and very much to the right — they are violently opposed not only to socialism, but also to liberalism and democracy. But if all fascists are far right, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all devotees of far right ideologies are fascists. Far right is a relative ideological position defined against the centre ground. When politicians try to drag the Overton window towards a far-right position using conventional electoral means, they are far-right but not fascist. Fascists don’t want even a racially exclusive democracy, but race war and dictatorship — the revolutionary overthrow of the existing electoral representative system. For similar reasons, even though fascists often try to pass themselves off as right-populists for tactical reasons, they distrust and despise “mere populists” as simple opportunists and tail-enders without any real beliefs. As counter-intuitive as it may appear, given the contradictory mess that is fascist ideology, they sincerely believe in the absolute necessity of people having beliefs strong enough to kill and die for.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- Redemptive ultranationalism <o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Fascists believe in the nation, but that the nation is currently “fallen” and corrupt and needs a violent, revolutionary rebirth, to remake the social. This is Griffin’s <i>palingenesis</i>. The difference between mere patriotism or “ordinary” nationalism and ultranationalism is qualitative as well as quantitative. It is the fervent belief in the utopian possibilities for a reborn nation as an ideal society. The need for violent redemption is tied intimately to a narrative of national humiliation. “<i>Death to the traitors!</i>” is the rallying cry. There is a deep emotional need for revenge, not just on chosen scapegoats, but for the current social order itself. We have to see the difference between the revolutionary revenge fantasies of the fascist and the conservative’s fear of change. The conservative believes that the traditional order is under threat from subversion and “<i>society must be defended</i>.” The fascist believes that the conservative is too timid to face the truth that there's nothing left worth defending and </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“<i></i></span>society</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">”</span> can only be re-established by violent insurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- "<i>This is what they took from you</i>"</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>Imagined bereavement for a past solidarity that never was<o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">The idea of a lost golden age of past social solidarity (whether "white" or "national" or other exclusionary far right identitarian category) haunts the present day resentment of the far right. The real relative absence of social solidarity in existing capitalist society is projected backwards into nostalgia for a lost age of cross-class "white" (or other) solidarity. A Kübler-Ross style "stages of grief" of denial, anger, bargaining, despair is the simultaneously experienced turmoil of fascism's emotional monologue. The grand irony being, of course, that this mythical age of cross-class solidarity between bosses and workers on the grounds of shared "whiteness," never really existed. As any knowledge of actual class history will show. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">There is a particular danger here from radical liberal responses to this fascist mourning for a past white solidarity that never was, which is to reinforce that fantasy by, effectively, saying that that imagined past did in fact really exist. Here, strategically, the line must be drawn between militant, class-conscious anti-fascism and the liberal and radical liberal deformations. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">The only sustainable counter to the fantasy of a lost racial or national solidarity that never was, is to build a real class solidarity in the present. Even militant anti-fascism can never be the whole answer to the threat of fascism. Ultimately the positive side of anti-fascist counterpower is to build effective models of functioning class solidarity here in the real world. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- Conspiratorial by instinct and ideological necessity</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">—</span>"Who is 'they'?"<o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">If both liberals and the left mainly persist in seeing the fascist vs anti-fascist struggle as a two-way fight, fascists take the two-way fight perspective to extremes. To do this they rely on conspiratorial narratives of how all the apparently mutually hostile forces ranged against them, from liberals, the left, the state, the oligarchs, the migrant poor, etc., are all part of a united conspiracy against them, the “true people.” These conspiracies don’t have to make any logical sense; they just need to support the main narrative of a two way fight in which they, the fascists, are the forces of good, and all the others are pawns of the darkness. Similarly social conflicts do not arise from “structural” causes (like class conflict) because “structural” doctrines are part of the conspiracy. </span></p><h3 style="break-after: avoid; color: #434343; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21.4667px; margin: 16pt 0in 4pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Dimension 2 — Political</b><o:p></o:p></span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- Politically insurgent<o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">In this model this political character of fascism as a “revolutionary” force or following the strategy of counterpower — or political “antagonism” in the parlance here — is the real <i>differentia specifica</i> that separates fascists proper from mere adherents of far right ideological beliefs. It doesn’t just need to dream like a duck, it needs to quack like a duck, walk like a duck, swim like a duck, and generally make aggressively duck-like actions to be a duck. Fascist is, as fascist does. “<i>By their deeds shall you know them.</i>” In a collapsing social order (whether that collapse is institutionally real or politically subjective), the fascist ability to project force where the state is no longer able to (or willing to, from a fascist perspective) is the power to transform a “corrupt” society into a new fascist utopia. At the risk of sounding arch or wantonly Deleuzian, it is the strategy of violent reterritorialisation of the terrain of reproduction and civil society that marks out fascism from the far right or populism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- Führerprinzip (ultra-factionalism) <o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Again following the political typology sketched out in the summary points above, fascist politics compensates for the contradictory and tendentially incoherent character of their conspiracy-addled ideologies by ultra-factional political practices. Leadership and loyalty to leaders is a necessity for fascist group-formation at all levels from smallest to highest. US fascist Louis Beam may have popularised the concept of “leaderless resistance” amongst the American far right in his essay of the same name. But in my definition, politics is the process of forming collective bodies capable of exercising collective agency, and from that specific perspective, isolated cells and lone wolf terror attacks, while generally ideologically inspired, are functionally apolitical. We’ll come back to this in the discussion on incels below. At a movement level, the leadership principle produces the elevation of a maximum leader, demanding ultimate personal loyalty from every member and cast in the role of messianic saviour of the nation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Two things must be specified about this characteristic. First, it is not necessarily specific to fascists alone. Most right-wing populist movements also rely on a charismatic saviour/leader figure. Bolsonaro, Trump, Orbán (Modi, not so much) are all charismatic leaders in the right-populist mode, without so far really empowering the fascist fraction of their fanbase. Second, within fascism proper the leadership principle is often in tension or even conflict with the lust for revolutionary counterpower amongst the acolytes. In the late 80s I once had a member of the “Political Soldier” wing of the NF, a self-declared “Strasserite,” declare to us in all seriousness that we couldn’t accuse him of being a Hitler fanboy “…because Hitler was a reactionary who sold out the movement.” Which, within his ideological framework actually made sense (didn’t stop us laughing at him, though). The leadership principle is a pragmatic necessity for a fascist mass movement, but that doesn’t mean that fascists are always happy with their current incumbent Führer, to say the least. And it doesn’t mean that the leadership will not sell out the followers whose muscle brought them to the negotiating table when it’s time to cut a deal with the captains of industry and the armed forces of the permanent state, as the Brownshirts found out to their peril.</span></p><h3 style="break-after: avoid; color: #434343; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21.4667px; margin: 16pt 0in 4pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Dimension 3 — Cultural</b><o:p></o:p></span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- Cultural machismo and misogyny<o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Machismo is the cultural glue that binds all the elements of the other dimensions of fascism together. It’s the cultural chauvinist part of ultranationalism. The willingness to kill, indifference to mass death of non-nationals, is not just an ideological value but also a matter of pride and emotional pleasure. The “death cult” aspect lurks within the cultural-hedonic darkness of fascism. Speaking metaphorically, if the toxins in toxic masculinity could be extracted as an essential oil, it would be the engine fuel of the fascist war machine. It goes without saying that this all presupposes the general rightist view of masculine and feminine roles as natural, biologically rooted binaries and essentially unequal.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">However, if cultural machismo was as much part and parcel of fascism a century ago as it is today, there have been substantial changes in recent years. Sexism and misogyny used to be combined within the unitary body, behaviour, and speech of an identified individual in the company of their peers. Now the disaggregating effect of online virtual spaces have allowed misogyny to strike out on its own, find its own line of flight and end up dispensing with many of the macho stances that real-world performative masculinity imposed. Now the misanthropic aspect (“sympathy is for the weak”) of machismo is separated from the misogynistic (“sympathy is for p-----s”). Incel beta male culture is emblematic of the cultural forms that could not have existed prior to the new virtual terrains opened by the internet. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">- The aestheticization of politics [sic]<o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Ever since Walter Benjamin declared, in the epilogue of his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” that “<i>The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life</i>,” the concept of fascism as somehow the “aestheticization of politics” has entered the discourse. The first paragraph of <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm" style="color: purple;">Benjamin’s epilogue</a> is worth quoting in full:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 40px; text-align: left;"><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">“The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.”<a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><b><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">[iv]</span></sup></b></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">In the rest of the (brief) text of the epilogue, Benjamin goes on to quote Marinetti’s manifesto enthusing over the aesthetics of war and concludes that war and destruction is the inevitable perverse result of the aestheticization in the vein of Luxemburg’s “socialism or barbarism.” This was a very common perspective in the 1930s for fairly obvious reasons. Today the age of colonial empires is over. The failed US invasions of Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq mean that white supremacists no longer dream of new colonial empires.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">If the original context of Benjamin’s concept no longer plays, its evocative resonances are still with us. Fascism does have a culture of victimisation, that narrative of national humiliation mentioned above under the heading of redemptive ultranationalism, which is founded in a specifically identitarian take on “<i>We are nothing and yet we should be everything</i>.” We need to pare Benjamin’s aesthetic dimension from the “high culture” notions of art that haunt the intellectual milieu of his time and the later Frankfurt School, and relocate it solidly in popular shared pleasures (hedonics), like music.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Fascism loves memes and music. Not in the literal sense of specific musical genres, be it Wagner, Skrewdriver, Neofolk, Scandi-death metal or whatever. But because music represents the special power of aesthetics of being able to invoke emotions directly, especially amongst a mass audience. Viral memes can do likewise. And so fascism can use these cultural mediums to inspire and communicate the emotions of fascist desires, hatreds, rages, and ecstatic visions directly. Directly, that is, in a way that is obviously influenced by and channelling ideological values, but not intermediated by them. </span></p><h3 style="break-after: avoid; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24.5333px; margin: 0.25in 0in 6pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Summing up</b><o:p></o:p></span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">As I said at the outset, this article is a shortened extract from a longer text, “<a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/fascism-and-the-three-way-fight-4a05b87a4eec" style="color: purple;">Fascism and the Three-Way Fight</a>,”<a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">[v]</span></sup></sup></a> which is a chapter in an unfinished book-length text “Ideology and Practice.” In the original text I preface the proposed model above with an engagement with writers from the 3WF perspective, including Don Hamerquist, J. Sakai, and Matthew Lyons, before presenting my own alternative framework. For brevity, I’ve omitted that critical engagement here, so for anyone further interested in those critiques I’ll redirect you there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">I discussed above the limitations of liberal anti-fascists’ “two-way fight” perspective of the struggle as one in defence of democracy. But for those of us coming from a radical left perspective, we shouldn’t assume that all of the obstacles are coming from the liberal side of the fence. The radical left has its own blindspots and long-lasting misapprehensions. As I’ve argued, in my view one of the most damaging of these is the habit of confusing the ideological with the political. The old sayings “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” and “politics makes strange bedfellows” mean that at a basic level we understand that politics can cut crossways to ideology, usually in damaging ways. But leftist discourse tends to conflate the two dynamics, for contingent reasons of our own history. We understand why liberals want to view fascism one-sidedly from a purely ideological viewpoint, because their political solution and only tactic, ultimately, is to call yet again for votes for a bankrupt Democratic zombie neoliberalism. As militant anti-fascists we need to distinguish between the hatefulness of far right ideologies and fascist politics of violent street counterpower. In the struggle for the hearts and minds of the working class, the legitimacy of our direct action tactics is founded on the old maxim that “<i>he who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword</i>.” And for that we need to be able to clearly discriminate between the fascists and the mere haters in a way that can be witnessed and understood by all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"> </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1aEFOIFH2kwWxFIIoNuFeHVWVwQezuYETIHhisPh9qWF2dfuWwI12q5AuRPrg1JTDAMUFe08LRHynLBSkLhh0bqaoLj7pLs83I-l1BzU5o48i5y-zHzIh51p7dmu_Tl7rN4oNKumLL0IMYTjGTtJgM_5cwfk9NitejGorzz4GQeo9lLKtxU/s640/NationalAction_England.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="640" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1aEFOIFH2kwWxFIIoNuFeHVWVwQezuYETIHhisPh9qWF2dfuWwI12q5AuRPrg1JTDAMUFe08LRHynLBSkLhh0bqaoLj7pLs83I-l1BzU5o48i5y-zHzIh51p7dmu_Tl7rN4oNKumLL0IMYTjGTtJgM_5cwfk9NitejGorzz4GQeo9lLKtxU/w400-h301/NationalAction_England.webp" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">British neo-nazi group, National Action, hold anti-refugee, anti-Islam rally. <br />Photo is reproduced solely for educational uses.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="edn1"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-GB"><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px;">[i]</span></sup></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"> <a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/ideology-and-practice-43a7e512f0f7" target="_blank">https://eidgenossen.medium.com/ideology-and-practice-43a7e512f0f7</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="edn2"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-GB"><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px;">[ii]</span></sup></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"> <a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/a-history-of-confusion-part-2-marxism-and-ideology-b49796cb8da0" target="_blank">https://eidgenossen.medium.com/a-history-of-confusion-part-2-marxism-and-ideology-b49796cb8da0</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="edn3"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-GB"><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px;">[iii]</span></sup></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"> I have taken the term “a portable definition of fascism” from an essay by Geoff Eley, “What is Fascism and Where does it Come From?”, published in <i>History Workshop Journal</i>, Issue 91, doi:10.1093/hwj/dbab003, and at the time of writing, available online at </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/91/1/1/6329186" style="color: purple;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 10pt;">https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/91/1/1/6329186</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;">. Although the term appears earlier in the introductory chapter “Introduction: A Portable Concept of Fascism” by Julia Adeney Thomas, in the 2020 book “Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth-Century Rise of the Global Right”, doi:10.1215/9781478004387, a collection of essays edited by both herself and Eley.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="edn4"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-GB"><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px;">[iv]</span></sup></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"> <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm" target="_blank">https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="edn5"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><a href="applewebdata://8155F6AA-29E2-4AEA-822E-6AE82741A643#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="color: purple;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-GB"><sup><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px;">[v]</span></sup></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"> <a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/fascism-and-the-three-way-fight-4a05b87a4eec" target="_blank">https://eidgenossen.medium.com/fascism-and-the-three-way-fight-4a05b87a4eec</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;">Photo credits:</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;">1. <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4279523/clashes-anti-fascists-police-national-front-supporters-lincolnshire/" target="_blank">The Sun</a>, 19 August 2017.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;">2. <a href="https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2020/06/02/what-is-antifa-the-left-group-trump-terrorists-history-anti-fascist-mussolini.html" target="_blank">The Week Magazine</a>, 2 June 2020. Picture via Getty.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;">3. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/uk-news/national-action-founder-alex-davies-trial-b2080917.html" target="_blank">The Independent</a>, 17 May 2022.</span></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-76458278315052160442023-01-08T20:53:00.001-05:002023-01-08T20:53:42.806-05:00Their Anti-Imperialism and Ours (guest post)<p><b>by Linda Mann</b></p>
<p><i>Editors’ note: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is now in its eleventh month, and the war has no end in sight. For radicals in the west, the war raises crucial questions about imperialism, national oppression, class conflict, and political responsibility, yet it remains a point of deep disagreement and confusion. </i>Three Way Fight<i> believes that a radical response to the war needs to hold Russia’s right-wing authoritarian regime primarily responsible while also critiquing western powers and Ukraine’s capitalist state for their actions and roles. We’ve posted a compendium of useful “<a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/03/antifascist-resources-on-ukraine.html" target="_blank">Antifascist Resources on Ukraine</a>” and an in-depth <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/06/no-longer-gendarme-for-west-simon.html" target="_blank">review</a> of Simon Pirani’s thoughtful analysis of the conflict and the developments that shaped it.</i> </p>
<p><i>Our comrades at the online journal </i>Insurgent Notes<i> recently published a new <a href="http://insurgentnotes.com/issue-25/" target="_blank">special issue on Ukraine</a>, and we encourage readers to check it out. Rather than promoting a unitary “line,” the special issue presents a range of perspectives and political positions in order to encourage thoughtful, open debate—in particular on whether western radicals should support Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion or refuse to take sides in a war between capitalist states backed by competing imperialist interests. We believe there are valuable arguments to be made on different sides of this debate, but we ultimately find some arguments more compelling than others.</i> </p>
<p><i>In the </i>Insurgent Notes<i> special issue, we especially appreciate John Garvey’s “<a href="http://insurgentnotes.com/2022/12/against-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-for-the-successful-resistance-of-the-ukrainian-people/" target="_blank">Against the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, for the Successful Resistance of the Ukrainian People</a>,” which argues that Ukrainians “are faced with an existential crisis—perhaps comparable to what the Palestinians have dealt with since 1948,” and “for the moment, the defense of the people cannot be accomplished without the use of the state. If Ukrainians succeed, they will live to fight another day against that state. If Ukraine falls, there will be no fight left to have—there will only be tyranny and prolonged national subjugation.” Exploring debates among Marxists around the First World War, John quotes Rosa Luxemburg’s little-known argument that the working class “must fight for the defense of national identity as a cultural legacy, that has its own right to exist and flourish,” which as John notes “seems to be the essence of the fight that Ukrainians have been conducting.”<br /></i></p>
<p><i>In this spirit, we publish below a guest post by Linda Mann titled “Their Anti-Imperialism and Ours,” a review of the book </i>War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict<i>, by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies of the left-liberal group Code Pink. This review criticizes Benjamin and Davies for implicitly justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and uncritically echoing many points of Russian government propaganda about the war. More broadly, “Their Anti-Imperialism and Ours” traces the rise of a “red-brown ‘peace movement’,” which in the name of opposing U.S. and western imperialism serves as apologists for mass killings by Putin’s government and its right-wing authoritarian allies, notably Assad’s government in Syria. </i></p>
<p><i>We think Linda Mann’s review is a useful contribution to the discussion and mostly agree with her critique, but the analysis is her own, not necessarily that of </i>Three Way Fight<i>, and we take issue with it on a few points. For example, we think it’s misleading to describe former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as a “Kremlin puppet.” (Simon Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-our-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-ukrainian-and-russian-people-not" target="_blank">argues persuasively</a> that both Yanukovych and his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, were trying to navigate between Russia and the European Union, although they had different leanings.) In particular, we think the review underplays the reality and danger of Ukrainian fascists in the 2014 revolution and in Ukraine since then. It’s not true, as Putin’s supporters claim, that the Ukrainian government or military is run by Nazis or that the 2014 revolution that overthrew President Yanukovych was a western-backed fascist coup. But fascists really did <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/06/no-longer-gendarme-for-west-simon.html" target="_blank">play an important role</a> in the broad-based 2014 revolution, and in the following years they have carried out widespread physical attacks and exercised influence beyond their small numbers, as discussed <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.leftvoice.org/beyond-putins-propaganda-the-far-right-is-a-major-problem-in-ukraine/" target="_blank">here</a>. </i></p>
<p><i>With these caveats, we believe this guest post strengthens understanding of the Ukraine war and the dangers of uncritically supporting opponents of U.S. imperialism. </i></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p>
<h2>Their Anti-Imperialism and Ours</h2>
<p>A Review of <i>War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict</i>, by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies</p>
<p>By Linda Mann</p>
<p><i>This article was greatly facilitated by Bill Weinberg’s <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/against-pseudo-75765404" target="_blank">podcast</a> about the book on </i>Counter Vortex<i>. The level of research in his review of this odious book is phenomenal and he deserves our support.</i></p>
<p>The most important quote in Benjamin’s and Davies’ book is the following: </p>
<blockquote>“The massive Western [military] support put Russia in a predicament…. In November 2021, Russia still enjoyed ‘escalation dominance,’ meaning that it could bring greater military force to bear than the US or NATO in any war in Ukraine. But Russia’s escalation dominance would keep diminishing as Ukraine’s military was gradually armed and trained up to NATO standards, with or without actual NATO membership.<br /><br />
“This meant that from Russia’s perspective, if they were going to have to fight to defend the Donbas and Crimea, every year they waited to do so would reduce their escalation dominance, tipping the balance in favor of Ukraine and increasing the risk of a potential nuclear war with the US and NATO. <br /><br />
“The United States military was well-aware of the predicament in which it was deliberately placing Russia’s leaders” (pp. 66 – 67).</blockquote>
<p>Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies may think Russia’s war with Ukraine is senseless, but in these 2+ paragraphs they explain quite clearly to the rest of us what is at stake in this war. They also present several clues regarding their own interpretation. One, that the Donbas is Russia’s to defend. They later claim that Luhansk and Donetsk are part of a civil war within Ukraine and that Kyiv was obligated to recognize them as autonomous under the Minsk Accord. But (true to form), Benjamin and Davies never mention that Russia was also obligated to retreat to its borders and refused. </p>
<p>Two, that an aggressive war was on the table from the beginning, that it wasn’t the illegal war Benjamin and Davies admit it is when paying lip service to international law, and that Russia’s ability to wage this war was wrongfully undermined by the West. This is truly the heart and soul of the “NATO did it” argument, by improving Ukraine’s defense posture and reducing Putin’s precious escalation dominance. To wit, “[NATO’s] training helped Ukraine defend itself, but it also meant that the fighting was hard fought and deadly on both sides” (p. 82). </p>
<p>To be clear, this is what we’re really talking about here: </p>
<blockquote>“‘Escalation dominance means you can control the pace of escalation.’ That term has always been used in the past to refer to the ability of the United States to threaten another state with overwhelming retaliation in order to deter it from responding to U.S. force” (Gareth Porter, “<a href="https://militarist-monitor.org/escalation_dominance/" target="_blank">Escalation Dominance</a>,” 2007). </blockquote>
<p>Aaron Miles has <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/escalation-dominance-in-americas-oldest-new-nuclear-strategy/" target="_blank">a good article</a> on escalation dominance as applied to nuclear conflict, which is the bogeyman invoked by Benjamin and Davies in their final point. The statement on nuclear weapons is the most mind blowing of all and hard to process. It means, in essence, that not only is Russia’s war of aggression justified, but that if Russia has to resort to nuclear weapons to win, it’s the fault of the NATO countries that help Ukraine defend itself. It’s worth mentioning that Benjamin and Davies also try to portray a scenario where the US and NATO threatened Russia with a first strike (pp. 77-78). This is based on the refusal of the US to negotiate issues extraneous to the impending invasion in February 2022. </p>
<p>Only two countries have threatened the use of nuclear war in response to losing a war of aggression to a “weaker” power. The second country is Russia in the current war with Ukraine. But the first to do so was the US during its war with Vietnam. These threats came closer to fruition than Russia’s (so far), but no one on the left ever suggested that Vietnam should give up its national liberation struggle as a result. (See Erik Villard, “<a href="https://www.historynet.com/nuclear-weapons-vietnam/" target="_blank">Did the US Consider using Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam?</a>”) <br /></p>
<h3><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7P9Dw4vozwi7okDCoJlhQqOBe0J03v6hMNk_AQAXrhm_0I5D4-iDGYdT_gFdt5QVNQSMQMt-s19SxbM1xTfPOBeXHC_ViD3k9YeMiVrCDvxpZCPe-7o0QRWgCEVhRTTHrLKnsA_cpv8LAWHL2wjudmszf0hohdU3BJnRaDPPFP6dd1vmeg/s640/Youre_not_an_anti_imperialist_you_just_want_different_imperialists_to_win.svg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt=""You're not an anti-imperialist; you just want different imperialists to win"" border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="640" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7P9Dw4vozwi7okDCoJlhQqOBe0J03v6hMNk_AQAXrhm_0I5D4-iDGYdT_gFdt5QVNQSMQMt-s19SxbM1xTfPOBeXHC_ViD3k9YeMiVrCDvxpZCPe-7o0QRWgCEVhRTTHrLKnsA_cpv8LAWHL2wjudmszf0hohdU3BJnRaDPPFP6dd1vmeg/w400-h235/Youre_not_an_anti_imperialist_you_just_want_different_imperialists_to_win.svg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poster by dikleyt<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </h3><h3>The history of a bad idea</h3>
<p>Much of what I will cover here can be found in Anton Shekhovtsov’s <i>Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir</i> (Routledge, 2018). His book doesn’t cover the Western left, or leftist ideas at all; it’s a history of Russia primarily set in the Putin era. However, it begins with the development of “Strasserism,” an anti-capitalist current within the Nazi Party and contacts between the far right and the Soviet Union that predate the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Another author writing about the “red-brown'' alliance is Alexander Reid Ross, with his Against the Fascist Creep (AK Press, 2017). It begins in the same interwar period as Shekhovtsov, but it is a history of the US and European left’s contagion by fascist co-optation. Neither of these books are about the so-called “horseshoe theory,” and until recently the situation they describe would have seemed obscure, an anomaly that was isolated to a few nut groups like the LaRouchies. (Lyndon LaRouche was also in contact with many of the same Russian fascists as Western leftists who are referred to in this review.) </p>
<p>It would have been quite possible, in fact usual, for a left political activist of any persuasion (anarchist, Leninist, pacifist, etc.) before 2013 to be completely unaware of phenomena like red-brown alliances, Eurasianism, multipolarity, etc. If asked, they would have quickly replied that Russia was a capitalist country, not a socialist one. The question would have seemed odd due to the fact that Russia was widely recognized, at least during the 90s and early 00s, as a corrupt oligarchy and mafia-run state. People active for several decades were suddenly confronted in the mid 2010s with pro-Assad “peace movements,” Putinist “anti-imperialism.” (I will use quotation marks here on out for these formations.) Opponents to Assad were called terrorists and the opposition to Russia, beginning with Maidan in 2014, were “Nazis.” </p>
<p>When did the rot set in? We could go back 100 years like the above-mentioned books and trace a lot of it to the degeneration of both the SPD (the German Social Democracy) and the Russian Revolution. The US left has been affected by these developments, but the environment that ultimately produced Benjamin’s and Davies’s book began with the Iraq War with some foreshadowing in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Code Pink is an outgrowth of the Iraq War, as is the ANSWER Coalition which organized the massive anti-war demonstrations in 2003-2004. The main apologists for this “ideology” are people like Chris Hedges, Scott Ritter, Colleen Rowley and others who dealt (honorably, in most cases) with post-9/11 era fabrications of pretexts for the Iraq war. The organization VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) founded by Ray McGovern is not well known but has become quite prominent in this milieu. But the takeover of major portions of the left beyond the antiwar groups of the Iraq war began when RT (Russia Today) set up shop in the West in 2011. One of the first tests was the gassing of Ghouta, Syria in August of 2013, which was carried out by the Assad government. There was an immediate <a href="https://www.rt.com/op-ed/326111-ghouta-chemical-attack-turkey/" target="_blank">attempt</a> by RT and its minions to deflect blame onto Saudi-backed rebels. One of the more noteworthy efforts was an <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/the-inside-story-of-one-websites-defense-of-assad" target="_blank">article</a> in Mint Press (which is widely believed to be funded by Iran, another Assad ally). It was immediately discredited. </p>
<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmqejU5SZHXece22GOHtqie_NM1Lhv1s0dtyh83WVSpdWIfVI122QU735cWDHFJLaJX4yRtRO5zmG3-aiguE59Zu3rzNFUJERCGBknRBo5IFjqvi4tV7EdM_u18aC9o6m0hpkee8mEd3r-yCk6wG2l-mOVQEuUZAY-uLNvtqcmoxdgC7JKDQ/s640/Thinking_of_Ukraine_but_never_forgetting_Palestine_(51926060775).jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Woman in political march holding sign: "Putin out of Ukraine! NATO out of Europe! USA out of everywhere! War is a crime."" border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmqejU5SZHXece22GOHtqie_NM1Lhv1s0dtyh83WVSpdWIfVI122QU735cWDHFJLaJX4yRtRO5zmG3-aiguE59Zu3rzNFUJERCGBknRBo5IFjqvi4tV7EdM_u18aC9o6m0hpkee8mEd3r-yCk6wG2l-mOVQEuUZAY-uLNvtqcmoxdgC7JKDQ/w640-h360/Thinking_of_Ukraine_but_never_forgetting_Palestine_(51926060775).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Imperialist aggression has multiple sources, including the USA, US allies, and US opponents.<br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Indeed, Syria was one of the first major projects of the developing red-brown “peace movement” after the Iraq War. The goal was to isolate Syrians who were being tortured and killed on a mass scale in Assad’s prisons, by his chemical weapons and the carpet bombing by Russia. Normally, if the US isn’t directly involved, there are still activist groups involved in condemning the atrocities, providing material aid and refugee assistance. What happens if a major disinformation campaign replaces all this with an apologist infrastructure for the war criminals? <p></p>
<p>Anyone who has suspected that nothing the left does makes any difference has been educated by the catastrophic effect of this betrayal. There are only small, local groups on the left in the US that still defend Syrians’ right to rise up against their government and help refugees, such as CISPOS in Minneapolis (Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria) and Syria Solidarity NYC. </p>
<p>In Benjamin’s and Davies’s book, a canned history of Ukraine is presented that echoes Putin’s assertion that Ukraine is not a separate country because it has been occupied by other countries or been part of empires (mainly Russia). It has only known independence since 1991 and during a brief period after the Bolshevik Revolution. This is tantamount to saying that other oppressed nationalities like the Palestinians and Kurds have no right to self-determination. </p>
<p>According to Benjamin and Davies, post-independence Ukraine’s original sin occurred in 2014 when it had an uprising to overthrow a Kremlin puppet named Yanukovich and then held elections that elected Poroshenko as president. These events are presented as a coup by the authors and their co-thinkers in the “peace movement” because Victoria Nuland expressed a preference for Arseniy Yatsenyuk to take over as prime minister during Maidan. “Yats” and Poroshenko were both elected in 2014 and continued in that role until 2016 (Yats) and 2019 (Poroshenko). There is no suggestion by Benjamin and Davies that these elections were unfair, and they admit that Right Sector and Svoboda together earned 2% of the vote. These groups, which made up less than 1% of the Euromaidan demonstrators, had gained prominence when the Berkut (Special Operations Police) under Yanukovich began shooting demonstrators. This isn’t explored in any real detail; there is merely the observation that the demonstrations were no longer peaceful. The outsized role of the fascists was due to their ability to fight the Berkut. Otherwise the demonstrators, who were largely liberals and pacifists, would have been massacred. (See Michael Colborne, <i>From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right</i>, p. 30). In all, approximately <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_during_the_Revolution_of_Dignity" target="_blank">130 demonstrators were killed</a> in January and February of 2014, along with an estimated 700+ injured.<br /></p>
<p>But the authors’ problem with Ukraine really dates back to the Orange Revolution of 2004. The same Kremlin puppet was involved that time as well. A common accusation lodged by these “leftists” is that uprisings in countries ruled by autocrats that the US does not favor, are “color revolutions.” The Orange Revolution was one of the earliest of these revolutions, but not the first. The very first in the 21st century was the “Bulldozer Revolution” in Serbia which deposed the genocidal dictator Slobodan Milosevic. This goes a long way to explaining the hostility of the US “peace movement” to color revolutions. This hostility would seem odd because the color revolutions are mass movements that depose dictators in a mostly peaceful manner through electoral politics. It’s unusual for pacifist methods to effect real change in the absence of a mass armed struggle (see Ward Churchill, <i>Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America</i>, 1998), but you’ll never see color revolutions showcased along with Gandhi or the Civil Rights movement and the reason for this is political. Serbia has entered their pantheon of victims because they were bombed by NATO, putting an end to their genocide in the former Yugoslavia just as they were about to reduce Kosovo to rubble. NATO didn’t do this because they are a humanitarian organization and the bombing did kill civilians and damaged infrastructure. Serbia was allowed to conduct its ethnic cleansing and rape camps for several years before Western Europe and the US decided that allowing them to turn Eastern Europe into a mass grave was too disruptive. </p>
<p>Autocratic governments like Russia and China don’t like revolutions in general, which might come as a surprise to the red-brown crowd, but these revolutions in particular are seen as a sneaky plot by Western neoliberals for overthrowing governments without having to go through the hassle of fomenting a Civil War or installing a puppet government. The “peace” and “anti-imperialist” activists solemnly repeat this special pleading by these dictators. Apparently, Otpor, the massive youth group that helped to overthrow Milosevic and have him sent to The Hague, did get money from the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID. PORA, the mass youth and civic group in Ukraine, consulted with Otpor, but claimed not to have accepted any support, although their successors in Maidan did (according to Benjamin and Davies) receive funding from NED. This brings us to another obsession of the authors and their “anti-imperialist” co thinkers: the purity of the victim and an insistence that poorly armed or unarmed people face the armed state and/or its military without any aid. Anyone who has defended the right of Vietnamese, Nicaraguan, and other Third World victims of US aggression to defend themselves using weapons from sources like the Soviet Union or China will recognize the debate tactics being used here. </p>
<p>Prior to the Orange Revolution, Georgia held the Rose Revolution which led to a peaceful change in leadership in 2003. There were many others, most occurring in the so-called Coalition of Independent States, or countries that became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s obvious why Putin wouldn’t like these revolutions and one reason he doesn’t is that they involved independent political action through mass mobilizations and civic engagement. The receipt of aid doesn’t change this and these groups have the right to accept assistance. In the midst of all this, the Putin regime began to turn to “managed nationalism” through fascist groups, in particular Russkii Obraz. Robert Horvath discusses this in his 2021 book <i>Putin’s Fascists: Russkii Obraz and the Politics of Managed Nationalism in Russia</i>:</p>
<blockquote>“Russkii Obraz was simultaneously collaborating with the state and with some of the most violent and politically extreme elements in Russian society… these divergent engagements were made possible by the Kremlins’s ‘preventive counter- revolution,’ a programme of measures designed to protect Russia from an anti-authoritarian ‘colour revolution’” (p.63).</blockquote>
<p>In December of 2014, members of the Eurasian Youth Union, affiliated with fascist Alexander Dugin’s Eurasia Party, attended a <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2015/02/moscow-conference-draws-fascists-neo.html" target="_blank">conference in Moscow</a> put on by the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia. Other attendees included representatives of the International Action Center and United National Antiwar Coalition, both associated with the Workers World Party, and the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group in the US. The subject of the meeting was the “Right of Peoples to Self-Determination and Building a Multi-Polar World.” One of the agenda items, UNAC reported, was the “US-backed war against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.” </p>
<h3>The ideological foundations of the red-brown left</h3>
<p>To what end does the “red-brown” left labor? We see the means they employ to get there; their shifting rationales, their opportunism, and the utter lack of any empathy for victims of imperialism who are being attacked by powers other than the US. But their ends seem particularly murky and in constant flux. Indeed, they purport to have no goal other than stopping US imperialism. This is a worthy objective but they don’t seem to mind giving other imperialists a boost or at least left cover for their crimes. And caping for Putin, China, Iran, et al. doesn’t even affect US policy other than to make outfits like NATO stronger, as more countries clamor to join and military spending goes through the roof. This latter result of the war is one which Benjamin and Davies spend significant time bemoaning. </p>
<p>The apologists for Putin may spurn theory but this doesn’t mean they have abandoned arguments when advancing their position. Indeed there has been a surfeit of arguments that tend to shift in response to certain events, though often the events driving the shifts aren’t readily apparent. Is the Russo Ukraine war a proxy war or is it an inter-imperialist war? Both of these positions and other shifting arguments are only tangentially related to the events of the war. Instead, they are concocted to add in the US/NATO as combatants and to remove the Ukrainians as autonomous actors. In the early days of this war, some put forward the writings of Karl Liebknecht, a German socialist in the SPD before World War I who, unlike the majority of his party’s deputies, refused to vote for war credits. He <a href="https://johnriddell.com/2016/07/11/liebknecht-1916-down-with-the-war-down-with-the-government/" target="_blank">declared</a> it was the duty of every Socialist to deny support for their imperialist government. However, he said nothing about supporting the imperialist war aims of a competing government. As the war has dragged on, “proxy war” appears to be the winning argument, albeit a proxy war with only two (or at most three) parties fighting for their own interests. Others have stuck to the “inter-imperialist war” position, meaning that all sides were waging an unjust war, including the side that was attempting to defend itself. </p>
<p>These arguments never recognize material facts such as Russia’s support for fascism and Christian fundamentalism around the globe, though the relatively small number of Ukrainian fascists are given a level of attention that renders invisible the vast numbers who oppose fascism. This is of a piece with their approach to fascism in general. It doesn’t exist (except for Ukraine) because if it did exist globally, as we know it does, they would have to acknowledge all the fascists who admire “anti-imperialist” Assad and Putin. Instead, we are now seeing the beginnings of a red-brown alliance as Code Pink <a href="https://twitter.com/medeabenjamin/status/1543309840545710080?lang=en" target="_blank">finds common cause</a> with anti-Ukrainian politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene. </p>
<p>Other than occasional lip service to “Russia’s brutal aggression,” acts of oppression, including war crimes, never play a part in red-brown argumentation. What does matter are the geopolitics of imperialist competition and the shifting reality of a war that constantly wreaks havoc on their worldview and leads to a lot of impressionist ideation. Before the war, their political line didn’t seem to ever change. The anti-imperialist landscape involved the victims of US imperialism and the non-existence of victims found in the multipolar world outside of US hegemony. Now, because of this catastrophic act, every day is a new day for these folks. The nostrums of yesterday are quickly discarded as they become disproved on the battlefield or, of all places, the Kremlin. In this way they are a lot like the fascist GOP. Both depend on people not remembering the inconsistencies of the past as they put forward a new operating theory. But they also resemble the communist parties of western capitalist countries during the interwar period when Stalin kept changing the political line and the sheep had to follow. </p>
<p>They never had to face this situation before, because other victims such as anti-Assad Syrians, Uighurs, Chechens, and various dissidents who could be dismissed as “color revolutionists” never had a fighting chance. Nothing upsets the pacifist applecart like an “unworthy victim” (see below) running afoul of a desired outcome. Ward Churchill diagnosed this problem as follows: </p>
<blockquote>“It is immediately perplexing …that many of North America’s most outspoken advocates of absolute domestic non violence when challenging state power have consistently aligned themselves with the most powerful expressions of armed resistance to the exercise of US power abroad” (<i>Pacifism as Pathology</i>, p. 70). </blockquote>
<p>National liberation struggles have long been the means through which revolutionary desires are expressed in First World countries. This is a legacy of the Stalinist doctrine of “socialism in one country” which dictated that the CPs in first world countries forego revolutionary struggles against their own ruling classes. The same applied to colonial people when their struggle was supported by the Soviet Union. They were to subordinate the class struggle to the national liberation struggle being waged by their own capitalist class. Now the armed struggle they look to for inspiration is Russia’s attack on Ukraine, refashioned as a war against NATO. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p>
<p>Shifting rationales, hidden agendas, these are the universally recognized calling cards of sophistry. Any reviewer, faced with constant omissions, distortions and outright lies, has to dig below the written word and apply the conundrums created by these authors to living situations. </p>
<p>For example, a distinction is often made between wars between sovereign countries and so-called civil wars. Atrocities committed in the first instance are clearly governed by international law and rules of war. The “international community” has found it more difficult to deal with human rights violations by governments against their own people (unless genocide is involved). The UN charter specifically prohibits wars of aggression by its member states, which may be one reason Putin decided to call his war against Ukraine a “special military operation” and criminalized the use of the term “war.” The international left, in contrast, has never had a problem with equating crimes against humanity whether committed by a foreign aggression or a government domestically. Until now. A common justification by the “left” of Russia’s intervention in Syria is that the Assad government requested its assistance in putting down a popular uprising against the repressive government. This can justly be compared to the requests of various client states of the US for “assistance” against their own people. Or the requests for assistance by Belarus and Kazakhstan for Russian assistance in suppressing uprisings in those countries. </p>
<p>Solidarity for refugees (or at least neutrality) has also been a given in left circles. In the midst of a chapter on how “privileged” the Ukrainian refugees were, here’s a particularly noxious statement by Benjamin and Davies regarding refugees in general: </p>
<blockquote>Ukraine proved that, if you have the right (white) skin color, you’ll get sympathetic coverage from the Western media. But it also helps if you’re resisting the right invader” (p. 125).</blockquote>
<p>Syrians didn’t have the right skin color but they did, arguably, have the right aggressor as of 2015, when the Russian bombing campaign began. But this did not avail them in the eyes of the Western “peace movement” because Russia wasn’t an invader. They had become “unworthy victims,” as defined in 1988 by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in <i>Manufacturing Consent</i> (“A Propaganda Model”). As for Ukrainian refugees, who are “worthy victims” with regard to skin color and having Russia as a foreign aggressor, justice would demand that they at least receive sympathy and at least neutrality. But it was more convenient for the “peace movement'' that they be silenced as the Syrians were. In one of the most nauseating instances of “whataboutery,” the authors compare the (to them) more limited bombing by Russia in Ukraine to the US bombing of Iraq. They end by stating that the impunity of US imperialism is to blame for Putin believing he could get away with the same behavior in Ukraine and that any attempt to hold him accountable would be dismissed by the world as part of a double standard. <i>“And that they would be right”</i> (p. 127). The US does enjoy relative impunity (though not complete impunity), but the “peace movement” seems to be isolated in its view that this double standard excuses Russia. </p>
<p>However, there is a large grain of truth to this statement about impunity, though not in the way Benjamin and Davies would have us believe. The reason Putin believed he would escape condemnation for the destruction of Ukraine isn’t that the US did the same thing. It was that he had already destroyed, or damaged, at least three countries prior to the invasion without much notice by much of the world, including the “peace movement.” These were Chechnya (part of Russia), Georgia, and Syria. Additionally, Russia has sent its mercenary army, the Wagner Group, to various countries in the global South where they have committed war crimes against civilians. This was done at the request of the governments, of course, which means they don't “count.” </p>
<p>Putin went to a lot of trouble to convince the world that Ukraine is really part of Russia, which is similar to the magic wand he used successfully in Chechnya, Syria, and South Ossetia in Georgia. It worked with a large part of the Russian population, far right sympathizers in the West (including members of the GOP and alt right groups in the US). It also worked with Benjamin and Davies and their fellow “peace activists.” The latter make a distinction between an “illegal war” (which they admit this was) and a “provoked war” (p. 80). These provocations mainly involved Ukraine acting like an independent country and NATO responding to requests for memberships by countries that have a long history of victimization by Russia. Of course NATO did this after various US politicians had “promised” that NATO wouldn’t. But unlike the Budapest Memorandum (fn. 4), none of the parties to these ”promises” thought to sign an agreement. </p>
<p>To sum up, the real questions are not about methods and arguments of Benjamin and Davies and their followers. It’s their goals we need to examine. This involves some guesswork because, unlike most left organizations, their goals are opaque. The best analyses are by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgjHpdQLQy4" target="_blank">Michael Karadjis</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlWPb84cWwM" target="_blank">Kavita Krishnan</a>. According to them, the “anti-war” crowd is more concerned with geopolitics than they are about class struggle and international solidarity. This can be seen in one of their primary demands: That the US go around the Ukrainians and negotiate a peace deal with Russia. This really touches all of their main objectives: </p>
<ul><li>That Russia be treated as an equal vis a vis other imperialists like the US or China. This includes the right to carve up the world into “spheres of influence” with the big boys.
</li><li>That Ukraine be reduced to a colonized country with no voice regarding its future and no right to autonomy or self defense.
</li><li>And that Russia be allowed to keep what it has stolen.</li></ul>As Ukraine seizes back more land and the Russian military degrades, the push for these negotiations becomes louder and more desperate. And here we see the final goal: that Russia wins. Because, if Russia loses, this will discredit the “peace” and “anti-imperialist” movements just as surely as if the Syrian uprising had been allowed a chance to defeat Assad and Putin. <br />
<p><i>December 16, 2022</i></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Photo credits<i></i></h3><p style="text-align: left;">1. פֿינצטערניש, <br />21 February 2022 (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CCO 1.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Youre_not_an_anti_imperialist_you_just_want_different_imperialists_to_win.svg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">2. Alisdare Hickson, from Woolwich, UK, 6 March 2022 (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thinking_of_Ukraine_but_never_forgetting_Palestine_(51926060775).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br /></p>ThreeWayFighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11512465373943902647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-91075625348855451172022-08-31T13:03:00.000-04:002022-08-31T13:03:52.024-04:00nuevo/novo/new/nouvel... álbum par Brigada Flores Magon, Immortels.Along with <i>Discos Machete, Incendiario!, SHARP Rio de Janeiro, Rebel Time Records, RASH U.S., RASH Guadalajara, Dure Realite, </i>and <i>Unite & Win Records</i>, <i>Three Way Fight</i> is proud to be able to support the americas edition of the upcoming album by one of our generations most important antifascist musical groups, <p style="text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Brigada Flores Magon</span></b></i>. </p><p style="text-align: center;">Hailing from Paris, <i>BFM</i> has for over 20 years been making music for revolution and uncompromising action against the fascists, the state and the capitalist system. More than musicians, <i>BFM</i>, come from the lived struggle which underlines the anthems they create. Check 'em: </p><p style="text-align: center;">IG: @brigada_fm</p><p style="text-align: center;">FB: Brigada Flores Magon</p><p style="text-align: center;">Bandcamp: brigadafloresmagon.bandcamp.com</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKSib0APUqxZ6LROVVNFPVvWTCV5rg-AxUGr8_tM8VX_LSmYKOdBm76o9oFA2NnBVrWubHdPC0QrcSpcd12jIW2feL6FC6heLyR2U1TM6WhoonKsSgEoD4dT9vKycvRDK4xZrmFL8G8sbpxNY-ymZgoztlA6EIsH4KBP2zEJr1f-v4X5gQuns/s1028/BRIGADA_insta.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1028" data-original-width="1028" height="663" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKSib0APUqxZ6LROVVNFPVvWTCV5rg-AxUGr8_tM8VX_LSmYKOdBm76o9oFA2NnBVrWubHdPC0QrcSpcd12jIW2feL6FC6heLyR2U1TM6WhoonKsSgEoD4dT9vKycvRDK4xZrmFL8G8sbpxNY-ymZgoztlA6EIsH4KBP2zEJr1f-v4X5gQuns/w663-h663/BRIGADA_insta.jpg" width="663" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-84129461951167201192022-08-05T19:32:00.003-04:002022-08-05T19:51:48.114-04:00In Praise of Chip Berlet<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMlQg4skL6KACT3HZGZnGz1Ixnc7Xkv0gqm3l9T7FBrxi0JTmuhb1Tv5kaIAu1YqhyOWcLt6YBGGNOisj-Hu2GO6AfbZKvI3fe-pb-4DTS-HzdSOS79EG4DGKzYS_DiJYs4vGEOG3MzFz5Dj_C8jCFJbTOYdgMbNMHj6F1Q3zrNaKMmNzusvk/s2198/de-(13).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="2198" data-original-width="1500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMlQg4skL6KACT3HZGZnGz1Ixnc7Xkv0gqm3l9T7FBrxi0JTmuhb1Tv5kaIAu1YqhyOWcLt6YBGGNOisj-Hu2GO6AfbZKvI3fe-pb-4DTS-HzdSOS79EG4DGKzYS_DiJYs4vGEOG3MzFz5Dj_C8jCFJbTOYdgMbNMHj6F1Q3zrNaKMmNzusvk/w273-h400/de-(13).jpg" width="273" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><p class="v1msonormal" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 20px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><i>Berlet’s articulation of the syncretism across the right — in contrast to complacent "common sense" center vs. extremes, as well cruder Marxist assessments — is indeed a key observation. It better explains the current phase of American political economy. </i></blockquote><p> </p><p></p><div>Guest post by Ian Wallace</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: italic;"><i><br /></i></div><i>Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy</i> <br /><br />Edited by Pam Chamberlain, Matthew Lyons, Abby Scher, and Spencer Sunshine<br /><br />Published by Routledge Press, 2022<br /><br /><br /><span> <span> </span></span>I have no great understanding of academia or literary genres, so I had no idea of what a Festschrift is. Wikipedia tells me that a it’s a book that contains praise of a respected person's work, (hopefully) when the subject is still alive. The word itself, <i>Festschrift</i>, sounds like a name for piece of Ikea furniture. This is now sort of an old joke, and only useful here by extending the metaphor: the book is best when ignoring the directions, and don’t sweat the handful of parts left over after assembly. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>The book is organized into four sections, a structure ill-suited to its constituent pieces, and I would advise against trying to understand the content according to these categories. It reads just fine, taking each chapter on its own merits. Some contributions are naturally stronger than others. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>Chip Berlet was born in 1949, and spent his young adult years in the New Left the 1960s. His trajectory from Christian youth culture into progressive activism is not unique, but perhaps underappreciated in leftist circles. He thankfully dropped out of university in 1971 and moved into journalism, including a stint at <i>High Times</i>. In the 1980’s, Chip turned his efforts towards researching the Far Right, a topic that has occupied his work since. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>We start with young Chip Berlet's genesis in the disintegrating remnants of the post-war social compact. The world he and the New Left were building was the one I was born into in 1971, and reading about it here, I think I under-appreciated the civic intuitions that underpinned the rise of the New Left, its church groups and social infrastructure. The excitement of young minds being galvanized by the world organized against them comes across here, enough to overwhelm the inevitable nostalgia. (Not that we shouldn't be allowed some nostalgia; it can help make sense of one's life.) <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>We then move along to the basis of Berlet's analysis. Here I am at a deep disadvantage. I have never read any of Chip Berlet’s work. The anti-fascist work I have engaged in was mostly bound up in the subcultural context of the 80s, 90s, and oughts. That world was underdeveloped politically. Having spent more time in theory, now I see Chip's fingerprints all over the place, and better yet, recognize some answers to questions I have had for a good bit of time. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>Berlet’s articulation of the syncretism across the right — in contrast to complacent "common sense" center vs. extremes, as well cruder Marxist assessments — is indeed a key observation. It better explains the current phase of American political economy. Most of this book was written before the farcical January 6thcoup, and that's sort of a shame. It may have pushed some of the more liberal contributors here a bit harder, and allowed more pointed questions to be asked regarding the current state of decay within the US body politic. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>I spent a few weeks in Turkey in 2008. Recep Erdoğan's AKP had won reelection the year before, and was then slowly chipping away at the official secularism of the Turkish state built over the prior eighty years or so. I was struck by the repeated conversations I had with Turkish men, about 9/11. If there was anything that the men of Turkey wanted an American tourist to know, it was that the Jews were definitely responsible for 9/11. As Erdoğan's project moved forward, I have often wondered about the role of conspiracy theories in the rise of the right. I am glad to see the question front and center in Chip's work, it seems to still be an underexplored element even as conspiratorial thinking grips the American right from top to bottom. The contention that conspiratorial thinking is intrinsically linked to right wing populism, and I would say, various fascisms should not be controversial at this point. The Trump administration has proven the political utility of such approaches. But it's always lingered in the GOP's intellectual hinterlands. It's not going away any time soon. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>This dovetails I think well into the other feature Chip identifies as populist right markers, the scapegoating and apocalyptic narratives. These are well worn features, and probably well understood by most critics, especially as the right wing presents itself as the last defense against a Satan-worshiping pedophile cult that they believe operates the Democratic Party and it's military apparatus ANTIFA. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>The last pillar of populist right politics is producerism, a framework that explains a lot, from the current GOP war on "woke" capital, to putting the "socialism" in National Socialism. Producerism holds that only those directly involved in productivity really deserve any agency in political matters. While this can resemble a superficial criticism of capitalism, it’s actually a cross class collaboration between bosses and certain sections of the working class. It is perhaps the most dangerous shoals leftists need to navigate, and is endemic in the common sense of working-class people — and not just white people, as a short conversation with either one of my neighbors will quickly illustrate. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>This brings us nicely to the right wooing the left. While we refuse to platform even other leftists at this point, the right's parasitical opportunism allows it to avail itself of our forces, or more realistically, those we fantasize as our forces. It comes off as far more confident even in its batshit crazy perspectives than we do when we refuse to publicly defend our ideas against people that disagree with us. That would be most people, by the way. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>We might do well in assessing the negative features of populism that grows within our own side. We might wish that we were immune from scapegoating, apocalyptic thinking, and millennialism. While not usually at the front, rooting around in a variety of our corners, you can find them. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>While we are at it, we might also ponder that the political relationships between the far left and the Democratic Party are just as syncretic as on the right, like it or not. I don't think we are as alienated from the liberal power brokers as we might like to be. I mean, if a radical turd like Stephen Miller can float to the top of the American state, there are those amongst the left that might do the same, perhaps for the better, but probably more often for the worse. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>The rest of <i>Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy</i> is mostly composed of a good number of researchers, journalists, academics, activists and friends commenting on their experiences working with Chip Berlet. This is all very nice, but does not really add up to more than some much deserved appreciation. If we can draw lessons about his life and work, it's that decency and generosity are good qualities in our comrades. It's a shame that we need to be reminded of this. But of course we do, so the inclusion of so many appreciative observations is a nice legacy indeed. We should all be so deserving. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>Ikea aside, a festschrift in a nice, humane gesture. It counts even more if you're outside the academy, an educational void that no doubt informs Chip's humility and egalitarian principles. The work Chip Berlet has done clearly deserves recognition of his peers, and those he has influenced. By all accounts he is generous with his time and knowledge. I would make the case that the best way to show respect for Chip Berlet is of course organizing, researching, and writing not only against the right, but for a better world. <br /><br /> <span> <span> </span></span>Also, I might just go read <i>Right Wing Populism In America</i>. I hear it's quite good. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Ian Wallace is a marginally employed carpenter in the PNW, who, on occasion, tries to be useful in the project of liberatory communism. <br /><br /><i>Editor's Note: Matthew Lyons, a contributor to Three Way Fight, is one of the editors of Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy, but recused himself from any role in soliciting or editing this review.<br /></i><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-77766215968732481642022-07-19T21:25:00.002-04:002022-07-19T22:12:07.887-04:00Strategies to defend abortion access: three essays<p><i>How do we assert reproductive autonomy when far rightists are on the offensive and liberals have failed to stop them?</i></p>
<p>As we <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/05/abortion-christian-right-and-antifascism.html" target="_blank">noted</a> two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision repealing <i>Roe v. Wade</i> marks a historic victory for the Christian right and specifically its fascist, theocratic wing. Defending access to abortion is an antifascist struggle, but that doesn’t mean the focus should be only, or even primarily, on combating the far right. What’s needed is a struggle on two fronts: against the various forces of the authoritarian right but also against their centrist enablers—the politicians and institutions that have long claimed to be defending abortion access while weakening opposition to the far right and giving ground to it step by step by step. These are different kinds of struggle and they call for different approaches. </p>
<p>This is what <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/p/about.html" target="_blank">three way fight politics</a> is all about: a recognition that the fascistic far right is interconnected with but distinct from the oppressive status quo, and combating them both requires interconnected but distinct strategies. </p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsB80LL3rhuHc68jCtNGLL4x7iWca9iO6IzI3eB3YVo945StRQdwfVgHJI26mBeE3kRk64qQY1T7LTKZGH2HIlhSTRKDu4NWGO5fatpHcZMLS3SEEkDmEROXFkZYobbe2F287lHzvNsZkuWTobsZfmBtA3E9Go0iUy1pRAetABFl6xjenxbg/s478/Vigil_for_abortion_rights_3296_04%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Protesters hold banner that reads "Repro Freedom For All!"" border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="478" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsB80LL3rhuHc68jCtNGLL4x7iWca9iO6IzI3eB3YVo945StRQdwfVgHJI26mBeE3kRk64qQY1T7LTKZGH2HIlhSTRKDu4NWGO5fatpHcZMLS3SEEkDmEROXFkZYobbe2F287lHzvNsZkuWTobsZfmBtA3E9Go0iUy1pRAetABFl6xjenxbg/w640-h430/Vigil_for_abortion_rights_3296_04%20(1).jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />In the wake of Roe’s repeal, I’ve seen several excellent essays that use this kind of two-front framework to guide liberatory strategy. I’d like to focus here on three of these essays, to highlight what they share and also how their different perspectives broaden and enrich an ongoing discussion that’s vitally needed.<p></p><ul><li>Elise Hendrick, in “<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/68619626" target="_blank">Some thoughts about how the struggle for abortion rights and bodily autonomy should be waged (and can be won)</a>,” identifies abortion rights as central to a larger struggle for bodily autonomy, criticizes the Democratic Party and its adherents for giving us “forty years of retreat,” and advocates a militant strategy that targets the key pressure points of profitability and governability. </li><li>Noah Zazanis, in “<a href="https://spectrejournal.com/on-our-own-terms-abortion-transition/" target="_blank">On Our Own Terms: Class Struggle for Abortion and Transition</a>,” argues that “Right-wing offensives against abortion, transition, and queer sociality aim to enforce the bourgeois family by any means necessary,” and calls for a labor-based struggle that challenges the constraints imposed by established non-governmental institutions (NGOs). </li><li>CrimethInc.’s “<a href="https://crimethinc.com/2022/06/27/to-defend-abortion-access-take-the-offensive-strategizing-for-direct-action" target="_blank">To Defend Abortion Access, Take the Offensive</a>” advocates a carefully tailored approach to militant direct action in order to exert leverage where it can be most effective—on liberal politicians.</li></ul>
<p>Reading these essays, I see three overarching themes—three key things that each of them calls on us to do: highlight interconnections between different groups or rights under attack, confront liberal NGOs and the Democratic Party, and develop a clear and militant strategy. Let’s look at each of these themes in turn. </p>
<h3>Highlight interconnections</h3>
<p>Both Elise Hendrick and Noah Zazanis frame access to abortion as a key form of bodily autonomy, and both specifically emphasize connections between criminalizing abortion and criminalizing trans people as two prongs of a larger right-wing strategy. Zazanis writes, “The surface logic of parental consent laws [for getting an abortion] is similar to the logic barring childhood transition: abortion is a serious, irreversible medical procedure for which youth under 18 are too young to give informed consent.” Hendrick denounces a recent New York Times column that tries to stake out a position that’s pro-abortion rights yet trans-exclusionary as a blatant example of divide-and-rule tactics. </p>
<p>Zazanis also emphasizes the ties between defending bodily autonomy and building a strong working class: </p>
<blockquote>“Our fights for healthcare, and against criminalization, are inseparable from the labor rights of healthcare workers, and of the nonprofit workers doing unpaid overtime in the wake of the Dobbs ruling. More than ever, we must build strong, independent unions willing to defend workers who refuse to enforce these bans... It is no coincidence that the workers on the frontline of criminalization are in fields dominated by women, fields where queer workers are overrepresented and underpaid.” </blockquote>
<p>Hendrick and CrimethInc. both highlight a further connection: between the fight for abortion access and the fight against police violence and repression. CrimethInc. urges abortion rights advocates to learn from the George Floyd uprising and writes, “Yes, there are fundamental differences between the movement for reproductive freedom and the movement for Black lives—but those who will be most impacted by the criminalization of abortion overlap considerably with those who are most impacted by racist policing.” Hendrick calls out implications for movement security, noting that criminalization of abortion means “the full weight of the surveillance state is coming down on millions of people who have previously been largely exempt from it…. That means making clear the importance of not talking to the police, not coordinating with police, protecting our identities, and...not posting unedited video of people doing illegal things on social media.” </p>
<p>In summary, drawing the connections between anti-oppression struggles helps us to understand the right’s larger agenda, build and strengthen coalitions, make our movements smarter, and honor the multiple and complex ways that people are affected by institutional violence. </p>
<h3>Confront NGOs and the Democrats</h3>
<p>All three of our featured essays sharply criticize the Democratic Party’s role as supposed defender of abortion access. Zazanis notes that “For decades, Democratic leadership has treated abortion as a cudgel for electoral gains” (and more recently has done the same with so-called “LGBT issues”). Hendrick adds that this approach has repeatedly meant whitewashing the shameful anti-abortion positions of some Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate Tim Kaine. CrimethInc. describes the effect of such opportunism as “the workings of the political ratchet, in which Republicans continuously push state institutions towards more oppressive agendas while Democrats continuously give ground, keeping those who are suffering invested in the state itself in hopes that it might one day be reformed.” As I’ve argued <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/02/caution-doesnt-make-us-safe-review-of.html" target="_blank">elsewhere</a>, this dynamic doesn’t result from Democratic leaders’ subjective “weakness”—it reflects the party’s structural role as a vehicle to divert liberatory initiatives into support for an oppressive, capitalist order. </p>
<p>Zazanis and Hendrick are similarly critical of liberal NGOs for being structurally and financially tied to a “respectability politics” that weakens—or simply betrays—liberatory struggle. Hendrick warns that “Liberal non-profits will try to narrow the focus of this movement, to divide bodily autonomy into specific niches… and channel our energy and our anger into avenues that don’t make the ruling class nervous. They will resist any attempt to defy these laws and the cops who enforce them outright, and they will try to prevent any kind of solidarity and cross-pollination” between political struggles. Zazanis gets more specific, calling out Reproaction for trying to police the boundaries of acceptable “direct action” and Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, and the National Center for Transgender Equality for union-busting and abusive management practices. Even smaller, more independent NGOs engaged in vitally important support for self-managed medication abortion have “effectively ignored the question of who runs the clinics and how they operate, or how to defy those who seek to close them.” </p>
<p>Hendrick sums up part of the lesson with regard to both NGOs and the Democratic Party: “Only by maintaining our independence from these institutions can we exert the sort of pressure that is necessary in order to force them to do the right thing.” </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxWGvsaqYzCrLHN8aMUVbwOxEwrtHZkukQHEC1b-uCw2A3mq-esdAfn7dU4DN6qVoHBsFoOczSpOjVYgwrvL8ydZEWUWcFS1n9TXpTb5gk2uJAaFkp2sPP9PRIQ6C8Y6iEw4lgiEkoYIn_-vznC47Auoy615mT0IlXwXDf9j492dxqy91SXg/s800/Defend_Abortion_Rights_-_Maintain_the_Rage_(52203840386).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Protester at rally holds sign with the words "Abortion saves lives" on a transgender pride flag" border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxWGvsaqYzCrLHN8aMUVbwOxEwrtHZkukQHEC1b-uCw2A3mq-esdAfn7dU4DN6qVoHBsFoOczSpOjVYgwrvL8ydZEWUWcFS1n9TXpTb5gk2uJAaFkp2sPP9PRIQ6C8Y6iEw4lgiEkoYIn_-vznC47Auoy615mT0IlXwXDf9j492dxqy91SXg/w640-h428/Defend_Abortion_Rights_-_Maintain_the_Rage_(52203840386).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Defend Abortion Rights--Maintain the Rage, Melbourne, Australia, 9 July 2022<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<h3>Develop clear, militant strategy</h3>
<p>To varying degrees, all three essays offer suggestions on what’s needed to protect abortion access and bodily autonomy more broadly. Zazanis advocates breaking with respectability politics, recognizing that effective direct action “makes oppressors feel victimized,” and forming independent networks both to help criminalized people survive and to lay a foundation for more comprehensive institutional change in the future. </p>
<p>Hendrick elaborates on Zazanis’s point about direct action: </p>
<blockquote> “If we want the ruling class to even consider restoring our right to bodily autonomy, we need to put the hurt on them. We need an or else.<br /><br />
“Historically, the movements that have extracted meaningful concessions from unwilling ruling classes have been those that attack the two major pressure points of capitalist society: profitability, which is the point of the entire system, and governability, which calls the system’s very existence into question.” </blockquote>
<p>As reference points, she cites two recent large-scale militant initiatives: in Poland in 2016, mass protests and a strike (an attack on profitability) that forced the government to walk back a proposed total abortion ban, and in the U.S. in 2020, widespread militant attacks on both police stations and big box retail stores (governability and profitability) following the police murder of George Floyd. Hendrick argues that calls to abolish the police have not succeeded because they threaten capitalist society on a deep level, but that U.S. capitalists are not committed to banning abortion and would restore abortion access “<i>if we make it clear that they can’t afford </i>not <i>to</i>.” </p>
<p>CrimethInc., too, argues for a militant approach, but they are particularly concerned with how militancy is targeted:
</p><blockquote> “if your goal is to exert leverage, you have to identify a group you can actually exert leverage on—a group that is likely to change course as a consequence of your intervention…. You have to make sure that the target of your efforts has a choice—then make them an offer they can’t refuse.” </blockquote>
<p>They cite two counter-examples. On one hand, many abortion rights proponents have joined public rallies that help to boost participants’ morale but have no specific target. On the other, a number of anonymous groups, operating under the name Jane’s Revenge, have vandalized anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers.” The latter actions “may inspire people to take action on their own, but do not offer a participatory space in which to build collective momentum.” In addition, although the vandalism actions have a specific focus, “in targeting anti-abortion centers, they are taking on the most intransigent opponents of abortion…” CrimethInc. continues, “If it is possible to exert leverage on anyone who is complicit in criminalizing abortion, it is probably not far-right religious cult members, but their centrist accomplices”—in other words, liberal and moderate politicians who could be persuaded to defend abortion access if the cost of not doing so is high enough. </p>
<p>Here, too, the movement against racist police violence offers a useful reference point: </p>
<blockquote> “At the high point of the George Floyd uprising, when millions of people had ceased to accept the legitimacy of the police and were acting accordingly, we saw terrified liberals like the mayor of Minneapolis suddenly take the demands of the movement very seriously, promising to take steps towards police abolition... Later, when the politicians had reestablished control, they betrayed those promises—showing that our effectiveness hinges on keeping our social movements lively and strong, not on winning concessions.” </blockquote>
<p>Exerting leverage in this way is very different from allying with liberals against the far right, or with, say, the federal government against state governments. As CrimethInc. puts it, “compelling one [state] institution to limit the power of another can be strategic, provided it does not contribute to legitimizing any of the institutions involved. It must be clear to everyone that the power that drives social change derives from grassroots organizing, not from state institutions…”</p>
<h3>Concluding thoughts</h3>
<p>How do we go about asserting reproductive autonomy in the face of a major defeat, when far rightists are on the offensive and the forces of liberal respectability have failed to stop them? The three essays I’ve examined here grapple with this question in related ways. That doesn’t mean that their authors necessarily agree on every point, but it’s striking to me how much their arguments complement each other, and I do think the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. At the least, there’s a lot here that can inform and inspire further discussion and strategizing. </p>
<p>I started this discussion by invoking three way fight politics as a framework for strategy. None of the three essays uses that terminology, but at least two of them make points closely related to it. CrimethInc. notes that the far right are not defenders of the established order but rather advocates of social change (increased repression and oppression) and have used sustained pressure campaigns and a range of tactics, including bombings and murder, to bring it about. Hendrick emphasizes that those who advocate banning abortion are “a minority of bigots who are useful to capital, but far from essential to it,” and it is precisely this gap that opens strategic space for advocates of liberatory politics. These three essays insist that we have choices beyond surrendering to fascism on one hand and subordinating radical possibility to liberal holding actions on the other. </p>
<h3>Photo credits</h3>
<p>1. By Frypie, 10 May 2022 (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vigil_for_abortion_rights_3296_04.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>. Image has been cropped.<br />
2. By Matt Hrkac, 9 July 2022 (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY 2.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Defend_Abortion_Rights_-_Maintain_the_Rage_(52203840386).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.
</p>Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-56933307675186539202022-06-11T15:03:00.004-04:002023-02-20T18:14:30.154-05:00No longer a gendarme for the West: Simon Pirani on Russia's invasion of Ukraine<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlSIv3VR_QvV8NHUkaRwizO2HF-xlYZmC80ykwkXnd9yyMO4fye8zzkszmR1JhCGVmjn5lJhpIEorzCmsWzyd3ilyb2EuhqubacGNN78KF7WLOlUvPf0ZYgHt0hJQA9rm4kgJIgwtkPRhplwOFmwT4Shdu-5PziaVwxjpJNJv9YkBqq3y-ww/s1024/02022_1234_Russian_diaspora_protests_against_war_in_Ukraine.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Woman holding hand-printed sign that reads "I'm Russian, I'm against war"" border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="1024" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlSIv3VR_QvV8NHUkaRwizO2HF-xlYZmC80ykwkXnd9yyMO4fye8zzkszmR1JhCGVmjn5lJhpIEorzCmsWzyd3ilyb2EuhqubacGNN78KF7WLOlUvPf0ZYgHt0hJQA9rm4kgJIgwtkPRhplwOFmwT4Shdu-5PziaVwxjpJNJv9YkBqq3y-ww/w320-h212/02022_1234_Russian_diaspora_protests_against_war_in_Ukraine.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>How should western leftists respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? How do we best oppose imperialist aggression and systemic violence in a situation that defies simple narratives? How do we navigate between Kremlin-inspired propaganda and anti-Russian hysteria, or between the “anti-imperialist” and “anti-Nazi” pretensions of a right-wing authoritarian capitalist aggressor and the “pro-democracy” claims of critics who routinely support brutal repression and mass murder?<p></p>
<p>From a three way fight perspective, the Russia-Ukraine war presents special challenges because it’s a situation where fascists—and claims of antifascism—have played significant—but also significantly different—roles on both sides. </p>
<p>There are a lot of wretched takes on the Russia-Ukraine war, but a number of good ones as well—statements and articles that lay primary responsibility on Russia’s imperialist attack while also critiquing the actions of western powers and Ukraine’s capitalist state. <i>Three Way Fight</i> has compiled some of the writings we’ve found most useful in our “<a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2022/03/antifascist-resources-on-ukraine.html" target="_blank">Antifascist Resources on Ukraine</a>” post. </p>
<p>One writer I’ve returned to again and again over the past several months is Simon Pirani, a British leftist who has been studying and writing about Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics since the 1990s, first as a journalist and then as an academic scholar. (See “Note” below.) Most of Pirani’s recent writings can be found on his blog <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><i>People and Nature</i></a> or on his <a href="https://simonpirani.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">website</a>. Pirani’s work stands out because: </p><ul>
<li>his analysis of both Russia and the Ukraine is informed by decades of research and personal engagement with radical movements in the former USSR;
</li><li>rather than focus on geopolitics or the relations between governments, he places the development of social forces at the center of his analysis and working-class solidarity at the center of his calls for action; and
</li><li>he makes a number of important points that few others have made, such as noting that Putin long acted as “a gendarme for international capital” before falling out with western powers.</li></ul>
<p>In this essay I offer a review of Pirani’s recent writings about the Russia-Ukraine war and its background. Because Pirani has produced a series of essays and interviews that overlap in scope, I have pieced together a number of his core arguments and grouped them into four sections: “Russia,” “Ukraine,” “The war,” and “What to do.” This approach necessarily involves skipping back and forth from one article or interview to another, so I have included a full list of Pirani works consulted at the end.</p>
<h3>Russia</h3>
<p>Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">describes</a> Russia’s role in global capitalism as both <i>subordinate</i> and <i>imperialist</i>:
</p><blockquote>“In terms of its relationship with the large Western states, and its position in the world economy—principally as a supplier of raw materials—Russia is very definitely in a subordinate position. But in relation to Ukraine and other countries around it such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Georgia, and states in the Caucasus, it definitely acts as an imperialist power.”</blockquote>
<p>Because of inequities baked into the international economy, Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">argues</a>, Russia’s dependence on commodities exports has fostered a “rent-seeking, parasitic form of capitalism” that in many ways has more in common with countries of the Global South than industrialized countries. To compensate for its lack of economic power, Putin’s Russia has relied disproportionately on military strength—including its nuclear arsenal—to bolster its ambitions to great power status. It has fought wars in Chechnya (1999-2009), Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014 to the present), and Syria (2015 to the present), and has sent troops to suppress political protest movements in Belarus (2020) and Kazhakhstan (2022). At the same time, Pirani notes, “Russia has shown little sign either of wanting to acquire territory, beyond enclaves with a majority of Russian speakers, or of being able to dominate it economically.”</p>
<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>“In terms of… its position in the world economy—principally as a supplier of raw materials—Russia is very definitely in a subordinate position. But in relation to Ukraine and other countries around it… it definitely acts as an imperialist power.”</i></span> <br /></p>
<p>To augment Pirani’s account, Russia’s reach has been further extended by military contractors, most notably the <a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/vlads-wagner.html" target="_blank">Wagner Group</a>, a private Russian company that has close ties with the Russian military and Putin himself. Wagner mercenaries have been deployed to eastern Ukraine, Syria, and at least fourteen African countries, including Mali, where they have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/04/russian-mercenaries-wagner-group-linked-to-civilian-massacres-in-mali" target="_blank">implicated in massacres</a> of hundreds of civilians.</p>
<p>To understand how Russia came to occupy its contradictory international role, Pirani reaches back to the origins of post-Soviet Russia. After the USSR collapsed in 1991, representatives of western capitalism went in and pushed successfully to break up the state-run economy and restore private enterprise on terms of ruthless neoliberalism. As a result, Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-the-sources-of-danger-of-a-wider-war/" target="_blank">notes</a>, “both Russia and Ukraine were plunged into the greatest peacetime slump anywhere, ever. Whole swathes of industry, including much manufacturing capacity related to the military, were junked. Social welfare systems collapsed.” It was this period that established Russia’s primary international economic role as an exporter of fossil fuels and other commodities. </p>
<p>Under Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, not only the welfare state but the state as a whole was <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">extremely weak</a>:
</p><blockquote>“Tax collection, above all from the oil, gas and metals companies, sank into a very low level.... The state was losing its monopoly on armed force, not only with the [separatist] situation in Chechnya and some of the other republics, but also just in terms of the number of guns that were in the hands of criminal gangs who could participate in the economy by seizing property or other methods.”</blockquote>
<p>After coming to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin set about restoring a <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">strong Russian state</a>. First, he used brutal military power to suppress Chechen autonomy and give a warning to separatists anywhere else in Russia. Second, he</p>
<blockquote>“made very clear to the companies that taxes from now on were going to be paid. And the oligarchs who argued with him the most fiercely, or were otherwise politically dangerous to him, ended up either outside the country, or in jail, or, in a couple of cases, dead. Putin tilted the relationship of power between the state and capital to the state's advantage.”</blockquote>
<p>Third, Putin’s government increasingly cracked down on political dissent and independent media.</p>
<p>Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">notes</a> that during the first decade of Putin’s rule, economic modernizers within the governing elite talked about moving the country away from dependence on resource exports, but this ended after the 2008 financial crisis, a 2012 decline in oil prices, and finally Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and Western powers’ imposition of sanctions in response. Economic modernizers lost their influence and the <i>siloviki</i> (people from the security services, including Putin himself) became completely dominant. </p>
<p>Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">debunks</a> the idea that Putin’s Russia and the western powers have been locked in a steadily mounting conflict:
</p><blockquote>“From the time Putin’s set-up became established, from the point of view of Western capital, they had a good relationship with Russia. Russia was supplying oil, gas and minerals to the world market. They were obeying the rules of that market. They were trading on terms which the West could understand. They were accepting all the rules of international finance and the dominance of the Western banking system.”</blockquote>
<p>In addition, Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">argues</a>, the western powers accepted Russia’s military role as a gendarme for international capitalism—an enforcer of order in the former Soviet republics and even in the Middle East:</p>
<blockquote>“For all their disavowals of ‘spheres of influence,’ Western powers not only ignored Russia’s multiple war crimes in Chechnya, but acquiesced in the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and, most significantly, Russia’s bloody intervention in support of the Assad dictatorship in Syria since 2015. This tolerance for Russia as a gendarme was the other side of the coin of the Western powers’ own military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and their support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen.”</blockquote>
<p>Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea caused the western powers to modify this stance by kicking Russia out of the G8 and imposing limited sanctions, but in other respects they continued to accept Russia’s gendarme role, for example with regard to its recent military interventions in Belarus and Kazakhstan. The relationship did not fundamentally change until Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine this year. Now, <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">for the first time</a>, “the bourgeoisie internationally have decided to shut out Russia from the international financial system, to shut Russia out of any investment, and Russia’s population can starve!” Pirani describes this as comparable to the western powers’ policy toward Venezuela or Iran: “They want to buy these countries’ oil on the world market, but allow the rest of their economies to collapse.”</p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Western powers not only ignored Russia’s multiple war crimes in Chechnya, but acquiesced in the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and, most significantly, Russia’s bloody intervention in support of the Assad dictatorship in Syria since 2015. This…was the other side of the coin of the Western powers’ own military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and their support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen.”</span> </i><br /></p>
<p>Pirani’s analysis of Putin’s regime appears to have evolved in response to recent events. In an <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">interview</a> conducted in mid March, he touched briefly on the far right’s role in Russia, noting that, contrary to Putin’s supposed interest in de-Nazification, “the Russian fascists and nationalists are a greater force, and a better armed force…than the Ukrainian fascists”:
</p><blockquote>“Sometimes [the fascist movement in Russia] is subject to heavy clampdowns from the state; at other times it is allowed by the state to, for example, terrorize migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus, to terrorize the left. The state, to some extent, regulates the extent to which the fascists are able to do street activity in Russia. And the use of Russian fascist gangs, supported by the Russian state, was the key force in the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the establishment of the so-called ‘people’s republics’ there. Russian fascists and extreme nationalists, and some of the Chechen armed gangs that are used by the Russian state to control Chechnya, were heavily involved.”</blockquote>
<p>However, in an <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">article</a> published April 19th, Pirani offered a much bigger claim, that the Russian state as a whole is not only authoritarian but is now moving toward fascism. He argues that four recent developments constitute this shift toward fascist rule: </p><ul>
<li>a redefinition of patriotism to center on repelling external and internal enemies militarily
</li><li>an ethno-nationalist redefinition of the “Russian world,” with a focus on purging Ukraine from the earth
</li><li>the incorporation of armed far rightists into the state
</li><li>intensified repression of dissent via both state organs and fascist-like squads.</li></ul>
<p>I agree that these developments represent an alarming, qualitative shift in the character of the Russian state. To bolster one part of Pirani’s argument, Putin’s vision of Russia leading a Eurasian civilizational clash with the West <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/12/dugin-russia-ukraine-putin/" target="_blank">echoes</a> the ideas of neofascist theorist Aleksandr Dugin (although Dugin’s direct influence on Putin has often been <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/does-putin-take-his-cue-from-alexander-dugin" target="_blank">exaggerated</a>).</p>
<p>Yet overall, I don’t agree that we should understand the changes in the Russian state as a move toward fascism. Pirani’s argument is based on “the possibility that fascism can congeal in the state, without the type of mass mobilization on which Hitler and Mussolini relied.” While I support efforts to rethink standard Marxist assumptions about fascism, I also think it’s analytically and strategically important to <a href="https://sdonline.org/issue/47/two-ways-looking-fascism" target="_blank">delineate fascism</a> from other forms of dictatorship. To me fascism necessarily involves a mass-based revolt against the established political order, rather than an intensification of that order’s own authoritarian tendencies. (Paul Bowman has <a href="https://eidgenossen.medium.com/is-putin-a-fascist-ad39eac5cf5a" target="_blank">argued</a> this point directly with regard to Putin.)</p>
<h3>Ukraine</h3>
<p>Like Russia, after the USSR’s collapse Ukraine experienced massive privatization and developed what Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">calls</a> “a parasitic form of capitalism” with heavy reliance on commodities exports. However, “US and European capital were far less committed to plundering Ukraine’s resources than they were Russia’s, Poland’s or the Baltic states’. And while the EU had no interest in admitting Ukraine to membership, it welcomed an inflow of cheap migrant labour from Ukraine.” </p>
<p>Unlike Russia, Ukraine was a relatively small country, historically colonized by Russia and navigating between bigger powers on either side. Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">quotes</a> Ukrainian socialist <a href="https://spectrejournal.com/fighting-for-ukrainian-self-determination/" target="_blank">Yuliya Yurchenko’s analysis</a> that the country’s oligarchs “turned pre-existing and largely non-conflictual differences [such as between Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers] into new animosities and prejudices...as an effective strategy to divide and rule the population that kept resisting the plunder with waves of resistance from below, from the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan uprising in 2013. These divisions were further amplified by the different oligarchs’ relationships with the European Union (EU) and Russia.” </p>
<p>Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">notes</a> that the split between pro-Russian and pro-EU elite factions has been a through-line of post-Soviet Ukraine. At the same time, he cautions that standard portrayals of Ukraine’s pre-2014 presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych as “pro-Western” and “pro-Russian,” respectively, are oversimplifications. While they had different leanings, both tried to pursue a binary policy between the two neighboring powers. </p>
<p>In February 2014, President Yanukovych was deposed and fled the country following three months of protests in Kyiv’s central square, or Maidan. Some western leftists and liberals have portrayed this as a fascist coup backed (or in some versions orchestrated) by the U.S. government. Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">rejects</a> such claims as “Kremlin-inspired nonsense.”
</p><blockquote>“Maidan was not invented by the US or European bourgeoisie. It was a ‘wave of resistance from below’... It came amid economic instability caused by the 2008-09 economic crisis, and hard on the heels of the ‘Arab spring’ of 2011-12. Hundreds of thousands of people occupied the centre of Kyiv, including overnight in sub-zero temperatures. Subsequent research by sociologists showed the high level of participation across Ukraine in local demonstrations, and in particular on attacks on police stations that led to the collapse of the police force.”</blockquote>
<p>The Maidan mass movement was “politically heterogenous [sic] and confused” but in broad terms motivated by (a) a desire for Ukraine to become part of “Europe” so as to improve wages, (b) opposition to political corruption, and (c) fear of excessive Russian influence on Ukrainian politics. “These fears fed into nationalist slogans.”</p>
<p>Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">acknowledges</a> that provocateurs and opportunist politicians were active on both sides of the conflict, and that armed fascists played an active role among the protesters. “We have many friends—socialists, trade unionists, feminists—who were also in the crowd, and who actually felt threatened and also tried to organize themselves to protect themselves from these fascists.” But, bottom line, “this was a mass movement, and we can’t analyze these events in 2014 without recognizing that.” Pirani’s assessment confirms the <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2014/02/ukraines-upheaval-between-fascists.html" target="_blank">analysis</a> of the Maidan revolution that I offered at the time.</p>
<p>The Maidan uprising and revolution, Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">continues</a>, sparked an “anti-Maidan” countermovement fueled by “fears among working-class Russian-speaking Ukrainians about the influence of Ukrainian nationalism, including reactionary and fascist types of nationalism, in the Maidan movement—although sociological evidence shows that these fears were expressed as separatism only by a tiny minority.” Pirani argues that the two movements, despite being in conflict, shared similar aspirations (of social and economic reform) and adds that “<i>it was right-wing militias from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content</i>” [italics in original]. (For more on the Maidan and anti-Maidan movements, see <a href="https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/politics/eastern-ukraine-popular-uprising-conspiracy-or-civil-war/" target="_blank">this 2014 discussion</a>, which Pirani cites, by Ukrainian and Russian activists and scholars.)</p>
<p>Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">argues</a> that the danger from Ukraine’s fascists is real but “has not overwhelmed Ukrainian civil society.” He <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">notes</a> that although fascist played a significant part in the 2014 revolution, in the elections that followed fascist parties received a small percentage of the vote—less than in many other European countries. However, <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/06/01/the-russian-empire-is-failing-in-its-own-way/" target="_blank">armed fascist gangs</a> became more numerous and dangerous, as guns were taken from local police and as fascists (and others) mobilized to counter pro-Russian separatism in Donbas. These fascist gangs, some of which were incorporated into the military, have launched physical attacks against leftists, Roma, and the LGBT community. </p>
<p>I agree with this assessment as far as it goes, but I think there’s also more to be said. Lev Golinkin, a Jewish Ukrainian American journalist who is no fan of Putin, has <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/" target="_blank">warned</a> not only of fascist units within the Ukrainian military but also fascists holding high-ranking positions in the national police and, more broadly, widespread and largely official glorification of World War 2-era far right organizations that participated in mass killings of Jews and Poles. There have also been significant ideological differences between different Ukrainian far right groups, for example with regard to the European Union and to the severity of antisemitism.<br /></p><h3><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5SV-40LbDMqsUqlGyiuvj4B-lYOG1q5Bzrz2qMHMO3W465wyOBysx1Q0LHps82t39TA-e6F4XtfUueT_9c1Grolbl45TatsdbAJTIXNN2KmIsTr43-7JeWi54Jofxq5pAL2tiELI8vVNk2M_6VaLevLcLvCWUwSHnaEfSYr1rDwzFp_Jew/s1280/Evacuation_of_students_from_26_countries_from_Ukraine_to_Poland_(03).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Aerial view of crowd of people sitting and standing in station waiting area" border="0" data-original-height="958" data-original-width="1280" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5SV-40LbDMqsUqlGyiuvj4B-lYOG1q5Bzrz2qMHMO3W465wyOBysx1Q0LHps82t39TA-e6F4XtfUueT_9c1Grolbl45TatsdbAJTIXNN2KmIsTr43-7JeWi54Jofxq5pAL2tiELI8vVNk2M_6VaLevLcLvCWUwSHnaEfSYr1rDwzFp_Jew/w640-h480/Evacuation_of_students_from_26_countries_from_Ukraine_to_Poland_(03).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Evacuation of students from 26 countries from Ukraine to Poland<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></h3>
<h3><br />The war</h3>
<p>Pirani sharply <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">criticizes</a> those who portray the Russia-Ukraine war as essentially an inter-imperialist conflict:
</p><blockquote>“[T]his is not a conflict, in the first place, between Russia and the US, or between Russia and the NATO powers. It's a conflict—in the first place—between the Russian army instructed by the Russian government, and the Ukrainian population as well as the Ukrainian government. It's complicated, but then life is complicated.”</blockquote>
<p>In this war there is a fundamental asymmetry between the two sides:</p>
<blockquote>“<a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">The Ukrainian war</a> can not be seriously equated with the Russian war, any more than the Iraqi war with the US-UK invasion; the Kurdish war with Turkish aggression; the Palestinian war with Israeli apartheid; or, going further back, the Vietnamese war with the US war. People who think Ukraine is fighting ‘a proxy war for NATO’ should clarify the difference, if any, between this and the ‘proxy war for the Arab states’ fought by Palestine, or the ‘proxy war for the USSR and China’ fought by Vietnam.”</blockquote>
<p>Pirani has followed Ukrainian socialists in describing Ukraine’s resistance to Russia as a <i>people’s war</i>, by which he <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">means</a> “an armed conflict in which a significant section of the population is engaged, alongside or independently of the state, and in which social, labour and democratic issues figure along with national ones.” He highlights three ways this describes the Ukraine conflict: </p><ul>
<li>“the Russian army’s shockingly anti-popular methods, a continuation of its methods in Chechnya and Syria,” which parallel western forces’ brutal tactics in Vietnam or Iraq and which turn Ukrainians’ resistance into “a war for survival”
</li><li>the fact that millions of Ukrainians have chosen <i>not</i> to flee the country, and a large proportion of them have taken up arms or joined the war effort in non-military roles
</li><li>the widespread and persistent popular protests by Ukrainians in areas occupied by Russia.</li></ul>
<p>At the same time, Pirani cautions against romanticizing the Ukrainian resistance. He <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">warns</a> that “assumptions widely shared by Marxists in the early 20th century, about the potentially progressive roles of the national bourgeoisie,” and which have often been associated with the concept of people’s war, have proven to be false. He warns that any people’s war carries the danger that “new forms of statehood, authority and oppression will proliferate” or that militarization may overwhelm civil society, as happened in Syria. The motives of NATO countries in arming Ukraine must also be taken into account.</p>
<p>I appreciate Pirani’s effort to face the complexity of this issue, but I also think fuller discussion is needed. Pirani’s definition of “people’s war” is so broad that it could apply when a large part of the population is mobilized around a war of <i>conquest</i>, if that war involves a challenge to established political structures or calls for socioeconomic reform. I’m thinking particularly of some wars of settler colonialism, notably the U.S. War of Independence and Israel’s 1948 war: in both cases popular struggles for political autonomy and seemingly radical change were integrally bound up with systematic forced expulsion of whole peoples. The larger point here is that mass mobilizations may be the opposite of liberatory, even if they involve ostensibly progressive goals. That doesn’t negate Pirani’s point that leftists should support the Ukrainian resistance, but we need to either sharpen our concept of “people’s war” or find a different yardstick altogether.</p>
<p>That said, Pirani does make a number of distinctive points in discussing why Russia chose to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the first place. In broad terms, he emphasizes internal factors over external ones, and argues that among external factors, NATO expansion was much less important than the larger crisis of international capitalism. </p>
<p>By invading Ukraine and provoking harsh western sanctions, Putin’s government has “<a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">wrecked</a> the Russian economy’s prospects” or, to put it differently, “has prioritized military adventure and associated political aims over the medium-term and perhaps long-term economic interests of Russian capital.” Despite Putin’s history of punishing even elite dissenters, some Russian capitalists, such as <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/04/business/lukoil-end-war/index.html" target="_blank">Lukoil’s board of directors</a>, have openly called for an end to the war.</p>
<p>I think it would be helpful to consider this part of Pirani’s argument in relation to a recent debate between Ilya Matveev and Volodymyr Ishchenko on whether Russia’s invasion was economically rational or guided by imperial ideology. Central to this discussion was the idea that Russia now has a Bonapartist regime, in which the political elite exercises state power in the interests of big capitalists as a class but independent of any specific capitalist factions. (The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VK_1JBC55w" target="_blank">discussion</a> was sponsored by Salvage journal and Haymarket Books, and LeftEast published a <a href="https://lefteast.org/russias-war-on-ukraine-imperial-ideology-or-class-interest/" target="_blank">summary</a>.)</p>
<p>Many western leftists have argued that NATO expansion into eastern Europe threatened Russia’s security and thus provoked the Ukraine invasion as a defensive measure. Pirani <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">rejects</a> this argument for several reasons. He points out that most NATO expansion happened before 2004 and that it was motivated as much by eastern Europeans’ historically based fears of Russian dominance as by western imperialist aims. He argues further that NATO’s expansion was offset by its acceptance of Russia’s gendarme role within the latter’s own sphere of influence, as discussed above. In addition, blaming the Ukraine invasion on NATO expansion falsely portrays the Russian state as a victim—obscuring that state’s actual victims in the war—and underplays Russian internal dynamics: the re-emergence of the strong state, the tensions between economic interests and military-political ones, and the state’s uneasy relationship with its own population. </p>
<p>In the context of Russia’s internal dynamics, Pirani highlights two immediate factors behind the invasion: first, nationalist and militarist pressures from the increasingly powerful <i>siloviki</i> within the state. In <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">Pirani’s words</a>, “Putin could not be seen by hardliners in the military and security services to be the president who failed to undermine the Ukrainian state when he had the chance.” Second, Kremlin fears that the Ukrainian mass protest movement that toppled Yanukovych might spread to Russia. Pirani doesn’t directly say so, but these fears may have been heightened by the mass protests against the Belarusian dictatorship in 2020, which Russian military intervention helped crush. </p>
<p>On the most macro level, Pirani agrees that international capitalist forces brought about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but <a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">argues</a> that these forces must be understood systemically—not as an inter-imperialist power play by western states but as “the broader crisis of 21st century capitalism”:
</p><blockquote>“It is this crisis that dashed the 1990s hopes of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and many social democrats, that Russia would be integrated as a democratic European partner. Moreover, it is this same crisis that favored the rapacious form of capitalism on which Kremlin authoritarianism rests, and that produced the social unrest of the 2010s in both Russia and Ukraine that formed the backdrop for the initial outbreak of war in 2014.”</blockquote>
<p>To reduce these dynamics to a “one-sided focus on NATO expansion,” Pirani <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-the-sources-of-danger-of-a-wider-war/" target="_blank">argues</a>, “has more in common with a distorted conspiracy theory than a coherent explanation.”</p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Pirani agrees that international capitalist forces brought about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but argues that these forces must be understood systemically—not as an
inter-imperialist power play by western states but as “the broader
crisis of 21st century capitalism.”</i></span></p><h3>What to do</h3>
<p>How should western leftists respond to the Ukraine war in practical terms? Pirani is cautious about answering this question in detail, but he does offer some <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-the-sources-of-danger-of-a-wider-war/" target="_blank">broad recommendations</a>. Some of these—such as denouncing anti-Russian bigotry and calling for all refugees to be welcomed regardless of ethnicity—are relatively uncontroversial on the left. His call for international solidarity with the anti-war movement in Russia, while a problem for active Kremlin supporters, would likely be shared by leftists whose position is based on the slogan “No war but class war.” </p>
<p>Because he sees the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a war of imperialist aggression, Pirani calls for solidarity with the Ukrainian people and their resistance, including armed resistance. That means movement support—presumably including material support—for Ukrainians who join territorial defense units and foreigners who travel to Ukraine to help the fight. It also means support for the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, but not support for a no-fly zone, because of the danger of triggering a wider war. (Gilbert Achcar, another leftist supporter of Ukrainian resistance, has argued for a similar distinction in more detail <a href="https://newpol.org/a-memorandum-on-the-radical-anti-imperialist-position-regarding-the-war-in-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR3983Og8-X981-KskLv3w6jMmmqFDJzPqRpCps85Hd870M1YH-syVDgn28" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://newpol.org/six-faqs-on-anti-imperialism-today-and-the-war-in-ukraine/" target="_blank">here</a>.) Pirani is clearly reluctant and conflicted about some of the positions he advocates, <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-the-sources-of-danger-of-a-wider-war/" target="_blank">warning</a> that “military conflict inherently favours state machines and other hierarchies, and disfavours collectives and communities.” But this is one of those times when not taking a position is taking a position. </p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>In a series of recent articles and interviews, Simon Pirani has offered one of the best overall analyses I have seen of the Russia-Ukraine war and the developments that have fueled it. Pirani’s approach combines a nuanced understanding of social and political dynamics with a deeply humanistic concern for how these dynamics affect actual people. He is rightly critical of those western leftists who prioritize opposition to the U.S. and NATO out of a one-dimensional approach to anti-imperialism. Although Pirani writes from a Marxist perspective, many anarchists and others could find his approach helpful. His analysis meshes well with in-depth discussions of various areas he touches on only briefly, such as accounts of <a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/russia-a-new-wave-of-anti-war-protest/" target="_blank">anti-war resistance</a> in Russia and of the Ukrainian state’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/21/why-did-ukraine-suspend-11-pro-russia-parties" target="_blank">repressive</a> and <a href="https://crossbordertalks.wordpress.com/2022/05/28/workers-ukraine/" target="_blank">anti-working class</a> policies.<br /></p>
<p>Pirani's analysis is certainly not the last word on Russia or Ukraine. For example, I suggested above that his treatment of the Russian state could benefit from dialog with conceptions of Putin's regime as Bonapartist, and thus relatively autonomous from direct capitalist control. My criticisms of Pirani center on three issues. First, I think the far right’s role in Ukraine needs fuller discussion than Pirani provides. Second, I disagree with his claim that Putin’s Russia is moving toward fascism, because I believe fascism is best delineated from the establishment-based authoritarian nationalism Putin represents. Third, I agree with Pirani that western leftists should support Ukraine's resistance while being mindful of its dangers, but I think his concept of “people's war” unintentionally legitimizes certain mass-based, seemingly progressive wars of conquest. All of these criticisms are rooted in standard <i>Three Way Fight</i> arguments: that far right politics needs close attention, right-wing authoritarianism takes different forms and fighting them requires different strategies, and drives to strengthen oppression and systemic violence can come from below as well as from above.</p><p>These are limited criticisms, and none of them calls the substance of Pirani's core arguments into question. Pirani has enriched my understanding of the Russia-Ukraine war and its significance for today's world, and I hope many more readers will give his work the close attention it deserves. </p><p><i>Thanks to John Garvey and Michael Pugliese for helpful discussions that informed this review, and to Xtn for comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.</i> <br /></p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p>One part of Pirani’s background requires special comment: he was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) from 1972 until its breakup in 1985. The WRP was a British Trotskyist group led by Gerry Healy that represented one of the most poisonous examples of left-wing sectarianism and abuses of power; the group splintered when Healy’s extensive sexual violence against female members was exposed. Pirani’s politics have moved far from the WRP’s vanguardist arrogance, and he has <a href="https://libcom.org/article/break-wrp-horses-mouth-simon-pirani" target="_blank">written</a> thoughtfully and self-critically about his involvement in the WRP (which he joined at age 14) and its dissolution. </p>
<h3>Simon Pirani works consulted</h3>
<p>“<a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/03/donbas-donetsk-luhansk-ukraine-russia-putin" target="_blank">The Russian Statelets in the Donbas Are No ‘People’s Republics’</a>” (Jacobin, 1 March 2022) <br />
“<a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/ukraine-the-sources-of-danger-of-a-wider-war/" target="_blank">Ukraine: the sources of danger of a wider war</a>” (People and Nature, 21 March 2022)<br />
“<a href="http://europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article61722" target="_blank">Is this monstrous war of aggression really between two equal sides?</a>” (Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, 21 March 2022)<br />
“<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/putin-has-sacrificed-russias-economy-for-this-war-on-ukraines-people/" target="_blank">Putin has sacrificed Russia’s economy for this war on Ukraine’s people</a>” (Truthout, 24 March 2022) <br />
“<a href="http://links.org.au/simon-pirani-movement-needs-different-politics-concerned-with-ukrainian-russian-people-not-governments" target="_blank">Our movement needs a different politics that is concerned with Ukrainian and Russian people not governments</a>” (Links, 1 April 2022) <br />
“<a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/site-contents/supporting-the-ukrainian-resistance-six-questions/" target="_blank">Supporting the Ukrainian resistance. Six questions</a>” (People and Nature, 19 April 2022) <br />
“<a href="https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/06/01/the-russian-empire-is-failing-in-its-own-way/" target="_blank">The Russian empire is failing in its own way</a>” (People and Nature, 1 June 2022)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Photo credits</h3>
<p style="text-align: left;">1. Russian diaspora protest against war in Ukraine, photo by Silar, 6 March 2022 (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:02022_1234_Russian_diaspora_protests_against_war_in_Ukraine.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br />2. Photo by State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, 10 March 2022 (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY 4.0</a>), via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Evacuation_of_students_from_26_countries_from_Ukraine_to_Poland_(03).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br /></p>Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13622622.post-51475395571526468722022-05-07T10:46:00.001-04:002022-05-07T11:24:17.846-04:00Abortion, the Christian right, and antifascism<p><i>It’s time for antifascists to stop treating the Christian right as a secondary threat. </i></p><p>When the U.S. Supreme Court scraps legal protection for abortion rights—using arguments that also <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/politics/roe-alito-obergefell-loving/index.html" target="_blank">directly threaten</a>
legal protections for homosexuality, contraception, interracial
marriage, and much more—it will mark a historic victory for the
Christian right. More than anyone else, Christian rightists have worked
steadily and carefully for almost half a century to reach this goal.
They have done this not only because they want to stop pregnant people
from making decisions about their own bodies. More broadly, Christian
rightists have used abortion as a tool to rally mass support behind
their larger agenda to impose patriarchal families, compulsory
heterosexuality, and “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220507143442/https://www.generals.org/blog/preserving-states-rights" target="_blank">God-given gender identity</a>” on society as a
whole.</p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoJbIZx0o9jqOFOpOzZcZNKnOeylQmPu_RwanWyu2HkKPlP5gNYw9CyFWz2n7zCvS8_6nuSD3AcMzTPkAQNR6Ng6Y-Pl1w4HZbSwHRAVmuxgicI-ngabPTSsAcJc3IUSV3MeIkje8A7XXE8eLwO67o3q2-cyIa1SEQp_Ti2HVm10mX0VSqNg/s800/BACORR_clinic_defense.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Protesters hold abortion rights signs and a large banner that reads "We'll never go back" with a coat hanger crossed out" border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="800" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoJbIZx0o9jqOFOpOzZcZNKnOeylQmPu_RwanWyu2HkKPlP5gNYw9CyFWz2n7zCvS8_6nuSD3AcMzTPkAQNR6Ng6Y-Pl1w4HZbSwHRAVmuxgicI-ngabPTSsAcJc3IUSV3MeIkje8A7XXE8eLwO67o3q2-cyIa1SEQp_Ti2HVm10mX0VSqNg/w640-h424/BACORR_clinic_defense.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) clinic defense <br />at Planned Parenthood on Valencia, San Francisco, 29 September 2011<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The Christian right has played a long game, setting aside centuries-old theological disputes, bringing millions of people into political activism for the first time, mobilizing both wealthy patrons and independent funding streams, and gradually building a rich organizational network, from think tanks and lobbying groups to local prayer cells. The Christian right has forged and used alliances with diverse actors, including neoconservatives and laissez faire libertarians, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-bibis-new-tribulation-courting-jew-converting-demon-exorcising-american-allies" target="_blank">Likudniks</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/06/17/islamic-bloc-christian-right-team-up-to-lobby-un/f32a43e6-a7c0-43cf-9719-a9e1d12ce712/" target="_blank">conservative Islamic governments</a>. The Christian right’s embrace of Donald Trump as a modern day “<a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda" target="_blank">Cyrus</a>”—an ungodly man of power who serves God’s purpose—is a model of <i>realpolitik</i>, and it has paid off in spades.
</p><p>The Christian right has functioned as a political big tent, encompassing multiple ideological doctrines, strategies, and tactical approaches, and making room for different factions to riff off of each other without tearing each other down. Most importantly, it has encompassed both reformist and revolutionary poles of thought—a creative tension between those working to make changes within the existing political system and those who want to scrap all secular and pluralist institutions and replace the existing state with a full-on theocracy. In this dynamic, the incrementalists have had the numbers but the theocrats have been the trend setters, again and again staking out forward positions that have helped to guide and animate their more cautious comrades. </p>
<p>A pioneering current of theocratic politics known as <a href="https://religiondispatches.org/how-a-fringe-theocratic-movement-helped-shape-the-religious-right-as-we-know-it/" target="_blank">Christian Reconstructionism</a>—whose “Godly” vision includes disenfranchising women and punishing homosexuality with death by stoning—has played a pivotal role within the anti-abortion rights movement, pushing it toward more violent actions and more militant opposition to the state. Michael Bray, a Lutheran pastor who spent four years in prison for firebombing a series of reproductive health clinics in the 1980s, is a Reconstructionist. So was Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister who murdered a physician and his bodyguard outside a clinic in Pensacola, Florida, in 1994. So is Matt Trewhella, a Pentecostal minister and founder of Missionaries to the Preborn, who in the 1990s defended the killing of abortion providers as “justifiable homicide” and urged Christian rightists to form church-based militias. </p>
<p>The movement’s other leading theocratic current, <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2021/09/create-fire-in-you-to-fight-injustice.html" target="_blank">New Apostolic Reformation</a> (NAR), has combined Reconstructionism’s call for right-thinking Christians to “take dominion” over all spheres of society with authoritarian mass organizing and the Pentecostal/Charismatic belief in divine prophecy and working miracles. NAR leaders have aggressively promoted <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/08/24/139781021/the-evangelicals-engaged-in-spiritual-warfare" target="_blank">homophobic legislation</a>, including a notorious bill in Uganda that would have made gay sex punishable by death. New Apostolics have been a dominant force in the <a href="https://politicalresearch.org/2010/01/18/the-new-christian-zionism-and-the-jews-a-lovehate-relationship" target="_blank">Christian Zionist movement</a> and have proselytized Jews aggressively in Israel and elsewhere. NAR leaders staunchly supported Donald Trump throughout his presidency and have played key roles in the fraudulent <a href="https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2020/12/14/jericho-march-in-dc-coming-out-party-for-movement-journalists-havent-really-covered" target="_blank">Stop The Steal</a> campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. </p>
<p>The Christian right’s theocratic wing falls squarely within my proposed <a href="https://sdonline.org/issue/47/two-ways-looking-fascism" target="_blank">definition of fascism</a>: <i>a revolutionary form of right-wing populism, inspired by a totalitarian vision of collective rebirth, that challenges capitalist political and cultural power while promoting economic and social hierarchy</i>. Whether you accept that definition or not, it’s clear that Christian theocrats (a) advocate intensified forms of oppression and repression, (b) want to impose their beliefs through a comprehensive transformation of society, and (c) use scapegoating, rituals, and people’s longing for community to mobilize supporters behind their goals. Theocratic organizations are a significant force in their own right, and their role within the larger Christian right give them leverage far beyond their numbers. (One 2013 <a href="https://www.apologeticsindex.org/2977-new-apostolic-reformation-overview" target="_blank">estimate</a> puts the NAR’s U.S. membership alone at 3 million. Even if that’s off by an order of magnitude, it still dwarfs the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys combined.) </p>
<p>Discussions of right-wing politics are often compartmentalized by ideology. This approach treats Christian rightists separately from white nationalists and the far right, and excludes Christian right politics from many definitions of fascism. That’s better than lumping all rightists into one nebulous category, because we need to understand our opponents’ differences so we can combat them effectively. Unfortunately, in practice many antifascists treat Christian right politics as not just separate from white nationalism, but also less important. Maybe they think Christian rightists are more moderate than white nationalists, or maybe they see issues of gender and sexuality as secondary to issues of race. In this framework, the Christian right gets attention only to the extent that it has a relationship with white nationalism or the extent to which its politics are seen to be “really” about race. </p>
<p><a href="https://religiondispatches.org/neo-confederates-and-the-revival-of-theological-war-for-the-christian-nation/" target="_blank">Interconnections with white nationalism</a> are important, as is <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/" target="_blank">segregationism’s role</a> in fueling the Christian right’s rise in the 1970s, and the movement’s <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2021/09/create-fire-in-you-to-fight-injustice.html" target="_blank">more complex racial politics</a> today. But those aren’t the main reasons the Christian right is dangerous. For half a century, Christian rightists have consistently placed gender and sexuality—not race—at the center of their program, and those wars need to be fought on their own terms. </p>
<p>Let’s remember: In the 1990s, the <a href="https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1295" target="_blank">Anti-Racist Action Network</a> made support for abortion rights and reproductive freedom one of its four <a href="https://antiracistaction.org/points-of-unity/" target="_blank">Points of Unity</a>, and ARA activists helped <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rory-mcgowan-claim-no-easy-victories" target="_blank">defend reproductive health clinics</a> while also confronting neonazis and racist cops. This is history we can learn from. The fight against Christian theocracy is a fight against fascism. The fight for abortion rights is a fight against fascism. </p>
<p><i>For further details and references about the Christian right, see</i> <a href="https://www.leftwingbooks.net/book/content/insurgent-supremacists-us-far-right%E2%80%99s-challenge-state-and-empire" target="_blank">Insurgent Supremacists</a><i>, chapters 2 and 6, and</i> <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Right-Wing-Populism-in-America/Berlet-Lyons/9781572305625" target="_blank">Right-Wing Populism in America</a><i>, chapters 11 and 12.</i></p><b>Photo credit</b>: By Steve Rhodes (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" target="_blank">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>), via <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/6195039871/in/photolist-arraM8-arrcwg-artPKj-artQns-arrbr4/" target="_blank">Flickr</a>.<span id="docs-internal-guid-0f0ef928-7fff-7f26-7723-0231d2482fec" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"></span> <br />
Matthew N Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15664330735255207352noreply@blogger.com0