Anti-Fascist Network

This weekend saw an excellent result for anti-fascists and a severe blow for Generation Identity’s attempt to launch their white nationalist youth movement in the UK as their “European conference” got shut down.

GI exist across Europe but want to build in the UK, partly as a way to break into the wider English-speaking world. Stopping them here has importance not only for this country but across Europe and the world. They are a dangerous new force on the far-right, with slick branding and a carefully maintained public appearance that belies the extreme positions they actually advocate. See here for more information about who they are and what they stand for.

Things started to go wrong for GI early on – Firstly their leaders were denied entry to the country – overall leader Martin Sellner appears to have been given a permanent ban, Ábel Bòdi, the leader of GI Hungary was also prevented from entering the country and the leader of GI Italy, Lorenzo Fiato pulled a sickie. Associates of GI such as Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone also appear to have been permanently banned from the country. Annika Franziska of GI who was due to be a main speaker on both Saturday and Sunday also was a no-show.

Then just days before the event, their venue in London cancelled on them and they had to desperately run around to find a new venue, which ended up being not in London as advertised but in the distinctly not-London location of the Stag community arts centre in leafy Sevenoaks in Kent.

Just to avoid any confusion…

GI had become so paranoid about security that their entire conference was delayed by an hour as they triple-checked for infiltrators.

Their much-vaunted livestream of the conference for those who couldn’t attend attracted at one point a mere 3 viewers (2 of whom were us) and then got cut off after 5 minutes. When it re-started it revealed empty chairs a-plenty and some very sub-par speeches from those filling in for their missing leadership.

Within about an hour of their conference starting, anti-fascists had revealed the venue and headed down there en masse while contacting the venue to ask why they were hosting an extreme right wing racist gathering.

By the time anti-fascists arrived in Sevenoaks, GI had already been kicked out onto the street – their conference cut short by 3 hours.

Sunday

On Sunday, GI had announced they would be speaking at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, wearing the hat of their 120dB campaign which tries to blame migrants for sexual assaults against women.

AFN had organised a counter-event of speeches and music to oppose them. We outnumbered them easily 2:1, did our speeches and music and had a bit of a shout at GI’s crowd of 30 (26 of whom were men) supposedly launching a campaign about violence against women (“You’re just a shit Tommy Robinson”, “You should have stayed on YouTube”, “Where the fuck is Sevenoaks?” etc) before heading off to march down Oxford street, while GI were escorted by the cops to the pub.

The noisy anti-fascist crowd then followed GI to their pub, the Duke of York on Harrowby St, where they all retreated inside. Locals called the pub landlord to ask why they were serving white supremacists. This resulted in the pub firstly stopping serving them, then kicking them out and donating all the money the fascists had spent to a refugee charity. Anti-fascists stopped for a celebratory photo-op outside the pub before heading off for a well-earned pint. Meanwhile the sorry rag-tag of GI were marched by Mr Plod straight to Edgeware Rd to be put on the tube and fucked off.

Thank you and well done to all the individuals and groups who helped out or attended over the weekend. GI may have had a crappy weekend but they haven’t gone away and will no doubt be back again. Hopefully we can continue to see the co-operation and unity between anti-fascists that characterised the weekend continue and grow when we shut down their next event.