By Berkshire Antifascists
The DFLA are coming to London on October 13th. Wanna know you can help out and be a proper-good-Antifa? Well now that Antifa has become an SEO friendly term, you can’t move for thinkpieces and blog posts. We thought we’d join in with our very own listicle. We’re like, totally top content-creator millenials too, you know.
originally posted on While Rome Burns
So… Saturday.
10,000 far-right racists take over Whitehall and Trafalgar Square yelling anti-Muslim hate, pulling Nazi salutes and screaming the name of Tommy Robinson. They assault journalists, attempt to attack anti-fascists and try to break through the gates of Downing Street. They take over and trash a sightseeing bus, forcing driver and passengers to abandon it. They force back the cops, chucking bottles, traffic cones and street barriers, and then roam uncontrolled, chanting racist slogans from the EDL days. They are addressed by a series of celebrity Islamophobes. Speaker after speaker openly incites hatred against Muslims to the delight of the cheering crowds.
The opposition was minimal. A small counter demo of about 200-300 people down the other end of Whitehall. Those who joined it deserve all credit for being there. They were under fairly serious threat of being attacked by breakaway mobs from the main demo.
This was the largest far-right demo in the UK since the Second World War. More than triple the size of any EDL demo that ever happened. Twice as big as the “Day for Freedom” only a month ago.
It’s an event that’s become mythologised, Moseley was able to carry on recruiting and indeed marched again within the week. A year later an equally large march was met with similarly fierce opposition in Bermondsey. It was one battle in an ongoing campaign, fascism isn’t that easy to put down. Anti-fascism is never just ‘the big demo’.
On the 4th October 1936 , tens of thousands of anti-fascists turned out to stop Moseley’s Blackshirts marching into the East End of London.
Barricades during the “Battle of Cable Street”
View original post 1,532 more words
re-blogged from crimethinc
Anti-fascism has arrived. Here’s where it needs to go.
Following the clashes in Charlottesville and the massive anti-fascist demonstrations afterwards in Durham, Boston, and the Bay Area, the struggle against fascism has arrived in the consciousness of the general public. Tens of thousands of people are realizing that the fight against fascism didn’t end in 1945—that today, as increasingly authoritarian governments collude with ascendant fascist movements, this battle is more pressing than ever. Read the rest of this entry »
There are already a lot of reports of what happened in Dover on Saturday knocking about, so we’ll keep ours short and sweet, and focus on the analysis. What does Dover mean for the Antifascist Movement in this country?
The day started with a 150-strong bloc of locals and AFN gathering in Pencester Gardens, forming up behind a large “Open the Borders” banner, and marching to occupy the fascists’ RV point at the Castle Inn.
The AFN bloc forming up.
It is the responsibility of anti-racists and anti-fascists to break the silence on the nature of the far-right’s presence in Rotherham.
By now virtually everyone in the country must be acquainted with the horrific details of the child sex abuse in Rotherham. As far as the extreme-right are concerned this is the perfect storm: a gang of Asian men with the connivance of ‘politically correct’ authorities engaged in systematic abuse of young white girls. The mainstream media are effectively spouting EDL press releases, while the EDL themselves accuse all those who oppose them of condoning paedophilia. Meanwhile, the whole spectrum of extreme right-wing groups have taken up residence in Rotherham, establishing a permanent camp outside the police station and holding marches and demonstrations through the town, all building up to today’s large ‘unity’ demonstration of all the racist groups.
Israel had been struggling with its mass murdering until the arrival of super-underpants-EDL man
As many readers are no doubt aware, since the beginning of the current Gaza crisis on July 8th, the EDL and other far-right fascist groups have been popping their heads up and attacking and abusing pro-Palestine demonstrations. They have always been vastly outnumbered by demonstrators against Israeli apartheid but as this list shows, they have been active and persistent across the country and have resorted to acts of violence and harassment against individual protestors when they have been able to get away with it.
The demonstrations, marches, vigils and so forth that have taken place in connection with Gaza over the last month have been almost uniformly peaceful despite people’s understandable anger and have represented a cross-section of the community with people of all ages including lots of children. Obviously the EDL and their fascist chums count it a great victory to chant racist abuse and intimidate and attack peaceful family-friendly demonstrations including small children. Anti-fascists should not allow them to claim these victories. Ideally we should be aiming to know when they are planning these mobilisations and to see them off.
The relentless diet of anti-migrant hysteria served by the mainstream press for the past few months has been staggering, even by their standards. The Daily Express in particular outdid itself, promising a “crusade” against Bulgarian and Romanian immigration.
But as a study in the Guardian showed, there’s rarely much of a correlation between the headlines and the reality. The study showed that headlines about migrants have increase out of all proportion to the actual levels of immigration, which have tended to rise only slowly, and with the occasional dip.
Read the rest of this entry »
This is the account of the North East Anti Fascists 2013
We live in the area of the UK where the fascists are at their strongest, and so our task is far harder than other areas, especially given wider political issues which make progressive left wing politics in the North East even harder ie, bureaucratic and institutionalised labour movements and authoritarian left politics.
Nationally, the year started off very badly for Tommy Robinson who was sent down for using a false passport to get into the USA – Tommy the Illegal Immigrant! Tommy Robinson later abandoned the failing EDL having been shocked to discover they’re a bunch of racist nazis – who’d have thought it!?
Anti-Fascist Network 