Greeting troublemakers... welcome to Trouble.
My name is not important.
Right up there with slavery,
the Crusades, the colonization of the Americas,
and Nickleback's most recent album,
No Fixed Address,
World War Two ranks pretty high on any person's
list of the worst things that human beings
have ever done.
It was a horrific slaughter
marked by the wholesale flattening of entire cities,
an unprecedented global death toll,
and the worst atrocities ever committed
on European soil.
And so it's not surprising that by the time
the smoke had cleared
the political ideology that kicked things off,
facism, had become a nearly universal
synonym for pure, absolute evil.
But while fascism has struggled with a serious branding issue
ever since, the ideas and material factors that led
to its initial rise never truly disappeared.
Today, with the neoliberal capitalist order
in a period of intense crisis, fascism is once again
being spoken about as a serious threat.
The revival of far-right nationalism,
white supremacy, misogyny and other toxic reactionary ideologies
has, in turn, provoked renewed enthusiasm for anti-fascist, or antifa organizing.
If we hope to build on this momentum,
it is vitally important that we move past using fascist as a pejorative,
or a slur for our political opponents,
and instead seek a better understanding of just what it is that we're up against.
Over the next thirty minutes, we'll bring you the voices of
a diverse crew of anti-fascist and anti-racist organizers,
as they share their experiences of bashing the fash,
and making a whole lotta trouble.
Hail Trump! Hail our people!
Hail victory!
It's a highly debated question about how you define fascism,
and there's a lot kind of at stake here,
because when we label a movement as a fascist movement,
it means that we, from the very beginning,
aren't going to engage with it intellectually,
we're not gonna engage with its arguments,
and furthermore, it's acceptable to use violence
to suppress the movement.
For decades the left has really defined
fascism as how the state responds
to capitalism in crisis.
The capitalist system, when there's a crisis,
uses right-wing or fascism to fight
social and left-wing movements.
Fascism is an ideology that's inherently reactionary
and authoritarian.
As anarchists and communists,
we consider fascism as counter-revolution,
the exact opposite of what we are fighting for.
It's a political movement, which seeks to
destroy its political opponents through force,
and therefore we must resist it by any means necessary.
Fascism, I would define as a
authoritarian, reactionary, nationalist movement,
rooted in an idea that there is a conspiracy
against the white man,
there's a conspiracy against western civilization.
There is a need for a street movement,
aimed at their political enemies,
so the left and minorities,
and social groups seeking liberation.
People basically fighting back
whether it's the working class as a whole,
groups that are oppressed under white supremacy,
women trying to fight back
against patriarchy,
these are seen as the extreme social ills
that their movement has to face
and defeat in order for them to
get to where they want to go.
Contemporarily, it seems like
pretty much everything is considered fascism
depending on who it is you ask.
The left and the right
both characterize each other as fascist...
which is.... interesting.
There's many kinds of fascism,
just like there are different kinds of
socialism, anarchism or communism.
But they all share similar qualities of
being extremely authoritarian,
nationalistic, and ultimately based on
preserving hierarchies of class, race and gender.
A fourteen-year-old girl in Rockville Maryland,
was raped in a highschool bathroom by
two men, allegedly in this country illegally.
The way in which migrants are
kind of being scapegoated by the mainstream media,
by the government, by the ruling class essentially,
and fascists, they see an opportunity in this
and also push those agendas and push forward
that kind of racist, anti-migrant rhetoric in order to
fuel their political agenda
which is to destroy any
working-class resistance
and any left-wing organizing.
I think there's a real mistake to see
fascism as a list of principles
that could be applied to
any kind of political movement in any kind of country
in any time period.
It's an actual real living political movement.
I think part of the problem is
with asking "is something fascist?" or
"are we in fascism?" is
is this the worst thing that could possibly exist?
And I think that as a conceit
is really ham-fisted,
especially for North Americans.
Arguably, the United States
wouldn't have a worse history
and Canada wouldn't have had a worse history
if overt fascists were at the helm.
I just, like... I fail to see it,
and I think it negates the horror
of North America
by claiming that it could have somehow been worse.
In Canada and in the United States,
the basis of these countries are racist.
It was forged through the mass genocide
of its Indigenous people,
and through slavery, which has built
what we know today as America.
I think the actual functions of
white supremacy, patriarchy,
authoritarianism, settler-colonialism,
within North America should be
understood more deeply as it actually
exists.... and not in comparison with
other places.
Hardline fascist movements are fairly similar in
the United States and in Europe.
The main difference is the concept of identity
that the fascist movements are standing up for.
In the United States, our identities are mostly
defined by the category of race.
We're a settler nation, people were brought here
against their will, of various racial groups.
And white supremacy is a way to break that
possible class solidarity, against the people
that own and control the society.
In Europe this notion of race
doesn't exist in the same way.
And so the fascist and the other far-right entho-nationalist movements
tend to define themselves tightly around their country of origin.
If you look at, arguably, how the Irish were internalized into
the American nation
after the end of slavery, you can see how
the roots of whiteness are very different
than say, somewhere in like Italy,
where you have now, the Northern League,
who argues that, y'know,
only the north are proper Italians,
and are white.
And the south of Italy
are not white.
And that distinction wouldn't be made
in America.
So in Europe, the fascist parties have always looked
for a racialized understanding of class politics.
They reject communist or anarchist critiques of class society
and instead they replace that with a racialized ruling class
which is always "the jews" or maybe it's thinly-veiled anti-semitism,
like the globalists.
Fascist groups in America, make that enemy
into the immigrant, into the Black Lives Matter activist,
into the refugee.
Not the people that actually own and control society,
or the people that are basically turning the gears,
like landlords, politicians, police officers...
y'know, people in control of the prison industry.
And that's always really what fascism in the US
has always tried to do.
Y'know it's always tried to make enemies
out of people below white workers.
And as we can see with Trump.... I mean, that sells.
American novelist Sinclair Lewis
is often quoted as predicting
"when fascism comes to America,
it'll be wrapped in the flag
and carrying a cross."
Pretty good as far as guesses go...
but as it turns out, it was Pepe the frog memes.
Yup, we live in strange times.
But sure enough, it was a Pepe pin
on the lapel of posh alt-right theorist
and unrequited Depeche Mode groupie,
Richard Spencer, when he was righteously
clocked on the streets of Washington DC,
during Donald Trump's inauguration.
This haymaker heard 'round the world
titillated radicals and liberals alike, spawning
dozens of hilarious Youtube remixes.
I know I've probably watched the clip about a hundred times.
While Spencer himself can trace his political pedigree back to
the Italian fascist theorists of yesteryear,
the broader movement he belongs to is somewhat more politically diverse,
and thoroughly contemporary.
Today's reactionary movements are the toxic byproducts
of our particular time and place,
an age characterized by widespread chaos and insecurity on one hand,
and the mass proliferation of social media, on the other.
This is the world we live in.
And it's an ideal breeding ground
for a new brand of fascism.
So a lot of far-right groups are different
than maybe traditional conservative groups.
Far-right and especially fascist movements
tend to be much more revolutionary and messianic.
They don't just want to keep society stable,
they wanna restructure it in their vision.
So it started with, uh, this guy, Richard Spencer. Boop.
He came up with the name alt-right, alternative right,
and I like this guy.
The alternative right is a rebranding of
paleoconservatism, white nationalism,
all these different things.
They started as a fascist movement, I think pretty clearly.
They emerged at a time when the fascist movement was
resetting itself in its aesthetic and cultural references.
One of the things they've been able to do
is they're saying "look, we look good,
we have nice haircuts, we're not these kinda classical skinhead types
or people wearing klan robes, y'know, we're something different"
and the media has really gone gaga over that.
You remind me of like a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens.
Even among the fascist part of the alt-right
there's a more neo-nazi wing around Andrew Anglin
and the Daily Stormer.
The Muslim hordes, we've fought these people for how long?
And now we invite them in?
And give them free everything so they can rape women on the streets?
And then there's the more fascist, but not explicitly nazi wing
around the National Policy Institute and Richard Spencer.
To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer and a conqueror.
We don't exploit other groups.
They need us and not the other way around.
The alt-right scene, I suppose, is a bit of a gateway into
kind of more violent and extreme fascism.
Recently the movement has expanded
and attracted a lot of people.
So we get people like Gavin Mcinnes,
who is one of the founders of VICE magazine.
Why is blackface offensive?
And people who promote it, such as Milo Yiannopoulos.
This is a new populist conservative and libertarian movement,
that is going nowhere, so long as the left continues
to prioritize Muslim feelings over gay lives.
So long as the left continues to prioritize the feelings of
sociopathic feminist bitches over everybody else.
Milo! Milo! Milo!
The group that they want to inoculate and organize
is largely college-educated, upper-middle-class, straight men.
People who are very social media savvy,
people who are very tech-savvy.
They love their memes.
Groups like American Vanguard and Identity Evropa
are blanketing campuses across the country with posters.
And so it's attracted a lot of people in college Republican groups
who are not explicit white nationalists, but they like a lot
of the tenor and the style of the alt-right.
If you look at Richard Spencer, just this week
it's come out that he makes literally millions of dollars every year
because his parents own a cotton farm in Louisiana
in this hugely impoverished area of the country.
And that's a huge contradiction because
most white people are not wealthy in this country.
Most white people have to get up and go to work.
They don't get money from their parents for owning
a cotton plantation where black people used to work
as slaves and that's why they're rich.
It's a very fractured group, there's not necessarily a center to it.
They're not united and they all kinda bicker with each other.
And that's exactly where we want them to stay.
This side cares about western chauvinism and ideas.
This side says whites have to be a part of this.
Someone like Roosh V, who self-identifies as a pick-up artist,
he's a real piece of shit who wrote an article about raping an Icelandic woman.
You've also got members of the alt-right scene who use
the myth of the "rapeugee".
So the refugee, who is a danger to our women.
So they're still incredibly gender essentialist notions of womanhood,
but they'd be at odds with, for example, someone who boasts about raping women.
Matthew Heimbach has definitely ridden the wave of the alt-right.
But what makes Heimbach different is that he is interested,
even though he himself comes from a very wealthy community
outside of Washington DC, it's called Poolesville,
he's very interested in talking to everyday, poor and disaffected white people
and trying to build a neo-nazi base within that.
The Traditionalist Worker Party, they're very open
that they are neo-nazi.
The patriot movement is the successor to the 1990s militia movement
who are famous for forming paramilitary groups around the United States
and two of its adherents bombing the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
The movement historically tends to be in a reverse cycle
with Democratic presidents.
They have a whole narrative about how the president is really a communist
who's a secret traitor to the country, and he's about to let
foreign armies invade.
The major organization is the Oathkeepers.
They recruit current and former military, police and first responders.
There's another group of sheriffs and other law enforcement called
the CSPOA, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
There's a decentralized version of militias called the 3 Percenters,
and then there's sovereign citizens, who believe in some of these
sort of alternative legal theories...
based on a kind of crackpot reading of the law and of history.
A free inhabitant is-is-is... they are allowed to...
they are free people. They have all of the rights of a US citizen
without following any of their laws.
- Well that would just be pure anarchy if that was the case. - Nope.
Breitbart is interesting because it's become a major media player fairly recently
and it has positioned itself firmly to the right of FOX News.
And so this has helped drive things further to the right,
and then clearly with their former head being in the Trump cabinet now,
they're almost acting as a semi-official media wing of the current Trump administration.
People hear stuff from the insurgent far-right about, for instance like
Syrian refugees in Sweden raping white women, which is not true.
And then Trump basically parrots these things, or speaks to them,
or dog-whistles to them or just repeats them as fact.
It's not about truth. It's about projecting force into the conversation.
It's about saying "No... fuck you, it's about refugees."
Or "Fuck you, it's about men being attacked in society by feminism."
So it creates this kind of potential insurgent base,
and I think that's the scariest part.
Historically, anarchists and anti-authoritarians have always been
at the forefront of anti-fascist resistance,
and over the decades we have experienced our share of both victories and defeats.
On the eve of the Second World War, anarchists in Spain and Catalonia
responded to a fascist coup d'etat against the sitting republican government
by launching a far-ranging social revolution.
After nearly three years of bloody civil war,
General Francisco Franco's fascist army won out
and tens of thousands of anarchists were summarily executed or forced into exile.
Despite its tragic outcome, the Spanish Revolution remains, to this day,
an unparalleled example of mass working-class resistance to fascism.
Anarchists also fought against fascist thugs
within the broader struggles waged by autonomists, feminists and militant youth movements
in Italy throughout the 1960s and 70s,
and in Germany during the 70s and 80s,
where the black bloc first emerged as a militant tactical formation.
These struggles also had an important influence on Greece,
where for years now, when anarchists haven't have been lighting cops on fire with Molotov cocktails,
they've been beating the crap out of members and supporters of
the country's main fascist party, Golden Dawn.
On March 30th, a crew of about 30 antifascists
attacked Golden Dawn's main headquarters,
located in one of the most heavily-guarded areas of downtown Athens.
Anarchists have also set up dozens of squatted social centres
and buildings to house refugees,
and have helped to defend migrants from fascist paramilitary attacks.
In December of 2016, a group of western anarchists and anti-authoritarians
fighting in Northern Syria joined forces under the banner of
the Antifascist Internationalist Tabur, or AIT, claiming inspiration from
the international volunteers who fought in the Spanish civil war.
Of course, you don't have to travel across the world
to fight against reactionary politics.
In order to be effective, it's important that anti-fascists and anti-racists
be rooted in the communities in which they live,
and where fascists and other reactionaries will attempt to recruit.
I joined Anti-Racist action when I was 15, I think.
The Toronto chapter was a sizable chapter within a broader network
of ARA chapters that were organized city-by-city.
The intention of ARA was to expose, oppose and confront
racist and right-wing organizations and organizing.
In Toronto that took on various forms.
Sometimes it was very physical, other times it was not.
Sometimes it was skinheads.
Many times it was Christian Right organizations,
anti-choice organizations, anti-Native organizations,
and those politics generally were also grappled with
within a cultural engagement with broader sectors
of the population within Toronto.
So there was an attempt to develop
an anti-racist, feminist, anti-colonial politics.
It was mostly comprised of youth, and much of that
cultural engagement revolved around sub-cultural groupings.
So within the punk scene, sometimes within the hip-hop scene,
within the electronic music scene.
That was where the politics were disseminated.
Before I joined Toronto had a sizable on-the-ground white supremacist presence.
A physical struggle took place on the street for who held sway
and essentially the anti-racists won.
There were areas of Toronto that were declared no-go zones for white supremacists.
Nazis out! Nazis out! Nazis out!
Districts in Toronto that white supremacists were already in were declared no-go zones,
and then they were established to be no-go zones.
Then those districts were used as bases of operation
and then more districts were established across the city.
It was a process that took several years and was a lot of work
and at times very dangerous, but it was successful.
Then the question became: "what do you do with that success?"
And ARA continued. It adapted, but it essentially kept the same methods
and the same strategy.
And then that method and that strategy became less and less applicable
and it slowly petered out.
One of the unfortunate things of it petering out
was that it left very little legacy.
And it seems as though people are making it up anew
because, frankly, we left nothing behind for them to review.
Alerta! Alerta! Anti-fascista!
RASH has several groups all over the world
in different countries, in different cities.
Montreal RASH has been here since the 90s
to fight against the right-wing politics that were
infiltrated into the skinhead movement.
Collectively or individually, people in RASH do participate
in different struggles, either it be syndicalist,
feminist, in queer communities, anti-gentrification, for immigration rights.
We want to create a culture of anti-fascism in our subculture
to show that Montreal is red, we are here and fascism
and racism does not have its place here.
The Montreal Sisterhood is a non-mixed collective
formed by people who identify themselves as women.
It was born when we made a reflection about the place
of women in our scene, in the anti-fascist movement,
and our goal is to create feminine and feminist solidarity
in our movement.
We organize self-defense workshops, screenings, reading circles,
and we really try to bring forward feminist issues in our scene.
Our links with RASH are really good. We work together a lot.
Some girls are members of both organizations.
We could say that we are brother and sister organizations for sure.
Well I've been in LAF for a couple of years now.
When I initially joined, there was quite a low level of far-right activity.
Our group was established as the English Defense League was splintering.
That's kind of affected the organizational structure of London Anti-fascists.
We originally saw ourselves as the militant leading edge of a much wider
anti-fascist movement that would be led by traditional groups like Unite Against Fascism.
However, these groups have pretty much wound up, as the far-right has splintered.
Our response to the way in which we confront and combat fascism
has to change with the way in which the political climate is changing.
We still consider ourselves a militant anti-fascist group,
but we are now the main anti-fascist mobilizing force in London.
We consistently out-mobilize other more mainstream groups,
with a more radical, more direct action-oriented message.
We use an anarcho-syndicalist model of organizing.
It's actually really effective. It means that we're always accountable to one another.
We attempt to push a demonstration that we've called in a certain direction.
And having a really strong organizational base means that
when we're on actions we can trust our comrades
because we know that we've organized with them in a way that
they've been involved from the very beginning.
Other groups prefer to have an affinity group structure.
The important thing is that these strategies change and adapt.
We've been building links with various anti-fascist groups across Europe.
They've come to support our actions, we've sent people to support
some of their big mobilizations.
Obviously we have different political contexts
and therefore we respond differently to the kind of far-right activity
that's happening within our base.
It doesn't mean, however, that we can't learn from each other
in order to grow our group, and also grow militant anti-fascism.
These days it can sometime feel like we're all just
one Donald Trump twitter beef away from full-scale nuclear war.
And the feeling that there are incredibly powerful forces beyond our control
that hold so much sway over our lives can be pretty demoralizing.
But nobody ever said revolutionary struggle was easy
and given the fact that reactionary forces are steadily
gaining ground in countries around the world,
it's vitally important that anarchists and other anti-fascists not give into despair,
or take our eyes off the prize in pursuit of what may seem like urgent short-term gains.
In other words, we need to come up with, and put into play strategies and tactics
that build our collective power and autonomy in order to better prepare us
for the battles to come... even as we act against threats in the here and now.
As we enter into a highly dynamic period of transition,
it is vitally important that we keep our eyes open
and refuse to compromise on our visions of a better world.
In short… it’s time to get our game face on.
You can give examples of left-wing navel gazing
when it comes to the 2008 financial crisis.
We've left the misery of working people
to be taken advantage of by the far-right
and other reactionary elements in society.
Reactionary ideologies have always been there.
People thinking that neo-nazis are a new thing
and fascist are a new thing is not true.
What we think is lately, yes, it has become more and more vocal.
We've seen waves and waves of arson attacks against mosques,
vandalism at Jewish places of worship and cemeteries.
We've seen continuous terrorists attacks both in Canada and the US
by Trump supporters and white nationalists, so I mean I think unfortunately
those kinds of attacks are going to continue.
We've gotta be prepared, if this is basically the baseline now,
it could be very scary in the next couple of years.
There is a political struggle going on for, for lack of a better word
the hearts and minds of the working class.
My humble suggestion would be that the best way to wage that struggle
is to form working-class organizations that take up working-class struggle,
that can develop politics that are best suited to the problems
that confront the working class.
Those politics are anti-white supremacist.
They are anti-Islamophobic, they are feminist
and they are communist.
These are the politics that need to actually be developed.
You need to build your organization. You need to build it strong.
You need to build it in the communities and workplaces
that you exist in, and then you need to make
you and your comrades ready for conflict.
You need to make sure that everyone is ready to stand and fight if necessary.
But don't fetishize that.
It's not only a physical thing.
Popular education is also a good way, propaganda,
doing some research about fascist groups.
These roles are just as valuable and just as important
as punching nazis in the face.
Which, I fully advocate... but again, it's not the be all and end all
of anti-fascism. It's often the most fun... but...
Organize. Don't wait for anybody, organize now with your friends,
with some people from your communities, with some people
in your workplace, in your neighbourhood.
We could keep going down the road that we've been going down
with an increasing obsession over a puritanical form of struggle
where we wish to improve ourselves more than
we wish to improve the world around us.
Or we can seek to reach out to the more reactionary,
unorganized elements of society and pull them into
a struggle to overthrow capitalism
and overthrow a system that oppresses us all.
We can't give up poor white people to these groups.
If there's nobody that's offering a counter-narrative,
nobody that's going door-to-door in a trailer park,
all that stuff... I mean, eventually these groups
will have an influence in these areas.
If we have no prospect of organizing with the working class
to cultivate politics that are counter to these politics,
then we are in far worse trouble than the black bloc
is capable of taking care of.
But, the bright side is I personally, and I think many other people
don't think we're in that position just yet.
It's unclear what's gonna happen, I think, even six months from now.
Right now there's a lot of moving pieces on the board.
The anti-fascist resistance has emerged and increased quite quickly.
If it can make firmer links with the movement for immigrants rights
and Black Lives Matter, and other larger somewhat radical
or fairly radical social movements in our society, it'll be a much stronger movement.
The far right are getting stronger and they're gaining more confidence.
So it can start to feel as if like, y'know, we're in a losing battle.
But actually, I think that things are still up for grabs.
I think we have to get our shit together.
I think we have to organize collectively, and I think
we have to stay revolutionary-minded.
On one hand, we wanna make sure that anti-fascism
is not devoid of revolutionary politics, like it needs to have
this in-depth analysis, but also that we don't throw
the baby out with the bathwater.
This is gonna be how a lot of people get involved
with the wider revolutionary movement
and we should be very open to that.
If you're interested in challenging reaction and far-right ideology
and interested in defending yourself, then get in touch with
your local anti-fascist group.
Don't be scared to approach them.
The tactics and strategy are really open.
There's a place for everybody.
Particularly if you're a woman or a minority or disabled,
you'll be told by more liberal elements of the left that
y'know... anti-fascism might not be for you.
And that antifa are just predominantly white men
and they have a white men savior complex, or whatever.
But actually, a lot of that is bullshit.
I think it's really important as well to encourage
more women and minorities to be involved in anti-fascism
because it's an incredibly empowering feeling to feel that
you can go out on the streets and physically stop
fascists from being able to organize.
It's important to build up anti-fascist self-defense now.
And that includes not just people being ready to roll out
to a demonstration to fight some nazis,
it means mapping out in the local area who the fascists are,
where these groups are situated, where their power is,
who the leaders are... and really kind of obliterating those networks.
When looking to the future, the one thing anti-fascists should be doing
is identifying those fascist organizers that could be launching
this future movement and brutally pushing them out of the movement
and setting back any fascist movement 5, 10 years by doing so.
We have to be able to split these movements.
Y'know we have to crack them at the base
and expose their contradictions, and that's a huge task for us right now.
Don't take shortcuts in your understanding
and don't take shortcuts in the strategies that you employ.
Be reasonable, think about things, be diligent, be disciplined,
carry out revolutionary politics within the working class.
As we continue to slip further into the dangerous,
uncharted territory of 21st-century political reaction,
the need for innovative strategies and bold, effective action
will become ever more important.
So at this point, we’d like to remind you that Trouble is
intended to be watched in groups, and to be used as a resource
to promote discussion and collective organizing.
If there’s no antifa or anti-racist organizing initiatives,
consider screening this film with some comrades
and considering what sort of initiative would work best for your area.
Interested in running regular screenings at your campus,
infoshop, community center, or even just at your home with friends?
Become a Trouble-Maker!
For 10 bucks a month, we’ll hook you up with an advanced copy of the show
and a screening kit featuring additional resources and some questions
you can use to get a discussion going.
If you can’t afford to support us financially, no worries!
You can stream and/or download all our content for free
off our website: sub.media/trouble.
If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics or just wanna get in touch,
drop us a line at trouble@submedia.tv.
We’d like to thank everyone who helped make this episode possible,
and wanna send a shout out to the first official Troublemaker chapters,
in Montreal, Hamilton, Calgary, Prague, Atlanta, Morrisville, Madison,
The Hague, Rhyneland, Medford, Quilcene, Asheville, Durham,
Whitehorse, Brooklyn, Philly, Minneapolis, Sandpoint and Hendersonville.
Now... get out there and make some trouble.