This episode of It's the End of the World
As We Know it and I Feel Fine,
was made possible by contributions
from slaves like you.
Spank you very much!
Gooooooooood morning slaves
and welcome to another sedition of
It's the End of the World as We Know it
and I Feel Fine...
the show where schadenfreude
is a dish best served cold.
As the morning papers
blared the news
some were stunned.
Shit!
Scheiße!
Merde!
I see.
I am your host the Stimulator
and for the past week or so,
one thing's been dominating
the headlines
Brexit
Brisket
Booyakasha!
Yup... on June 23rd peeps in Britain
voted in a national referendum
to leave the EU
We're out!
plunging both the UK and Europe
into a deep existential crisis.
And like... our future's
kinda been taken away.
And as political commentators,
journalists, bloggers
and pundits of all stripes
endlessly pontificate on the causes
and possible consequences
of the looming Brexit...
the only thing that peeps seem to
be able to agree on is that
it's a fucking game-changer,
and that the future is more uncertain
than it has been in a long fucking time.
As soon as the first poll results
started coming in,
the British pound went into
mothafuckin' free-fall,
dropping to its lowest rate
in over thirty fucking years.
London’s infamous financial district,
the so-called City of London,
also took a proper pounding,
posting the biggest losses since
the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
All around the world
stock markets are experiencing
sporadic aftershocks,
as ever-opportunistic investors
shift vast sums of money around the world
in a ruthless effort
to profit off the crisis.
Politicians in Scotland
and Northern Ireland have already
called for their own referendums
- raising the spectre of the break-up
of the UK itself.
Some people hate the English.
I don't... they're just wankers.
We on the other hand,
are colonized by wankers!
The morning after the Brexit vote
Britain's posh, pig-fucking PM,
David Cameron,
who initially proposed the referendum
in a Faustian bargain to
maintain his position atop the
Conservative Party's pecking order,
acknowledged in the most eloquent,
face-saving way that he could muster,
that he had shit the bed
and had no intentions of sticking around
to watch the help clean it up.
I will do everything I can
as Prime Minister
to steady the ship over the coming
weeks and months.
But I do not think it would be right
for me to try to be the captain
that steers our country
to its next destination.
Just breathe it in.
Let's just take this in together,
shall we?
A political legacy in tatters...
... the Prime Minister who
- who took us out of Europe.
Bye Bye!
Frankly, I don't have anything to hide.
Oink oink oink!
He was a frat boy
- a glorified frat boy.
Stuck his penis in the head
of a dead pig.
David Cameron - pigfucker!
Maybe WE should kiss
just to break the tension.
Buuuuuuuuut while it's a rare treat
to watch David Cameron rewarded
for his arrogant, tone-deaf hubris
with an early fucking retirement,
that doesn’t mean that things are
necessarily going to be
better off once he’s gone.
Mixed in with the British voters'
righteous anger at
the austerity-pushing bankers
and the faceless technocrats in Brussels,
has been a terrifying rise
in right-wing nationalism,
racism and xenophobia.
Despite England’s role
as the literal fucking flag-bearer
of centuries of colonialism
and global imperialist domination,
one of the main issues during
the referendum campaign
was fears over immigration,
with the Euro-skeptic party, UKIP,
headed by Britain’s creepy racist uncle,
Nigel Farage,
and former mayor of London
and petulant man-child, Boris Johnson,
leading the fascistic charge.
Since the Brexit vote
attacks against Eastern Europeans,
ethnic minorities,
and people perceived to be Muslims
have spiked sharply,
with over 90 hate crimes reported
over the following three days
- ranging from threatening notices
and graffiti,
to arsons and vicious assaults.
While these tensions have been building
for some time now,
far-right groups are clearly on the march
and have only been emboldened
by recent events.
On June 24th around 2000 people,
including a sizeable crew of antifa,
took to the streets of London
to demonstrate their support for migrants
and vent their rage at
the right-wing tabloids that have been
steadily churning out
sensationalist headlines,
and whipping up racist,
nationalist sentiment
for months on end.
Despite all the uncertainty currently
gripping the UK, one thing is clear.
The time has come for
bold militant actions
and sustained anti-racist,
pro-immigrant organizing
in working-class neighbourhoods
across the UK and beyond.
Because make no mistake.
While Britain is the first major country
to ditch the EU,
they almost certainly won't be the last.
With far-right politicians in France
and the Netherlands already calling
for their own national referendums,
the disintegration of the European Project
may come sooner than people think.
If the mothafuckin resistance
doesn't rise to this challenge
then we are in for some seriously
dark fucking times.
And finally, in sad fucking news,
on June 7th Roger Clement passed away.
Roger was an OG from so-called Ottawa,
who did three years in the clink
for fire-bombing a Royal
Bank of Canada branch
back in the summer of 2010.
During his trial Roger was solid
and staunchly principled,
pleading guilty in exchange for
all charges being dropped
against his co-accused.
He will be missed.
Rest in power, comrade.
As Europe finds itself plagued
by a resurgence of right-wing nationalism
and a corresponding rise in
hostile anti-immigrant sentiment,
over on this side of the pond,
a similar dynamic is playing out
in the United Snakes
- albeit one with distinctly
American characteristics.
A group of Texans are pushing for
a Texas exit... or Texit.
Texit?
Texit.
Yee-haw!
Buuuuuuuuuuut while the odds of a
so-called Texit are slim
to mothafuckin nil,
there's no getting around the fact that
the political atmosphere in
the United Snakes is toxic as fuck,
and shit only seems to be getting worse.
Decades of neoliberal capitalist
restructuring has produced
vast economic deserts
in so-called Middle-America,
as jobs have been shipped off
to hyper-exploited labour markets
in the Global South.
Public schools have been decimated
by years of chronic underfunding, and
federal and state prisons are overflowing.
Mass shootings have become
an almost daily fucking phenomenon
and each fresh tragedy is
immediately and reflexively seized upon
as a chance to blame
politically convenient scapegoats.
A Muslim scholar says
killing homosexuals is the
compassionate thing to do.
This is part of
their religious doctrine....
their ideology.
Within this bleak fucking context
a growing army of pissed off Americans
have retreated into fantasies
based on heavily romanticized
and white-washed images
of a fictional past
and vast fucking conspiracies
promoted by red-faced asshats
like Alex Jones.
You're declaring war on this country
with a bunch of jihadis
you brought in!
You did it, you son of a bitch!
The Trump campaign has been
a clarion call for millions of Americans
disillusioned by the repeated betrayals
of Washington-insiders
like Hillary Clinton.
When their holdings are invested
in the Cayman Islands
and her husband is middle-man
to some of the world's biggest deals
as they feather their nest
at the expense of America...
it is time to take the country back!
And as his fascist calls for border walls
and mass deportations of Muslims
have sparked militant resistance
from peeps in cities across the country,
many Trump supporters have
announced plans to descend
on Cleveland for the RNC on July 18th,
in what's expected to be
an epic showdown between
two bitterly opposed camps.
Fittingly, this showdown will be
taking place in an open-carry state,
in the very city where 12 year old
Tamir Rice was gunned down
by racist fucking pigs in 2014.
And outside the well-managed spectacle
of the 2016 electoral farce,
neo-nazi and white supremacist groups,
like the KKK, have also been
taking advantage of
the current levels of racist,
hyper-nationalist rhetoric
thrust into the mainstream
by Trump's campaign.
In the latest example,
on June 26th, members of
the Traditionalist Workers Party
attempted to hold a rally at
the California state legislature,
in Sacramento.
They were confronted by a group of
roughly 400 antifa, who proceeded
to shut them the fuck down, and give
the nazi scum a serious fucking thrashing.
During the resulting scuffle,
numerous people were stabbed,
including at least 4 anti-fascist comrades
- with 3 more comrades hospitalized
due to blunt force trauma.
That's why we need to take them on
directly.
Take them on head on.
Confront them with as many people
as possible - prepared to shut them down.
And that is what this demonstration
did today.
Sacramento was the latest front
in an increasingly violent battle between
fascist and anti-fascist militants.
The way things are headed,
it's not going to be the last.
So... to learn more about
just what the fuck went down,
I recently caught up with Brazo,
an anti-fascist organizer who was
on the ground in Sacramento.
Hey Brazo, how the fuck are you?
I'm alright.
So what exactly went down in Sacramento
on June 26th?
Well in Sacramento on June 26th,
the Traditionalist Workers Party,
in conjunction with the Golden State Skins
and the Klu Klux Klan,
tried to have a permitted demonstration
at the west steps, in Sacramento.
Now there was about 25 to 30
Traditionalist Workers Party people.
and the anti-fascist and anti-racist
crews were about 400 deep.
When we approached,
it immediately turned into a brawl.
They took knives out.
They started stabbing people...
people defended themselves.
They took a really bad beating.
I think that everyone on their side
had some blood of their own on them.
And we stopped them
- we stopped them from having
their meeting, but at a huge cost to us.
On the anti-racist side there were
probably a total of 9 people
that were injured, and I think
the number was 7 of them
hospitalized.
We had anticipated that there would be
injuries... but really didn't anticipate
that it was gonna escalate this quickly
and severely for people on our side.
But the medical people who were there,
y'know, they did their job.
They played their role well enough
that people who were taken
to the hospital didn't die.
How was the counter-demonstration
organized?
We treated June 26th a lot like
a major convergence, because
that's how the fascists had
plugged what was happening.
You know, this was gonna be the time
that the KKK, the Golden State Skinheads
and the Traditionalist Workers Party
were gonna show their level
of coordination in the street
and materialize their politics.
And that's why we treated it
as such a serious threat,
to be able to physically stop them
from manifesting that racist,
fascist politics in the streets.
So there were a lot of trainings
that happened before.
A lot of infrastructure was put
in to get people from the places
they were coming from all over
the west coast - to be able to
go to Sacramento.
Medical teams were assembled
and medics started gaining supplies.
We did a couple of fundraisers to go
buy the medical supplies.
There were medical trainings
that were done.
The NLG [National Lawyer's Guild]
really stepped in - so a legal hotline
was established.
There was also an immense amount
of help by Indigenous groups
in Sacramento that really supported us
in many ways that I think are
really important, and I hope
we continue that relationship.
So we really treated it not only
as a convergence for anti-fascists
and anti-racists on June 26th,
but also a way to start to
already build these networks.
And to build them up strong
and to build confidence
in those networks.
To be able to squash them out
wherever they go, before this issue
gets more severe.
Who the fuck are the Traditionalist
Workers Party?
And why were they trying to rally?
Well the Traditionalist Workers Party
is a white supremacist,
white nationalist group.
They want your classic fascism.
They want the consolidation of the economy
and the state, under white culture.
They're led by a clown named
Matthew Heimbach
who lives somewhere on the east coast.
And what they're basically trying to do
is trying to consolidate
all of these different white power
organizations.
And they're basically trying to
move their politics from
online rhetoric into the material world.
Their stance was that if they could
converge in liberal California,
then they could converge anywhere
in the country, materially.
Which is why we focused so much
energy on stopping the rally
from happening altogether.
Anti-fascist militants are often
denounced by liberals and
so-called “progressives” in particular
for their use of violent tactics
when confronting members of the far right.
What do you have to say to
those critics who argue for a strategy
of nonviolence and deescalation
when dealing with these types of groups?
It kind of brings to mind,
when people start that conversation,
to me, is that Howard Zinn quote:
"You can't be neutral on a moving train."
Our society, and our culture
is already moving in this one direction.
Hegemony is our society requires violence.
Black and brown people,
trans people, queer people
- our identities are kept in check
by violence.
Whether it's public executions
of black and brown people in the street,
mass incarceration, gender policing
all of these are ways that are
violently keeping us in a subservient
position to white supremacy,
capitalism, the state and hegemony,
basically.
So our liberation requires anything
in the toolbox,
which unfortunately does
include violence sometimes.
It's not like violence is the objective
of these demonstrations.
It's a means for liberation.
And it's a means for self-defense.
Fascism, as a popular social movement,
thrives on widespread feelings
of victimization, or declining privilege
among socially dominant sectors of society
such as white, working-class men.
Realizing this,
do you think that groups like the
Traditionalist Workers Party are actively
seeking out physical confrontations
in order to inflame these feelings
of white male victimization
and garner more attention?
And if so, how should that
factor into how anti-fascists,
feminists and anti-racists should
respond to their attempts to organize?
There's no way for us to route around it.
Other-ized identities: black, brown,
queer, trans, what have you...
all these other-ized identities
that are not male or white
- our liberation and their privilege
are contradictory...
opposed to one another.
They can't exist in the same world.
So every time that we're asserting
our rights as other-ized people,
asserting our dignity,
it's a slipping of that privilege.
So you could say that a lot
of these white supremacist groups
their sort of like, budding,
it's at the same time that
the United States sees its first
Black president, and the
ascension of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
Not that the Obama administration
is an assertion of that, but,
the ascension of the Black Lives Matter
movement, and the wide criticism of
racist police practices,
is a slipping of white privilege
- or at least the beginning of
the dialogue about what white privilege
does to black bodies.
So, it's either white people
- white working-class people -
realize that their disenfranchisement
is not because of other people
- the disenfranchisement is
institutionalized... and because of that
we're actually on the same side
of this struggle, but their privilege
blinds them from being able to
recognize that.
And the crumbs of power
that are given to them....
they want to maintain.
So they're either gonna realize
they have that privilege, and join
the right side of history....
or we're take that privilege from them.
Those are the only two outcomes.
Much of the far-right in the US
seem to be active supporters
of Donald Trump.
Why do you think this is?
And what implications do you think
that this will have in terms of
the upcoming RNC in Cleveland
and the political climate in the US
more generally?
Well I've listened to Heimbach's podcast
and he sort of views Trump
- he says.. if Trump doesn't take his
rightful place as President of
the United States,
then Trump should start his own
political party, in which
the Traditionalist Workers Party,
and all the other white supremacist
groups can get behind Trump,
and push their agenda.
So they see Trump as being sort of like
the electoral head of all of these other
white supremacist groups.
Now, in terms of how it will affect
the RNC - it's difficult to say.
The people from the Traditionalist
Workers Party are saying that
they're gonna do "security"
for the RNC this year.
What happened in Sacramento
is going to set a precedent for
how those interactions are gonna
go down, but it really depends
on what the anti-fascist forces
- and anti-racist forces -
look like in Cleveland.
We already know what the Traditionalist
Workers Party and all these other
racist groups - what they're capable of,
and what they're gonna do based on
what happened in Sacramento.
The level of potential violence
is escalated.
We're beginning to see, like,
outright confrontation with weapons
- with bladed weapons - the real sort of
disregard for people's safety.
That's really - it makes the spectrum
of what these demonstrations
will look like even larger.
I've even seen on some of their
forums and websites, they're criticizing
themselves for just bringing
bladed weapons.
They're like, "if this confrontation had
happened and we had prepared properly,
we would have ended this confrontation
in a rain of blood."
That's what they said.
Anything else you wanna add?
It's really really important that
when people go out and take this amount
of risk in the streets, that they feel
supported by the people around them
- the comrades and their loved ones.
Some ways that people can support
is to donate to rally.org/june26th.
The money will go to cover
mostly medical costs and transportation.
We had 9 people injured.... 7 of them
pretty badly - had to go to the hospital,
so the money that you guys donate
will go to support them.
Thanks Brazo, and that about does it
for this sedition of It's the End
of the World as We Know it
and I Feel Fine.
I wanna send a massive shout-out
to the peeps who donated cash
to help us get through the dog days
of summer.
So merci beaucoup to:
Gavin, Jeremy, Benjamin, Reto,
Christopher, Renzo, Sebastian,
Mifan, Puget Sound Medic Collective,
Alexandre, Medicine Agency, Lars, Ricky
Andrew, Mason, Gregory, Nas, Margaret,
Megsha, Martin, Derek, Jonathan, Kyle,
Shannon, Steven, Dylan, Peter, Matthew,
Francois, Jennifer, John, Benjamin,
Nicodemis, Cecil, Janya, Danielle,
Jacob, Ranko, Samuel, Matthew, Justin,
Crystal, Anton, Guillome, Robin,
Nathan, Massiage, Hansen and Max.
Balchie!
I also wanna give a warm welcome to
to the newest members of the taconspiracy:
Leo and Aradore.
Corundas!
That's all for now.
If you're heading to the RNC
or DNC, remember to go with comrades.
Find out who the groups are who offer
legal support, and don't do any
gangsta shit with people you haven't
known for years.
Stay safe.... but above all
give them fucking hell!
See you in the street comrades!