vimeo.com/.../215274960

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 [e-mail].

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.