THE PLAGUE OF NATIONALISM

This week we unpack the historic #Brexit vote in the UK, which has sparked a political crisis and generalized a populist anti-immigrant sentiment.
We then shift our attention to the United Snakes, where the long-standing effects of neoliberalism and disillusionment with the traditional political establishment is leading many down the path of right-wing reaction and conspiracy theories. We end things off with an interview with anti-racist organizer Brazo, who fills us in on the June 26th clashes in Sacramento between anti-fascist and anti-racist militants, and members of the Traditionalist Workers Party.

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!

Shit!

Shit!

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

Brexit

Brexit

Brexit

Brexit

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!