Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here on Garrison Davis. This
Speaker 2: is the show where we talk about how everything is
Speaker 2: kind of falling apart and how we can sometimes put
Speaker 2: it back together. Joining me is as my my dear
Speaker 2: dear collaborator and friend, James Stout. Good morning, James.
Speaker 1: Good morning Garrison. That's very kind of you, Thank you.
Speaker 2: And we got a very special episode here today. We
Speaker 2: are talking with four people who have put together a
Speaker 2: new book by AKA Press called No Parseran. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have kind of a little bit of a like a
Speaker 2: group discussion about anti fascist history and this kind of
Speaker 2: this the state of anti fascism in the past few years.
Speaker 2: I know, this is how I kind of got started
Speaker 2: with radical politics growing up in Portland, Oregon. You see
Speaker 2: Nazis marching around in your street and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this is obviously a problem, so much a problem, do
Speaker 2: something about this. And stuff has changed a lot the
Speaker 2: past the past few years. I mean, like the anti
Speaker 2: fatist movement that I got kind of that I kind
Speaker 2: of got into only twenty eighteen. You know, it's very
Speaker 2: different now, and it's I don't know, these types of
Speaker 2: things live on through like oral histories as well as
Speaker 2: you know, books, and I think it's really cool to
Speaker 2: have these types of conversations. So joining us today is
Speaker 2: Shane Burley, Emily Gorcinski, Michael Novic, and Darryl Lamont Jenkins.
Speaker 2: Greetings everyone, I'm going to hand it over to Shane
Speaker 2: and you can kind of talk about the book.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, Thanks Scarrison, Thanks James for having us
Speaker 3: on the whole crew of us. Yeah, this book was
Speaker 3: something came out last year, but we had been working
Speaker 3: on it for about four years. I'm starting in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: I was drunk with Kim Kelly and New York and
Speaker 3: we thought it'd be really great to put together something
Speaker 3: with all of our friends. And what do you do
Speaker 3: with a big group of people. It takes like four
Speaker 3: or five years to pull off. But really the idea
Speaker 3: was trying to do something that was bigger than what
Speaker 3: had been written about anti fascism at that point, which
Speaker 3: was shockingly narrow. What people understood it as of just
Speaker 3: a few movements, mostly very recent history, and so much
Speaker 3: wasn't being included in that conversation. So the idea was,
Speaker 3: how can we build out like a much bigger picture
Speaker 3: of this by including as many voices as possible. So
Speaker 3: we ended up getting a couple of dozen folks together
Speaker 3: that had different takes on it. Some talking about tech,
Speaker 3: some talking about deep history, some talking about anti fascism
Speaker 3: in their countries, o their continents, and so in general,
Speaker 3: the idea was to make it feel like a discussion
Speaker 3: between people who either know each other or should be
Speaker 3: like in some kind of comradeship with each other. So
Speaker 3: that was sort of where it came together. I think
Speaker 3: with this conversation. The way we were thinking about this
Speaker 3: is I want I wanted the opportunity to talk with
Speaker 3: basically my friends about their history a little bit, and
Speaker 3: so I asked three folks that had a really long
Speaker 3: history with doing organizing work, and so I thought it
Speaker 3: would be cool maybe if we go through talking to
Speaker 3: them a little bit about their prehistory or their early
Speaker 3: history organizing. And Michael, your history goes back the furthest
Speaker 3: as you know, we know, so I thought we could
Speaker 3: kick off with you and then talk with Emily and
Speaker 3: then Darryl just kind of getting into your background. So
Speaker 3: how do you get started in movement work? I actually I
Speaker 3: should say first, when did you get started in movement work.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, so I sometimes felt a little bit of
Speaker 4: a dinosaur. I was born in nineteen forty seven, so
Speaker 4: the fascism in power was a fairly recent reality in
Speaker 4: my life. My father was a immigrant from Poland. I
Speaker 4: came here in the thirties. Most of his family was
Speaker 4: destroyed in Biello Stoke. They had uprising there similar to
Speaker 4: the Warsaw Ghetto r Almost everybody was lipidated in that process.
Speaker 4: So there's a family history there for me. Also obviously
Speaker 4: grew up in the shadow of you know, the US
Speaker 4: atomic bombing of Rosa Manakasaki and the US incarceration of
Speaker 4: Japanese Americans and concentration camps, so you know, those are
Speaker 4: realities in my life. I've lived in a you know,
Speaker 4: orthodox Jewish immigrant working class family and neighborhood in Brooklyn,
Speaker 4: which is now dominated by extremely right wing forces. Borough Park.
Speaker 4: It's one of the bastions of probably you know, neo
Speaker 4: fascist Republican prosionists. But somehow, when I grew up there
Speaker 4: that was not the case. Anyway. I got involved in
Speaker 4: politics in the sixties and you know, student movement stuff,
Speaker 4: anti war stuff, and at Brooklyn College, which when I
Speaker 4: was there, it was free public four year college part
Speaker 4: of the City University System in New York, and I
Speaker 4: was actually eventually elected student body president. They had liquidated
Speaker 4: the student government earlier when you know, people opposed the
Speaker 4: Korean War, and we had a struggle to get you know,
Speaker 4: for student rights and anti war stuff and so on,
Speaker 4: and we succeeded in getting student body elections for offices
Speaker 4: for the first time in about a dozen years. But
Speaker 4: you know, as part of all that anti war and
Speaker 4: anti police brutality and other stuff that was going on
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn at the time, and then we raised the
Speaker 4: question of the fact that Brooklyn College was ninety eight
Speaker 4: percent white, white in a borough that even then was
Speaker 4: you know, majority black in Puerto Rican, and suddenly all
Speaker 4: the student support we had had for all the other
Speaker 4: struggles cops off the campus and you know, avy up
Speaker 4: the campus and so on, and we got you know,
Speaker 4: dean of students fired and other stuff. But as soon
Speaker 4: as we raised the question of opening the campus up
Speaker 4: and having open admissions to the City University system and
Speaker 4: a special emissions program for black and Puerto Rican high
Speaker 4: school students, most of our students support have oporated. And
Speaker 4: for me, that was an object lesson that unless you're
Speaker 4: you know, consciously organizing about internalized and institutionalized racism, everything
Speaker 4: else you do that is you know, progressive or anti
Speaker 4: imperialist or anti war is kind of a house of
Speaker 4: cards or you know, castles made of sand. And in
Speaker 4: particular and raising those issues, we discovered that there was
Speaker 4: a fascist element down the campus. There were people who
Speaker 4: formed the Early Jewish Defense League in Brooklyn who were
Speaker 4: primarily anti black. And also there's a group called the
Speaker 4: youth what is it, Young Americans for Vitom YAF, which
Speaker 4: was like the youth wing of the National Review, right
Speaker 4: wing Republican formation, and they were pretty openly fascistic in
Speaker 4: their politics. So, you know, it became a question that
Speaker 4: if you were doing you know, anti racist and anti
Speaker 4: war an anti capitalist organizing, you were going to face
Speaker 4: not just you know, a struggle against the force of
Speaker 4: the state, but that there were reactionary elements within particularly
Speaker 4: white society, and I think because of set the colonialism,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a mass base for that. And struck
Speaker 4: by the title of the show just say, I don't
Speaker 4: know if people are familiar with the book, it can't
Speaker 4: happen here, but Obviously your title is a reflection it
Speaker 4: could happen here. I think it has happened here. For
Speaker 4: one thing, I think the fashion has always been an
Speaker 4: element of US political culture because of settle colonialism. You know,
Speaker 4: I mean definition of fascism is that it's bringing the
Speaker 4: methods of rule of the colonies into the metropol But
Speaker 4: the US is a settler colony, and therefore there are
Speaker 4: colonized people inside this country, you know, always have been,
Speaker 4: and so fascistic elements of you know, slave labor, genocide,
Speaker 4: you know, land theft, all the rest have always been
Speaker 4: part and part of that is also creating that mass
Speaker 4: base within the settler population that supports you know, that leadership.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I think that that you know that both
Speaker 4: those personal aspects and that consciousness, and so I came
Speaker 4: in contact with, you know, the very radical forces in
Speaker 4: the Black Freedom Circle. Back then, the Black Panther Party
Speaker 4: is very active. There was one of the people in
Speaker 4: the Black Student Union joined the Black Panther Party. You know,
Speaker 4: it's a period of very fascist attacks and the Panthers
Speaker 4: had formed the National Committee of the Combat Fascism and
Speaker 4: had an analysis that you know, the US was fascistic,
Speaker 4: and you know, George Jackson at that time said, you know,
Speaker 4: fascism is already here, and I think he meant it,
Speaker 4: you know, literally, And so that's part of the perspective
Speaker 4: I've carried through for you know, I don't know what
Speaker 4: that is sixty years now close.
Speaker 3: To Yeah, I mean, I think really quickly, I would
Speaker 3: like to hear kind of what your experience was with
Speaker 3: forming John Brown. Where did the idea come from? Because
Speaker 3: I think for a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 3: are thinking of recent anti fascist American anti fascist history
Speaker 3: that ends up being kind of a starting point for
Speaker 3: a certain kind of no platform tactic. So how did
Speaker 3: you first kind of develop that? What brought you in?
Speaker 4: So, yeah, just to say, I was, you know, coming
Speaker 4: out of the movement as I did, I moved from
Speaker 4: New York to California because there was a strong There
Speaker 4: was a newspaper called the Movement, which was the newspaper
Speaker 4: basically of friends of Snick. It was the people who
Speaker 4: left Snick when Snick adopted a black power analysis and
Speaker 4: said that white people who were involved should go organize
Speaker 4: in the white community. And there was a you know,
Speaker 4: kind of a I was part of a Working Class
Speaker 4: Organizing Collective in Hayward, California. Eventually, out of that I
Speaker 4: got connected with, you know, some of the people that
Speaker 4: later formed Prairie Fire Organized Committee. I was in a
Speaker 4: group in the Bay Area called the June twenty eighth Union.
Speaker 4: It was a gay ends, pro socialist, anti imperiallests, pro
Speaker 4: feminist collective of mostly people of European decent. And we
Speaker 4: went to what was called the Hard Times Conference, which
Speaker 4: was put on by Prairie Far Organizing Committee in Chicago,
Speaker 4: and it turned out that there was secretly an effort
Speaker 4: by the weather underground to come up from underground to
Speaker 4: create a new communist party, and they serviced that at
Speaker 4: that conference. But there's a lot of opposition to that
Speaker 4: from across the board, from different Black liberation, American Indian Movement,
Speaker 4: the Puerto Rican in Deepending, the struggled Chicago movement to
Speaker 4: all of them, you know, felt that there was a
Speaker 4: sell out of the politics there anyway. Out of that
Speaker 4: process I was part of, I joined a Prairie Fire
Speaker 4: Organized Committee eventually, and that split and then there was
Speaker 4: a West Coast group which captained Prairie Far. The East
Speaker 4: coast formed a group called the main eineteenth communist organization,
Speaker 4: and they launched the original John Brown Anti Clan Committee,
Speaker 4: an initiative from the prisons. The organized prisoners in New
Speaker 4: York had discovered that there was an extensive network of
Speaker 4: clan claverns that were based in the prison guards and
Speaker 4: some of the white prisoners, and they asked for outside
Speaker 4: supporters to begin to expose that and deal with it
Speaker 4: and help them deal with it. And John Brand of
Speaker 4: the Gillen Committee was formed out of that. Separately, very
Speaker 4: far on the West Coast had formed a group called
Speaker 4: take a Stand against the Klan. There was a lot
Speaker 4: of you know, that was the period that the beginning
Speaker 4: of the notification of the clan that was going on.
Speaker 4: So this is the seventies and eventually, you know, under
Speaker 4: a challenge from particular the New African Independence movement, the
Speaker 4: Malcolm XS grassroots movement New African People's Organization which both
Speaker 4: Praise Fire on the West Coast and May nineteenth and
Speaker 4: the East Coast were connected to. They pushed for a
Speaker 4: joint organization. So at that point there was a kind
Speaker 4: of reconstitution of John Burnett the Clan Committee, and so
Speaker 4: I was part of that and we merged. You know,
Speaker 4: there were chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, the Bay Area, Los
Speaker 4: Angeles where I ended up in New York, I think
Speaker 4: Bowling Green, maybe the couple of Connecticut, and so they
Speaker 4: were quite active in that period, and you know, street
Speaker 4: level confrontations and you know other exposures of early Neo
Speaker 4: Nazi activity and clan activity, but particularly from a perspective
Speaker 4: of conscious and active solidarity with the Black freedom struggling,
Speaker 4: particularly the New African Independence movement, which is a very
Speaker 4: high level of unity, and over a period of time,
Speaker 4: you know, there was a struggle to broaden that out
Speaker 4: and try to be a more all embracing organization that
Speaker 4: could relate to the struggle. There were a lot of
Speaker 4: different formations at that time. There was the National Anti
Speaker 4: Clan Network, and there was a couple of others, and
Speaker 4: there were differing politics among all of them. And you know,
Speaker 4: John Branda Clink made that time, took more of a
Speaker 4: position of pro direct action and also, as they say,
Speaker 4: conscious solidated with the Black freedom struggle as a basis
Speaker 4: for doing that work.
Speaker 3: Anti Clan Network. I think so people kind of know
Speaker 3: that's where the Southern Poverty Law Center eventually came out
Speaker 3: of another networks of these different groups out here in Oregon.
Speaker 3: The Rural Organizing Project was sort of like a down
Speaker 3: the line there. I think it's interesting too about the
Speaker 3: found story. I was talking with our mutual friend Lisa Roth,
Speaker 3: who was part of the founding of that. Very first
Speaker 3: iteration of the John Brown Committee was they were doing
Speaker 3: a prison organizing with Black Panthers and Upstate New York
Speaker 3: and they were writing these letters saying the prison guards
Speaker 3: are clan and they thought, you mean they're really racist,
Speaker 3: you know, obviously they're the prison guards. Yeah, And when
Speaker 3: they went and looked it up. No, the president of
Speaker 3: the prison's guard union was the Grand Dragon of the
Speaker 3: State KKK, and they.
Speaker 4: Were actually he had a position within the prison system
Speaker 4: as the head of the sort of education activity educational
Speaker 4: activities in the prisons, and was using his formal position
Speaker 4: within the prison system to organize white prisoners along with
Speaker 4: the guards into clan clamorance.
Speaker 3: Which seems like a total That was sort of a
Speaker 3: validation with the centerpiece of John Brown being that cops
Speaker 3: and clan have that kind of collaboration, because that was
Speaker 3: their kind of the founding like lesson of that organizing.
Speaker 4: Sure, the blue by day, White by night, and a
Speaker 4: lot of those slogans come out of that period, and
Speaker 4: you know, I think it is you know, it's related
Speaker 4: to the later the aar A line that you know,
Speaker 4: fascism is built from above and below that there's you know,
Speaker 4: elements within the state that are operating independently, but there
Speaker 4: are also state forces and then they're you know independent, Yeah,
Speaker 4: so called revolutionary fascists that claim to be opposing the state,
Speaker 4: but we're not really.
Speaker 3: Well, I think to fast forward a little bit, quite
Speaker 3: a bit, Emily, I don't remember when we first met
Speaker 3: each other. Obviously it was probably shortly after Unite the
Speaker 3: Right happened. But how did you first get drawn into organizing?
Speaker 3: Did you have a long history before that happened, or
Speaker 3: were you just part of getting involved around the ramp
Speaker 3: up to that now?
Speaker 5: I think, you know, compared to the other folks here,
Speaker 5: I'm sort of the summer child of the of the group, right,
Speaker 5: I don't have a super long history in organizing. I
Speaker 5: think that, you know, I came to anti fascism before
Speaker 5: Unite the Right happened. I work in the tech industry
Speaker 5: and sometimes sort of around the gamer Gate era, I
Speaker 5: started noticing how white supremacist the tech industry had become.
Speaker 6: Right, it was.
Speaker 5: Sort of this nexus for a lot of this strongly libertarian,
Speaker 5: strongly supremacist mindset. It was sort of the worst of
Speaker 5: that meritocratic ideal that a lot of us had to
Speaker 5: experience in university and in our workplaces, and it just
Speaker 5: seemed like it was getting out of control. And that
Speaker 5: was kind of at the same time that we were
Speaker 5: seeing a lot more women come into the tech industry,
Speaker 5: we were starting to see a lot of changes in
Speaker 5: the space.
Speaker 6: And then there was sort of like this this.
Speaker 5: Vacuum left by gamer Gate, as that all sort of
Speaker 5: died down, A lot of this sort of energy needed
Speaker 5: to go somewhere, and so I started speaking out against
Speaker 5: some white supremacist organizing that was happening at conferences and
Speaker 5: things like that. And I think the first wake up
Speaker 5: call for me happened when some folks that are are
Speaker 5: linked to Milo Yanapolists put together a list of of
Speaker 5: SGW social justice warriors and this was journalists and activists
Speaker 5: and people who were speaking out and I somehow made
Speaker 5: that list. And I realized, after you know, looking at
Speaker 5: this and seeing what was going on that being a
Speaker 5: political being sort of just somebody with an opinion, wasn't
Speaker 5: you know, there was no way to be that wasn't
Speaker 5: a defense against what was coming. And so I just
Speaker 5: sort of looked inside and said, well, if this is
Speaker 5: the way it's going to be, like I'm going to
Speaker 5: fight back, I'm gonna I'm going to figure out what
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 6: I didn't really have a lot of organizing ties.
Speaker 5: They didn't really have a network, so like every other person,
Speaker 5: I just you know, shouted at Twitter and somehow that worked.
Speaker 5: The irony of this all is that all this was
Speaker 5: going on, I was starting to do you know, digital activism,
Speaker 5: using my tech skills to try to shine.
Speaker 6: Light on things that were wrong in the.
Speaker 5: Federal government and the Trump administration and things like that,
Speaker 5: and I really just wanted to step away from that.
Speaker 5: I kind of had like I went to Prague after
Speaker 5: Trump was inaugurated. I wanted to like, you know, clear
Speaker 5: the air a little bit. I didn't like the fact
Speaker 5: that I was on this hit list that was put
Speaker 5: together by people who have like a couple of handshakes
Speaker 5: away from.
Speaker 6: The president's desk. So I went to Europe.
Speaker 5: I went to Prague and I cleared my head, and
Speaker 5: when I came back, I said, you know what, I'm
Speaker 5: going to just focus on local activism. I'm going to
Speaker 5: focus on the issues that are in my community. I
Speaker 5: knew that we had things going on with our local
Speaker 5: low income housing space, we had a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: stuff around the statues that was coming up in town,
Speaker 5: and I didn't really expect, like it was kind of
Speaker 5: random that Unite the Right was you know, destined for Charlottesville,
Speaker 5: and so all of the work, all of the organizing
Speaker 5: that I had started to do that spring, and that
Speaker 5: where I guess that winter in that spring started to
Speaker 5: pay off, as you know, as Charlottesville became the target
Speaker 5: of all of the neo Nazis. So I think it
Speaker 5: was sort of I don't want to say it's it's fortunate,
Speaker 5: because it's not really the greatest, like it's not a
Speaker 5: positive thing that that's what happened. But I guess that
Speaker 5: I am lucky that as I came to this awakening,
Speaker 5: it was happening you know, before and not after, and
Speaker 5: that I was able to use the network that I
Speaker 5: was building, the audience I was building in order to
Speaker 5: help like back. So yeah, I guess that's that's sort
Speaker 5: of like, I don't know that I would have been,
Speaker 5: you know, as much as dedicated as I was if
Speaker 5: it wasn't for that very personal sort of experience. And
Speaker 5: I look back at that like I'm kind of embarrassed
Speaker 5: by that. But you know, we all have our own paths.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think, you know, there's something interesting about
Speaker 3: that year in advance of the Unite the Right, where
Speaker 3: where different groups were testing the waters a little bit,
Speaker 3: and how that was their ability to ramp up in
Speaker 3: the area, but it was also the anti fascist ability
Speaker 3: to ramp up, you know, So talking with Mimi and
Speaker 3: other organizers there, like those earlier events like the earlier
Speaker 3: Clan rally that happened like you know, months earlier, or
Speaker 3: kind of those that early flash mob that Richard Spencer
Speaker 3: led that gave people the opportunity to build up the base.
Speaker 3: So how did you kind of shift to focusing on
Speaker 3: that first? I guess how did you hear about Unite
Speaker 3: the Riots, this big kind of like target event, But
Speaker 3: what was the steps along the way there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think one of the things that really that
Speaker 5: I really tried to do that year was to use
Speaker 5: the experience I was having traveling to try to understand
Speaker 5: the history of movements that were against you.
Speaker 6: Know, great state powers.
Speaker 5: Right when I was in Prague, I spent a lot
Speaker 5: of time reading about and looking into and walking through
Speaker 5: the sites of where the Prague Spring took place, and
Speaker 5: where the Deil Revolution took place, and how these groups
Speaker 5: of people were able to overcome this massive amount of
Speaker 5: state violence and still be successful. And when Richard Spencer
Speaker 5: first came to town that first flashbob is now called
Speaker 5: Charlottesville one point zero.
Speaker 6: I was in Berlin at the time. I woke up
Speaker 6: to see what was going on.
Speaker 5: And it was, you know, I think again just sort
Speaker 5: of these you know, the universe coming into alignment. As
Speaker 5: that was happening, there's also this big anti Nazi demonstration
Speaker 5: that was happening in Berlin. So I took that opportunity
Speaker 5: to go and learn about what anti fascists are doing
Speaker 5: in other countries and other localities, how they are organizing,
Speaker 5: how they spread their message, and so I think that,
Speaker 5: you know, as I learned about all of this going on,
Speaker 5: what the first thing that I tried to do is
Speaker 5: just look around and say, what can we learn from
Speaker 5: people who have been here before? Who have done this
Speaker 5: before and have this in their living memory, and that's
Speaker 5: what I tried to take back to Charlottesville. And then,
Speaker 5: you know, I think it was after that trip. I
Speaker 5: was in Berlin in May. I came back for that trip.
Speaker 5: I joined in the anti fascist march almost as soon
Speaker 5: as I got back, and that's when we had heard
Speaker 5: we've learned about the two rallies, the July eighth KKK
Speaker 5: rally and the August twelfth Unite the Right, And at
Speaker 5: that point, like from that moment, it was just like
Speaker 5: every waking moment of my day was spent organizing for
Speaker 5: those for those rallies.
Speaker 3: It's the sort of effect that just circumstance sort of
Speaker 3: speeds people's capacity to do it, and that maybe even
Speaker 3: maybe capacity is not the right word, they're kind of
Speaker 3: understanding of what it takes to do that work. So
Speaker 3: I was interviewing a number of the rabbis in the area,
Speaker 3: and these were not super political folks. These were not
Speaker 3: people like from some activist synagogues wh were mainline synagogues,
Speaker 3: but they connected with a number of faith leaders from
Speaker 3: the historically black churches, both of which were saying, okay,
Speaker 3: we're both going to be targeted here, and there's no
Speaker 3: there's no institutions coming to help. Really, there's no one
Speaker 3: we can count on here. So they created those collaborative
Speaker 3: spaces and really pretty complicated and effective organizing models having
Speaker 3: no experience doing it because of that hyper intense space,
Speaker 3: which I think is in a way that's why those
Speaker 3: circumstances have such an important effect on it. So how
Speaker 3: did you basically plan those couple of weeks in advance?
Speaker 3: How were you thinking about it, and what was the
Speaker 3: kind of groups you were working with these like networks
Speaker 3: that were coming together formal organizations.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there were a bunch of, you know,
Speaker 5: organizations on the ground that I connected with. Certainly we
Speaker 5: had a local chapter of Surge showing up for racial
Speaker 5: justice and they were doing a lot of organizing. And
Speaker 5: there was the Anarchist People of Color APOC. They were
Speaker 5: a great group of people that we connected with and
Speaker 5: that I connected with. And it also happened that I
Speaker 5: started dating somebody who's also connected to the local anti
Speaker 5: fascist scene at the time, so I sort of brought
Speaker 5: into all of these circles through that relationship as well.
Speaker 5: And so I think that sort of all of these
Speaker 5: things combined really made it clear that we had a
Speaker 5: small but very knowledgeable base of people that could organize.
Speaker 5: And I think that one of the things that we
Speaker 5: did exceptionally well in the lead up is because we
Speaker 5: had such a small core of people who don't who
Speaker 5: didn't really have, you know, a breadth of experience, you know,
Speaker 5: in doing this, we were able to compartmentalize really well.
Speaker 6: You know, some people were focusing on, you know, what.
Speaker 5: Are we going to do with the you know, the
Speaker 5: clergy collective, and how are they going to organize?
Speaker 6: What is their action going to be?
Speaker 5: And we had a media collective and that was where
Speaker 5: I put most of my energy. And so I think
Speaker 5: that we had these different groups of people that focus
Speaker 5: on different things that helped us unblock ourselves from the grander,
Speaker 5: sort of more theoretical, more abstract way to respond. We
Speaker 5: didn't have the time to debate over tactics, we didn't
Speaker 5: have time to debate over the ideology of anti fascism,
Speaker 5: what the right thing to do was, or what the
Speaker 5: best thing to do was. We really had to focus
Speaker 5: our time on what do we have time to do?
Speaker 5: What can we achieve given the constraints that we have
Speaker 5: and with those sort of constraints, I think that maybe
Speaker 5: we left some good actions on the table, but what
Speaker 5: we came up with I think was fairly effective.
Speaker 3: Do you think that it carried those community folks together
Speaker 3: through and after the event. Do you feel like those
Speaker 3: community ties were still there?
Speaker 5: I think some of them are and some of them
Speaker 5: are not. There are certainly community times that have broken.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of pressure that built up. There
Speaker 5: were differences of opinions that we set aside and hoped
Speaker 5: to resolve afterwards, and those did not necessarily get resolved
Speaker 5: in some cases, some interpersonal issues, some interorganizational issues. I
Speaker 5: remember at one point there was a decision that was
Speaker 5: being made, driven by a couple of the organizing groups,
Speaker 5: that they would not support anyone that was going to
Speaker 5: be armed, and this was a tension point between those
Speaker 5: groups and groups like Redneck Revolt that were coming armed
Speaker 5: to help support anti fascist rallies, and that like that
Speaker 5: is something that still you know, affected me pretty well
Speaker 5: because I was being targeted because of how present I
Speaker 5: was in social media and Twitter.
Speaker 6: And things like that.
Speaker 5: I needed to have an armed security detail, and you know,
Speaker 5: that created a lot of a lot of tension I
Speaker 5: didn't have legal like I had legal support pulled away
Speaker 5: from me. I didn't have legal support until until November
Speaker 5: of that year, when noise of a.
Speaker 6: Lawsuit started happening.
Speaker 5: So I think that some of those things did create
Speaker 5: some tension that led to fracturing of community, but some
Speaker 5: things actually really did tie the community back together and
Speaker 5: kept it close even as we have drifted apart and
Speaker 5: moved into different you know, different cities, different countries, different states, whatever.
Speaker 6: I think it's a bit of both. You know.
Speaker 3: There's one of the founding members of Rose Head Antifa
Speaker 3: said something that kind of stuck with me, which is
Speaker 3: that a lot of people will look to anti fascism
Speaker 3: as a way to rebuild the left or as to
Speaker 3: build this big mass united left. But that's not actually
Speaker 3: what's being demanded of the situation. The situation is very
Speaker 3: pretty straightforward, is to basically destroy this opposition of people.
Speaker 3: And how you do that. I mean, you can have
Speaker 3: considerations about how they bring in the community and try
Speaker 3: and align with other groups, but in the end, there's
Speaker 3: other decisions are being made, and so people often get
Speaker 3: disappointed when that ends up being what those projects actually are. Now, Daryl,
Speaker 3: you were down there right right correct, that was there.
Speaker 3: You're everywhere when we're there, I try to be.
Speaker 7: I think one of the things about Charlottesville that was
Speaker 7: really important is that we saw it coming, and we
Speaker 7: had seen it coming months, probably even years before it
Speaker 7: even happened. Hell, we saw it before in my case,
Speaker 7: because one of those everywhere places I had been was
Speaker 7: in York, Pennsylvania about twenty years prior, where you had
Speaker 7: somebody from a group called the World Church Creator. He
Speaker 7: was He was a local from World Church to the
Speaker 7: Creator that invited the leader of that group, Matt Hale,
Speaker 7: to hold the public meeting at that local library. It
Speaker 7: was a tactic that that particular group had and what
Speaker 7: that resulted in was about out three hundred neo Nazis
Speaker 7: coming to York, PA, about three four hundred anti fascists
Speaker 7: coming out to oppose them. And you pretty much saw
Speaker 7: a parallel of Charlottesville. As I said, up to an
Speaker 7: including a this was January twelve, twenty twelve, and up
Speaker 7: to an including a someone driving into a group of
Speaker 7: people and no one pat no one died, no one
Speaker 7: was killed, hurt. Pretty bad. I think the only reason
Speaker 7: why he served two years was because one of the
Speaker 7: people that he hit was a cop. Now we fast
Speaker 7: forward to Charlottesville, and ironically, I saw the person that
Speaker 7: organized things in York represented Vanguard America at Charlottesville.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 7: Two days prior, we MI for One People's Project had
Speaker 7: a little bit of a pot cast where we basically
Speaker 7: said that after everything that was going on in Charlottevielle
Speaker 7: prior to Charlottevield one point oh, Charlottesville two point zero,
Speaker 7: and then this whole Unite the Right thing was happening,
Speaker 7: where it was just making a big production out of
Speaker 7: having this event. We pretty much were resigned to the
Speaker 7: idea that this was going to be the so called
Speaker 7: rights ultimate in the sense that this was going to
Speaker 7: be what sent everybody, you know, realizing how bad things
Speaker 7: can get. You know it's going to be bad. We
Speaker 7: expected it to be bad. I went to Charlotteville armed,
Speaker 7: and I think really it was one of the first
Speaker 7: times that I ever did strap up when I went
Speaker 7: to one of these things. When everything went down, I mean,
Speaker 7: prior to everything going down, I was just basically, I think,
Speaker 7: videotaping everyone cracking jokes. I was playing happy Warrior because
Speaker 7: you know, you see this all before up to and
Speaker 7: including the fighting. The fighting is there, I mean, that
Speaker 7: happens all the time, even that massively, I'm used to it.
Speaker 6: What I wasn't used to.
Speaker 7: Was when someone was murdered, when someone was killed, because
Speaker 7: that's never happened, and that that actually freaked me out.
Speaker 7: It Actually I actually got really pissed off when that
Speaker 7: went down, and I think a lot of us did
Speaker 7: because because if we recognize this ourselves, if we who
Speaker 7: have been on the front lines all these years recognized
Speaker 7: that this was the direction that was going in, we
Speaker 7: also recognized that we had the ability to do something
Speaker 7: about it beforehand. That's one of the reasons why the
Speaker 7: Aco you got into a lot of trouble because they
Speaker 7: were busy trying to protect the free speech of everybody
Speaker 7: in all the neo Nazis there and insisting that they
Speaker 7: were going to be in that park because that's where
Speaker 7: they wanted to be. And when everything went down, a
Speaker 7: lot of people just looked at the ACO and said,
Speaker 7: could you at least recognize just how dangerous they was
Speaker 7: trying to make the situation ACOU I believe will no
Speaker 7: longer represent groups that insist on holding armed rallies. I
Speaker 7: think that was one of the things that they had
Speaker 7: said that they were one of the changeups. And even
Speaker 7: with the whole discussion about their freedom of speech and
Speaker 7: saying it was a matter of the free speech, people's
Speaker 7: attitudes were just like, Okay, fine, that's a given, But
Speaker 7: couldn't you let them get their own attorneys? Why do
Speaker 7: you have to keep defending the worst of society in
Speaker 7: the name of a free speech that frankly doesn't seem
Speaker 7: to be afforded the rest of us whenever we are
Speaker 7: opposing them. That's the attitude that a lot of people had,
Speaker 7: and it was really the last straw. Charlotteville was really
Speaker 7: the last straw, and people really got on a different
Speaker 7: footing and dealing with fascism. I was used to people
Speaker 7: trying to pull all the stops and trying to defend
Speaker 7: the quote unquote defend the freedom of speech of not
Speaker 7: just the fascist in our society, but the right in general.
Speaker 7: So every time I would criticize somebody on the right,
Speaker 7: somebody would try to say things ranging from we have
Speaker 7: to respect their freedom of speech or we should just
Speaker 7: ignore them, you know. And I hated it whenever it
Speaker 7: was and when it was combined the best way to
Speaker 7: fight hate speeches with more speech. You use the more speech, Well,
Speaker 7: why don't you just ignore them? That stopped after Charlottesville.
Speaker 7: All of a sudden, people started saying, Okay, we need
Speaker 7: to start doing something about this group. That's why you
Speaker 7: saw forty thousand people in Boston protesting against the fascists
Speaker 7: up there when they tried to hold a rally maybe
Speaker 7: a week or two later. You know, that's why you
Speaker 7: saw websites like the Daily Stormer get you know, yanked
Speaker 7: out of yanked out of the mainstream, and now they're
Speaker 7: sitting on the dark web. That's why you saw people
Speaker 7: disowned their family members because they went to this rally.
Speaker 7: We are seeing people being not just James Field's but
Speaker 7: others being held legally accountable for what they did in Charlotteville.
Speaker 7: And all of those individuals are fascists. All of the
Speaker 7: individuals were white supremacists. We realized that we had the
Speaker 7: ability to do something, and we started doing something. Unfortunately,
Speaker 7: we stopped after Trump lost and people tried to go
Speaker 7: back to that whole just ignore them routine, and within
Speaker 7: months we got January sixth, and that was when they
Speaker 7: tried they ratcheted up again about how we're going to
Speaker 7: really curtail the right and all and all that we
Speaker 7: but now that just became rhetoric. We're here again because
Speaker 7: you're starting to see a lot of the rumblings with
Speaker 7: the attacks on the trans community. Basically conservatives across the
Speaker 7: country are primarily trying to essentially do something to the
Speaker 7: rest of the country. I mean, you heard that when
Speaker 7: you go to the SEAPAC meeting, the Conservative Political Action
Speaker 7: Conference a couple of months ago. All they did was
Speaker 7: talk about things they wanted to do to America.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: And this is what we have been fighting all our lives.
Speaker 7: This is what we have been warning about all our lives.
Speaker 7: And while anti fascism has essentially become mainstream, there is
Speaker 7: still a lot more work that we have to do
Speaker 7: in order to basically see all that work bear fruit.
Speaker 7: And that's some pretty much the deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that forty thousand person kind of response to a
Speaker 3: Proud Boy rally in Boston just a couple of weeks
Speaker 3: after Unite the Right, it was one of the most
Speaker 3: common sense kind of moments and it totally dwarfs into them.
Speaker 3: I mean, forty thousand people will do it whatever they want,
Speaker 3: right forty thousand people will stop any kind of small march,
Speaker 3: even a large one, and so the lesson was learned
Speaker 3: then it seemed to be forgotten immediately.
Speaker 7: And they're perfect example of that because that group that
Speaker 7: they were protesting went on to become Super Happy Fun America.
Speaker 7: They're the group that are now pushing the straight Pride
Speaker 7: rallies and they are really in the forefront of all
Speaker 7: the anti trans anti LGBTQ plus activity, And of course
Speaker 7: some of them got arrested in at January sixth, so
Speaker 7: they pretty much built up their stock since then, but
Speaker 7: so did we, and it's just a matter of using
Speaker 7: that stock. Who's going to use that stock more effectively?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was really interesting how you centered this,
Speaker 1: like this shift that happened among people who went previously
Speaker 1: involved in anti fascism, from this kind of near liberal
Speaker 1: understanding or maybe even liberal understanding of the sort of
Speaker 1: struggle against fascism being one that could take place in
Speaker 1: the open, with free speech being the most important thing
Speaker 1: that's at stake, and one that moved like in a
Speaker 1: moment right when I Nazi killed Heather Higher.
Speaker 7: Two.
Speaker 1: There's a ton more at stake than we thought, and
Speaker 1: I think you're right that we've gone back, like right,
Speaker 1: we've gone back to the previous understanding, which I think
Speaker 1: is what everyone kind of a lot of people, I
Speaker 1: guess they felt like they could vote for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: and then it was done, like it had disappeared. And
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear all of your insights, with
Speaker 1: all your experience in the movement and like what needs
Speaker 1: to be done. I guess to keep that organizing going
Speaker 1: as worrying this kind of nadir or thermidor of like
Speaker 1: anti fascist organizing in the US.
Speaker 4: If I could offer something from maybe a little bit
Speaker 4: of a longer view, you yeah, you know, Darrell talked
Speaker 4: about somebody being killed and that never happening before, but
Speaker 4: of course it has happened before. And so nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: nine there was a Death of the Clan rally in Greensboro,
Speaker 4: North Carolina, and people were attacked and killed by an
Speaker 4: alliance of the Clan and the Nazis with you know,
Speaker 4: the ATF had people in one and the forget. I
Speaker 4: think the FBI had people in the other and were
Speaker 4: instrumental in bringing the two forces together to attack the
Speaker 4: anti Clan group and several people were killed in that,
Speaker 4: and then the same thing with aar in Las Vegas,
Speaker 4: Lynn S Newborn, a black tattoo artist, and Darren Shirsey.
Speaker 4: It was actually I think a sailor, active duty sailor
Speaker 4: who were in anti racist action in Las Vegas were
Speaker 4: executed and killed by neo Nazis there, And so I
Speaker 4: think there is a history of that that we need
Speaker 4: to be aware of, but also that that there's ups
Speaker 4: and downs and lulls in both fascist organizing anti fascist organized.
Speaker 4: One of the things that happened after the seventy nine
Speaker 4: killings is that Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for president
Speaker 4: in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the scene of the killing of shor
Speaker 4: En er Chaineyan Goodman on a state freights platform. And
Speaker 4: while he was president, you know, I brought in Pat
Speaker 4: rob Pat Buchanan and you know, went to Bittberg. So
Speaker 4: there's a long history of the state, you know, playing
Speaker 4: foot seet with these people, and I think we should
Speaker 4: recognize that, but also that there are going to be
Speaker 4: ups and downs in in both fascists and anti fascist organizing,
Speaker 4: and you know, just see that that. I think the
Speaker 4: longer range perspective that is important to understand. The other
Speaker 4: thing I did want to take a little exception to
Speaker 4: is the idea that the role of anti fascist is
Speaker 4: to destroy fascists, and I think that I don't completely
Speaker 4: agree with that analysis. I think that it's critical that
Speaker 4: actually anti fascists forced to see themselves as part of
Speaker 4: a revolutionary transformation of the society and its entirety, and
Speaker 4: that the ability to actually reach an organizing people has
Speaker 4: to do with making it clear that fascists are not
Speaker 4: providing an alternative to what's wrong with the society, although
Speaker 4: they claim to be, and that we are, that we're
Speaker 4: part of liberatory and you know, self determination elements, anti
Speaker 4: colonial elements, you know, support for sovereignty of indigenous people,
Speaker 4: you know, support for LGBTQ people's rights and all those
Speaker 4: things that have a positive aspect of a way to
Speaker 4: reorganize society in a different way than the fascists are
Speaker 4: putting forward. And I think that that is critically trying
Speaker 4: to sustain a base and build a base by you know,
Speaker 4: having a positive you know, one of the things that
Speaker 4: I've been doing for many years, I published Turning the Tide,
Speaker 4: which you know, started as a little zine. We were
Speaker 4: sending it to other chapters of Anti Racist Section and
Speaker 4: also went to the prisons, and you know, eventually we
Speaker 4: changed the subtitle of that to the Journal of Intercommunal Solidarity,
Speaker 4: in the sense of saying, Okay, it's not just Anti
Speaker 4: Racist Section, it's not just anti fashions, but what are
Speaker 4: we ford? You have to have a positive if you
Speaker 4: really want to organize people, you have to have a
Speaker 4: positive sense of what they're struggling for, not just what
Speaker 4: they're struggling against.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Michael's right, Greensboro did happen. I was really referring
Speaker 7: to in recent time. It wasn't. It was the first
Speaker 7: time for myself to be at a rally and not
Speaker 7: see anyone and see somebody get murdered. But yes, Greensboro,
Speaker 7: November third, I believe, nineteen seventy nine in North Carolina,
Speaker 7: that happened, and all the clan members had actually gotten
Speaker 7: away with it. They did not. They were found. They
Speaker 7: cleared them. Meanwhile, recruiting state court and federal court both.
Speaker 7: Their claim was that they were not They were brought
Speaker 7: up in civil rights judges in the federal court and
Speaker 7: they claim they weren't against black people. They were just
Speaker 7: again communists, and that right, there was something that even
Speaker 7: family members when I first heard of Remember, I'm a
Speaker 7: kid at this time. I'm sitting there listening to family
Speaker 7: members basically laugh about the situation because all they saw
Speaker 7: were clan and communists and they were just had the
Speaker 7: attitude of just let them kill each other. And that
Speaker 7: was actually a line that was said, don't. I don't
Speaker 7: know which family members said it, but that was a
Speaker 7: line that stuck with me since I was a kid
Speaker 7: and at the time I wasn't really politically a student.
Speaker 7: I just that's how I recalled that situation, and with
Speaker 7: Dan and Spit the Las Vegas murders that that is
Speaker 7: a different situation, however, because that wasn't the rally they
Speaker 7: sought them out. That was basically on the off time,
Speaker 7: so to speak. Yes, and we've seen that before, most
Speaker 7: certainly Luke Cerner from Portland, for example. I mean, he said,
Speaker 7: but he's a quadriplegic because somebody came after him.
Speaker 5: The German police intercepted one. When Adam often came to Germany,
Speaker 5: they tried to get me. I don't know if you
Speaker 5: know about.
Speaker 4: I think because I have been fairly public, I've been
Speaker 4: docked and tracked down by fascists and several different occasions
Speaker 4: in different places that I lived in. You know, we've
Speaker 4: had armed patrols that you know, at various points that
Speaker 4: you know. It's clearly you know they do try to
Speaker 4: target people as well as you know, attacking mess action.
Speaker 3: Emily, you've gotten it as much as anyone I've ever
Speaker 3: seen in terms of dosing and harassment and targeted attacks
Speaker 3: and threats like that.
Speaker 5: Who are you referring to? I think you Oh, I
Speaker 5: think we've all gotten it bad.
Speaker 6: I don't. I don't think that there's any there's no competition.
Speaker 2: Here contest who has the most death threats on.
Speaker 5: I did want to just jump back real quick to
Speaker 5: the thing that you were mentioning Michael about. You know,
Speaker 5: building anti fascism needs to be about building, and I
Speaker 5: think that there's two there's two sides to this. I
Speaker 5: like to talk about, like the breaking work, which is
Speaker 5: what a lot of the street anti fascism is about, right, Like,
Speaker 5: sometimes Nazis come marching into your town and you have
Speaker 5: to break that. You have to stop that, you have
Speaker 5: to confront that, and you have to do things to
Speaker 5: make it so that they don't want to come back
Speaker 5: into your town or any other towns like your town,
Speaker 5: and I think that that's breaking work, you know, the
Speaker 5: work of cracking down Nazis, docsing them, exposing them, whatever,
Speaker 5: that's breaking work. I think that in the last few
Speaker 5: years has become more high profile for various reasons. But
Speaker 5: I think that as we're looking at you know what
Speaker 5: you were mentioning therel like the anti trans legislation, the
Speaker 5: rise of the political far right in government in power,
Speaker 5: we do need a different solution. I'm not saying that
Speaker 5: you can't go out and like intercept Ron DeSantis's motorcade
Speaker 5: and like punch him in the face. I am saying
Speaker 5: it will probably end very badly for you if you
Speaker 5: try to.
Speaker 6: Do that, right, right, So maybe what.
Speaker 5: We actually also need is to try to build those
Speaker 5: alternative structures that are not reliant on the state right.
Speaker 6: You know, when we see these these.
Speaker 5: Trans bands coming in like it's a horrible thing. But
Speaker 5: the only thing that actually comes through my mind is
Speaker 5: we have more tools, more resources now to create the
Speaker 5: networks of support than we've ever had in history. A
Speaker 5: lot of our energy should be pouring into supporting those networks,
Speaker 5: supporting that that care supporting that mobility and that freedom
Speaker 5: of movement rather than just trying to run up against
Speaker 5: this brick wall that is this Republican you know behemoth
Speaker 5: that is moving you know forward into into all of
Speaker 5: our rights. Like we're not going to face it down
Speaker 5: head on. We need to go around it in some way.
Speaker 5: And I think that that going around it is going
Speaker 5: to require that building, that community, that sort of redevelopment
Speaker 5: of those alternative structures. So I think it's so important
Speaker 5: to have that as well.
Speaker 2: Big thanks to Shane Burley for setting up this conversation.
Speaker 2: The second half of our talk with Michael Novic, Emily Gorcinski,
Speaker 2: and Daryl Lamont Jenkins will be coming out tomorrow. We'll
Speaker 2: talk a bit more about the modern state of anti
Speaker 2: fascism and what things from the past might help inform
Speaker 2: us in the anti fascist struggle of today. See you
Speaker 2: on the other side. It could happen here as a
Speaker 2: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or
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Speaker 2: It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com,
Speaker 2: Slash sources, Thanks for listening.