Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It could happen here. This is Garrison Davis.
Speaker 2: This episode is part two of a conversation that myself
Speaker 2: and James Stout had with some of the contributors to
Speaker 2: a book by AK Press titled No Passeran. It's an
Speaker 2: anti fascist anthology that talks about the modern anti fascist
Speaker 2: movement and some of the writer's own experiences with anti fascism.
Speaker 2: So we'll pick up our conversation basically right where we
Speaker 2: left off, talking about the modern state of anti fascism,
Speaker 2: anti fascists and like, you know, the left quote unquote
Speaker 2: in general right now is kind of in a weird place.
Speaker 2: You know, like a lot of people were you know,
Speaker 2: extremely kind of catalyzed after Charlottesville, and that led to
Speaker 2: a like massive resurgence of anti racist action, anti fascist action.
Speaker 2: And I think the quote unquote like antifa movement of
Speaker 2: the twenty teens abs like was is probably one of
Speaker 2: the largest like politically radicalizing forces for people, especially people
Speaker 2: my age, people a little bit older. It's you know,
Speaker 2: it's very influential in what the kind of the modern
Speaker 2: like anarchists or you know left, you know scene is.
Speaker 2: And there's like there's a lot of positive parts of that.
Speaker 2: There's also you know, there's some some drawbacks for that
Speaker 2: as well. Kind of one one kind of recurring thing
Speaker 2: is that like when your only tools a hammer, then
Speaker 2: everything is a nail. And there's certain elements of of
Speaker 2: like and and this like antifa notion, like people who
Speaker 2: like grew up with with like anti fascists and being
Speaker 2: their primary kind of mode of practice. Then it can
Speaker 2: be very easily turned horizontally. But you know, it's after
Speaker 2: after j six, after after Biinen's been inaugurated, we have
Speaker 2: had this very weird lull, but there's still been you
Speaker 2: know a lot of fascist mobilization. But this response to
Speaker 2: it that you know was very normalized in twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: has has definitely shifted. We we've seen, like you know,
Speaker 2: the one thing that's been new is, like you like
Speaker 2: you mentioned regarding you know, Charlotte Spell, there's lot of
Speaker 2: like debate around if people should show up armed. We
Speaker 2: now have like the Drag Time Story Hour kind of defenses,
Speaker 2: like armed defenses with John Brown, gun clubs becoming more popular.
Speaker 2: But you know, the one the kind of occurring things
Speaker 2: that everyone's kind of been talking about it I've been hearing,
Speaker 2: Like there's so many parallels for what we've been going
Speaker 2: through the past like five ten years to other kind
Speaker 2: of things in the past. Like while all of the
Speaker 2: John Brown anti Clan Committee stuff, there's just a lot
Speaker 2: of cyclical notions. I mean, even I'm here in Atlanta
Speaker 2: right now, there's this Rico grand jury indictment. Everyone's thinking
Speaker 2: about like green scare stuff. Even even John Brown Anti
Speaker 2: Clan Committee did grand jury resistance back in like the eighties.
Speaker 2: Like it's this this these things have happened before. And
Speaker 2: I think one thing that you know, the quote unquote
Speaker 2: after anti fascists sometimes they're kind of bad at is
Speaker 2: actually passing down the history. There's this tendency that when
Speaker 2: people get involved, we're kind of forced to reinvent the
Speaker 2: wheel every time. But it's like completely like unnecessary, but
Speaker 2: we tend to just keep trying the same things over
Speaker 2: and over again. So there's even people younger than me
Speaker 2: who weren't even old enough to get involved in anti
Speaker 2: fascist stuff in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and they're
Speaker 2: now kind of growing up. There's still this fascist mobilization.
Speaker 2: You know, liberals are kind of passive because they have
Speaker 2: their guy in the White House, and we're going to
Speaker 2: be reaching a really interesting tipping point in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: So for these types of people who are like either
Speaker 2: wanting to get involved or who are like just just
Speaker 2: starting to realize that, hey, maybe we should actually do
Speaker 2: something about all this stuff, especially as you know, trans
Speaker 2: existence is one of the main things under attack right now.
Speaker 2: What is kind of some like lessons from the passage
Speaker 2: you would like to be passed down to people.
Speaker 3: A couple of things that come to mind. I was
Speaker 3: reminded because James is in San Diego about you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things we haven't talked about at all
Speaker 3: is the border, and that's been a recurrent theme of
Speaker 3: the right and of the state, both in terms of
Speaker 3: building you know, a repressive apparatus. So going back to
Speaker 3: you know, the early days of People Against Racist Terror,
Speaker 3: which is the group that I had in La after
Speaker 3: John brand Ask and Anti Clan Committe left. One of
Speaker 3: the first actions we did was there was something called
Speaker 3: the American Spring at the Mexican Border, which was a
Speaker 3: neo fascist element. It kind of grew out of the
Speaker 3: previous Clan Border Watch that David Duka done, and they
Speaker 3: were trying to you know, build up a base of
Speaker 3: support for you know, very you know, close the borders.
Speaker 3: And so we did bring people from la and joined
Speaker 3: up with San Diego. And actually at one of those
Speaker 3: rallies somebody drove a car at and nearly hit someone
Speaker 3: from the the the you know, the anti fascist forces.
Speaker 3: So I think that's an important piece of we should
Speaker 3: be thinking about the other thing in terms of killings
Speaker 3: and shootings. You know, somebody from the Red Nation was
Speaker 3: just shot in Albuquerque, and you know, I think that again,
Speaker 3: the question of indigenous sovereignty and indigenous rights is a
Speaker 3: leading edge of struggle. A lot of the struggles around
Speaker 3: missing and murdered Indigenous women have to do with the
Speaker 3: you know, fossil fuel industry and in the back in
Speaker 3: other places where you know, women have disappeared and been
Speaker 3: killed by you know, people in the fossil fuel industry basically,
Speaker 3: And I think bringing all that to bear is really
Speaker 3: critical to have the breadth of consciousness and the understanding
Speaker 3: that there is a global struggle that's going on and
Speaker 3: Indigenous people in particular are part of that, about the
Speaker 3: survival of humanity and of the planet in a sense,
Speaker 3: and to situate anti fascist struggle in that context, I
Speaker 3: think is really really important and relates to who are
Speaker 3: our allies, who are leadership, where is the struggle being
Speaker 3: led by and so you know, one of the things
Speaker 3: we uncovered here is that the people involved in the
Speaker 3: militia movement started their operations by supporting Christian militias in
Speaker 3: Guatemala and the Philippines, attacking left forces in those countries
Speaker 3: and indigenous forces in those countries. And you know, having
Speaker 3: that global perspective, I think that's one of the really
Speaker 3: great strengths of the book, by the way, that I
Speaker 3: thought was really amazing, as the coverage of anti fascist
Speaker 3: movements all around the world, and you know, the anti
Speaker 3: fascists in India and so on, and having that sense
Speaker 3: that it's not just you know, people of European descent
Speaker 3: or you know, African Americans in the United States who
Speaker 3: are post to fascism, but there's a very very broad,
Speaker 3: you know, movement around the world and inside this country
Speaker 3: of people who are experiencing fascism literally all the time
Speaker 3: that you know, gives a strength to anti fascism.
Speaker 4: There is an exceptionalism that exists even in the left
Speaker 4: and American exceptionalism that exists even in the American life
Speaker 4: when it comes to how bad things are, how good
Speaker 4: we are at organizing or whatever. And I think that
Speaker 4: a lot of the time is one of the things
Speaker 4: that we often forget is that we are not the
Speaker 4: only people going through this, both in time and space.
Speaker 4: Right there's movements that are going on elsewhere that are
Speaker 4: facing a much deeper sort of repression than what we
Speaker 4: see in the United States, and they are still finding
Speaker 4: ways to organize. I like to do you know when
Speaker 4: we talk about like the attack on queer rights, and
Speaker 4: you know, things like all of these hateful laws that
Speaker 4: are being passed which will almost certainly be thrown out
Speaker 4: in the courts, and that's you know, it's going to
Speaker 4: be a couple of years. But you know people are saying, well,
Speaker 4: this is going to make pride illegal, and this is
Speaker 4: you know, this is the worst thing. This is like,
Speaker 4: you know, a step towards genocide and all of that stuff.
Speaker 4: And I think it's actually important for us to put
Speaker 4: things in perspective. Istanbul has a much stricter set of
Speaker 4: restrictions on we are organizing quirkeet demonstrations. Pride happens every
Speaker 4: year Pride is attacked by cops every year, they still
Speaker 4: continue to persist. What can we learn as Americans from
Speaker 4: that movement. I think that's a really important thing for
Speaker 4: the American anti fascist scene to really start to to
Speaker 4: think around and try to take this moment. As you mentioned,
Speaker 4: there's a lull that is happening now, both in the
Speaker 4: organizing and in the popular support. We need to take
Speaker 4: that moment to reflect on what is working, what is not,
Speaker 4: to regroup and to find new approaches, new tactics. This
Speaker 4: is something that I write about in the chapter I
Speaker 4: wrote on TRANSI anti Fascism. Right, we need to, like
Speaker 4: we need to absolutely bring in historical contexts and comparative
Speaker 4: analysis into our into what we're doing, But that does
Speaker 4: not mean that we need to say that everything is
Speaker 4: literally the Holocaust. What we need to do is look
Speaker 4: at what are the factors, what are the causes, what
Speaker 4: are the root causes of the things that are happening,
Speaker 4: and how can we strategically organize to disrupt and to
Speaker 4: bypass those forces. So I think it's really important to
Speaker 4: have that multifaceted perspective.
Speaker 5: I think that Emily is touched on something that is
Speaker 5: really important when we say that the police are being
Speaker 5: are attacking pride events, pride marches and such, that suggests
Speaker 5: that somebody initiated something on our side. That speaks to
Speaker 5: what it is we have to do. We have to
Speaker 5: initiate certain actions. We cannot keep waiting for the fascists.
Speaker 5: We can't keep waiting, we can't keep being reactive. We
Speaker 5: do have to go on the offense. I mean, that's
Speaker 5: one of the reasons why myself, me and others have
Speaker 5: been so successful. It is because we don't wait for
Speaker 5: the fascists to do something. We do something to them
Speaker 5: before they make a move, and we know when to
Speaker 5: do it because they basically send us signals out courtesy
Speaker 5: of their free speech, that they want to do something,
Speaker 5: and we just take those cues and say, Okay, here's
Speaker 5: how we are going to go forward. We're going to
Speaker 5: let people know about you, We're going to let people
Speaker 5: know how to keep you at bay. I mean, that's
Speaker 5: the kinds of things that we need to do. We
Speaker 5: need to just basically say we are establishing this institution,
Speaker 5: we are establishing the security around that institution, and you
Speaker 5: are not going to be able to breach this institution.
Speaker 5: The other thing that we do need to do in
Speaker 5: that while we build that is also make it clear
Speaker 5: to some of those that, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 5: or wishy washy on the subject, are more mainstreamers and
Speaker 5: liberals and such who are quick to defend the fashions
Speaker 5: that they say they don't believe in before they defend us.
Speaker 5: We gotta start telling them to chill, and you gotta
Speaker 5: start telling them to pick a side and stop getting
Speaker 5: in everybody's way. Stop being a bulwark because you're too
Speaker 5: cowardly to put up this fight or you're too interested
Speaker 5: in protecting your other interests as opposed to being concerned
Speaker 5: about what's coming down the pike. The book starts off
Speaker 5: with a discussion about a three way fight. We definitely
Speaker 5: are in one. Do you want to explain what a
Speaker 5: three way fight is? Well, three way fight is not
Speaker 5: only you're dealing with you know, the obvious enemy, so
Speaker 5: to speak, but you're also dealing with those that are
Speaker 5: hesitant to do something about that enemy to the point
Speaker 5: that they will fight you more, to the point that
Speaker 5: they will fight you more. And frankly, it's frustrating. It
Speaker 5: is a frustrating thing, but it is there and it
Speaker 5: has been there through our history, and I mean even
Speaker 5: the mo I mean, I'm surprised I'm actually referencing a
Speaker 5: Mel Gibson movie, but even the movie Brave Heart brought
Speaker 5: that up. Now, I don't think that we need to
Speaker 5: smack people upside their head with a mace, but by
Speaker 5: the same token, we do have to let people know
Speaker 5: that we do have to be a little bit more
Speaker 5: I should say, assertive in our efforts as we go
Speaker 5: forward and basically try to rout this particular fascist element,
Speaker 5: and an assertive means blowing past those that are supposed
Speaker 5: to be on our side. I mean, because I was
Speaker 5: thinking about the fact that this is now the twelfth
Speaker 5: anniversary of Occupy Right, and Occupy was trying to do that.
Speaker 5: Occupy is still trying to do that, and respects the
Speaker 5: folks that were in Occupy, but some of the folks,
Speaker 5: because what you also saw at Occupy were a lot
Speaker 5: of folks who thought that they would be able to
Speaker 5: take advantage of the progress that we were making in
Speaker 5: this effort and turned it into a more fascist thing.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was just looking at a lot of
Speaker 5: the characters that come out of Occupy that went to
Speaker 5: the fascist side, and when you look at who they are,
Speaker 5: you realize that you had a whole bunch of opportunities
Speaker 5: that were within our ranks that were looking for something
Speaker 5: totally different than what the rest of us. We were
Speaker 5: looking out for each other and Occupy The true people
Speaker 5: that were dealing with Occupy Wall Street were looking out
Speaker 5: for each other in our communities. These guys just thought, Hey,
Speaker 5: perfect opportunity to just say that we're one with them
Speaker 5: and drag them over here to the right. That's strasserism,
Speaker 5: that straight up stratsifism. But when you look at it
Speaker 5: even further, it's just a bunch of people that only
Speaker 5: cared about themselves ultimately. And we've seen it after year
Speaker 5: after year in this fight. So I think that it's
Speaker 5: going to be very important to build and protect our
Speaker 5: institutions and recognize what it is we are protecting them from.
Speaker 5: And it's not hard. We have shown over and over
Speaker 5: and over again that we are prepared to weigh that
Speaker 5: kind of war. We just have to basically recognize it
Speaker 5: within ourselves when we have to do it, and that's
Speaker 5: just and do not wait for people to die. I mean,
Speaker 5: Heather Hire did not have to die. No one in
Speaker 5: January sixth. Regardless of how I feel about any of
Speaker 5: them had to die. That should not be the thing
Speaker 5: that we should respond to. We already know what to do,
Speaker 5: we just need to do it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it picked up on a lot of
Speaker 6: what everyone said, especially Michael. I think part of what
Speaker 6: gets out here is having a place for like broad
Speaker 6: social movements where they're able to interact with one another
Speaker 6: and support one another. So anti fascist movements as a
Speaker 6: defensive movement have often been essential to actually operating other
Speaker 6: kinds of organizing, you know. So like when I was
Speaker 6: working with Houselest encampments and we were doing food not
Speaker 6: bombs and stuff. You get attacked by far right groups,
Speaker 6: you had to have a defense development. There was no
Speaker 6: other choice.
Speaker 5: Same thing.
Speaker 6: I've been at union offices that were attacked by the
Speaker 6: far right. You have to have that defens development. And
Speaker 6: then on the same token, we're talking about mass actions
Speaker 6: against far right demonstrations. It requires people that are coming
Speaker 6: probably from all kinds of political backgrounds, but they've gotten
Speaker 6: involved from different kinds of practices. We're having mutual aid
Speaker 6: networks that support people getting there, sustaining themselves there, medical care,
Speaker 6: all kinds of component pieces. So those things require that
Speaker 6: kind of back and forth, and I think that also
Speaker 6: begs to how do you get people in We're talking
Speaker 6: about a lot of problems with people on like the
Speaker 6: moderate left, not kind of taking those next steps, those
Speaker 6: defensive steps that are necessary, but also how do we
Speaker 6: find a pathway for them in. You know, if we're
Speaker 6: talking about mass participation in something, if we're talking about
Speaker 6: like a revolutionary movement with huge masses of people, we
Speaker 6: have to figure out what those pathways for people are
Speaker 6: and giving them access to them. And I think also
Speaker 6: moving past what we've thought of as the far right before.
Speaker 6: I mean people have talked about this a little bit.
Speaker 6: You know, a lot of what we think of as
Speaker 6: recently anti fascism was built around finding the alt right
Speaker 6: and other kind of recent short term projects, and what
Speaker 6: we have now is just radically different, just like it
Speaker 6: will be in a few years. And so having a
Speaker 6: deep kind of intersexual understanding of how that works, because
Speaker 6: when you do that, you have that kind of natural
Speaker 6: understanding of where that's going to show up again, how
Speaker 6: it might interact with different communities, and what rule places
Speaker 6: for you. How are you able to interact with it
Speaker 6: as this person coming into a social movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, especially considering something I've been kind of
Speaker 2: watching and we're seeing a little bit of it with this,
Speaker 2: with this set of Republican primaries, is that we have
Speaker 2: an incoming new wave of kind of gen z and
Speaker 2: millennial Republicans who grew up in the alt right era
Speaker 2: who are now bringing that sort of like alt right
Speaker 2: street politics to electoralism, and how that's going to be opposed.
Speaker 2: It's going to be you know, I was just talking
Speaker 2: about before how we shouldn't just try to like retread
Speaker 2: the same ground over and over again without learning the
Speaker 2: histories from the past. But like this, for a lot
Speaker 2: of people who have just been doing like street politics
Speaker 2: the past few years, figuring out how they're going to
Speaker 2: oppose like fascism in this much more like electoral setting,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be an interesting shift because, yeah, you can
Speaker 2: like punch Richard Spencer and no one really cares too much,
Speaker 2: But if you punch someone like, you know, DeSantis, that
Speaker 2: is going to be a different thing to kind of
Speaker 2: sort through it. And so yeah, I think that is
Speaker 2: kind of one of these shifts that you know, maybe
Speaker 2: maybe coming up here soon and whatever kind of evolves
Speaker 2: on the anti fascist side to kind of meet that
Speaker 2: it is going to be interesting to watch and take
Speaker 2: part in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, you know, the part of the
Speaker 3: ar analysis has always been that fascism is built from
Speaker 3: above and below. And I think we really have to
Speaker 3: understand that that the fascism is Fascism is not only
Speaker 3: the factor of the street politics and the people who
Speaker 3: declare themselves to be fascist, but that there are fascist
Speaker 3: elements in the structure of this society, and there are
Speaker 3: fascist elements in power in this government right now. And
Speaker 3: you know, the fascism has come to power in quite
Speaker 3: a number of you know, in Italy, neo fascists as
Speaker 3: the Prime Minister, and you know in the United States
Speaker 3: Matt Gates, and that element has a clear you know,
Speaker 3: they're in power within the Republican Party, they control the
Speaker 3: House representatives in a way, and I think that that's
Speaker 3: a critical understanding. But also it speaks to the fact
Speaker 3: that fascist practices and elements exists in a lot of
Speaker 3: different places. And I think one of the things I've
Speaker 3: always tried to put out to people is that this
Speaker 3: is an aspect of the nature of imperialism, central colonialism
Speaker 3: and I want to emphasize that because I think there's
Speaker 3: a fractal character to what we're dealing with or holographic,
Speaker 3: you know, there's any element of this society that you
Speaker 3: attempt to deal with, you're actually facing the entirety of
Speaker 3: imperialism and fascism.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 3: So, if you look at the labor movement right now,
Speaker 3: labor is a big resurgence, particularly here in southern California.
Speaker 3: There have just been you know, the hotel workers and
Speaker 3: restaurant works on strike, the screen actors on strike, the
Speaker 3: writers go on strike, and the fact that there you know,
Speaker 3: there is a fascist element to the employment structure and
Speaker 3: trying to organize it. If you look what happened to
Speaker 3: the Amazon union, or just the fact that again going
Speaker 3: back in history, you know, the Taft Hartley Act was
Speaker 3: written to criminalize you know, communists and and also solidarity
Speaker 3: with the labor movement outlaw. You know, solidarity strikes, and
Speaker 3: that's fascist, that is you have to understand that. And
Speaker 3: you know, one of the reasons that the Puerto Rican
Speaker 3: in Dependence movement attack Congress was that the US attempted
Speaker 3: to put the Taft Tartly Act into practice against the
Speaker 3: labor movem in Puerto Rico, and the Nationalist Party said no,
Speaker 3: we're going to counterattack. So I think that that's a
Speaker 3: really critical understanding. We started out talking about the prisons,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's nothing more fascists that's in prison.
Speaker 3: And one of the things they do in prison is
Speaker 3: they use privilege to try to divide the prisoners. You know,
Speaker 3: and we haven't talked much about privilege and how it
Speaker 3: operates in the society, but you know, it's a key
Speaker 3: factor in how people are are organized by the system
Speaker 3: to collaborate to you know, get along by going along
Speaker 3: and so. But even inside the prisons we've seen here
Speaker 3: in California and elsewhere, and you know, the Alabama, Georgia elsewhere,
Speaker 3: prisoners are able to organize under conditions of fascism that
Speaker 3: exist in the prisons. They have ways to communicate with
Speaker 3: each other, they've built into racial solidarity in many cases.
Speaker 3: So I think those are examples of anti fascism that
Speaker 3: we need to embrace and understand the same way that
Speaker 3: people organ you know, if you're organizing a union, you're
Speaker 3: operating on a certain level clandestinely, because if you're open
Speaker 3: about it, you're going to get fired. And they're going
Speaker 3: to retaliate and they're going to anybody you talk to
Speaker 3: is going to get fired. So we need to have
Speaker 3: an understanding of ways to organize that are not always
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about arms struggle, and I'm saying that
Speaker 3: people have to organize below the radar when you're dealing
Speaker 3: with fascism, especially when it's in power, and fascism isn't
Speaker 3: in power, and a lot of sectors of the society
Speaker 3: right now and people are dealing with it, as Emily
Speaker 3: said about you know, Istanbul and Pride marches, you know,
Speaker 3: so you know, I think we need to make those
Speaker 3: connections into the labor movement, into the prison movement, into
Speaker 3: the you know, formally incarcerated people's movement, you know, the
Speaker 3: solidarity with indigenous struggles that are going on against that's
Speaker 3: just the colonization of their lands and struggles. And I
Speaker 3: think that if we understand that that's an aspect of
Speaker 3: anti fascism, I think it actually strengthens what we're engaged in.
Speaker 1: Definitely. I think it's also important just to, like, I guess,
Speaker 1: if people are thinking about their organizing, and it's always
Speaker 1: important to hear from those struggles as well. As you know,
Speaker 1: to to include them, but to really include them in
Speaker 1: a sense of like listening and learning from rather than
Speaker 1: sort of telling and saying this is like a Cish hat,
Speaker 1: white guy. It's definitely a thing that I've perceived in
Speaker 1: the movement in the last few years is a desire
Speaker 1: to speak a little more and listen a little less.
Speaker 1: And one thing I enjoyed about your book is that
Speaker 1: when we talk about fascism, and we'd already mentioned Michael's
Speaker 1: mentioned the border as a sort of a location for
Speaker 1: fascist experiments within the United States, which I think it's
Speaker 1: very hard to argue against living on the border. If
Speaker 1: you protested in twenty twenty against police violence, you were
Speaker 1: surveiled using technology that has been used for years where
Speaker 1: I live, against migrants and citizens who live here. But
Speaker 1: I really liked your perspective on looking at global fascisms,
Speaker 1: because fascism is it's very easy to spend too much
Speaker 1: time defining fascism, especially as anti fascists, right, Like, it's
Speaker 1: extremely easy to be like, it's not fascism unless it
Speaker 1: comes from the Fascia region of Italy, kind of like
Speaker 1: this like cheese or champagne. Definition of fascism, but they've
Speaker 1: focused on, for instance, fascism in India. Like, if I
Speaker 1: go to the border, I was at the border a
Speaker 1: couple of days ago, right that there are tons of
Speaker 1: Punjabi Sikh people camped out in the desert right now
Speaker 1: because border patroller are holding them in an open air
Speaker 1: concentration camp, essentially because of what's happening in India that
Speaker 1: they turn up here, right and as well as bringing
Speaker 1: sort of migrant detention, resistance and migrant mutual aid and
Speaker 1: to any fascism, I think it's important anti fascists also
Speaker 1: like we can take concrete action to protect and like
Speaker 1: to care for victim survivors of fascism. I guess people
Speaker 1: who fled fascism, and like, when I think about what
Speaker 1: my backgrounds in the study of the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: right that that's what my PhD is about. The thing
Speaker 1: that radicalized young often Jewish men growing up in the
Speaker 1: same part of New York that you did, was often
Speaker 1: seeing people fleeing fascism coming to their communities and then
Speaker 1: being like, we can't allow that not only to not
Speaker 1: happen here, but the crucial step that like, we can't
Speaker 1: allow that to happen anywhere, and that being what kind
Speaker 1: of motivated them to travel to Spain, and many of
Speaker 1: many of them died fighting in the Spanish Civil War, right,
Speaker 1: But I think we could do better to do that
Speaker 1: as well. Like now, I know not all of us
Speaker 1: are living in the United States right now, but sometimes,
Speaker 1: like Emily said, American anti fascism can be very exceptionalist
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I think that we have so much
Speaker 1: to learn from anti fascists. In my sort of formative experiences,
Speaker 1: we're in Catalonia, in Spain, but also in India, also
Speaker 1: in Russia, right, And I wonder if anyone could shall
Speaker 1: like sort of I guess concrete ways that people listening
Speaker 1: can help to expand that solidarity into an international anti fascism.
Speaker 6: I think there's an interesting example, and it gets to
Speaker 6: what Michael was stressing about fascism being kind of colonial
Speaker 6: rule brought back to homeland. You know a lot of
Speaker 6: the methods that were used against kind of mid century
Speaker 6: anti fascist organizers, for example, the Anti Nazi League or
Speaker 6: later anti fascist.
Speaker 5: Action in the UK.
Speaker 6: We're basically test run against Irish Republicans in Northern Ireland, right,
Speaker 6: So those uprisings different kind of methods of crowd control,
Speaker 6: use of quote unquote non lethal weapons, different kinds of
Speaker 6: forms of incarceration, then used later against the Anti Nazi League.
Speaker 6: So there's sort of a step. They're taking this colonial
Speaker 6: rule back home that's the testing ground, and then using
Speaker 6: it domestically. And I think what that actually does is
Speaker 6: create a certain bridge between two communities that there's now
Speaker 6: a point of connection where they can relate. That doesn't
Speaker 6: mean they're in the same situation, right like it doesn't
Speaker 6: mean that like someone protesting in the United States is
Speaker 6: in the same situation as someone in to call in
Speaker 6: my space, But having that shared system that actually binds
Speaker 6: us together in that sense of solidarity, that's a new
Speaker 6: model of safety. That's a new model of community. So
Speaker 6: it's now seeing my strength in that alignment with someone else,
Speaker 6: of connecting with communities internationally, learning from what they're doing,
Speaker 6: but making real connections between them, ones that have a
Speaker 6: real sense of weight between them, where someone's success in
Speaker 6: international social movement has real effect on your lives and
Speaker 6: back and forth. I think committing to that is actually
Speaker 6: the kind of biggest thing we can do that creates
Speaker 6: an international movement, and it makes everyone stronger everyone, more effective.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one of the strengths of anti racist
Speaker 3: action was that it was always an international organization. It
Speaker 3: was US and Canada and there were a lot of
Speaker 3: chapters in Canada and that really helped break some of
Speaker 3: the US exceptionalism understanding. But he also had corresponding organizations.
Speaker 3: It was Resistancia, Redskin in Colombia in Bogaton, and a
Speaker 3: couple of like Colleia. I think, and you know, I
Speaker 3: think that that really is an important element. And again
Speaker 3: what I said is that we need to understand that,
Speaker 3: you know, similar to what Lennon said about the the
Speaker 3: Russian Empire, that is the prison house of nations, that
Speaker 3: there are captive nations inside the borders in the United States,
Speaker 3: and that you know, indigenous sovereignty, uh, you know, Puerto
Speaker 3: Rican independence and you know Hawaiian sovereignty and a lot
Speaker 3: of other issues. And I think those are things that
Speaker 3: you know, the fascists try to exploit. Also, you know,
Speaker 3: they present themselves, you know, fascism presents itself in the
Speaker 3: Third World as a strategy for you know, national dependence.
Speaker 3: When the Japanese you know, empire, but it so forward.
Speaker 3: It was the the you know, they presented themselves as
Speaker 3: being opposing British and US imperiless in Asia. You know that,
Speaker 3: and you know then they were employing their own imperialism.
Speaker 3: But you know that that internationalist element I think is
Speaker 3: really critical. And uh, I think the same thing in labor.
Speaker 3: I think that the labor movement, you know needs in
Speaker 3: this country needs to think about uh, you know, prison
Speaker 3: struggles as part of the labor movement needs to think
Speaker 3: about the internationalists uidlarity with labor struggles elsewhere. One of
Speaker 3: the things I raised with in relation to the uh,
Speaker 3: the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild here is that
Speaker 3: you know, they're based this whole thing about artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if people are aware, but artificial
Speaker 3: intelligence depends on tens of thousands of people in the
Speaker 3: Philippines and elsewhere that are working, you know, as gig workers,
Speaker 3: processing stuff to put it into artificial intelligence. And you know,
Speaker 3: the same thing you're saying about the border, the technology
Speaker 3: of self driving vehicles is based on the same technology
Speaker 3: using to you know, for motion detection on the border.
Speaker 3: And the reason they're doing that is also because the
Speaker 3: people driving self driving vehicles is not just Google and uber,
Speaker 3: but it's the US Army Tank Division which wants to
Speaker 3: have automated self driving tanks the same way they have drones.
Speaker 3: And having that understanding that it is up against the
Speaker 3: global system and the fascists or a piece of that,
Speaker 3: but they're not the only piece of that, I think
Speaker 3: is really really critical to understanding what we have to
Speaker 3: deal with.
Speaker 4: We talk about, you know, what would a fascist government
Speaker 4: look like if it was in control, you know, full
Speaker 4: control with no opposition. I think there are plenty of
Speaker 4: examples of that, and there's a fascist war happening right
Speaker 4: now in Ukraine, and I think that there's so much
Speaker 4: that we can learn from what is going on there
Speaker 4: that oftentimes I think that as anti fascists we find
Speaker 4: ourselves wanting to be with the left, that we get
Speaker 4: into a political situation that gets muddled. I went to
Speaker 4: the border twice in Ukraine when the war broke out.
Speaker 4: I would relive Unite the Right one hundred times before
Speaker 4: I had to go back to that again. We don't
Speaker 4: understand scales until you have seen it, until you've seen
Speaker 4: the hundred or the thousand yards there from hundreds of people,
Speaker 4: you know, poring over the border. I'm sure James, you're
Speaker 4: you're you're very familiar with this, with the border work
Speaker 4: that you're doing there. These things are so often distant
Speaker 4: and abstract to us that we we lose sight, that
Speaker 4: we think that we can influence things within our own
Speaker 4: spaces that will then have an impact on these bigger,
Speaker 4: bigger systems, and we can't write. So I think that
Speaker 4: you know, to go back to you know, what would
Speaker 4: be the call of action? You know, what would I
Speaker 4: want the listener to take take away from this. I
Speaker 4: think that this is about, as somebody said earlier, listen,
Speaker 4: listen more, and speak less. Right, try to read, Try
Speaker 4: to to see what people elsewhere are doing, how they're organizing,
Speaker 4: what their needs are. You know, how do we do
Speaker 4: mutual aid in earthquake and flood stricken areas? How do
Speaker 4: we do mutual aid for refugees who are fleeing a
Speaker 4: war and things like that. There's just so so much
Speaker 4: out there that we need to bring into perspective. And
Speaker 4: if you think that you can fix any of it,
Speaker 4: or even just a small part of it simply through
Speaker 4: speaking up or you know, awareness campaigns, I think that
Speaker 4: you're a misled So I think my call it action
Speaker 4: is go out, read books, meet people, get off of Twitter.
Speaker 4: Scrass for me to say it. But the master's tools
Speaker 4: can't dismantle the master's house, right. We can't keep this
Speaker 4: pattern of outrage cycles up. In order to move the
Speaker 4: issue forward, we have to come up with something new.
Speaker 4: My challenge to people is to put your brains together
Speaker 4: and figure out what that news going to look like.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's where we could end actually is with each
Speaker 1: of you suggesting something like Emily has just done right,
Speaker 1: something to read, something to do, and an action to
Speaker 1: take that could concretely to help us oppose and rebuff
Speaker 1: and push back against fashion.
Speaker 5: I think it was pretty much going back to what
Speaker 5: I was saying earlier, that it will begin when we
Speaker 5: take the bull by the horns. It will begin whenever
Speaker 5: we decide that we are going to establish this. I mean,
Speaker 5: it goes back. You know, I grew up with hip hop.
Speaker 5: I was in the punk scene. Both those genres. Both
Speaker 5: those cultures were created by people who by those who
Speaker 5: didn't see, say, the mainstream listening to them. So they said,
Speaker 5: you know what, we don't need them. We need to
Speaker 5: just go ahead and do what we need to do.
Speaker 5: So we can benefit what it is we want to do,
Speaker 5: and that's the attitude that we got to have. We
Speaker 5: got to have that hip hop attitude, got to have
Speaker 5: that punk attitude, and we just simply got to build
Speaker 5: the institutions that will address the situation. And I will
Speaker 5: say it again, that's what Occupy was about. I think
Speaker 5: we need to continue to learn the lessons from Occupy
Speaker 5: in order to go forward. And once we start doing that,
Speaker 5: first of all, when we do that, we're going to
Speaker 5: see again people trying to either co op or or
Speaker 5: take it down. And we got to also protect ourselves
Speaker 5: from from that as well. I mean, I know I'm
Speaker 5: repeating what I had said earlier, but I think that
Speaker 5: the solutions and you know what I didn't say. I
Speaker 5: think the solutions are already being implemented. I think that
Speaker 5: we are all have been working and doing this. Folks
Speaker 5: that aren't on this folks that aren't on this podcast,
Speaker 5: folks that would never be on any pockets are just
Speaker 5: basically putting their time and to make sure that the
Speaker 5: things are done properly. I just got I just saw
Speaker 5: on the news that they had in Delaware they just
Speaker 5: passed the law against I guess what they call panic
Speaker 5: panic killings in regards to the LGBTQ community. You know
Speaker 5: that what they call back in the day, the gay
Speaker 5: panic thing defense. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Delaware became the seventeenth state I believe, yesterday to make
Speaker 5: that illegal. It should have been illegal in the first place.
Speaker 5: But but they basically for those who don't know what
Speaker 5: that means, it generally means you cannot kill somebody because
Speaker 5: you're freaked out over someone being gag. I mean, that's
Speaker 5: just basically what it is concerned for. It happened after
Speaker 5: Jenny Jones. Uh, somebody expressed their feelings towards another man,
Speaker 5: and that person after the Jenny Jones show had murdered
Speaker 5: that person, and the killer, instead of getting first degree murder,
Speaker 5: got second degree murder because he used a gay panic defense.
Speaker 5: So people initially, so that was where everything started, and
Speaker 5: everybody was saying that we got to do something about that.
Speaker 5: If it was not for us putting together the mechanism
Speaker 5: and the institutions to breasically basically voice our concerns, voice
Speaker 5: our issues, and say we got to do something about
Speaker 5: this today, would that have happened. It should not be
Speaker 5: seventeen states, By the way, it should be all fifty.
Speaker 5: But that's the kind of things that we need to do.
Speaker 5: These are the things that it's all going to depend
Speaker 5: on us, and how we act to things that is
Speaker 5: going to make all the difference in the world. So
Speaker 5: when everybody's ready, let's rock and roll.
Speaker 6: I think I'm really interested in getting people connected as
Speaker 6: social movements for their entire lives and seeing things through
Speaker 6: being really connected with communities. And I think that's about
Speaker 6: looking about where people fit in, where they feel comfortable
Speaker 6: building those relationships because it both at the kind of
Speaker 6: local and national international scale, So finding I think a
Speaker 6: piece and pathway for folks. I mean right now, I
Speaker 6: think considering what we're dealing with, climate and economic collapse,
Speaker 6: mutual aid networks or a natural central piece of that.
Speaker 5: So it's a labor.
Speaker 6: Movement and going where the far right is having their
Speaker 6: front lines, making our defensive front lines, so for example
Speaker 6: in defense and trans healthcare against that trans legislation and
Speaker 6: defense of queer events like dirrect mean story are that's
Speaker 6: absolutely important, and we have those relationships now. So it's
Speaker 6: about sort of finding a place to be able to
Speaker 6: reproduce those social movements and grow them and again like
Speaker 6: Daryl said, people are doing that, and I think like
Speaker 6: as there are shifts, people have to kind of redefine
Speaker 6: that a little bit. But having that adaptability is what
Speaker 6: we've kind of learned over this rapidly changing environment the
Speaker 6: last few years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll take again to give people a little bit
Speaker 3: of sense of the longer view. I think that the
Speaker 3: rise of the Christian Right in this country has a
Speaker 3: lot to do with the distruction of the labor movement
Speaker 3: and the collapse of organized labor. Was that vacuum was
Speaker 3: filled by you know, the Christian right, because the labor
Speaker 3: movement at one point did touch people throughout their lives
Speaker 3: and their culture, and it was not just in your workplace,
Speaker 3: but it was a community organization. And I think that
Speaker 3: we have to rebuild that, you know, from the bottom up,
Speaker 3: and it is happening. There's a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: young people involved in labor organizing. I think that again
Speaker 3: what I said earlier about the fractal nature of the system.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things people left in the
Speaker 3: name is anything they're trying to do, they have an enemy.
Speaker 3: It's not just a problem that they're trying to face,
Speaker 3: they have there is an enemy. Out there that is
Speaker 3: trying to enforce the system that we have as it collapses,
Speaker 3: and I think that that's critical. So yes, the mutual
Speaker 3: aid and the kind of things Emily was talking about,
Speaker 3: I think are critical. I think people are working on
Speaker 3: people's assemblies. I was at this dual Power gathering and
Speaker 3: the Midwest and there was just one up in Portland recently.
Speaker 3: And I think that the understanding that all the power
Speaker 3: and all the wealth that this system possesses is actually
Speaker 3: stolen from the people that it oppresses and exploits, and
Speaker 3: that it's our power and it's our power to take
Speaker 3: it back. We have the creative power. I think that's critical,
Speaker 3: and that their power is exploitive and power over an
Speaker 3: hour is the power, you know, to create. I think
Speaker 3: that understanding and that concept of solidary and I do
Speaker 3: think that, you know, against Stephen Beko, part of the
Speaker 3: Black Conscience movement in South Africa, said the you know,
Speaker 3: the greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is
Speaker 3: the minds of the oppressed. And I think to the
Speaker 3: extent that we can wage to struggle for a different
Speaker 3: consciousness that is not based on privilege, is not based
Speaker 3: on getting along by going along is not based on individualism,
Speaker 3: you know, but is based on collective solidarity, and that
Speaker 3: actually disempowers the people that we're dealing with and threatens
Speaker 3: them in ways that you know, they're they're they're freaked out.
Speaker 3: They understand better than we do the tenuous nature of
Speaker 3: their power. And you know the reason for fascism, the
Speaker 3: turn to fascism is that they want to try to
Speaker 3: intimidate people and you know, you know, break people, people
Speaker 3: sell clarity up. And I think that that, you know,
Speaker 3: we need to understand there's a dialectic there and to
Speaker 3: the extent that we can create those connections between people
Speaker 3: that actually disempowers them, the fascists and the state. You know,
Speaker 3: I have a different perspective on the three way fight.
Speaker 3: I think the three way fight is versus the fascists,
Speaker 3: you know, the self declared fascists and against the state
Speaker 3: and the capitalist the bourgeoisie. And you know, they're not identical.
Speaker 3: They have contradictions with each other and we can exploit
Speaker 3: those and drive wedges of our own. I think we
Speaker 3: have to find wedge issues that peel people off from
Speaker 3: their identification with the oppressor, with white supremacy and with
Speaker 3: imperialism and you know, pull people together and then who've
Speaker 3: been you know, separated from that identification with the state
Speaker 3: and with white power and bring them into solidarity with
Speaker 3: you know, the global majority of people who are struggling
Speaker 3: for you know, survival and a better world.
Speaker 2: Does anyone have anything to plug besides the book?
Speaker 1: Yeah, explicitly plug the books. I don't think we did, Like, like,
Speaker 1: what where can you buy it?
Speaker 5: What's your code? Yeah?
Speaker 6: I can plug in and do the self promotion. So
Speaker 6: the book is no passeran anti fascist Dispatches from a
Speaker 6: World on crisis, So we all have chapters in it.
Speaker 5: I edited it. It's with AKA.
Speaker 6: Press, who listeners are probably familiar with, so you can
Speaker 6: get AKA Press. Always recommend folks go to Akpress and
Speaker 6: buy directly if they can, but you can get it
Speaker 6: pretty much anywhere. And it's a hefty read. It's about
Speaker 6: five hundred pages, about twenty five chapters, and it really
Speaker 6: covers the gamut. Some of the stuff we talked about,
Speaker 6: some stuff we didn't get to. So it's a really
Speaker 6: good overview of some of the different conversations happening in
Speaker 6: the anti fascist movement and hopefully where it goes in
Speaker 6: the Future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll second that. I think the chapter in anti
Speaker 3: fascism in the black metal scene was really fascinating and
Speaker 3: worth the price of the book all by itself, honestly
Speaker 3: the stuff. But India, I did want to talk to
Speaker 3: other books. I've been involved in what is called the
Speaker 3: Blue Agave Revolution. It's self published myself and OsO Blanco
Speaker 3: Indigenous political Prisoner Contact, Anti Racist Actions, anti Racist dot
Speaker 3: Org or emailed me anti racist on the score, laid
Speaker 3: Yahoo dot Com. I was also involved with although I
Speaker 3: did not edit or anything, but I contributed a lot
Speaker 3: of material to we Go Where They Go, which is
Speaker 3: from PM Press. It's the history of AAR and it's
Speaker 3: chock full of incredible material about you know, specificity. One
Speaker 3: of the things we didn't talk about aras involved in
Speaker 3: was cop Watch. But you know, just a lot of
Speaker 3: you know, cultural material and other stuff there that it's
Speaker 3: well worth reading.
Speaker 5: Well, I guess I'll try. I mean say, I have
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff out there right now. One of
Speaker 5: the things that you can look for with me is
Speaker 5: a documentary that was put out in twenty eighteen called
Speaker 5: Right Age of Rage. It's somewhere online. I believe it's
Speaker 5: on TB right now what was on Netflix. I found
Speaker 5: out that the reason why it's not on Netflix anymore
Speaker 5: is because Netflix has deemed it too political. But you
Speaker 5: can still find it out there. It's a really good
Speaker 5: remmer on basically what it is we're fighting in this
Speaker 5: current time. We Don't Walk in Fear is the latest
Speaker 5: documentary that I've been involved with. Some students in Villanova
Speaker 5: University wanted to do a documentary about me, and it's
Speaker 5: not exactly available to the public. What I've been doing.
Speaker 5: You can probably find it at film festivals and things
Speaker 5: like that, but what I've been doing is showing it
Speaker 5: at various events that I've been invited to, whether it's
Speaker 5: some sort of speed engagement or what have you. So
Speaker 5: it's only a half hour long. But if anybody's in
Speaker 5: a university or in a bookstore or whatever and would
Speaker 5: like me to come out and show show the documentary
Speaker 5: to folks and talk about it later, please feel free
Speaker 5: to give me. Hit me up over at our website
Speaker 5: One People's Project dot com. We also have a newsline
Speaker 5: that's adevox dot com, both of them on threads and
Speaker 5: on ig We also have also the last thing that
Speaker 5: I would like to hype is also in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: there are There was the movie Skin where Mike Culter
Speaker 5: who played Lue Cage and it's in the TV show Evil.
Speaker 5: He plays me. It's about a neo Nazi, someone from
Speaker 5: the villain the Social Club, one of the nastiest and
Speaker 5: forces who got out thanks to myself and others. And
Speaker 5: it's a it's a beautiful story and it's been now
Speaker 5: since twenty eighteen. The short film is a different story.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to say too much about it because
Speaker 5: you need to watch it. You can find it on YouTube,
Speaker 5: or you can find a feature Amazon feature Skin on
Speaker 5: Amazon Prime. But you can find they find a short
Speaker 5: film on YouTube. It actually won an Oscar in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: and I'm listening as a consulting producer, so I guess
Speaker 5: I have an oscar. And that's about it. I mean,
Speaker 5: if you want me to speak, come to your colleges
Speaker 5: or whatever to speak or show the documentary We Don't
Speaker 5: Walk in Fear. Feel free to give me a ring.
Speaker 5: I'll be happy to see you. I love traveling.
Speaker 3: Like I mentioned one other thing. Actually we talked earlier.
Speaker 3: I am the interim general manager of KPFK ninety point
Speaker 3: seven FM in Los Angeles. It's one of the PACIFICA
Speaker 3: radio stations. So it's KPFK dot Org. We have stopped
Speaker 3: labed spying on the radio. We have It's going down
Speaker 3: on the radio. We have Society and American Indian Airwaves
Speaker 3: in the radio, we have Larrasa Radio, a.
Speaker 5: Lot of others very worthwhile.
Speaker 3: It's at KPFK dot org and we're in a current
Speaker 3: membership drive for October. Anybody wants to join the station.
Speaker 3: They don't live in LA and the Anti Racist dot
Speaker 3: Org has about thirty five years of turning the tiet
Speaker 3: and a bunch of stuff actually from earlier. I put
Speaker 3: some of the stuff from Brother Reform from being Sexism
Speaker 3: but I worked on in the seventies up there, including
Speaker 3: a letter from Michelle McGee was just recently released finally
Speaker 3: after I think forty eight years in prison, survivor of
Speaker 3: the Mare in Courthouse Rebellion.
Speaker 4: I don't have anything to plug. I have a book
Speaker 4: that I'm working on getting representation for, but that's still
Speaker 4: a little bit too early for me to plug. So
Speaker 4: I'll just maybe plug a little bit of what is
Speaker 4: continuing to happen in Charlottesville before we end, so some
Speaker 4: of you may not be aware of that. Criminal cases
Speaker 4: are still being brought against the neo Nazis who marched
Speaker 4: with the tiki torches. We have sort of successfully convinced
Speaker 4: the local prosecutor to do something about these fascists who
Speaker 4: have obviously terrorized the community and continue to do it
Speaker 4: in their other communities. And whether or not you agree
Speaker 4: with that approach, the community in Charlottesville and Alcamoll still
Speaker 4: needs that support and that witnessing. As this all heads
Speaker 4: to trial this winter, we're expecting some renewed fascist attention.
Speaker 4: So I'll just give a shout out for the community
Speaker 4: and ask for your awareness.
Speaker 1: Great, well, thank you very much for time everyone. I
Speaker 1: think that was really instructive and interesting. And yeah, everyone
Speaker 1: should read the book. I read much of it before
Speaker 1: we started today. It's great, it's very interesting. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you very much.
Speaker 2: Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
Speaker 2: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com, slash sources, thanks for listening.