Insofar as we know, It’s Going Down is one of best platforms presenting news from an antifascist perspective. Has the federal classification of antifa as domestic terrorists caused any repression of your website?
There is no federal classification of antifa as domestic terrorists as the US lacks the legal infrastructure to designate domestic groups as such….
Before leaving office, Trump did issue an executive order that stated antifascists would be added to the list of groups banned under the so-called ‘Muslim Ban’ or Travel Ban, however no one was clear how this would be implemented or if this was legally possible, and Biden has already thrown out those executive orders regardless.
The push by the Trump administration to label antifascists as domestic terrorists has however been picked up as a rallying cry by sections of the GOP and the far-Right….
At the same time, repressive State organs such as the FBI, DHS, and Joint Terrorism Task Forces operating out of Fusion Centers routinely place heavy emphasis on anarchist, Black Lives Matter, and antifascist groups. For instance, thanks to Freedom of Information Act Requests, we know that police in Berkeley referred to “Black Lives Matter” and “ANTIFA” as “hate groups” in the lead up to counter-protests to far-Right rallies. Homeland Security even pushed the line that antifascists were a bigger threat than the far-Right in the lead up to Charlottesville.
The FBI has also ramped up surveillance of Black Lives Matter, creating a designation of “Black Identity Extremists” and also creating a so-called “Iron Fist” program to disrupt the current Black liberation movement; all of which echos back to COINTELPRO [from the 1960s.]
In the wake of the far-Right storming of the capitol on January 6th, it is incumbent upon autonomous social movements and the Left in general to remind the public that for years the State allowed the fascist Right to grow, while focusing on coming down against the Left. Giving the State more powers to repress even the far-Right, will ultimately be used even harder against movements from below.
What are your primary critiques of the mainstream liberal media’s approach to fascist and white supremacist activity?
The neoliberal press treated the ascension of the Alt-Right in 2016 as an oddity; an upper-middle class fascist movement that embraced white identity politics was something that they did not know how to cover. The fact that they believe racism and white supremacy to only be the station of poor and working-class whites speaks volumes to the ‘class gaze’ of many journalists. This reality was shattered however in Charlottesville, where the press was confronted, and in some cases attacked, by the very people they had been platforming for the past year….
The stance by the press overall towards antifascists and anarchists more broadly has been one largely of contempt. Before Charlottesville, there were literally more editorials written attacking antifascists in mainstream newspapers than there were attacking the Alt-Right. And while the red carpet was rolled out for the far-Right and volumes of explainer pieces were written about the movement, when it came to autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements and struggles, the press was afraid to dive deep and give a platform to those with radical anti-capitalist views — and for good reason. While news of Nazis sells, it does also not upset the owners of corporate media. This dynamic resulted in a reality where the media gave the far-Right a large platform to talk about their ideas, where antifascists, when they were interviewed at all, were forced to defend their tactics.
In short, if working people understood that they could self-organize and take on the far-Right without looking to the State or the police — and what other conclusion could one make under Trump — then what was stopping them from blocking ICE vans, stopping evictions, launching strikes and engaging in other forms of actions that put our own interests ahead of those in power?
As a guest on our show put it: the media exists to divorce social movement from their potential base of support within the wider population. While we are not opposed to talking to the media at times, we do so knowing that they are owned and controlled by forces that don’t have our best interests at heart.
What role do anarchist media projects, including It’s Going Down, play in challenging fascism?
IGD and other platforms have been able to massively shift the conversation around the far-Right while vindicating social movements pushing back against them. We’ve also been able to at times break stories — for instance exposing an Alt-Right member of Turning Point USA screaming racial slurs on video, thus causing a crisis within the organization and his removal. Just today, we learned that a member of the Proud Boys who has wormed his way into the local GOP was removed due to a video of them calling for the murder of migrants going around on the internet. Moreover, journalists for a lot of reasons also lack the fortitude to ‘break stories’ and challenge existing narratives. The fact that Unicorn Riot, IGD, and many others have pushed things so hard, allows journalists in the mainstream to report on what we’re already covering. The downside of this is that at times our work is stolen and not attributed back to us by larger outlets.
What antifascists are currently behind bars who were convicted for their political activities?
First we should mention, Gage Halupowski, currently serving a six year sentence for defending other protesters from a group of fascists armed with hammers. There is currently an outbreak at his prison, so please step up and support! Also anarchist prisoner Eric King faces constant attacks and harassment for being an outspoken antifascist and is currently fighting trumped up charges from the guards. Finally, hundreds of people are facing heavy charges following the rebellion that kicked off this summer following the police murder of George Floyd. We must all play a role in prisoner defense, so get in where you fit in and do what you can.
Anything else you want to say on these topics is welcome!
There’s a lot more we can say but the energy that exploded last summer needs to continue, albeit in new trajectories and projects. The neoliberal center is going to attempt to placate liberals and progressives and push for social peace; it’s our job to point out the contradictions and how similar both parties really are. We need to keep building up the mass networks and programs of mutual aid, tenant unions, and prison organizing which has been taking place across the US the past year and expand these projects. There’s a lot of new people around radical circles now that need to be caught up to speed on everything from security culture to community organizing — let’s not lose our momentum but keep growing. Already since Biden has been elected we’ve seen strikes in New York and riots against the police in Tacoma; things may have calmed down a bit, but nothing is going back to whatever ‘normal’ is in an age of catastrophic climate change and rising fascism. Get organized. Expand the capacity of your projects. Work on strengthening existing movement infrastructure and growing it. Solidify and build regional networks. Deepen relationships with the broader proletariat in every way possible.
Follow It’s Going Down online at itsgoingdown.org, on Twitter @IGD_News on IG: its.going.down. and check us out in the bay area on the radio, every Friday at 12PM NOON at 94.1 on KPFA.
It’s rare to have a good feeling about the earth these days — but that’s the feeling I had as I turned the wrench and shut off the valve to my house’s gas meter on New Years Eve. “This house,” I thought, “is finally done with combustion.” I had just replaced all the natural gas-burning machines with electric alternatives — and around here that’s a big improvement since over 80% of the local electric grid is an emissions-free mix of hydro, nuclear, solar, wind and geothermal.
The only way to get to zero emissions is to stop burning fossil fuels — which means either not doing stuff we currently do with fossil fuels or converting machines to run on electricity, since it’s possible to make electricity without combustion. Wind is already cheaper than fossil fueled electricity and solar power is about to be cheaper. So the one-two punch is to convert to electric power and make electrical generation emissions-free. While electric power plants currently account for 27 percent of US emissions, the number is falling rapidly and could hit zero with enough public pressure and investment.
Individual acts may feel irrelevant in the face of the global, rapidly escalating climate catastrophe. But doing what you can helps avoid terror, hopelessness and paralysis — so you can stay focused on collective action that might help. I’ve found that I can’t live in denial of climate change. At the playground with my daughter, while taking a shower, riding my bike or cooking dinner, I’m always aware that the world is dying around me, that human society may soon be swept away if CO2 emissions continue at their current rate, and that complex ecosystems (and my life which depends on these ecosystems) will decline every year for the rest of my life because human are still burning fossil fuels.
When I boiled water for hot cocoa with my old gas stove, I could imagine the CO2 spewing into the air – to drift and blow – some absorbed into the ocean changing its chemistry, some warming the climate. My small act emitted CO2 that would remain in the environment for the next 100 years — long after both me and my cocoa would be cold and dead and gone.
Fossil fuels are collective mass suicide — it has been clear for 30 years that no level of CO2 emissions is sustainable. Climate change can feel overwhelming since it’s global and seemingly out of our control — as individuals we didn’t invent and don’t run all the systems dependent on burning fossil fuels. Addressing climate change requires systemic change — institutional change, political change — which is only going to happen because millions of people organize, agitate, protest, and create overwhelming pressure for transition.
Everyone can get involved in agitation for dramatic, immediate measures to cease fossil fuel combustion locally and nationally — stopping new pipelines, urging divestment, pressuring corporations and working outside and from within cultural and political systems.
Focusing on personal action in addition to collective action is a distraction — but also a paradox, because getting to zero emissions requires unprecedented and widespread levels of personal and individual change along with systemic change. Neither works on its own.
At my house, the most complex aspect of getting rid of natural gas was running a bunch of new 220 volt circuits. The biggest adjustment was swapping the gas stove for an electric induction one that uses a magnetic field to heat just the pot and that allows instant temperature adjustment. I love cooking and it is a fine alternative to gas — my food is just as yummy and it is just as fun to cook.
Converting to electricity is something individuals can do right now to get closer to a zero emissions world and perhaps to reduce personal eco-anxiety.
But the largest single source of emissions in the US is transportation — 28 percent — and individual passenger cars represent about 60 percent of that. So even more than changing home appliances, the greatest impact an individual can have is reducing transportation combustion by either moving less or moving without combustion.
The simplest, easiest way to reduce transportation emissions is to move less in the first place and focus on friends, events and places right around you — which is how humans existed until about 100 years ago. I’ve mostly given up trying to convince anyone to do this — we’re all so used to a car-based lifestyle that disregards distance. But it’s still right even if it requires re-training ourselves.
Mostly, I bicycle for transportation and I admit that being able to do so is a privilege. I live in California where the weather is nice and I’ve been able to arrange my life so I live close to stores and work at home. There are also lots of choices that I and other bicyclists make so we can bicycle — it isn’t all privilege and luck. Part of being a bicyclist is seeing distance differently than car drivers do. Going even 10 miles takes a long time on a bike — so cyclists figure out how to meet their needs closer to home and avoid frivolous travel. I rarely go more than 3 miles from my house without putting my bike on BART — which I haven’t done since pandemic started. There’s a richness in staying nearer to home — you discover a lot of stuff you would have missed whizzing around in a car.
When my daughter was born 8 years ago, she couldn’t go on a bike for her first year, so I mostly walked within a mile of home that year. Now we go on all our adventures and daily travels by bike. From ages 1-6 she rode on an iBert seat on my handlebars, and now she rides a tagalong third wheel that clips to the back of my bike. I can haul almost anything I need in bike bags or a bike trailer — I’ve even moved plywood and bags of cement. And each year I take about 20,000 Slingshot organizers to the post office via bike trailer. Once you think like a bicyclist, you realize how much is possible on foot, via bike and on public transit — and a lot of car travel most people do thoughtlessly seems silly.
But cars still dominate. So a question becomes “If millions of people insist on driving, and if gasoline powered cars is certain climate suicide, what can be done to promote cars that don’t emit CO2?”
Cars can run on hydrogen which only emits water when its burned — and it is possible to make hydrogen out of regular water with solar or wind powered electricity, but so far hydrogen cars are rare. A lot of energy is lost using hydrogen vs. batteries, so it takes a lot more energy per mile driven. Another article should address the topic. Most non-emitting cars being built now are electric battery-powered vehicles.
So even though I don’t care much for cars, my wife and I decided to buy an electric car last year. My 73 year old housemate Nora’s car was in decline, and I felt like if she was going to drive most days, it would be better if she drove an electric car not a gasoline one.
Okay — let me admit the full absurd truth: I had an extremely vivid dream one night about a VW bus. When I woke up I checked Craigslist and the first thing I saw was a VW bus converted to electricity. It was beautiful — but the number of miles it could go on a charge was terrible. While obsessing over the VW, I researched electric cars and realized that they are now a very reasonable option if you want to drive a car. If everyone switched from gasoline cars to electric vehicles (EVs), it would dramatically reduce CO2 emissions. Even if they were all run entirely on fossil fueled electricity, EVs would cut emissions since power to run them emit less CO2 per mile than gasoline cars. It would help even more if people drove less. Used EVs are selling for not too much money these days.
The 2 key things to consider if you want to get an EV are the battery range — how far can you go between charges — and where you can charge it? We got a 2017 Chevy Bolt with a range of about 230 miles. It has a quick charging plug that can recharge the battery in under an hour, but so far there are hardly any of those fancy quick chargers out there. Fast chargers use DC power and cost thousands of dollars — no one has one at home.
What people have at home is either a level 1 charger running on 110 volts, or a level 2 charger that needs 220 volts. The level 1 charger will take more than a day to recharge a car which isn’t going to work for most people. So I installed a 32 amp level 2 charger — which brings up another funny story. Most EVs in my neighborhood are parked in a driveway for charging. My house is a big old Victorian with no driveway — there’s only street parking. Where could I put the charger? I put it in the corner of the yard under the bike shed and then I ran the cord into some trees that hang over the sidewalk. When not in use, the cord is hidden in the tree. When you want to charge, you get out a ladder, disconnect a bungie cord holding the cord to a branch, and pull down the cord. It looks like the tree is charging the car.
Like any technology, EVs take an ecological toll on the earth and in particular their batteries require huge lithium mines. Half of global production is from Australia; 20 percent from Chile. Mines can release toxic pollution and gobble up scarce water resources. A good article by climate activist Jonathan Neale explains how lithium production must be made more just and ecologically sound — he thinks it is possible. Those who want to keep driving cars need to compare the damage related to gasoline cars — emissions, oil wells, pipelines and refineries — vs. lithium mines. Neither is perfect and both harm poor people and poor regions disproportionately. But overall lithium mines aren’t as bad — carbon emissions damage the entire earth in dramatic and not-yet fully understood ways.
As with any new technology, it’s important to compare the new technology (with new harms) against the technology it is replacing (with harms that might feel invisible because we are used to them.) Windmills kills some birds and change landscapes — but to really understand the harm you need to compare them to oil wells, coal mines, pipelines, and CO2 emissions — which overall harm more birds and will change more landscapes.
Since I’m so bike oriented, I’ve barely driven the EV since we got it, but Nora uses it most days. On a few trips to the beach it was easy finding places to charge — even a fun challenge. It’s also a funny feeling when you pass a gas station, because your gasoline car-brain thinks “do I need to get gas?” but then you realize the gas station is irrelevant.
The Bolt is peppy — since there’s no engine and no transmission, it accelerates super fast and goes up hills easily. There is no oil to change and many fewer moving parts than a gasoline car, so at least in theory it should require less maintenance. We’ll see.
I can’t believe I’m writing a car review for Slingshot but I strongly believe the climate crisis calls on all of us to be deeply flexible — open to change and the unexpected. The way we grew up and all the stuff we’re used to isn’t sustainable, and we have to dump it right away. More than half of all human CO2 emissions since the beginning of time have happened since 1988 — the year it became clear that human emissions were causing climate change and also, oddly, the year Slingshot started publishing.
Socially on a global and institutional level — as well as individually — it helps to have a vision for what a sustainable, non-fossil fueled work would look like. Socially, this is necessary to figure out very complex and long-term plans and changes.
Individually, having such a vision helps avoid terror, hopelessness and paralysis looking at an existential crisis that seems too big for any single individual. When I think about how the world could be better if it were sustainable, it gives me a giddy sense of excitement — even while I also realize getting there might be difficult or even unlikely.
Almost every human activity we’re part of day-to-day is killing the earth, so for almost everything around us, there’s an alternative we can imagine.
• Transportation – 28% of US emissions: Walking, biking, transit, electric cars, electric buses, electric trucks, people living closer to jobs and necessities, high speed trains running on electricity instead of airplanes, ships with high-tech sails. Cities redesigned to make it easier to bike and walk. Free and better public transit. More local production – less moving stuff around. A slower and more local pace of life that emphasizes seeing stuff along the way instead of being all being about the destination. Reclaiming the rich social experience of traveling by train.
• Electrical generation – 27% of US emissions: Wind, solar, geothermal, small hydro, tidal power. Storage that pumps water uphill when there is surplus power and that runs turbines when power is needed.
• Industry – 22 % of US emissions: Using less stuff and smarter methods. I want to better understand what this category means.
• Commercial & residential – 12% of US emissions: Phase out natural gas and electrify everything.
• Agriculture – 10% of US emissions: Less animal agriculture. Organic and sustainable farming techniques that sink carbon. Gardens and fruit trees everywhere.
Humans figured out how to harness fire — and now if we want to save ourselves we need to learn how to stop burning stuff.
A super weird part of the whole process is that in general, I hate buying stuff and when I do, I always feel a sense of regret knowing that I’m degrading the earth and feeding the industrial beast. But strangely, with the car and the other electrical stuff, I had an unfamiliar feeling of calm and being part of the future.
Interview conducted by Sarafina (Witch Militia Northeast)
Who is PMS?
We are called Power Makes Us Sick, which kind of speaks for itself in a way. We’re an anti-national group that researches autonomous health practices and shares the good news about all the ways we can and do care for one another outside of and in opposition to the state and capitalism.
And how does PMS relate to those issues of health? Where do you fit in?
“We’re all a bit sick. In some ways we are healing. We’re all healers in some way. We’re all growing stronger or learning how to better act in the world through this collective and others. There’s a lot of little things that we’ve just accidentally found out along the way that we all have in common, they didn’t start off as rallying points.”
“Take what you need and compost the rest” is a slogan and an approach that inspires us.
Our work is centered around sharing skills, resources, and tools. A mutual aid with emphasis on the ‘mutual’. We offer our support to social movements and others fighting back against oppression. We make new friends along the way, we share strategies and lessons from their experiences and ours. They help us refine our tools, and then we bring all of that back to the group and are able to share new skills farther and wider.
What is autonomy? What is health? What are practices of autonomous health?
Autonomy, in our context really doesn’t mean ‘solo’ or on the level of the ‘individual’. It’s something that only begins to make sense in a collective context, and against repression, control, and institutional power. We see it wherever people are finding each other and coming together to directly bring about the kind of world they wish to see.
In terms of ‘health’ it’s the kind of health we want to see in the world, not necessarily in the ways it is conceived of by those in power. If ‘health’ is related in a certain context to work and productivity, we might refuse to be healthy. Alternatively, we might choose to say this or that aspect of the dominant society is profoundly ‘unhealthy’, sickening, sick…
Our working model of health encompasses the mental, physical, and social aspects and we want to incorporate an understanding of each part. We are inspired by an example given to us by our friends at the ‘group for an other medicine’ (rough translation) in Thessaloniki who say that if there is mold in a building and you’re only looking at the physical health of the individuals you might treat the affected lungs, but if you understand health in a social context, you might come together to pressure the owner of the building to remove the mold. This is just an example of how the shift to the social can help address the issue at its core.
We too often feel that the dominant practices of healthcare ignore the health of the social body. By shifting the discourse to encompass the social, we can get a better picture of the things that are ailing us as a society, whether that be the way that capitalism makes us all very anxious, the way that industrial civilization itself encourages us to work ourselves to death, the way that patriarchy can make us feel very small (or gets us killed), the way that racism means we ignore the pain of certain people (or gets us killed), among a myriad of other social ailments. This consciousness doesn’t mean we can write and analyze our way to better health, but it can give us an edge, an organizing basis, a direction.
This is where ‘practices of autonomous health’ comes in. Methods and means can be pirated and communalized, or found in already existing popular and folk contexts. In our zines, we share examples of what autonomous health care looks like in practice through articles, report backs, and interviews. The mental, physical, and social aspects are not necessarily distinct from one another, but we cover them all in each zine.
What are some of the shared beliefs that have brought the group together?
“Action dries your tears! Self care can’t cure social diseases! Most of us are not doctors!”
We don’t have these set in stone, but there are definitely some common threads that come from our experiences and that we’ve encountered. There’s a few points that stand out as some kind of ‘tenets towards an autonomous healthcare’. These areas are consent, accountability, self-defense, and illegalism. They might be more open questions than core beliefs, but we certainly see them as crucial, and sometimes underdeveloped, in movements and initiatives we’ve been involved with.
How does the matter of consent come up in your work, and how do you navigate that?
Our approach to consent in care goes something like this: take measures to ensure that you’re getting consent from folks before providing care whenever possible. Be conscious and respectful of the tools and practices that the individual (or community) in question might already be using. Honor and strengthen those practices and offer information about additional sources of support if it makes sense or it is requested of you. Always ask folks what help they need first or what they are already doing: they probably have a good idea of what support they need or want anyway. We look to harm reduction principles, which affirm that each of us is capable of determining what our own health, healing, and well-being could look like, and that these understandings are a valuable basis upon which care and support can be provided. Caring is a process; consent needs to be obtained and maintained throughout that process.
Beyond offering care, consent extends into the way we relate to one another in the group as well. We make decisions on the basis of consensus, which for us is about people in the group consenting to doing work that they feel called to work on, that coheres around their values, or simply that they feel good about. Consensus is not about unanimity, but unity, which is generated through shared commitment. It is about slowing down in order to take the time to consider and address everyone’s concerns, as well as their cool ideas. When we practice with consent and consensus in these little ways, like decision making, we learn what it feels like and can spread that farther and wider into the everyday.
Self-defense and health aren’t necessarily topics you would expect to see together. How do you see them as relating?
For any movement to substantively or even marginally challenge capital, self-defense must be considered. The line between self-defense and care is quite blurred. How can movements survive without defending themselves from the many systems of exploitation, dominance, coercion, and oppression that we experience in our daily lives? And further, how can we defend ourselves without cultivating our own infrastructures of care to patch the literal and emotional wounds, both current and ancestral? In our zine on autonomous trans healthcare, we wrote of the Stonewall riots in 1969: “If you are so accustomed to fighting to exist on a regular basis, and fighting to keep your friends and loved ones alive, you are already so enmeshed in, and so concerned with a community self-defense that letting the brick fall on someone who is attacking you is simply not so far of a stretch.” We think this is how it starts; survival and self-defense are just so intertwined for so many.
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, who were involved with the riots, were founders of STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a group focused on direct action as well as harm reduction and providing housing and food for other trans/gender-nonconforming people. It’s clear to us that these aspects of social movements are so much a part of one another, so separating them feels haphazard considering what’s at stake. When self defense becomes care, when care becomes a riot, when these become interchangeable – that’s when it becomes revolutionary, when you start to see substantive change.
How do you approach the question of illegalism, or what does that mean to you?
In short, we are against the law.
It is an essential aspect of state formation to criminalize solidarity. In most contexts, like wherever there is a state, it is illegal to meaningfully take care of one another’s health. Acts of care are criminalized; such as sharing food with houseless people, providing shelter to those without the documentation the state demands, and distributing medication without a license. We are guided by our theoretical approach and stay grounded in the history of past projects of autonomous and illegalist care, but often it is most effective to learn by doing, bringing us into direct conflict with the state.
Solidarity means taking care of one another. When we learn to take risks for one another’s wellbeing, we learn to render the walls of division obsolete. Sometimes people are baffled by the idea that these seemingly trivial acts would be illegal, but of course they are. Taking action through seizure, distribution, or provision of what is necessary for survival in the face of oppression interrupts and challenges the state’s ability to maintain power. State power depends on the ability to decide who is a citizen and who is not, who deserves ‘rights’ and who doesn’t, and ultimately who lives and who dies. That is whack, obviously, and so we aspire to shift the responsibility of care into the hands of the community.
This is why we don’t just passively skirt the law, but we support practicing in a way that essentially renders ‘the law’ totally irrelevant. Remember, “you didn’t see shit.” We’re doing the work in a manner that DIRECTLY creates the world that we want to see. That means us being able to take care of one another’s bodies entirely on our own terms, with consent, with abundance, with nurturance.
Is that why you’re an anonymous collective? It seems this is directly connected to how you relate to legality.
Yes, anonymity is practical: we may allegedly do things that are not considered entirely lawful, or that the state considers a threat. Sometimes this looks like direct action; often these are simply things we do to survive. When we don’t connect our names and faces to our work, we can speak more openly in hopes of sharing our tools and strategies with others living lives that are similarly outside of the law. Some of us have faced doxxing by fascists or harassment by abusive people in our own scenes. You may see some of us at events or workshops, or out doing things in our communities, because some degree of identification is sometimes what’s needed to build connections of trust with others, but maintaining good security practices is essential for us.
Anonymity can be a tool for accountability: it may feel counterintuitive when we’re used to an emphasis on visibility, but speaking and moving as a nebulous collective means that no one can use our work to build themself a platform or gather social capital, or actual capital/money, for that matter. We have agreed to refuse to do so ourselves.
We recognize that being denied visibility can be part of the harm and repression inflicted on us by power. It can be degrading and demoralizing when we don’t get recognition for our actions: either because care and healing are less visible and less valued than other forms of activity – or because we consciously chose (alleged) criminality and anonymity over taking credit.
Also, speaking from a position of anonymity doesn’t mean you speak for everyone. It might be necessary to be very clear about the standpoint you’re talking from. At least, it’s important not to speak for those whose experiences you don’t share.
These problems open up a strategic question about what kinds of visibility are useful as a means, but for us it’s never simply an end.
“Accountability” can be understood in a lot of different ways. Usually, in radical communities it is understood in a very specific context around harm. It sounds like you all might be intending for it to be understood differently. Can you elaborate on what this concept means to you?
Accountability is an elusive principle that we constantly aspire to develop and understand within ourselves, with each other, and in our communities. Why is it so hard? We could start by looking at two different ways accountability gets used. First is the view that seems common in activist, anarchist, queer, feminist communities. There, accountability is often seen as a response to harm, something that’s primarily invoked when one person harms another, often in the form of abuse and sexual violence. The second way accountability can be understood is as an ongoing practice of care, or as harm-reduction, a continual basis for healing and reparation(s), which may open up some new possibilities and directions.
What is the accountability model and what were some of the inspirations behind it?
Here we understand accountability as a kind of shared responsibility, specifically in relation to a person’s health. Being able to ‘account’ for each other. We have been developing a tool for groups to use to move towards collective engagement in the health of many individuals, in an overlapping web of smaller groups. We were inspired by some models that people were already using to reinvent how they thought about healthcare for themselves, including the clinic at Vio.me in Thessaloniki, the Icarus Project, and others. In Thessaloniki in the wake of ‘the crisis’, some newly-unemployed medical professionals were able to reinvent health care from the ground up by creating an experimental clinic in a factory squatted by workers. Later, some of those involved developed the ‘group for an other medicine’ whose project was a system starting with an expansive initial interview that would take about three hours or “as long as was needed” with (1) someone from their community, (2) a ‘doctor’, and (3) a ‘psychologist’. They would use an exhaustive questionnaire to inform a comprehensive discussion about the person’s wellbeing, some next steps, and how to achieve them together. It also served as a kind of health record for many of the migrants, who otherwise did not have papers of this type, that they were in control of and could take with them. Drawing heavily from how inspired we were by what we saw of their process, we wanted to adapt this for folks who might not have access to a physical clinic, whose networks might be more spread out, or for groups of friends and comrades in community with one another.
Our accountability model is a guide with suggestions for how people might form such a group themselves. It covers the types of commitments and boundaries participants might choose to make with one another, a series of questions for the long interview itself, and ideas about how to move forward and continue working on core issues once they’ve been identified. Right now, it also contains some practical suggestions around security and group process that would aid in keeping everyone safe and secure. The idea is to redistribute accountability for each other throughout the ties that exist between people who already share community with one another, and shift responsibility (and therefore power) into the hands of the community while mapping out and making visible the pre-existing relationships of care so that they can more heavily be relied upon. This means building ties based on accountability and support for the wellbeing of each individual in a pre-emptive way – building stronger relationships of care BEFORE people break under the burdens of capitalism and other oppressions, and the community is left to pick up the pieces.
What are you working on right now?
Our most recent zine came out last May and was a collection of preliminary ideas and resources in response to the Covid-19 pandemic – much of this is still relevant and reflects what we are doing right now.
As for our current public-facing work, we’re forming a new publication tentatively titled ‘An Abolitionist’s Guide to Autonomous Emotional Support’, which will focus on concrete models and tools to support the emotional wellbeing of our communities on our own terms. The general contexts we see are immediate and longer-term survival, combatting and deserting repression, isolation, ‘pathology’, and associated distress, harm, and capture.
The zine will include some ways to relate to our herbal allies, notes on how to navigate ‘big psych’, reflections on supports that have served us well (DBT, somatic exercises, on-the-ground emotional first aid, etc.), a toolkit for a “spa day” you can take anywhere, de-escalation and self-defense basics, an ‘ask me anything’ from an anarchist therapist, among other little treats. If you are working on a project that coheres around these themes, we’d love to hear from you. We invite you to share tools and strategies that you’ve found useful in supporting the emotional health of your friends or community, or that have allowed you to find support in times of crisis.
How can people hear more, or how can people work with you or become involved in the collective?
If you can, go to our website – www.p-m-s.life – there’s a ‘Want to get involved?’ section listing ways folks can connect with us and support our work. On the site you can also find a slightly longer version of this interview, including a list of prior and ongoing struggles, groups, and projects that we are inspired by.
All our zines and a bunch of shareable resources can be downloaded from there. Our zines are made to be shared! Feel free to print them out, give them to your friends, put them in your local infoshop, add them to your zine table, leave them strategically placed around your city, etc.. We have a small social media presence – you can follow us on instagram @powermakesussick – but we mostly rely on people spreading the word about what we do, sharing our zines, and reaching out to us personally. If you don’t have access to the internet, you can write to us and we are happy to correspond, and/or send physical copies of our zines to anyone who needs them.
PMS can be reached via e-mail at powermakesussick@riseup.net or powermakesussick@protonmail.com. All physical mail can be sent here: PO box 234 Plainfield, VT 05667
Fascism Isn’t Synonymous with Tyranny (What Fascism Isn’t)
To many Americans, fascism is just another word for tyranny. This is because American history is taught as the triumph of capitalist American democracy against all forms of tyranny or revolution. Americans against the Nazis, Americans against the communists, America against the terrorists. But fascism is something more specific, a particular powder keg of values. Let’s talk about the psychology that separates the fascist from your standard authoritarian. There are several factors that intermingle to produce this particular stew.
WTF Is Fascism?
Nationalism and Nostalgia
Fascism is symptomatic of an empire in decline. Fascism always comes with a potent mixture of entitlement and nostalgia. The Italians were nostalgic for the glory days of the Roman Empire. The Third Reich was a yearning for a return to the success of German imperialism in the Second Reich.
MAGA is in this same tradition. MAGA isn’t about moving forward into a great American future, it’s about going backwards, to the prosperity and domination they were promised when they said the Pledge of Allegiance. Understanding this is key to the emotional underpinnings that drive this movement. It’s not a coincidence that fascism comes to fading empires. People are more likely to turn to xenophobia and savagery when the future they inherit can’t compare with the mythology they were promised. At the heart of every fascist is someone who wonders why we can’t just go back to the “good old days.”
Frightened of a changing world, the American fascist wants to return to the mythical American Dream, and fantasies of working men with pension plans, two-car garages and enough money to raise a family. They’ve been fooled into thinking minorities and elites are the reason this dream is broken, and since those people aren’t “true Americans” they seek to free us of their influence…by imprisoning, deporting or executing them.
Return to Tribalism
When the nation-state is threatened, people don’t abandon their nationalistic identities. But when facing scarcity, they become tribal — they must protect their own, but they still identify their country as their “tribe.” If they can’t achieve the American Dream in a society where everyone has equal rights, then they will reject equal rights. It is a closing of ranks, ever reducing the number of people who have rights from the false belief that this will allow those who remain to return to plenty.
Appeals to “equal rights” are useless on the fascist, who believes that you have to fuck people over to survive. They were promised an American dream, feel entitled to it, and think that it means that someone else must suffer in the process. Some of them see violence as a temporary, unpleasant necessity to “purify the nation.” Others believe in the myth of social Darwinism, and view liberal ideas about fairness as naive. They come to see prosperity as a zero-sum game, believing that progress for the underprivileged will take away from their own chances for success.
Yearning for Daddy (the Cult of Personality)
It’s critical to understand that fascism is driven by fear. The fascist sees their empire crumbling, and the truth of this creates a valid fear that is easily exploited by psychopaths who want to raid the coffers and seize power. Fascists elevate strength above all other features because of their primal terror of being victimized.
The misogynist fears gay men will treat him the way he treats women. Likewise, the fascist believes if minorities are empowered they will resort to the brutal tactics of the fascist.
In Don’t Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff’s research suggests that people view the world through metaphorical frames. Our first exposure to political ideology is through the metaphorical frame of the family. Progressives want the country run with “nurturant parent” values: nurturing, listening, providing — while conservatives prefer a “strict father” archetype — punishing, testing, rewarding. Lefties want to take care of the poor, conservatives want to teach them discipline, force them to straighten up and fly right. Lakoff says,
“In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right…When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth.”
Combine this erroneous philosophy with the fear of a changing society and you get an audience that is primed for violence. Trumpsters lashed out from a primal, infantile longing for this father figure who will protect them. They are irrational because they are desperate. Like a helpless toddler, they want a big strong bully to save them from the societal changes they are powerless to stop.
Fascists are drawn to a showman who tells them he has a solution that will bring the nation to its former glory. Their leader is both disciplinarian and protector. Every president fills this role, but the fascist leader is an insurgent who comes from outside the political establishment. Fascism is in reaction to the failure of the state to provide for the people.
It’s not that the fascist leader is attractive or glamorous. The best training for a fascist leader isn’t to be a lawyer, it’s to be a used car salesman. The leader offers easy solutions. They use simple, superlative language. Bureaucracy? Regulation? The fascist is suspicious of any policy that takes a book’s worth of text. Fascists don’t unite around a policy or economic plan. Rather their infantile fear drives them to entrust their future to a leader who promises a new golden age, using whatever might is necessary. This leader must captivate the people or they won’t fall for the snake oil of scape-goating immigrants and minorities. “I am your voice, I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order,” Trump said, reassuring his followers that he is the big strong daddy they’re seeking. In return, his followers proclaim him the “God Emperor.”
The Violence Is the Point
Only now that we understand the infantile fear that drives the fascist do we arrive at authoritarianism. To the fascist, it’s OK that their leader is a bully. They believe he must be mean and strong in order to protect them. Masculinity and cruelty are praised because they must be strong before their adversaries.
When Trump supporters assaulted or murdered protesters, many were horrified. But to his nascent fascist supporters, violence is a feature, not a bug. They are angry, and they feel violence is necessary and called for. It doesn’t bother them when he hints second Amendment advocates should murder journalists because they don’t fear the weapon of tyranny will be turned back on them. They think he’s protecting them from a harsh world.
Fascists Always Have a Scapegoat
The infantile longing of the fascist is expressed through an equally infantile longing for purity. Like the child who has just been potty-trained, the fascist is obsessed with cleansing. Nazis used terminology for their scapegoats such as “vermin,” “parasites” or “poisonous weeds.” Trump threatened that asylum-seekers would bring “large-scale crime and disease” and that they would “pour into and infest our country.”
At last we come to the racism. It is not simply that Trumpsters are racist. Most Americans are racist, as our society teaches racism from birth. Even those who purport to fight racism still benefit from the privileges of a racist system. Trumpsters embrace racism as the “secret truth” that life is just an endless battle of tribal warfare.
Because fascists fear their culture is being threatened, they’re hostile to those they perceive as not fitting the nationalist fantasy (e.g. immigrants, queer people, drug users, African-Americans, etc.). Under the pressures of real economic hardship, the fascist believes the problem can be solved by getting rid of some undesirable group.
The rise of Trump was directly linked to his desire to deport millions of immigrants and his promise to ban Muslims from entering the country. Thus it seemed at first that Trumpism represented “fascism light,” because they only sought to get rid of minorities through non-murderous ways.
But after deporting all the asylum-seekers doesn’t cure America’s economic woes, will fascism cease? Or will they next target minorities and dissidents who were born here? Once a state has determined to spurn its own citizens, there is no “away” to send them to. The next step is for them to be imprisoned or murdered. Because fascism cures nothing, the quest for purity is a downward spiral that ends in genocide.
Action over Intellect
Once the actions of Trumpsters are viewed through the lens of fear of change and fantasies of the mythic past, the rest of the symptoms of fascism come into focus.
For example, their distrust of intellectuals. In a working society, intellectuals can be trusted. But when society is failing, people will look at all expertise with skepticism. “A new study” always seems to contradict last week’s study. So fascists don’t trust studies. They don’t respect the authority of scientists or professors.
Historically both Mussolini and Hitler were fans of action for action’s sake. In Mussolini’s “Doctrine of Fascism,” he says “Fascism desires an active man, one engaged in activity with all his energies: it desires a man conscious of the difficulties that exist in action and ready to face them.” The spirit of think-first-ask-questions-later doesn’t align with quiet study and contemplation.
As fascism scholar Robert Paxton said,“It’s…the aggressive style, the assertion of strength and the image presented of somebody who’s not going to be bothered by little things like the rule of law or political correctness or being polite, and will actually get things done.”
They stereotype the intellectual as a bogeyman sitting in his ivory tower, with his cushy taxpayer-paid job, making new rules the nationalist must follow. This is why MAGgots react to well-researched discourse with trolling. What is rooted in fear and rage doesn’t end with rationality.
Now the other attributes of fascism fit in like pieces in a puzzle. Of course Trump attempted to disdain or control the media, as total trust in the leader means no voices of opposition can be tolerated. Of course they glorify the police and military, as these are the real-life bullies who actualize the ethnic cleansing. Of course domestic terrorists are celebrated, because in a world of might makes right, strength is the only value that matters. Of course those who worship strength would embrace sexism, as toxic masculinity elevates the same violent rhetoric. Of course there is rampant cronyism and corruption because fascism only takes hold when the state is vulnerable to collapse. Of course they challenge the legitimacy of elections; they’ve abandoned their agency to the simplistic promises of their bully-protector.
Idolizing Psychopathy
In the face of their savagery, it’s easy to claim that fascists are all psychopaths. But psychopaths are a small percentage of the population; the prevalence of authoritarianism reveals a more dire truth. Rather, the psychopath is the ultimate ideal of the fascist: one who has crushed all feelings of sympathy, one who responds to weakness with brutality, one who strikes without hesitation. Displays of caring and concern will be treated as signs of weakness. The fascist views their own natural human decency with shame. Thus their own violent rhetoric is yet another form of projection. They can never entirely crush their humanity, so they will resort to increasing atrocity to deny those feelings. As Trump would say: sad.
There’s finally light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Yet, for many radical spaces the past year has put them on the edge of extinction. Now’s the time to put life into the slogan “We don’t want to go back to normal.” When the lockdown finally lifts, your local radical space, DIY venue, bike kitchen, coop, community garden, arts warehouse etc. needs your help so it can get back on its feet and fill the schedule with events, shows, activity and energy. If you’ve been isolated and missing other people, join the struggle against soulless consumer capitalism and spend your time on stuff that really matters: freedom, art, music, love, justice and the earth.
Slingshot maintains a list of racial projects worldwide in its Organizer and on its website at slingshotcollective.org. Hugs for everyone all around. Here’s some corrections and additions to the list in the 2021 Organizer. Email Slingshot if you have any other updates we can include in the 2022 Organizer.
Prøve Gallery – Duluth, MN
An all-volunteer experimental and contemporary art gallery with a big stack of zines. They host music, spoken-word and other events. 21 N Lake Ave., Duluth, MN 55802, provegallery.com
Cactus Club – Milwaukee, WI
An artist-run music venue & community space. 2496 S. Wentworth Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53207 414-897-0663
Red Planet Books & Comics – Albuquerque, NM
Reportedly the only Native comic shop in the world. They highlight work by Native and Indigenous artists and writers. 1002 Park Ave SW Albuquerque, NM 87102 505-361-1182 redplanetbooksncomics.com
Pilson Community Books – Chicago, IL
Employee owned and operated new and used bookstore. 1102 W 18th St. Chicago, IL 60608 312.478.9434 pilsencommunitybooks.com
Rock Paper Scissors Collective – Oakland, CA
All-volunteer craft space, gallery and performance venue. They host low-cost classes and community events. 416 26th St. Oakland, CA 94612. They lost their space on Telegraph Ave and are now at this address rpscollective.org
Little Read Books – Denver, CO
A free bookstore – they also operate an outdoor free book stand that offers books, food, water and other necessities to those who need them. 2260 California St, Denver, CO 80205 littlereadbooks.org
Razed Bridges Distro – Chicago, IL
A zine and book distro located at Common Cup. 1501 W Morse Ave. Chicago, IL 60626
Kickstand – Vancouver, BC
Volunteer-run community bike shop with tools and parts so people can fix their own bikes. 1187 Parker Street, Vancouver, BC V6A 2H3 eastvankickstand.org
Dandelion Vivioteca – Guadalajara Mexico
An anarchist library. Calle Garibaldi 556, Colonia Centro, CP 44100, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
InfoPavlač – Czech Republic
A new infoshop associated with Food Not Bombs. Roháčova 20, Prague, Czech Republic
• The correct address for Lucie’s Place is 307 W. 7th Street Little Rock, AR 72201
• Wasted Ink has a new location: 906 W Roosevelt St, Suite 3 Phoenix, AZ 85007.
• The Food Cooperative in San Diego is a non-hierarchical, student-run, leftist, vegan food restaurant on UCSD’s campus. 9500 Gilman Drive MC-0323, La Jolla, CA 92093.
• Cedar Ridge Café in Maplewood, NJ has permanently closed.
• The Institute of Barbarian Books is now at 1073 Itabashicho, Shobara, Hiroshima 727-0014 Japan. tel: 080.4684.0130
• d-zona in Prague has a new address: Hybernská 4, Prague 1, Czech Republic
We wish we could have been flies on the wall during the circus at the Capitol building on January 6th. Many liberals called it an insurrection and a coup attempt, but as the inauguration went ahead it became clear to all that it was more of a temper tantrum — a dramatic one, what with all the costumes and photo ops. To antifascists who have been aware of and working to oppose the alt-right for years, the outburst at the Capitol was no surprise — it was yet another iteration of the violent and often deadly fascist activity that has only recently become widely criticized by the mainstream media.
The Democratic Party and their mouthpieces among the mainstream media and the nonprofits have overused the word insurrection in reference to January 6, 2021 with numbing regularity and potentially grave consequences. The question is not was it an insurrection, but why are different political factions choosing to label it in different ways based on their political agendas — what are the implications of labeling it as such? Whenever your enemy labels a historic event, put your hand over your wallet. We must never forget the naming of events can also be a form of psychological warfare. By drumming into our heads over and over, “Insurrection Bad,” some of us might begin believing it. In fact, where there is no mass revolutionary party, many of us will believe it.
We should not take leadership from the very party that is attacking us, including their use of words. The ruling class has long showed that they use words to flip ‘em around and confuse people. The fascists with their “Traditionalist Workers Party” — who are in fact the antithesis of a workers’ party; No Child Left Behind — led to the firing of 100,000 Black teachers; “School Reform” — a thinly veiled cover for the privatization of the public schools. The use of the word insurrection is part of a strategic toolkit to further criminalize future revolutionary activity in this country.
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
According to someone from the antifascist news source It’s Going Down: “In the wake of the far-Right storming of the capitol on January 6th, it is incumbent upon autonomous social movements and the Left in general to remind the public that for years the State allowed the fascist Right to grow, while focusing on coming down against the Left. Giving the State more powers to repress even the far-Right, will ultimately be used even harder against movements from below.”
Collusion? Yes. Coup? No.
Whether January 6 can be formally identified as a coup or not, what is clear is the now open, now secret, collusion between the President, member of congress, law enforcement commanders, police officers, and military personnel (active and veteran) who all collaborated before, during and after the January 6 event. Besides the handful of congresspeople including Majorie Taylor Greene (SC) and Lauren Boebert (CO) who have openly spouted Q Anon conspiracy theories, there is Paul Gosar (AZ), who is associated with the Oathkeepers, and Andy Biggs (AZ) and Mo Brooks (AL) who also associate with far right militia groups. It is a sign of the times that these people are being elected to national office, despite the fact that in some cases even their family members have made statements asking voters not to vote for them.
All of these people ran on a platform that Trump was going to win overwhelmingly, but if anyone claims he lost, it must be the work of Lucifer and his avenging angels. Thus, they laid the groundwork for the psychological unrest of their base.
What did this really provide us with? It wasn’t much of a coup, as the Senate was able to complete the vote within three hours. What we can carry away from this is that fascism is rising in the US. It is fragile, it is weak, and it can be easily smashed — and we need to get busy at carrying out this task. For instance, after the battle for Charlottesville, where a large number of fascists assembled and Heather Heyer was murdered, antifascism was re-awoken in America to the point where in Boston 50 fascists arrived at their so called “Free Speech Rally” on August 19, 2017 to find 40,000 antifascist counter-protesters assembled. That’s the odds we like! January 6th was a warning to all antifascists and class conscious workers that fascism in America cannot be ignored, nor should it be grossly exaggerated. American revolutionaries need the truth, not fairy tales and horror stories.
For instance, every person that attended that march was not aware that they would enter the building — and every person didn’t enter the building. Many of the participants in the march had formerly voted for Democratic candidates — some even voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary (1 in 10 people who voted for Sanders in the primary later voted for Trump). We have to look at this “Stop the Steal” movement like an onion. The middle of the onion is the KKK itself and longtime Nazi/fascist organizations. Then there are the proto-fascists: The Oath Keepers, III Percenters, Patriot Prayer, and The Proud Boys, who all heavily recruit from the police and the military. The next layer consists of alt-right groups that emerged from internet obscurity and had their coming out party in Charlottesville in 2016 — such as Republic of Florida, members of the Facebook group “Alt-Reich”, and the readers of the Daily Stormer and Infowars. These are followed by working folk who hate the Democrats, which is understandable given the Democrats’ performance. These working folk, many of whom do not view themselves as racist, can be won over to defending their own interests against the bosses, the bankers and the landlords. The Left needs to look at this element and split the base from the top.
Fascism is virulently opposed to working class organizations, including unions. Many people in the crowd were probably members of trade unions. Were there Jews in the crowd? These are contradictions. What this points to is working people struggling within this system, grasping for solutions, sometimes find fascist extremism the most attractive or accessible path given that there is no visible alternative. We seek to create and strengthen an alternative. One of our biggest hurdles is the lack of visibility for broad revolutionary movements that already do exist, while fascists are platformed and sensationalized by the mainstream media. The role the media has played has actually strengthened Trump and his followers. Was covering his every tweet really necessary? Trump himself is not a fascist, but a political exploiter of the fascists. While he urged his followers to march to the Capitol, he himself did not march with them.
According to someone from It’s Going Down, “The stance by the press overall towards antifascists and anarchists more broadly has been one largely of contempt. Before Charlottesville, there were literally more editorials written attacking antifascists in mainstream newspapers than there were attacking the Alt-Right. And while the red carpet was rolled out for the far-Right and volumes of explainer pieces were written about the movement, when it came to autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements and struggles, the press was afraid to dive deep and give a platform to those with radical anti-capitalist views — and for good reason. While news of Nazis sells, it also does not upset the owners of corporate media. This dynamic resulted in a reality where the media gave the far-Right a large platform to talk about their ideas, where antifascists, when they were interviewed at all, were forced to defend their tactics.”
“In short, if working people understood that they could self-organize and take on the far-Right without looking to the State or the police — and what other conclusion could one make under Trump — then what was stopping them from blocking ICE vans, stopping evictions, launching strikes and engaging in other forms of actions that put our own interests ahead of those in power?”
The Cops and the Klan Go Hand in Hand
The breaching of the Capitol was a ball of confusion from the start. The police wound up on both sides — some attempting to carry out their duties and fiercely resisting the mob, while some were openly cooperating with the rioters — taking selfies with them, moving the gates so people could enter the building. Will the real pigs please stand up? Actually, they’re all pigs. The police are far more politically heterogeneous than they would like to admit. We saw that on January 6th. This contradiction was so intense that two officers took their own lives after the incident.
As participants in the Capitol rally are identified and charges are brought, a large number of those in attendance have been outed as off duty cops. The extensive crossover between law enforcement and white nationalists and fascists is nothing new. In 1972, the FBI opened up an investigation into collaboration between American cops and the KKK. The investigation was abandoned because so much was uncovered, and the only public documents from it are heavily redacted.
Prosecutors are charging a number of off-duty cops who showed up to the rally, but they will never charge those who made the strategic decisions about law enforcement that day — practically sabotaging any defense of the Capitol. 57 state legislators attended the march — though it is unclear how many went in. This is why the pathetic attempt to hold Trump legally accountable was doomed to fail. The Republican legislators realized that if they brought heat on Trump, they’d incriminate themselves — as they were co-conspirators in this event. They’re stupid, but they ain’t that stupid.
One of the reasons that the cops and the Klan go hand in hand is because there are no consequences for it — there have been none for 100 years. This is why we need the right to self defense. This is why we need to form rifle clubs today. This is why we refuse to call their spectacle an insurrection, as we work towards a real one in the not so distant future. Those in power understand that not only do far right groups reinforce the existing power structure, but these groups may come in handy when the class struggle intensifies and a real insurrection comes around.
The instances of collusion between cops and fascists are so numerous it would take several books to catalogue them. Here are a few of the more significant examples:
Portland, June 3rd, 2018
In Portland, we can only praise the tenacity of the comrades in this city, who organized 100 consecutive days of protests during the Black Lives Matter uprising last summer. This is a necessary ingredient in our fight against fascism — steadfastness, consistency, dedication, sustainable engagement. While there are many incidents revealing that the cops and the Klan go hand in hand in Portland, we will shine the light on just one for now. On June 3rd, 2018, Lt. Jeff Niiya, acting under the rubric of free speech for fascists, actually informed members of Patriot Prayer that the mayor of Portland was demanding that the police carry out an arms search of the fascists — giving them a warning before the search began. All of this was caught on tape and published by The Guardian.
Sacramento, June 26, 2016
Through the defense work for the Sacramento 3, the truth came out in the courtroom — that the highway patrol, and the district attorney, were working in conjunction with the fascists from the beginning. CHP shared information with the Traditionalist Workers Party and helped to get them permits for their rally. CHP officer Donovan Ayres admitted in court that they had been aware at the time that TWP was a fascist organization. According to the Sacramento Bee, the District Attorney had planned to indict 104 antifascists in connection with this particular counter-protest. The police specifically warned antifascists that they could not carry even a sign on a stick — in effect disarming antifascists. As a result, nine antifascists were stabbed. Never again!
One of the survivors of these stabbings, Yvette Felarca, was among the 3 charged by the DA for their participation in the counter-protest, along with Mike Williams and Paz Porfirio — the Sacramento 3, who eventually won their case. All three are organizers — Yvette with By Any Means Necessary and Paz and Mike with the Brown Berets — and they were targeted amongst the attendees on July 26. Court solidarity is a must, and it is part of why this case was won. No antifascist should stand alone when they are facing the power of the state.
Berkeley, March 4, 2017
A similar process unfolded in Berkeley, but this time, we were at a distinct disadvantage. Janet Napolitano, then chancellor of UC Berkeley and former head of Homeland Security, spent $8 million on UCPD to defend the fascists’ “right to free speech”. Antifa was good at showing up, but didn’t display enough sophistication when it came to defending us on a political level and unfortunately it got the best of us. We are unconditionally opposed to free speech for known fascist organizations. We need to insist that there can be no free speech for fascists because they don’t speak of anything of consequence — all of their organizing is to facilitate genocide of the oppressed. Genocide is not debatable. The situation in Berkeley was unfortunately contradictory. The mayor took advantage of the anarchists’ weakness — they placed police as the “protectors” of free speech, allowing the fascists to run wild.
There were some positives in what was otherwise a complex situation. One: the Berkeley 5 were a group of antifascists who were charged with beating up a fascist. Their case went to trial, in which the DA instructed the jury to ignore the historical facts, but the jury found them not guilty. The state failed in its attempt to frame these antifascists.
San Francisco, August 25, 2017
Patriot Prayer proclaimed that they would march from Kezar stadium in San Francisco. Whenever confronted with a fascist assault, we should use defensive tactics, i.e. “we’re going to defend our families from fascist marauders.” The International Longshoremen and Warehousemen Union Local 10 got word and planned to march to the same location at the same time. Patriot Prayer abandoned their provocative plan, understanding the consequences. This is how you fight fascism — with the power of labor.
Profound organizing against fascism takes not only the form of active community defense, but also the forms of education and of mutual aid that can build revolutionary consciousness and capacity. Antifascists need to find ways to better appeal to working class folks rather than increasing political polarization.
According to someone from It’s Going Down: “The energy that exploded last summer needs to continue, albeit in new trajectories and projects. The neoliberal center is going to attempt to placate liberals and progressives and push for social peace; it’s our job to point out the contradictions and how similar both parties really are. We need to keep building up the mass networks and programs of mutual aid, tenant unions, and prison organizing which has been taking place across the US the past year and expand these projects. There’s a lot of new people around radical circles now that need to be caught up to speed on everything from security culture to community organizing — let’s not lose our momentum but keep growing. Already since Biden was elected we’ve seen strikes in New York and riots against the police in Tacoma; things may have calmed down a bit, but nothing is going back to whatever ‘normal’ is in an age of catastrophic climate change and rising fascism. Get organized. Expand the capacity of your projects. Work on strengthening existing movement infrastructure and growing it. Solidify and build regional networks. Deepen relationships with the broader proletariat in every way possible.”
It is not often in one’s life that reality confirms all of our convictions. But everything we’ve been saying has turned out to be 100 percent correct. We must never ever give up in terms of our perspective and our beliefs. The real goal of all of this is a socialist victory. Only by smashing capitalism can we smash fascism. Forward to our Socialist Future.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD WILL RISE AGAIN, FASCISM NEVER!
By Jesse D. Palmer If it wasn’t clear before, the increasingly rapid creep towards fascism — with millions of people living in an alternative reality and blindly following buffoons selling division, racism and gun-toting threats of violence — is now a grave threat to any hope for justice, freedom or social progress. What can and should radicals do to push back?
First, its crucial to avoid being distracted by the latest shiny thing and merely reacting against media-driven spectacle. We are weakest when we let our oppressors set the agenda, frame the discussion and define the rules. We’re at our best when we act based on love and compassion and create something positive rather than just being against other people’s ideas and actions.
Fascism is not loving — rather, it dwells on cruelty, grievance, tribalism, nationalism, male chauvinism and white supremacy. It focuses on a desire to go back to a mythical earlier way of life and involves unquestioning obedience to a leader and a willingness to believe anything the leader says, no matter how absurd.
In fighting fascism, we can’t let ourselves develop our own hatred, intolerance and cynicism. If 75 million Americans are supporters of or members of a cult, I want to try to understand them as much as I can and avoid dehumanizing them and dismissing them — because dehumanization is itself part of the problem — even though I think they are wrong and dangerous.
If we’re to have a strategy to turn in another direction, it isn’t going to happen overnight. While the American Dream has always contained elements of fascism, it is over-simplistic to say that shit has always been this bad — things have gotten worse over the last few years and it would be more helpful to figure out why rather than being bitter. The expanding wealth and income gap, the economic decline of rural areas, the dizzying pace of social and technological change — there are big social changes that have perhaps made it easier for some people to feel grievance, and that may have pushed some people towards tribalism because they feel threatened and vulnerable. Making life better and more just for everyone is crucial to deflate hate.
Props to Anti-Racist action, punks who fought skinheads in the ‘80s, and Antifa for decades of street fighting racist groups. Right now however, I’m more concerned about perhaps 75 million people leaning towards authoritarianism than the tip of the iceberg of the Proud Boys and their ilk. We need self-reflection about tactics. Antifa has had a hyper macho presentation that emphasizes self-defense and violence. This has been seized on by right wing media to promote a false equivalence narrative, which is arguably making the slide to fascism easier rather than more difficult. Street fighting escalates the tone of violent confrontation with fascists who actively want a violent, armed civil war. But Antifa and the larger radical scene is in general not heavily armed nor militarily trained — whereas most average right wing people in the US have guns, and right wing militias are heavily armed and often include military veterans with weapons training. If a civil war or armed conflict breaks out, the most likely result is authoritarianism, surveillance and repression — not any type of liberation. Looking at Iraq and other areas enduring armed conflict, there is a race to the bottom of pointless death and destruction, not just to the combatants but to everyone. Civil war is not likely to promote diversity, equality, freedom or environmental sustainability — rather a civil war is more likely to put all these backwards.
Beating someone up rarely changes their mind — and to address millions of people who don’t go to street fights, we need to focus on changing minds. Although radicals struggle with the limitations of religious-type nonviolence and sometimes advocate for militancy such as fighting with police or destroying property — I have never heard radicals calling for mass executions and assassinations of right wing figures, which is precisely the type of discussion that is now commonplace amongst millions of right wingers. They are talking about killing folks like us. The Three Percenters etc. may evolve into death squads targeting political or civic figures, non-conformists, immigrants, and non-whites. Or perhaps they’ll begin an armed insurgency that carries out bombings and arson. Since right wing groups are cross-pollinated with the police and military, it is folly to exclusively rely on the police and government to push back against the fascist movement.
Populism – if it emphasized uniting the working class across race and other lines against the 1%, corporations and bosses — could be a powerful and positive force. But at the moment, the most widespread populism is organized around white supremacy — the radical scene has no active major working class populist movement like we did during Occupy. All we have is rhetoric and our dreams — not enough broad-based on the ground movements. We need to fill this gap because a lot of would-be fascists are experiencing economic anxiety every day. They don’t necessarily want the hate or the leader-worship — but they want to do something against conditions that are intolerable. The anger is out there — we can help make sure it is against corrupt elites and rulers who disrespect regular folks. Radicals need to figure out ways to talk to people who have different demographics to build solidarity outside our bubbles. This will involve focusing on areas of agreement, not points of disagreement: -we love our family and friends -we want to be safe -we want a decent life, to have enough to eat, to have a place to live -we want things to be fair – those who work hard should be rewarded -we want to be free to decide what to do on our own and not have power structures tell us what to do. A lot of right wing people agree on these things. Radicals get hung up using college-educated code language. Sure Fox News plays a part in dividing the country, but our scene also needs to fix the ways we’re responsible for promoting division.
A larger community could stand up to the 1% who take more than their share. We need to be better at articulating the beautiful inclusive parts of our vision — tolerance, diversity — “we are all one”, “we are all Earthlings” — love each other — let’s share what we have rather than hoarding. We believe in freedom not conformity and boredom — cooperation not hierarchical power structures.
A crucial part of addressing rising fascism is figuring out ways to counter conspiracy theories — which begs the wider question of how to figure out what is true in an internet context filled with mis-information — and why it is important to try. Not all conspiracy theories are right wing — I constantly hear them in radical and alternative spaces. It is even more common to see friends relying on or distributing mis-information they heard on the internet without questioning its authenticity, checking the information or caring much. Too often I’ve kept quiet and let this stuff slide to avoid conflict but I’m not going to do that anymore — we all need to call out untruth when we hear it even if it supports our overall belief system. You don’t need a conspiracy theory to explain injustice and power imbalances – there are real power structures that are right out in the open. The anecdote to conspiracy theories is having something to believe in and to hope for.
The search for truth and facts — and trying to make decisions with the most accurate facts possible — is crucial to a just, free, decent and sustainable world. Those in power have always manipulated facts, lied and used propaganda. Facts we learned in school and in history have always been biased, racist and sexist. But that doesn’t excuse or diminish the seriousness of recent next-level alternative realities like q-anon that are now believed by tens of millions of people.
Everything is not relative. There is a difference between the science industry controlled by corporations and the process of science in terms of testing whether particular things are true. Science involves observation, skepticism, formulating hypotheses based on observations, testing deductions drawn from hypotheses, and refining or eliminating hypotheses based on findings. Sometimes, we can test facts ourselves, but mostly we have to rely on information from others, and so radicals need to discuss how to find facts, how to fact-check things, and how to promote distribution of factual information and corrections of mis-information. This cannot be about relying on big tech companies to police right wingers because any tools they develop against fascism we can bet will be deployed against radicals.
We have to be modest and humble. I have no idea how to fix all this shit – I’m not smart enough and I’m not sure anyone is. Over the 33 years Slingshot has existed, the world has gotten worse and worse. Maybe it’s time to try something else.
A few months ago my friends and I were at the Berkeley Marina and we were trying to figure out how to turn back modern-fascism while slowing climate change and addressing racial and economic injustice. Our zany idea was that everyone would work much less since a high portion of work consists of bullshit jobs that don’t contribute to human happiness nor address human needs — and all that surplus work eats up tons of natural resources which is pushing nature to the brink of extinction.
Since there would be plenty of extra time, huge voluntary, free, social camps would be created to help unite the world and connect people who come from different backgrounds. Everyone could take a few weeks off and take a solar powered train to natural places full of swimming, group activities, sports and games, collectively prepared feasts and huge dance parties each night. Half the people at each camp would come from urban, coastal “liberal” areas and half from rural, flyover, “conservative” areas so rather than seeing people from different backgrounds as media-stereotypes, you could meet, talk to and get to know and play with real people. For those who wanted, huge groups of people would eat psychedelic mushrooms and have intense visions and revelations about how we are all one — there is no separation between us and the earth and the plants and the ocean — and people are all the same. As the sun rose, it would be obvious to everyone that we can get what we need without hurting others. And in fact it’s the only way we can survive on this fragile beautiful world. Maybe fighting fascism isn’t only about fighting — when they go low, we get them high.
There is something magic about People’s Park in Berkeley — like a scrappy cat with 999 lives. Just when the University of California was finalizing plans to build a 16-story, 1,200 unit dorm on the park amidst the tidal wave of gentrification sweeping the Bay Area, UC Berkeley students swept in to join community members and say “not so fast.” As Slingshot goes to press, students have set up an occupation camp to prevent UC from drilling their last batch of soil samples related to the dorm. Events are happening in the park every Friday, there are frequent marches and protests, the student government and other student groups have issued statements in favor of preserving the park — once again the University finds itself knocked on its heels and mystified about the Park’s endless energy to inspire each new generation. A new mood is in the air — UC’s development plans are not inevitable.
People’s Park was constructed without permission in 1969 to create a beautiful community on vacant UC land. Protests about the Vietnam war and civil rights were against the system — the park represented a new chapter of resistance in which people began to build a new world worth living in.UC’s first attempt to seize back and destroy the park led to rioting, police shootings that left bystander James Rector dead and dozens wounded, and a week-long National Guard occupation of Berkeley. UC has always claimed to own the land on Dwight Way east of Telegraph, but since 1969 they have never been able to control it. Over the years, park users have practiced “user development” by building and tending gardens, trees and landscaping as determined by users, not government managers. It is a rare place in the city open to everyone, hosting a free speech stage and daily free food servings.
The issues connected to the Park are vital — people seek freedom to use and enjoy land, not just hold it for profit and greed. We demand direct involvement in creating the world and deciding how things should work in our community because these processes bring meaning to our lives. UC’s bureaucratic and dehumanizing management treats people and neighborhoods like computer circuits waiting to be programmed.
An unspoken justification for UC’s dorm is to displace homeless people who hang out at the Park — but it is a paradox, because these days there are homeless encampments on every corner so no one can seriously believe that destroying the Park could “fix” homelessness. UC has done everything it could to push homeless people to the Park, bias its students against the homeless by conflating poverty with crime, and try to make the park a festering eyesore by tearing out trees, the children’s playground, freeboxes, gardens and other improvements constructed by Park users. It made its own bathroom inhospitable and prison-like with no soap or hot water (even during the pandemic). In 2018 on the verge of the 50th anniversary, UC cut down 42 trees without warning or consideration. After decades of UC policy to undermine the Park, they now want to take credit for “cleaning up.” But the real mess is capitalism and a system that builds palaces for the few and leaves so many people out in the cold. UC claims the land is theirs and treats the park users and residents the way they treat the trees — disposable, worthless, unprofitable.
In this context, at the worst point in the pandemic, UC closed off most of the park with double-high metal fences and set up whirring generator-powered surveillance systems to protect drilling rigs. Park defenders had a rally on January 29 and 150 gathered — many of them in the Park for the first time. Everyone stood or sat on the ground, eye-to-eye at the same level and many spoke passionately. As the afternoon wore on, the sun cast long shadows on the golden grass — a crosshatch pattern of the fences that loomed above. An air of readiness and excitement grew and then like an unstoppable magnetic force, the crowd ran and tore the fence down and carried the pieces a few blocks to the University where it was piled in front of the administration building.
So started the student occupation — tents, hammocks — bringing foods and masks and gloves. Street medics from around the Bay area came to offer medical and mental health assistance to student defenders and unhoused park residents alike. Tense and dangerous situations have been de-escalated, or at least survived, with the collaboration of park elders, residents, and students instead of police. Occupiers put care and attention into the park — picking up trash and bringing friendliness and conversation so the park felt alive and fresh and not ignored or so scary.
As the occupation goes on, the focus has shifted from “occupation” (which implies a colonial presence) to “defense” and healing. New focuses are mutual aid, growth through gardening, and care of the land. There are regular arts events, classes, and movie nights. All are closely connected to realizing the park’s promises of autonomy and self-determination and defending it from the UC war machine through direct action. As the capitalist housing crisis has worsened, pushing the poor and people of color further to the margins of Berkeley, the park has become an essential refuge and cultural center.
It’s time to organize and share the knowledge between the generations, the resources between the housed students and the unhoused, to plan the defense of the park from UC’s colonial entitlement, and grow something together in a different way. The People’s Park committee is reaching out to see how the land could be re-matriated to indigenous stewardship, ending the landlordship of the UC once and for all. Contrary to what UC likes to say, the park is an essential and vibrant place today, not just history to get memorialized in a plaque.
To get involved, if you are in the Bay Area, come by People’s Park on Fridays at 3PM for the weekly community assembly, food, and events. Visit @peoplesparkberkeley on Instagram or venmo @pparkberk if you are able. For more info, visit peoplespark.org.
People’s Park forever! Let a thousand parks bloom!
What we do: We provide free subscriptions to incarcerated individuals in the US who request them. We only publish 2-3 times a year, so there will be up to a 6 month delay between when you request a subscription and when you get a paper. We do accept submissions of art and articles from incarcerated subscribers but we only publish a very, very tiny fraction. We don’t publish poetry or fiction, and only run personal narratives or stories about your case if they are framed within radical analysis.
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Comrades on the outside: We receive 5-10 letters from incarcerated folks every day. We welcome help reading them and processing subscription requests! — Love, Slingshot
Hello from a platform 50 feet up in a chestnut oak tree! Watching the season change from winter to spring up here, the ice and snow melting off the branches and being replaced with buds and birds and bugs, has been magical and reminds me of the interconnectedness of all life. However, the spring weather has also brought back the chainsaw crews and workers in neon vests, who wish to scare us down or physically remove us from these trees in order to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
For those of you who may not have heard about the resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, let me fill you in. The MVP is a 42-inch diameter pipeline that would carry fracked gas from the shale fields of northwestern West Virginia through Virginia for eventual export. To do this, it will cross through extremely steep and mountainous terrain — which has already caused pipe displacement, erosion and water pollution in construction areas — as well as under the Appalachian Trail (AT), across important sources of drinking water for local communities, and through some of the last remaining habitats of endangered species like the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter.
Direct action against MVP construction began over 3 years ago at the Hellbender Autonomous Zone on so-called Peters Mountain, though community members have been resisting the pipeline through legal methods ever since its proposal. The Hellbender Autonomous Zone included a monopod that lasted 57 days, a skypod that lasted 12 days, and tree-sits that lasted 95 days — long enough for MVP to lose its permits to work in the National Forest and to bore under the AT. Blockades and lockdowns to construction equipment continued on during 2018 and 2019, including lockdowns by a local teacher on her family’s land, a local professor, grandmothers, young people, Indigenous pipeline fighters, and a local and her daughter who occupied a tree-sit on their land, among others.
On September 5th of 2018, two new tree-sits on Yellow Finch Lane were first occupied, and now in March of 2021 we are celebrating over 915 days of the Yellow Finch tree-sits preventing the deforestation of this land. Over this time, MVP has repeatedly lost and had to refile for permits, been issued multiple temporary stop-work orders, and pushed back the date they’ve been telling their investors the pipeline will be completed by — they are now more than a billion dollars over budget. While the Yellow Finch ground support camp was evicted in late fall of 2020, there has been no successful extraction attempt of these tree-sits.
The flood of community support we receive up here gives me hope for a different world, one where communities come together and take care of each other, depending on each other to survive instead of the state or market. A world based on reciprocity, integrity, on love for all life. For me, that world has no borders, no walls, no prisons, no police, and no pipelines — we stand in solidarity with folks fighting the Line 3 pipeline in so-called Minnesota, with the Wet’suwet’en struggle against the Coastal GasLink pipeline, with BLM and police and prison abolitionists, and all other anticapitalist and decolonial struggles. Together, we can free ourselves from the chains of capitalism and imperialism, and build the world we’d like to live in.
Part of the reason why I am anonymous is because I could be anyone, even you! To get involved with the campaign against the MVP, email appalachiansagainstpipelines@ protonmail.com or visit Appalachians Against Pipelines on Facebook or Instagram! Or to support ongoing resistance, donate at bit.ly/SupportMVPResistance
