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Title: Three-Way Fight Author: J. Clark Date: April 2016 Language: en Topics: anti-fascism, self-defense, It's Going Down Source: https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/three_way_fight_print.pdf
I wrote this piece between the second half of 2014 and early 2015 for
Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed
Self-Defense, a forthcoming book from PM Press edited by scott crow and
Alexander Reid Ross. Since then, the activity and militancy of the far
right has steadily grown.
Summer 2015 began with the white supremacist attack on the historic
Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, that left nine
parishioners dead and one very racist white boy safely in police
custody. A wave of Black church burnings across parts of the South
followed, some explained by natural causes, others ruled as arsons, and
none featured very prominently in national media. Racist white
southerners and their allies across the country launched a
counter-offensive to defend their use of the Confederate Battle Flag.
In Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter protesters occupied the police
precinct following the police murder of Jamar Clark. After several
incidents of harassment and threats, three right-wingers shot five
protesters outside the precinct. That same week, an anti-choice
fundamentalist went on a shooting spree at a Planned Parenthood clinic
in Colorado Springs.
In January 2016, a well-armed (but under-snacked) Patriot-militia group
headed by Cliven Bundy’s sons occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in
eastern Oregon for over a month, virtually demanding a shootout with
federal authorities. And in February, Klansmen stabbed three
anti-fascist militants who dared to confront them at a park in Anaheim,
California.
In tandem with all these events has been the unexpected (though not
necessarily unforeseeable) rise of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
As his success has solidified, the immediate physical violence coming
out of his campaign and his supporters has also greatly intensified.
These events and others have brought the issues of fascism and
anti-fascism from the margins to the center of many radical
conversations in the U.S.[1] It’s well past time, and I hope this essay
will be a useful contribution to the discussion. Extremely grateful
shout-outs to Lena, Julie, scott, and Alexander for their feedback and
editorial work on this piece.
No pasaran! Pasaremos! Siempre antifascista!
J.
April 2016
“We are not simply in a conflict with the state in its present
incarnation, but in a three-way fight against it and its authoritarian
opponents.”[2]
Protesters blockade a highway in opposition to government land
management policies. Law enforcement officers use tasers, dogs, tear
gas, and “First Amendment Zones” to control protesters. Armed protesters
face down federal agents over issues of sovereignty.
These scenes could easily describe an Earth First! for-est defense
campaign, a mass protest against the Republican National Convention, or
an American Indian Movement occupation from the 1970s, respectively.
Instead, they all played out in southern Nevada in April 2014, during
the “Battle of Bunkerville,” when right-wing militias answered the call
to arms of a wealthy, white settler-rancher named Cliven Bundy.[3]
After a protracted dispute over cattle grazing rights on Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) land, federal agents began confiscating Bundy’s cattle
to recoup unpaid grazing fees. Bundy declared a “range war” and called
for support. Organized militias and unaffiliated individuals from across
the country responded, providing armed security details, setting up
armed checkpoints, and confronting federal agents.
The BLM quickly ceased their operation and released Bundy’s cattle.
Bundy, however, continued to call on supporters and local sheriffs to
disarm all federal agents, remove en-trance stations to federal parks,
and block interstate highways.
In speeches, he declared, “We're about ready to take the country over
with force!” and invoked a long history of populist right-wing “Patriot”
movements,[4] rejecting the authority and legitimacy of the federal
government and proclaiming his sacred right to the land on which his
cattle graze. Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than how quickly
the far-right was able to mobilize a mass-based armed response to
confront the Feds was how quickly the Feds surrendered.
Nonetheless, even before Bundy opined about whether Black people were
better off picking cotton as slaves, and before he blamed abortion and
welfare for ruining America, the movement coalescing around him
represented the germinating seeds of an insurgent, right-wing populism
eerily reminiscent of fascism.
Fascism is a reactionary mass political movement that is hostile to both
revolutionary socialism(s) and liberal, bourgeois democracy. Fascist
movements are rooted in perceptions of community/national decline and
obsessive myths of community/national rebirth and greatness. They
therefore seek, through redemptive violence, to purge or “cleanse” the
community/nation of “corrupting” or “alien” elements; replace the
current ruling elite with their own idealized class; and impose their
new brand of “order” on the rest of the populace.[5]
Fascism “is never a mere puppet of the ruling class, but an autonomous
movement with its own social base.”[6] Historically, fascism has often
functioned to defend capitalism against instability, crisis, and the
revolutionary left. At times, the state and its security apparatus have
cooperated and colluded with fascists to undermine or attack the left,
lending credence to narratives that fascism is simply a tool of the
ruling class or the most extreme manifestation of the state and capital.
However, fascist movements have also pursued agendas that clash with
capitalist and ruling class interests in significant ways, sometimes
taking positions which seem inline with the left while maintaining
authoritarian and reactionary underpinnings. For example, right-wing and
fascist elements have long opposed neoliberal globalization on the
grounds that it is an attack on national sovereignty and the privileged
position of white men in Western society. In the mid-to late-2000s,
after the anti-war left had mostly withered into irrelevance, various
right-wing elements vocally criticized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
for compromising the state’s capacity to police the U.S.-Mexico border
and other internal “threats.” A subset of the right-wing anti-war
tendency is also hostile towards Israeli colonialism and the U.S.’s
complicity, presuming both to be manifestations of various anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories. Whether it’s environmentalism, opposition to law
enforcement, or distrust of bankers, the far-right’s opposition-al
politics are always grounded in authoritarian values.
It is sometimes said that fascism is revolutionary, in that it seeks to
overthrow or seize state power. However, I prefer to only use the term
“revolutionary” to refer to movements that seek a more fundamental and
liberatory transformation of existing social relations. I instead refer
to fascism’s “insurgent” nature, as insurgencies can come from a variety
of political positions.
Twenty-first century fascism, in particular, does not always look like
the traditional forms of fascism that we are used to seeing. Some
contemporary fascists have “shifted away from traditional fascism's
highly centralized approach to political power and toward plans to
fragment and subdivide political authority.”[7]
These different forms of fascism are still built on authoritarian
ideologies and belief systems, but may use certain anti-authoritarian
language, strategies, and tactics to achieve their goals. For example,
prominent fascist groups over the previous decades have opposed all
government authority above the county level, advocated strategies of
“leaderless resistance,” or sought to establish the racist, right-wing
equivalent of temporary autonomous zones. One of the Patriot militia
groups which mobilized support for Cliven Bundy calls itself Operation
Mutual Aid,[8] appropriating a central tenant of anarchism in its
defense of “private property, lives, and liberty to exercise God-given
rights... codified in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of
Rights.”[9]
So-called Third Position fascism often espouses an explicitly
anti-capitalist politics. “National Anarchism,” for example, blends
anti-statism, anti-capitalism, and decentralization/hyper-localism
(along with many anarchist symbols) with their own special brand of
anti-Semitism, racial determinism and separatism, homophobia, and
anti-feminism.[10]
Similarly, Keith Preston’s “anarcho-pluralism” seeks to replace
centralized nation-states with small-scale political entities through a
“pan-secessionist” coalition amongst a wide range of oppositional
movements from “white nationalists, Patriot/militia groups, Christian
rightists, and National-Anarchists, [to] left wing anarchists, liberal
bioregionalists/environmentalists, and nationalist people of color
groups.”[11] His end-goal, though, is to empower “a handful of superior
individuals [to] rise above the bestial mass of humanity,” a starkly
anti-liberatory and authoritarian vision masquerading as revolution.[12]
This appropriation of the symbols, language, and tactics of the
anti-authoritarian left does more than just muddy the waters; it also
reflects “an ideological split in fascist circles as the younger
generation attempts to update its organizational models for the 21st
century.”[13] Early-twentieth century, industrial-era totalitarianism
relied on the central power of the nation-state to impose its vision.
Today, “in the era of outsourcing, deregulation, and global mobility,”
the decentralist currents in fascism express “a new social
totalitarianism” that “look[s] to local authorities, private bodies
(such as churches), and direct mass activism to enforce repressive
control.”[14]
Celebrating decentralized resistance without an analysis of the
political aims and content of that resistance ignores the role of
“illegal violence on the part of fascists, paramilitaries, gangs, drug
cartels, mafias, and authoritarian revolutionary movements [in forming]
an essential aspect of domination.”[15] If the last century taught the
revolutionary left “the consequences of using hierarchical means to
pursue supposedly non-hierarchical ends,” this century may teach us “how
supposedly non-hierarchical means can [still] produce hierarchical
ends.”[16]
Recent history has demonstrated that, like anti-authoritarian and
anti-capitalist ideas, fascism also finds increasing support from the
downtrodden and dispossessed people subjugated and alienated by
neo-liberal globalization; cycles of economic crisis and
austerity-driven “recovery;” climate change; and the expansion and
reconfiguration of modern empires.
The left often assumes that the discontent spawned from these crises and
contradictions of contemporary capitalism will always translate into
support for the left.[17] However, anarchist philosopher John Clark (no
relation to this author) observes that these crises and contradictions
do not exist in a vacuum. When analyzed concretely, “in the context of
the totality of social relations, they can be expected to lead in a
direction determined largely by the prevailing institutional structure
and the dominant political culture”—that is, in the United States, one
of white supremacist settler-colonialism, class exploitation, and
hetero-patriarchy.[18] “The disquieting but inescapable conclusion is
that [capitalism’s contemporary] transformative contradictions might
very well transform in a rightist, authoritarian, or even fascistic
direction.”[19]
In Greece, protracted economic crisis and suffocating austerity measures
imposed under intense pressure from the European Commission, European
Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund led to an intense period
of social upheaval, and dramatic rise in the visibility of radical and
anarchist organizing. But it also brought about a sharp increase in
scapegoating immigrants and support for the fascist Golden Dawn party.
In the 2012 parliamentary elections, Golden Dawn won nearly 7% of the
vote, up from 0.5% just 3 years earlier, to capture its first seats in
parliament. Emboldened by their electoral victory, members and
supporters of Golden Dawn escalated and increased their violent—and
sometimes deadly—attacks on immigrants, queers, and leftist political
opponents.
The Euromaidan uprising in the Ukraine in the spring of 2014 was
particularly disorienting for North American radicals because at first
glance it was easy to identify with the street fighting and rioting. But
in the midst of Ukraine’s multi-faceted power struggle, fascists
constituted “a powerful minority in the anti-Yanukovych campaign.”[20]
“The neo-fascists from Svoboda [Freedom party] and Pravy Sektor [Right
Sector] [were] probably the vanguard of the movement, the ones who
pushed it harder than anyone.”[21] Genuine
anti-authoritarian/anti-capitalist elements were nearly invisible, while
fascists reportedly appropriated anarchist symbols and even the image
and legacy of anarchist Nestor Makhno. The “accepted and leading role”
of Euromaidan’s fascist organizations was “a breakthrough and set a new
benchmark for fascists across Europe.”[22]
In France, the previously marginal far-right National Front party won
municipal elections in fourteen cities in March 2014, and then captured
a quarter of the national vote in the 2014 European Parliament
elections. Right-wing insurgencies and coups in Venezuela[23] and
Thailand, respectively, and electoral victories for hardline
nationalists in India[24] and other parts of Europe fill in the picture
of a global reactionary shift in the current moment of overlapping
crisis. It is not yet clear whether the far-right in these countries
will simply get absorbed into the current ruling class and act as the
new right hand of capital, or whether their parliamentary gains will act
as a foothold from which to further build their mass base and advance
insurgent aims.
The United States has not been an exception to this trend. The far-right
in U.S. is perhaps more inclined than elsewhere to adopt decentralized
forms and anti-authoritarian language, due in part to the cultural and
political mythology of individualism and federalism in US. The far right
in the US has also “worked diligently for decades at the [local]
grassroots level in many areas”—through churches, civic organizations,
and local political structures, for example—“to create the cultural
preconditions for reactionary grassroots [politics].”[25] This allows
the right to wage their reactionary battles state by state, city by
city, and school board by school board.
Yet, the far right also faces barriers to their power that contributes
to growing radicalism and militancy in their ranks. Despite some
electoral gains for the Tea Party,
They will never be able to muster the strength to defeat finance capital
and the political mainstream on parliamentary grounds. Assuming no
unforeseen economic amelioration, the conditions that are developing and
radicalizing the far-right ...will only deepen. Yet with a decided
inability to advance any further through parliament, the possibility of
a right-wing break with the ballot box as the [primary] terrain of
political struggle will begin to loom ever larger on the horizon. The
popular base and the historical conditions for a new form of Fascism or
proto-Fascism, called by a much different name, will continue to grow
unless relentlessly combated by a genuine, militant U.S. Left.[26]
A possible turn toward extra-legal, militant, collective action by a
growing right-wing mass movement is evidenced by Minutemen-style border
militias; Tea Party disruptions of Democratic town hall meetings; the
growing tendency of right-wing groups to openly display firearms at any
protest they attend; and the mobilization of armed Patriot militias to
con-front the federal government in defense of oppositional 21st century
settler-ranchers. If this movement is effectively mobilizing for war
with the feds over a bunch of cattle and the specter of a centrist
president that they think is too socialist, “what will happen if
[anarchists and the radical left] are the next ones who piss these guys
off?”[27]
On November 3, 1979, the multi-racial Communist Workers Party held a
“Death to the Klan” march in Greensboro, North Carolina. At CWP rallies
in the area over the previous months, they had openly carried firearms
for self-defense, due to death threats and acts of violence against
them. However, for this particular event, local law enforcement had
required that the CWP remain unarmed to receive a permit.
During the march, a caravan of Klansmen and mem-bers of the American
Nazi Party drove up to the CWP march and stopped. The fascists emerged
from their vehicles, pulled firearms from the trunks, and opened fire,
killing five core CWP members and wounding eleven other organizers and
bystanders. Unlike previous similar events in Greensboro, lo-cal police
were not present during the march, evidence of the police collusion with
the fascists in the attack. Nonetheless, the CWP’s unarmed presence at
this march, despite known threats, provided a ripe opportunity for an
open fascist attack. One unarmed CWP member got to his car to retrieve
his handgun and returned fire, albeit ineffectively.
Had the CWP maintained an effective armed presence at the march as they
had at others, it is extremely unlikely that the attack would have ever
occurred. The history of Klan action in the South during the Civil
Rights movement shows that their power and gall were greatly diminished
when met with organized armed opposition.[28] The Greensboro massacre
greatly deflated the power and capacity of the CWP, which transitioned
from revolutionary communism to social democratic activism before fully
dissolving a few years later.
The Greensboro massacre was also “a pivotal event for the U.S. far
right” in part because “it broke the suspicion and animosity” that had
previously “kept Klansmen and Nazis at odds with each other.”[29] The
subsequent “collaboration, cross-over, and interchange between the two
branches of the far right” shifted the “movement's ideological center of
gravity” from “segregationism to fascism --away from restoring the old
racial order, to new dreams of creating a new whites-only homeland or
overthrowing the U.S. government entirely.”[30]
As a chilling reminder that that past doesn’t pass, one of the neo-Nazi
participants in the Greensboro massacre, Frazier Glenn Miller, made
national headlines in 2014 when he fatally shot three people outside a
Jewish community center in Kansas City, after decades of fascist
organizing.
In the struggle against the state and capital, we run the risk of being
out-flanked by fascism and the insurgent right. Don Hamerquist states,
“The real danger presented by the emerging fascist movements and
organizations is that they might gain a mass following among potentially
insurgent workers and declassed strata through an historic default of
the left. This default is more than a possibility, it is a probability,
and if it happens it will cause massive damage to the potential for a
liberatory anti-capitalist insurgency.”[31] CrimethInc.’s commentary on
the events in the Ukraine similarly foreshadows “a future of rival
fascisms, in which the possibility of a struggle for real liberation
becomes completely invisible.”[32]
To guard against this trend we must cultivate a movement that is both
revolutionary and explicitly anti-fascist.[33] To paraphrase Michael
Staudenmaier, anti-fascism without revolution guarantees capitalism’s
continuing misery and devastation, reproducing the conditions from which
fascism grows. Meanwhile, revolution without anti-fascism all but
ensures that the insurgent right will ace out the insurgent left.[34]
On the one hand we must oppose, disrupt, and under-mine the
fascist/insurgent right and their organizing, as well as help build
support for the targets of right-wing violence and scapegoating.[35] On
the other we must organize to fight the conditions from which fascism
grows, such as capitalism and its current austerity programs which
intensify the impact of economic crisis on marginalized communities.
We must also recognize and address the potentially reactionary positions
within our own movements. For example, many environmental/anti-climate
change movements propagate narratives of catastrophe and apocalypse that
can inadvertently fuel reactionary ends.[36] Similarly, Occupy’s myth
about the 99% flattened out a lot of differences of race, class, and
ideology, reinforcing many of the nationalist myths about the U.S. and
allowing right-wing elements (like the “End the Fed” crowd) to feed off
of Occupy’s popular appeal.
Also, recent anti-fascist movements in the U.S. have encountered several
major pitfalls, including hyper-macho behavior and related patriarchal
tendencies, and getting stuck in a mostly reactive posture. Emphasizing
armed self-defense here admittedly runs the risk of compounding both of
these problems—simply one more example of anti-fascists preferring
supposed militancy over the less dramatic work of building a broad
anti-fascist culture and politics in revolutionary movements; one more
instance of anti-fascists jumping at some emergent fascist threat but
never proactively building a positive anti-fascist strategy.[37]
Confronting these challenges is imperative to building effective
revolutionary, anti-fascist movements.
Reciprocally, our organizing should engage the communities that tend to
form the mass base for the insurgent right, pushing on the internal
tensions and inconsistencies in their politics, to divide the misguided
from the true believers. For example, in Arizona, anarchists openly
carried firearms during their campaign against the neo-Nazi National
Socialist Movement (NSM) as part of a larger strategy to engage and
split the local Libertarian movement over their contradictions around
immigration and white supremacy. One participant wrote:
We carried firearms openly against the NSM, not just for self-defense,
or so that the NSM would know we were armed, but also informed by the
memory of having seen pacifist anti-war liberals denounce armed anti-war
libertarians at protests during the early days of that movement in
Arizona. We wanted to differentiate ourselves from the liberals in the
eyes of both groups.We knew the significance that would have.And the
right wing libertarians respond-ed.Quite a lot of them came out to [the
anti-Nazi] action.[38]
The goal was “to divide [the local libertarian movement], neutralize it
and, hopefully, to cause a shaking out of its more truly libertarian
elements towards advancing the attack on Capitalism and State ... [and
breaking] with the overall fascist tendency, the reactionary free market
ideology and the infantile patriotism.”[39]
One area anarchist reflected on the personal impact of the actions:
“This is the first time I have physically seen anarchists at
demonstrations carry firearms with them –and I have to say that the
experience was very empowering to see.”[40] While emphasizing that “the
way forward is collective action” and organizing by oppressed
communities, they also declare “if we are going to go up against people
like the NSM, we should be prepared to defend ourselves.”[41]
In Kansas and Colorado, anarchists used their involvement with gun
culture to distribute political literature—primarily focused on class
struggle and critiquing white supremacy—to mostly white working class
communities at local gun shows.[42] From Texas to North Carolina to
Oregon, anarchists and radical anti-fascists have quietly prepared to
defend their homes and organizing spaces. This preparedness can make all
the difference.
The struggle against fascism and the insurgent right is largely
political. Accessible political education and collective organizing
against the ideology and practice of private property, white supremacy,
and patriarchy, for example, can do more to curb the power and
legitimacy of insurgent right-wing populism in a country where private
property and white, male privilege are widely seen as synonymous with
liberty.
However, this struggle is often physical as well as political, and
building a capacity for armed self-defense is paramount. Armed
self-defense is sometimes necessary to provide physical
protection—autonomous of the state—from fascist terror, and to create
and maintain the space in which to wage our political struggles.
In the power vacuum in New Orleans immediately following Hurricane
Katrina, a group of radicals used armed self-defense to create the space
from which to launch broader grassroots organizing and relief
efforts.[43] White militias had formed in several neighborhoods
throughout New Orleans, including the Algiers Point neighborhood on the
West Bank of the Mississippi River.[44] Algiers Point is a small
wealthy, white neighborhood that is surrounded by the much larger
Algiers and West Bank neighborhoods which are predominantly poor and
Black.
The militias were comprised of white men from various socio-economic
backgrounds who ostensibly to protect their private property and secure
“law and order” locally in the absence of the state. However, much like
the police, their actions mostly amounted to intimidation and harassment
of Black people on the street in any number smaller than the pa-trolling
militia.
The militias self-organized to enforce the racial hierarchy in an area
where the state’s violence was no longer actively present.[45] They
threatened many desperate unarmed people of color, even killing some,
which they later bragged about to Danish media.[46] The actions of these
militias and the paternalistic, white supremacist attitudes of many
rescuer escalated tensions between all who were desperate and left to
their own devices in the storm’s aftermath.
In the wake of the storm, some Texas anarchists responded to a call for
support from Malik Rahim, an organizer and former Black Panther who
lived in Algiers and was witnessing and experiencing the militia’s
racial policing. They snuck into the city under martial law to get to
Rahim’s house, armed and ready to support the defense of the community
and their friends from the racist attacks and harassment of the
militias.
Together with residents of the neighborhood, they sat on Rahim’s porch
and went out on informal armed patrols to keep the white militias at
bay. When a truck with some of the Algiers Point militia pulled up in
front of Rahim’s house, as it had several times before to shout threats
at Rahim, an armed stand-off ensued. But this time, faced with an armed
and organized opposition, the militia abruptly left.
Without the presence of an organized, armed opposition to the Algiers
Point militia, violence against poor people of color in Algiers would
likely have been even much worse than it was. The presence of whites and
Blacks working together to defend a community against the racist
militias was often cited by local residents as having helped ease the
tensions in a racially and economically divided area that was devastated
in many ways before Katrina ever came ashore.
Moreover, armed self-defense helped create the space for broader
grassroots organizing and relief efforts to take place. The militia’s
power had been clearly diminished after facing armed opposition, and it
continued to wither as aid and food distribution sites, free medical
clinics, and independent media centers were developed into full
operations.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and particularly the struggles and
organizing in Algiers offer a tiny and intensified example of both what
is at stake and what is possible in the world today. John Clark explains
that the hurricanes “offers abundant evidence of how crisis creates
ideal opportunities for intensified economic exploitation, what has
since then come to be called ‘disaster capitalism,’ and also for
in-creased repression, brutality, and ethnic cleansing, which might be
called ‘disaster fascism.’” But “it also creates the conditions for an
extraordinary flourishing of mutual aid, solidarity, and communal
cooperation, something we might call ‘disaster anarchism.’”[47]
More recent struggles against white supremacy and police brutality paint
a messy picture of the different political forces mobilizing around
race, property, state violence, and individual rights to own and carry
firearms. Much of the re-cent Open Carry movement has been driven by the
largely white male Libertarian-right, a reaction to a perceived decline
of their collective power and an assertion of the right to overtly
threaten their historic violence in public. Whether promising to march
through historic Black neighborhoods in Houston or organizing meet-ups
at local fast food joints across suburban middle-America, much of Open
Carry has blatantly smacked of white male entitlement and explicitly
sought to normalize their armed presence in public spaces.
When John Crawford, a Black man, was shot dead by police for carrying a
toy rifle at a Wal-Mart in Ohio, a state that allows open carry, much of
the national Open Carry movement was remarkably silent on the matter.
The white, male core of the movement was too overcome by their racist
stereotypes about Black criminality and violence to see the obvious
implications: white people get to open carry and Black people get a
fusillade of bullets for trying to exercise a comparable right. And this
was but one episode in a long history of communities of color in the US
being legally and extra-legally denied the right to self-defense.[48]
One Ohio Open Carry group, however, partially recognized some of the
dynamics underlying Crawford’s murder. They mobilized several dozen
activists to a protest at the Wal-Mart where Crawford was murdered by
police, openly carrying firearms along with their signs decrying the
racist double standard in how police and citizens view people carrying
firearms, and the police violence that results.[49]
In Texas, a group of Black activists from various political tendencies
formed the Huey Newton Gun Club to flip the script on open carry,
marching in Houston and Dallas while carrying firearms.[50] Both
instances point to possibilities for creative engagement with the
contradictions in the populist Libertarian right.
The events surround the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Missouri provide
another model of community defense and the challenges it presents. After
the initial murder of Michael Brown, and again after the county
prosecutor and the grand jury refused to indict the officer, outraged
community members smashed, burned, and looted area businesses and police
vehicles, making good on the maxim of “no justice, no peace.” During the
unrest, a local Klan chapter began distributing fliers threatening
lethal force against protestors, and warning that the protests had woken
a “sleeping giant.”[51] In the midst of these riots in November, a local
Black church that had been critical of the local police and prosecutor,
and where Michael Brown’s step-father had recently been baptized, was
burned down, despite being several miles from any of the protests. Many
suspect Klan involvement.[52]
After the first night of post-grand jury protests in November, the
right-wing Patriot group the Oath Keepers began mobilizing in
Ferguson.[53] Founded by a former Ron Paul staffer, the Oath Keepers are
a national network of retired and active law enforcement and military
personnel, which vows to disobey any orders that they deem to be
unconstitutional.[54] It is part of the right-wing Patriot movement and
had a large presence at the “Battle of Bunkerville” with Cliven Bundy.
A cursory reading of their stated mission might lead one to think that
the Oath Keepers mobilized in Ferguson against the police murder of an
unarmed Black youth, or the extreme police violence against protesters.
In reality though, they saw the government’s real transgression as the
failure to prevent property destruction by an angry and historically
op-pressed community.[55]
The Oath Keepers spent only a few days posting up on the rooftops of
commercial buildings with rifles and binoculars before area law
enforcement told them to leave and threatened legal action for operating
a security service without a license. Incensed, the Oath Keepers
promised to instead join the protesters, but were back on patrol a few
days later. Like much of white America and the political establishment,
the Oath Keepers were much more committed to the protection of private
property than the struggle against white supremacy or police violence.
Yet their relationship with the state, even though comprised largely of
agents of the state and fulfilling some of its primary functions, seemed
to oscillate between guarded suspicion and open hostility.
In moments of crisis and upheaval, political lines and alliances can
shift quickly. Right-wing elements that in one moment act largely in
concert with the state can pivot to a much more system-oppositional, but
still reactionary, posture as the state reacts to threats to its
legitimacy from several directions. But whether these elements are
acting in direct concert with the state (as in Greensboro), against the
state (as in Nevada), or in a relative absence of state control (as in
Ferguson and New Orleans), they still pose a threat to our revolutionary
movements against white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and the
state.
The shape the future takes may hinge on our movements’ ability to
respond dynamically and appropriately to rapidly shifting conditions, to
build communities and networks of revolutionary solidarity and mutual
aid, and to defend those communities and networks. Armed self-defense is
an area that the radical left in the U.S. has neglected, but which may
be necessary for the survival and relevance of our future organizing in
the face of a growing insurgent fascism.
[1] The blog threewayfight.blogspot.com as well as
itsgoingdown.org/topics/anti-fascist both include some extremely
valuable contributions to this discussion.
[2] CrimethInc., “The Ukrainian Revolution & the Future of Social
Movements” CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective(2014),
http://crimethinc.com/texts/ux/ukraine.html
[3] Grace Wyler, “An Armed Standoff in Nevada Is Only the Beginning for
America’s Right-Wing Militias,” Vice (Apr. 16, 2014)
http://www.vice.com/read/an-armed-standoff-in-nevada-is-only-the-beginning-for-americas-right-wing-militias
[4] The Patriot movement is a loose collection of groups and people who
believe that strict (and some might argue selective) adherence to the US
Constitution is necessary to reign in a tyrannical (and sometimes
“socialist”) federal government and its “New World Order.” Various
strands run the gamut from militias, conspiracists, white nationalists,
and Christian fundamentalists.
[5] For deeper explorations, see Don Hamerquist, et. al., Confronting
Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement(Kersplebedeb
2002); Matthew Lyons, “Two Ways of Looking at Fascism,” Journal of the
Research Group on Socialism and Democracy Online(Mar. 8, 2011)
http://sdonline.org/47/two-ways-of-looking-at-fascism/; Matthew Lyons,
“What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features,” Political Research
Associates(Nov 1. 2000)
http://www.politicalresearch.org/what-is-fascism; Kevin Passmore,
Fascism: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford Univ. Press 2002); Robert O.
Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism” The Journal of Modern History, Vol.
70, No. 1. (Mar. 1998) (available at
http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf).
[6] Matthew Lyons, “What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features,”
Political Research Associates(Nov 1. 2000),
http://www.politicalresearch.org/what-is-fascism
[7] “Third Position,” Political Research Associates Archive(undated)
http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/third_position.html(quoting Chip Berlet
and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For
Comfort, 267 (Guilford Press 2000)).
[8] Cheryl K. Chumley, “Militias Head to Nevada Rancher’s Standoff with
Feds: We’re Not ‘Afraid to Shoot’” The Washington Times(Apr. 11, 2014)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/11/militias-head-nevada-ranchers-standoff-feds-were-n/
[9] Operation Mutual Aid(2014)
http://operationmutualaid1.webs.com/(accessed Apr. 18, 2014;
subsequently taken down); see also“Operation Mutual Aid Militia,”
Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium(2014)
http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/operation-mutual-aid-militia(accessed
Dec. 21, 2014).
[10] Spencer Sunshine, “Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists,” The
Public Eye Magazine Vol. 23, No. 4 (Winter 2008) (available at
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v23n4/rebranding_fascism.html).
[11] Matthew N. Lyons, “Rising Above the Herd: Keith Preston’s
Authoritarian Anti-Statism,”New Politics(Apr. 29, 2011)
http://newpol.org/content/rising-above-herd-keith-prestons-authoritarian-anti-statism
[12] Lyons, “Rising Above the Herd.”
[13] CrimethInc., “Fighting in the New Terrain: What’s Changed Since the
20th Century,” CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective(2010),
http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/terrain.php
[14] “Third Position,” Political Research Associates Archive(quoting
Berlet and Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America, 267).
[15] CrimethInc., “Say You Want an Insurrection,” Rolling ThunderNo. 8,
pg 18(Fall 2009) (available at
http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/insurrection.php).
[16] CrimethInc., “Fighting in the New Terrain.”
[17] Sasha Lilley, “Great Chaos Under Heaven: Catastrophism and the
Left,” in Sasha Lilley, et. al., Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics
of Collapse and Rebirth, 54 (PM Press, 2012).
[18] John P. Clark, The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian
Anarchism, 30-31 (Bloomsbury Publishing 2013). No relation to this
author.
[19] Clark, The Impossible Community, 31.
[20] Mark Ames, “Everything You Know About Ukraine is Wrong,” Pando
Daily (Feb 24, 2014)
http://pando.com/2014/02/24/everything-you-know-about-ukraine-is-wrong/
[21] Ames, “Everything You Know About Ukraine is Wrong.”
[22] Tash Shifrin, “Ukraine: No Tears for Yanukovych, No Cheers for New
Regime or Fascists in Its Midst,” Dream Deferred(Feb. 25, 2014)
http://www.dreamdeferred.org.uk/2014/02/no-tears-for-yanukovych-no-cheers-for-the-new-regime-or-the-fascists-in-its-midst/
[23] George Ciccariello-Maher, “#LaSalida? Venezuela at a Crossroads,”
The Nation (Feb. 22, 2014)
http://www.thenation.com/article/178496/lasalida-venezuela-crossroads
[24] Matthew N. Lyons, “Reading ‘The Solstice’—Kasama on Right-Wing Mass
Movements,” Threewayfight(Jun. 15, 2014),
http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2014/06/reading-solstice-kasama-on-right-wing.html
[25] Clark, The Impossible Community, 266.
[26] “On Shutdowns and Party Politics,” Dirt Road Revolutionary (Oct. 7,
2013)
https://dirtroadrevolutionary.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/on-shutdowns-and-party-politics/
[27] “Psycho Hicks,” RednBlackSalamander(Apr. 25, 2014)
http://rednblacksalamander.deviantart.com/art/Psycho-Hicks-450072949.
[28] The history of armed self-defense in the South during the Civil
Rights and Black Freedom movement is very instructive in this regard.
See Charles E. Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns
Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible(Basic Books 2014); Lance Hill,
The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights
Movement(UNC Press 2004); Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F.
Williams and the Roots of Black Power (UNC Press 1999); Akinyele Umoja,
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement
(NYU Press 2014).
[29] Matthew N. Lyons, “Frazier Glenn Miller, Nazi Violence, and the
State,” Threewayfight (May 8, 2014)
http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2014/05/frazier-glenn-miller-nazi-violence-and.html
[30] Lyons, “Frazier Glenn Miller.”
[31] Don Hamerquist, “Fascism and Anti-Fascism,” in Hamerquist, et. al.,
Confronting Fascism, 16 (available at
http://kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/fascism/fashantifash.php).
[32] CrimethInc., “The Ukrainian Revolution & the Future of Social
Movements.”
[33] “Anti-Repression, Anti-Fascist Strategizing Suggestions,” Black
Orchid Collective (Oct. 16, 2012)
https://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/anti-repression-anti-fascist-strategizing-suggestions/
[34] Michael Staudenmaier, “Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and the Three
Way Fight,” Upping the Anti No. 5 (2007) (available at
http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/05-the-three-way-fight-debate).
[35] For ideas and accounts of antifascist strategies and tactics, see
Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook (CrimethInc. 2004)
(specifically the chapters “Antifascist Action” and “Infiltration”)
(available at
https://archive.org/details/RecipesForDisasterAnAnarchistCookbook); K.
Bull-street, Bash the Fash: Anti-fascist Recollections 1984-1993 (Kate
Sharpley Library 2001) (available at
https://libcom.org/library/bash-the-fash-anti-fascist-recollections-1984-1993).
[36] Eddie Yuen, “The Politics of Failure Have Failed: The Environmental
Movement and Catastrophism,” in Sasha Lilley, et. al., Catastrophism:
The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth, 15 (PM Press, 2012).
[37] Some of these critiques were raised in response to the first
version of this piece back in 2006. See “The Three-Way Fight and
Militant Antifascism: A Short Review,” Threewayfight(Nov. 16, 2006)
http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2006/11/three-way-fight-and-militant.html
[38] “JT Ready is Dead: Fascism and the Anarchist Response in Arizona ,
2005-2012,” Fires Never Extinguished: A Journal of the Phoenix Class War
Council(Jun. 1, 2012)
http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/2012/06/jt-ready-is-dead-fascism-and-anarchist.html
[39] “High Noon is Too Late for Tea: Seeking Ways to Engage and Oppose
the Teat Party Movement,” Fires Never Extinguished: A Journal of the
Phoenix Class War Council(Apr. 7, 2010)
http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/2010/04/high-noon-is-too-late-for-tea-seeking.html
[40] “Phoenix: Where Anarchists Pack Heat and Send Nazis Packing,” Fires
Never Extinguished: A Journal of the Pheonix Class War Council(Nov. 9,
2009)
http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/2009/11/phoenix-where-anarchists-pack-heat-and.html
[41] “Phoenix: Where Anarchists Pack Heat and Send Nazis Packing.”
[42] “Rednecks with Guns and Other Anti-Racist Stories and Strategies”
The Defenestrator (2011) (available at
http://multi.lectical.net/content/rednecks_guns_and_other_anti_racist_stories_and_strategies).
[43] The original version of this section was co-authored with scott
crow, and is recounted in greater detail in his book Black Flags and
Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective, 46-70 (PM
Press, 2nd Ed., 2014).
[44] For in-depth reporting on the racist militias in post-Katrina New
Orleans, see A.C. Thompson, “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” The Nation(Dec.
17, 2008) http://www.thenation.com/article/katrinas-hidden-race-war
[45] “This ‘autonomous attempt to impose hierarchies in miniature’, when
allowed to develop in a zone temporarily abandoned by the State, takes
the form of warlordism. Rule by local mafia, by religious cultists, by
the tough-est guys on the block...[And] fascism is the ideology [that]
warlordism tends towards. With its wild warrior ethos and its scorn for
"feminine" bourgeois civility, warlordism has always been the social
myth that traditional fascism has dangled before its men.” Karl
Kersplebedeb, “Thinking About Warlordism,” Sketchy Thoughts(Aug., 29,
2010)
http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/08/thinking-about-warlordism.html
[46] Rasmus Holm, Dir., Welcome to New Orleans (Fridthjof Film 2006)
(available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V__lSdR1KZg).
[47] Clark, The Impossible Community, 192.
[48] SeeClayton E. Cramer, “The Racist Roots of Gun Control,” Kansas
Journal of Law and Public Policy(Winter 1995) (available at
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm; Adam Winkler,
“The Secret History of Guns,” The Atlantic(Jul. 24, 2011)
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/.
[49] It’s also safe to say that Ohio Open Carry isn’t quite there yet
with their analysis. SeeHeather Digby Parton, “Gun Nuts’ Tragic
Confusion: Why ‘Open Carry’ Groups Don’t Get Police Brutality,”
Salon(Oct. 1, 2014)
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/gun_nuts_tragic_confusion_why_open_carry_groups_misunderstand_police_brutality/;
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, “Shameless Open-Carry Activists Co-Opt Racially
Charged Shooting,” Vocativ(Oct. 7, 2015)
http://www.vocativ.com/culture/society/i-am-john-crawford/2/.
[50] Aaron Lake Smith, “The Revolutionary Gun Clubs Patrolling the Black
Neighborhoods of Dallas,” Vice(Jan. 5, 2015)
http://www.vice.com/read/huey-does-dallas-0000552-v22n1.
[51] Alice Speri, “KKK Missouri Chapter Threatens Ferguson Protesters
with ‘Lethal Force,’” Vice News(Nov. 13, 2014)
https://news.vice.com/article/kkk-missouri-chapter-threatens-ferguson-protesters-with-lethal-force.
[52] SeeWesley Lowery, “The Brown Family’s Pastor Tries to Make Sense of
the Fire that Gutted His Church,” The Washington Post(Nov. 28, 2014)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-brown-familys-pastor-tries-to-make-sense-of-fire-that-gutted-his-church/2014/11/28/15520f3e-7711-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html;
Steven D., “Michael Brown Fami-ly’s Church Burned to the Ground –Arson
Investigated by ATF (UPDATED),” Daily Kos(Nov. 29, 2014)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/29/1348212/-Michael-Brown-Family-s-Church-Burned-to-the-Ground-Arson-Investigation-by-ATF.
[53] Brian Heffernan, “In Ferguson, Oath Keepers Draw Both Suspicion and
Gratitude,” Aljazeera America(Dec 14, 2014)
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/14/oath-keepers-fergusonprotests.html
[54] Justine Sharrock, “Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason,” Mother
Jones(March/April 2010)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/oath-keepers.
[55] Mark Hay, “The Leader of Oath Keepers Says the Right-Wing Group Is
in Ferguson to ‘Protect the Weak,’” Vice (Dec. 1, 2014)
http://www.vice.com/read/leader-of-oath-keepers-says-the-group-is-in-ferguson-to-protect-the-weak-1201