#AFA Action

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

Christian nationalist leaders want to force Americans to live in accordance with their religious and political beliefs, and they have a plan to make it happen. They are demanding that future Republican presidents and senators consider only potential Supreme Court justices who meet the American Family Association’s “biblical worldview” standard. Yes, it is that brazen. Religious-right leaders who have endorsed the project want to impose a de facto religious test on the Supreme Court, a violation of constitutional principles and the American values of religious freedom and pluralism.   Right Wing Watch broke the story about this Supreme Court scheme last year after Phillip Jauregui presented it during a breakout session at the Family Research Council’s 2023 Pray Vote Stand conference.  Jauregui, a longtime activist in support of right-wing judges, now runs the Center for Judicial Renewal as a project of AFA Action, the American Family Association’s political advocacy arm. 

At this year’s Pray Vote Stand conference on Saturday, Jauregui presented the Supreme Court plan from the main stage, with a giant screen showing the name of other religious-right leaders that have endorsed it, including FRC President Tony Perkins, former Rep. Michele Bachmann, First Liberty’s Kelly Shackelford, and relentless purveyor of false Christian nationalist history David Barton.  When it comes to the Supreme Court, it’s not good enough to get conservative justices, said Jauregui, they have to be “great.” So the Center for Judicial Renewal has spent “thousands of hours” evaluating people whose names have been floated as possible future justices.  The first criteria Jauregui uses to evaluate a possible nominee’s potential for greatness as a “constitutionalist” justice is their “biblical worldview.” 

Otherwise conservative judges who don’t meet AFA’s “worldview” are put on Jauregui’s “red list” of unacceptables. Jauregui suggested that he is publicizing AFA’s “red list” to try to keep Donald Trump from including any of the four judges on the list of potential Supreme Court nominees Trump has said he will release before the election.  Among the things that have landed conservative judges on that list are using a transgender person’s preferred pronouns. The dossier on Judge Neomi Rao characterizes her “faith and worldview” as problematic, noting that she was “raised in an immigrant family of Zoroastrian tradition and converted to Judaism when she got married.”

[...] To be clear, this is not just a demand for only conservative Christian justices. It goes even further. “Worldview” is a hot topic on the religious right, and was the focus of its own breakout at Pray Vote Stand. The Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, which employs evangelical pollster George Barna, makes it clear that a tiny fraction of Christians—even a small minority of church-going evangelicals—meet their exacting standards for having a “biblical worldview.”

[...] In June, AFA Action asked supporters for money to expand the project to include lower federal court judges, but at Pray Vote Stand, Jauregui kept the focus on the Supreme Court. Jauregui noted that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are the oldest sitting justices, which he said makes his team’s work even more important. “God’s done work at the court, and it’s not time to lose that ground.”  AFA’s list of acceptable potential justices includes three right-wing appeals court judges, along with Kristen Waggoner, president of the religious-right legal giant Alliance Defending Freedom, and Mark Martin, former dean of the law school at Pat Robertson’s Regent University and now dean of the law school at High Point University. Right Wing Watch has previously noted that one of those AFA-approved Judges, Fifth Circuit MAGA Judge James Ho, “has become notorious as a virtual parody of a right-wing activist, whose extreme opinions read like far-right ideological diatribes.”

Christian Nationalists seek to impose a biblical worldview test on future judicial nominees for the highest court in the land by imposing a very narrow definition for acceptable court nominees by their standards.

[vanityangel]

Macho Man: "Don't know if I'm flattered or not. I think I'm... NOT flattered!"

[antifainternational]

STOCKHOLM REPORTBACK: On May 1st, antifascists in Stockholm paid a courtesy call to the home of a local nazi. Later that day, another pair of nazis were removed from a Spanish Civil War memorial site in the city & may have had trouble with their rental car as they fled. Good luck getting that damage deposit back from the rental agency, nazis!

[nando161mando]

"Antifascist action Springfield MO" (EN: English)

[autonomoustweekazoid]

[crabscrabscrabs]

This is Craig Miller from Stoke on Trent, the Nazi 'punk' seen at the rally today. Now I'm not going to say his living room is psychopathic but... I mean a blackshirt on one side and a Pressure 28 logo on the other, he's personally associated with the lead singer of Pressure 28, Kevin Gough who is a founding member of Combat 18.

Please spread him about and if anyone knows him or about him contact me please? He's obviously a fan of Pressure 28 and he's friends with Kevin Glough who is a known ex member of Combat 18. So I feel this guy aside from an activist Nazi Skinhead I think he might be a former Combat 18 member.

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

[gnosisandtheosis]

Defeating the National Front, and the later BNP threat, took the working class forming an organisation that was able to confront the fascists both physically and politically. Despite constant accusations of "squadism" by various elements of the "Left", Anti Fascist Action got the job done from 1985 to the early 2000's. A lot of lessons need to be taken from that organisation.

There have been anti-fascist counter-protestors at all of these fascist gatherings. In Rotherham they were outnumbered by the far right and had to retreat, with the result that the fascists were able to attempt to burn down a hotel with refugees in it, attempted mass murder. At a lot of other places the anti-fascists outnumbered the fascists, and nothing of the sort took place. The key is to have the numbers on the streets. If you're in the UK, look out for any mobilisations around you (https://standuptoracism.org.uk/stop-the-far-right-in-your-area-this-weekend/), get involved in Stand Up To Racism or whatever other group is active in the area.

Like to be clear, the far right are violent thugs. But the Palestine solidarity marches in London are routinely getting 100,000 people on the streets even after nine months, whereas these little riots are a few thousand people total across the country. A lot of people passively buy in to some racist shit about immigrants, but this kind of open street violence is well beyond the pale: the people opposed to it are in the overwhelming majority, it's just a matter of getting them out there.

[swishk]

[mudwerks]

G.I. Joe GI Nurse Action Girl Figure AFA 75+ *POP 1 Highest Graded* (Hasbro, 1967)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

The American Family Association’s Center for Judicial Renewal has been urging Republican presidential candidates and senators to adopt its explicit religious test for future Supreme Court justices;  the group is attempting to blackball conservative judges who fail to meet its “biblical worldview” standard. In a fundraising email sent Tuesday, AFA Action CEO Walker Wildmon revealed that the group is also seeking to apply its religious worldview test to judges for the lower courts, which he calls “a crucial, much-needed expansion of CJR’s scope.”

[...] Wildmon’s email also brags about the group’s involvement in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led project to engineer a far-right takeover of the executive branch if Donald Trump or another Republican is elected president this fall.

In spite of promoting an explicit religious test for federal judges—a clear betrayal of the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution—and supporting Project 2025’s authoritarian plan to undermine checks and balances, Wildmon’s email portrays AFA as a defender of the Constitution against “radical progressives” who he claims are “bent on destroying the rule of law altogether.”

Project 2025 partner and far-right hate group American Family Association’s sister organization Center For Judicial Renewal expands their religious litmus test (conservative evangelical Christians preferred) to lower court nominees.

[nelsontethers]

[addendum 2: overtop of the ACAB is two additional drawings seemingly added in separately. First is the number 161, and second is 3 jagged downward arrows. End addendum.]

ACAB spotted in Waynesboro, Virginia

[antifainternational]

In celebration of Anti-Fascist Action Sweden's 30th anniversary this month, our crew has translated an overview of their history for you! Enjoy!

[nando161mando]

What's 161?

161 = AFA = AntiFascist Action

1312 = ACAB = All Cops Are Bastards

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 28 July 1985, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) was officially launched at a meeting in Conway Hall, London, attended by 250 people with representatives from Red Action, Class War, Jewish Socialists Group, Newham Monitoring Project, Workers’ Power, Searchlight and various local anti-racist bodies from across the country. Its dedication to ‘physical and ideological opposition’ to the fascism would see it drive numerous far-right groups off the streets. For example, the fascist British National Party (BNP) had been growing in confidence in Liverpool, launching violent attacks on left-wingers, including trying to burn down a bookshop run by feminist collective. Within a year the BNP had been beaten from the streets, and later admitted they "were driven underground" by anti-fascists. And in London, after the neo-Nazi record label Blood and Honour tried to organise public events in the city, they too were smashed off the streets by AFA members who took over their redirection points for shows in Marble Arch in 1989 and Waterloo in 1992. AFA mostly wound down in the mid-1990s after the BNP had been forced to change its strategy from trying to control the streets to running in local elections. We have some anti-fascist books and merch available in our online store which you can check out, proceeds help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/anti-fascist https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=668836361956249&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[crabscrabscrabs]

Fellow wearsiders can you help in identifying these people.