#veterans fighting fascism

[hezigler]

Going on Offense for Democracy: Task Force Butler and Common Defense

An alliance of two veterans organizations that welcome veterans and their allies.

[larkandkatydid]

I think in one of your book roundup posts you recommended a book about African American WWII veterans' role in the civil rights movement. I'm looking for an appropriate book for both the holiday weekend and the horrible, horrible news, but I can't recall the title. Would you remind me?

Yes! I am so sorry it's taking me so long to work through asks (to you and to other people sitting in my inbox): I think the book you're thinking of is Matthew Delmont's Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War 2 At Home and Abroad. It's a great story of the "Double Victory" (against fascism abroad and racism at home) that really started with the black American soldiers who fought in the Spanish Civil War.

Something that's later on but super, super interesting is Beth Bailey's An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era. It's great, to me, not so much as military history but as institutional history and specifical of an institution that "did DEI" in a meaningful and (somewhat) successful way because it had to.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 4 June 1950, the 43 Group of militant anti-fascist Jewish ex-servicemen and women voted to disband itself at an extraordinary general meeting in London, England. The group had been formed four years prior by Jewish people who had fought in the British Army against the Nazis in World War II, who had seen the horrors of the concentration camps, and who returned home to see fascists organising openly on UK streets. They resolved to continue their fight against fascism, racism and antisemitism by any means necessary. The group included people like decorated war hero Gerry Flamberg (pictured, left, outside court on trial for attempted murder of a fascist) , apprentice hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, gay former officer Harry Bidney and women like Doris Kaye, who infiltrated fascist groups, and Julie Sloggan, who was one of its most ardent street fighters. They disrupted and broke up fascist meetings, usually after breaking through the fascists' police guard, and harassed fascist aristocrat Oswald Mosley and his followers in towns and cities up and down the country. Eventually Mosley went into exile, and fascist organising dwindled to such a level that the 43 Group dissolved itself. Although veterans of the group would throw themselves back into the movement when Mosley attempted a comeback in the 1960s. Learn more about the group in our podcast episodes 35-37: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e35-37-the-43-group/ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=637872025052683&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[antifainternational]

This June is the 9th anniversary of Antifa International. Back in 2014, we decided to start an anti-fascist social media collective to spread news about antifa actions from around the world; to support antifa crews from all over; and to promote and spread the tenets of anti-fascism. Since then, we've expanded our collective to ten members in eight different countries and grown our social media reach to more than 103,000 people across seven platforms. We've also worked on some very key antifa projects over the last nine years, including The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund, The International Day of Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Prisoners (July 25), and The International Violent Hate Crimes Research Project. We're especially proud this month welcome the 9th member of our collective - Three Way Fight - a veteran group of anti-fascists providing much-needed analysis and insight about the movement from a revolutionary perspective. We will be rolling out special events, suprises, and treats to celebrate our 9th anniversary all month long, so keep it on lock!

[thatstormygeek]

But one key group was left out. The Uncommitted Movement, the antiwar, pro-Palestinian action that placed second to Joe Biden in this spring’s discarded primaries, had spent weeks trying to move the convention, both in matters of symbol and substance, against the U.S.-armed slaughter in Gaza. In the end, their efforts had boiled down to one extremely achievable ask: to give a Palestinian-American — any Palestinian-American — or a doctor who had witnessed the suffering at the hands of the Israeli military a brief speaking slot, at any time during the four-day-long national pep rally. ... But the word that had come down on Wednesday turned out to be final. No Palestinian would be allowed to speak. ... Nevermind, too, that there was already a tearful presentation on the horrors of October 7, from the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American veteran of the IDF who is still being held hostage in Gaza — a presentation that the Uncommitted delegates made sure to attend in solidarity with the families of Israeli hostages, by the way. ... The refusal to platform a Palestinian speaker echoes nothing so much as the refusal, on orders of then-President and candidate Lyndon Johnson, of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, under the leadership of Fannie Lou Hamer, at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, sixty years ago this month. It similarly ignores the substantive divide between the protesters outside the convention and the uncommitted delegates inside — the fact that the latter are trying to work within and in coalition with the institutional Democratic Party. While some, like some in the MFDP, will likely continue to work for Harris’ election this fall, the refusal to give the reformers even a token platform on the main stage fuels arguments that the party, and perhaps the entire political system as it stands, is too hopelessly corrupted to work with, and thus must be challenged or overthrown.

It seems that those instincts are now operating — that the Harris-Walz campaign and the convention planners decided they could afford to alienate Palestinian-Americans and their ever-growing contingent of allies on the antiwar left. That it would be better to disappoint and insult them than to challenge, in the mildest of ways, the pro-Israel contingent or the reactionary center. It was clear from last night’s programming that their play is going to be to appeal to disaffected Republicans and so-called “moderate” independents, by focusing on militarism, police, and Harris’s career as a prosecutor, locking away criminals and “securing” the border. She telegraphed that in the foreign policy section by declaring with almost Reaganite bravado: “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” I really think they could have done both. I don’t think that having a Palestinian woman, hijab and all, deliver what was at bottom a bog-standard Democratic convention speech, with a shoutout to her father’s Jerusalemite origins where others shouted out their Hispanic or Native American heritage would have necessarily detracted from that pivot. I think they could have shored up part of the Michigan Arab-American vote without scaring away the voters they hoped to gain by trotting out ex-Republican congressmen and the Genesee County sheriff. I want to believe that sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Gazans, along with the other Omelas children of the world, in Haiti, Congo, and elsewhere, is not really the intractable trolley problem — a trade between potential victims of American fascism at home and the victims of American militarism abroad — it is made out to be. But maybe I’m naïve.

[mister-christmas]

hello guy who acts like a 12yr old who just discovered reddit and atheism and thinks he's hot shit. You have two choices before you: 1 Become a normal, well adjusted human being 2 keep shitting your fucking pants screaming "HERESY!! BURN THE HERETIC!! GET ME THE HEAVY FLAMER!!" whenever you see other people minding their business and enjoying the same hobby as you

Alas. Did you know warhammer 40k originally intended the Empire of Man, and all it's silly "muh human superiority all xenos must die" to be a satire? That aspect, of course, has sort of lost a lot of it's value over the years, due to the ludicrous amount of writers that the franchise has had over the years, but it is still rather apparent. I mean take a look at the ordo chronos wars, with people getting executed because getting the date wrong is heresy. Or take a look at, fuck, i don't know - the Thunder Warriors, who were all killed by the Emperor of Man because they 'outlived their usefulness'. Did you know that before he began the holocaust, Hitler ordered the deaths of mentally and physically disabled Germans? Many of whom were veterans of the first world war, whom he was supposedly aiming to avenge in his campaign of 'retribution' and bringing the Reich back to it's former glory. Eugenics, as the idea that 'genetically imperfect' humans don't deserve to live (note: the first human right is the right to live, ya doofus. Yes even awulf, wretched wastes of air like pedophiles and rapists have this right, as it is unalienable. It is also there so that people falsely accused of rape do not immediately get killed for a crime they did not commit) is called nowadays, was also surprisingly popular in the USA before and during the war. The shining bastion of democracy and justice lobotomized people it found too hard to deal with so that they would become easier to manage. It also banned interracial marriage. Something I also found curious, did you know that antifa means antifascist? Sorry to break it to you bud, but if you're antiantifascist you stand with the fascist. And if you are, sincerely, a fascist then i hope you do like Hitler and shoot yourself in the head <3

Man, you wrote an entire essay and managed to say nothing of value. But I've got time to kill so let's go through this.

It's interesting you think I, a Christian man, act like a reddit atheist

"Burn the heretic" is a meme, you clod. It's a joke. And when people are minding their own damn business I don't care about their little nonsense headcannons. But quite often they want to change the whole hobby to suite them.

Of course the Imperium is evil! It's fucking called the Imperium! Every faction in 40k is evil, that's the point! It's grimdark! It invented grimdark!

I see we're just completely going off the reservation today. No shit nazis, eugenics, lobotomization, and racism are bad. Is there a point to your ramblings?

Ah, well that makes the rest of this meandering tirade make a little more sense. You're stupid enough to think antifa has a monopoly on being against fascism. I can disdain both fascists and antifa. Being the enemy of my enemy doesn't make them my friend. Moreover just because they call themselves antifa doesn't mean they're actually fighting fascism or doing anything worthwhile.

[cyarskj1899]

the biggest and most heart breaking thing for me rn (and it changes by the MINUTE) is just how this truly gave the green light to everybody watching that morals will get you nowhere. You could be kind, empathic, beautiful, driven, loving … and you will still lose to an evil, racist, greedy white man who’s stolen, cheated, assaulted and hurt his way to the top. This is the message we send to kids and to our elders who’s living the rest of their years in what should be relative peace and happiness….yet now they’re forced to witness the same type of man rise to power, the man that terrorized them in their youth AND their elderly years. It’s stomach churning

Be clear, Trump’s win is a sign of voter realignment it's a sign of voter apathy. Trump didn't have to convert voters, just hold on to his base. This result is an indictment on MAGA and the 10 million + Biden voters who saw the most racist and sexist campaign, ignored the economists who warned about Trump’s plans wrecking the economy and still stayed home. Just remember that happens now is EXACTLY what y'all asked for and I will be here to remind you. #electionshaveconsequences

The thing about leopards is eventually they will eat you too. Your favorite local restaurant closing because the nice family who owns it getting deported. You thought they were some of the “good ones.” The price of produce skyrocketing even before the camps are built as immigrants flee. Your daughter dying of sepsis because the lawyers feel it’s too risky to perform that D&C. No more FAFSA for your kids college because you didn’t know that was part of the Department of Education. Veterans having their benefits cut because they rolled back the PACT Act as too expensive. That factory in town that was going to build chips and employ your kids never breaking ground because of the repeal of the CHIPs act. The bridge that was going to cut your commute in half being canceled because of the repeal of the Infrastructure Act. That sweet government job that you’ve loved because you can work 8 hours a day and fish on the weekends has been slated for a MAGA Schedule F slot because it controls funding for contracts that will go to Republican donors, so you’re fired without cause or any union protections. You’ll blame Biden or the local

Democrats probably. But it will be fine because Elon promised it would be uncomfortable at first but it will get better. You were just so sure it would be uncomfortable for…you know…”those people.” Not you. But that’s leopards for you. They eat whatever is available.

Kamala is a class act today cuz I would’ve got up there and said “fuck y’all, have the day you deserve.” Don’t get me wrong I understand they’re political figures so they can be going to the depths of hell even when those who are against them go low but I’m sick of the “they go low, we go high” shit. It’s time out for it at this point. Decorum died a long time ago.

You can’t fight racism, fascism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc with kindness or extending grace. People who don’t believe you should exist don’t deserve any respect.

I won’t hesitate to tell folks to go *** or go find the nearest intersection. Because you won’t be a bigot towards me & expect kindness in return.

You’ll never see white supremacists compromising on a gawd damn thing.. To them whiteness >>> everything else.. Lmao.

I want marginalized and the often mistreated folks to arm themselves, get their licenses, take up some self defense courses, etc. whatever you can do to survive these four years, do

[definitely-not-the-kgb]

I'm the child of two cops. I come from a family full of agents of the state and every conversation I have about France is becoming unbearable. How can someone say things like that about the French Police? How can someone insist so much? Be so blind? How can anyone say it was Nahel's fault? Even partially, even if he didn't comply, even if the car was turned on, even if he was too young to drive, was he not too young to be shot to death?

I remind you all that the bastard pig who shot him was a veteran of Afghanistan. That he is now a millionaire thanks to far-right fascists (with whom Macron is currently collaborating to fight the protest, because of course he is) celebrating him as a national hero for murdering a French kid.

I was biased for the longest time in favour of the police, thinking they were necessary and good because I didn't want to believe my parents, so much of my family, so many of their friends to be like they were described. I was wrong. And I am deeply sorry and disgusted at myself for ever defending them.

Mort au fascisme. Mort à la police. Vive la révolution et vive la France !

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter Eight. The Crusade

One of the most striking traits of the inner life of a crowd is the feeling of being persecuted, a peculiar angry sensitiveness and irritability directed against those it has once and forever nominated as enemies. These can behave in any manner, harsh or conciliatory, cold or sympathetic, severe or mild—whatever they do will be interpreted as springing from an unshakable malevolence, a premeditated intention to destroy the crowd, openly or by stealth. —Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power [153]

Pastor Russell Johnson stands against the backdrop of a huge American flag with the Christian cross superimposed on the Stars and Stripes. He calls his Christian warriors to battle. He invokes the legacy of the civil-rights movement, speaking of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. He talks of embattled Christians in America. A war of values and morals, of decency and goodness pitted against forces of darkness and evil, has enveloped the country, and he issues a strident call to arms. He calls Ohio “the tip of the spear to turn back the nation.

“We’re on the beaches of Normandy, and we can see the pillbox entrenchments of academic and media liberalism,” he says. “We’ll take back our country for Christ.”

Johnson, who leads the Ohio Restoration Project, is on a 10-city tour in Ohio. The Christian group’s credo is “Pray, Serve, Engage.” The rallies across the state are thinly disguised campaign events for “Christian” candidates, such as Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican nominee for governor. But the speakers also pound home the message that Christians must protect the family, ban abortion, bring back school prayer and register voters who will create a Christian Ohio. There are voter registration cards available, and the few hundred people at the rally are urged to join the “Patriot Pastors”—some 2,000 Ohio pastors, each of whom has promised to recruit 100 new “Intercessors” or “Faithful Servants of Prayer” and 200 “Minutemen Volunteers” to work in the upcoming election. The goal of the movement is to register 300,000 new voters. Johnson has called for a monthly voter-registration Sunday where clergy will show a PowerPoint presentation on how to register, collect cards and send them directly to the office of the secretary of state. These new voters will, in a phrase repeated often at the rally, be like “salt and light for America.” They will stem the forces out to destroy them and the nation. They will return America to the Christian path—which, Johnson claims, was the intent and goal of the nation’s founders.

The fusion of Christian and national symbols marks a completion for those at the rally of America’s new state religion, a Christo-fascism. A choir sings rousing patriotic and Christian hymns while pictures of American troops fighting in Iraq flash on huge screens. There are moments of prayer and a somber honoring of the men and women in uniform, with all veterans in the room asked to stand. Looming above it all is a huge American flag with the Christian cross superimposed on it. On another wall is a flag with a superimposed George Washington, sword by his side, kneeling in prayer. Christian rallies like these are also being held in other states such as Texas and Pennsylvania.

Johnson warns about the “secular jihadists” who have “hijacked” America, removing public prayer from schools, the 10 Commandments and the Bible from public places. He accuses the public schools, which he says promote an ideology of secular humanism, of neglecting to teach that Hitler was “an avid evolutionist.” There can be no negotiation, no compromise, no deals cut with the enemy. And the enemy lives in your neighborhood, teaches in your schools and works in your office. The battle lines are being demarcated in the suburbs of Dayton and across America.

Johnson likens America’s predicament to that of Nazi Germany. He tells the gathering of about 400 supporters that church congregations in Germany would sing so that they could not hear the passing of trainloads of crying Jews headed for nearby concentration camps. He accuses Christians in America of leading “Neville Chamberlain lives,” referring to the British prime minister who naively signed a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. As Johnson speaks, pictures of Hitler and Chamberlain flash on the screens. If Christians do not begin to act, they will be next. They will be hauled off in freight cars like the Jews in Nazi Germany and murdered.

The rhetoric creates an atmosphere of being under siege. It also imparts the warm glow of comradeship, the feeling that although outside these walls there is a dangerous, hostile world, here we are all brothers and sisters. It is clear to whom Christians bear a moral obligation: to fellow Christians. The world is divided into friends and enemies, neighbors and strangers. A moral obligation, Freud wrote, only increases with our affection for an individual. In this room, the commandment to “Love your neighbor as yourself” is twisted, in ways Freud could understand, to “Love your fellow Christians as yourself.” Loving one’s neighbor presupposes a bond, a shared sense of belonging, but it was a presupposition Freud pointed out was absurd. “If this grandiose commandment had run ‘love thy neighbor as thy neighbor loves thee,’ I should not take exception to it,” he wrote.[154] Loving a stranger, Freud said, was counter to human nature: “If he is a stranger to me…it will be hard for me to love him.”[155] And those outside the Christian community are effectively made strangers. They are no longer worthy of being loved. The distinction creates a world where there are only two types of people. There are godly men and women who advance Christian values, and there are nonbelievers—many of them liberal Christians—who peddle the filth and evil of secular humanism. This dividing line is nothing other than the distinction between human and nonhuman, between the worthy and those unworthy of life, between saved and unsaved, between friend and foe.

In rallies like those in Johnson’s Ohio tour, friends, neighbors, colleagues and family members who do not conform to the ideology are gradually dehumanized. They are tainted with the despised characteristics inherent in the godless. This attack is waged in highly abstract terms, to negate the reality of concrete, specific and unique human characteristics, to deny the possibility of goodness in those who do not conform. Some human beings, the message goes, are no longer human beings. They are types. This new, exclusive community fosters rigidity, conformity and intolerance. In this new binary world segments of the human race are disqualified from moral and ethical consideration. And because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers to create a Christian America, then nonbelievers must be seeking to destroy them. This belief system negates the possibility of the ethical life. It fails to grasp that goodness must be sought outside the self and that the best defense against evil is to seek it within. When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight. It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay. When evil is always external, then moral purification always entails the eradication of others.

This rhetoric of depersonalization creates a frightening moral fragmentation, an ability to act with compassion and justice toward those within the closed, Christian circle yet allow others outside the circle to be abused, silenced and stripped of their rights. And the passivity of many in America who do not acknowledge the danger of this rhetoric, and the moral fragmentation it inspires, lends itself to the pleasant fiction that these radicals are fundamentally decent, that they do not mean what they say, that they will never actually persecute homosexuals or nonbelievers or execute abortion providers. Such passivity only accelerates the probability of evil. Extremists never begin as extremists. They become extremists gradually. They move gingerly forward in an open society. They advance only so far as they fail to meet resistance. And no society is immune from this moral catastrophe.

The Christian Right, for now, is forced to function within the political system it seeks to destroy. Judges continue to judge. Teachers continue to teach. The media continue to report. Politicians continue to campaign. But in the world of fundamentalist rhetoric, only “Bible-believing” judges are worthy of respect. Only Christian teachers are true educators. And only the pseudo-reporters seen and heard on Christian broadcasts, who portray the course of historical and world events as conforming to purported biblical prophecies, report the real news. Finally, it is only the men of God, those who champion the Christian state, who have the right to rule. The movement is creating a parallel system, complete with parallel Christian organizations, to replace the old one. It is a slow and often imperceptible process, but Johnson’s Ohio rally is the outward expression of vast subterranean shifts that are methodically reorienting the lives of literalist Christians and the country.

Students in Christian schools are being inculcated with the intolerant, heavy-handed political doctrine on display at the rally. The Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, one of the country’s three major publishers of Christian textbooks, defines “liberal” in its schoolbooks as “referring to philosophy not supported by Scripture” and “conservative” as “dedicated to the preserving of Scriptural principles.”[156] And “Conservative Christian schools,” identified by their affiliation with one of four national school organizations that define themselves as evangelical and Christian, are the fastest-growing segment within the private school system. Such schools now represent 15.4 percent of all private school enrollment. The National Center for Education Statistics shows a 41 percent growth in the total enrollment at conservative Christian schools between 1992 and 2002.[157] The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that the number of home schoolers rose from 850,000 to 1.1 million between 1999 and 2003. Of those surveyed, 72 percent of parents cited the desire to give religious and moral instruction as a top reason for home-schooling.[158]

In texts published by A Beka, one of the big fundamentalist publishing houses, African religious beliefs are described as “false.”[159] Hinduism is “pagan”[160] and “evil.”[161] The lack of Christian conversion among Africans is blamed on “Satan’s strong hold on these people,” according to a Bob Jones University Press history textbook for seventh graders.[162] A Beka’s high school world history textbook blames the poverty and political chaos in most of Africa on a lack of faith. It skips over the repressive colonial European regimes that exploited the continent and decimated the population in countries such as the Congo, explaining:

For over a thousand years, there was no clear Christian witness in the vast heartland of Africa; the fear, idolatry, superstition, and witchcraft associated with animism (the belief that natural objects and forces are inhabited by mostly malignant spirits) prevented most Africans from learning how to use nature for man’s benefit and thus develop high culture like that of other African Empires.[163]

Another A Beka textbook argues that “witchcraft and spirit worship” caused most postcolonial self-governments in Africa to descend into dictatorships.[164] Hinduism is described as “devastating to India’s history.”[165] Hindus are “incapable of writing history [because] all that happens is dissipated in their minds into confused dreams. What we call historical truth and veracity—intelligent comprehension of events, and fidelity in representing them—nothing of this sort can be looked for among the Hindus.”[166]

The Muslim prophet Muhammad is portrayed as deceiving followers about his “supposed encounters with angels,” and Buddha is criticized because he desired to “leave his wife and newborn son”[167] in a search for enlightenment. The deaths of Muhammad and Buddha, set against the risen Christ, are taken as proof that Islam and Buddhism are false religions. And while the movement works alongside right-wing Catholic groups, within its own circle it spits venom at the Catholic faith. The A Beka textbook calls Catholicism “distorted” and explains that in Catholic countries such as Ireland children “grow up believing the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church without knowing of God’s free salvation.”[168] The Catholic empires of France and Spain failed to colonize the United States, students are told, because God wanted to make America a Christian nation.

The college protesters of the 1960s were largely the instruments of communists “seeking to exploit youthful rebellion in order to advance their own goals.”[169] Riots occurred in black neighborhoods because “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people.”[170] Those dependent on the welfare programs of the 1960s “became more susceptible to politicians that preyed on economic insecurity…. In this way politicians literally bought the votes of millions of Americans.”[171] And Joseph McCarthy becomes a patriot, with a textbook stating, “McCarthy’s conclusions, although technically unprovable, were drawn from the accumulation of undisputed facts.”[172]

It is this binary worldview that informs those around me at the rally. The room falls silent to watch a video that will precede the talk by Blackwell. It begins with images of the life of Christ. The text that accompanies the images is lifted from a passage in LaHaye’s final apocalyptic novel Glorious Appearing. The novel reprints a sermon by the late Dr. Shadrach Meshach Lock-ridge, who served as the pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego from 1952 to 1993. It is pounded out in a raplike beat, the voice deep and sonorous. The narrator slowly builds momentum, and the crowd shouts, rises and erupts in thunderous applause. Blackwell regularly uses the video as a campaign prop.

The Bible says my king is a seven-way king. He’s the king of the Jews; that’s a racial king. He’s the king of Israel; that’s a national king. He’s the king of righteousness. He’s the king of the ages. He’s the king of heaven. He’s the king of glory. He’s the king of kings. Besides being a seven-way king, He’s the Lord of lords. That’s my king. Well, I wonder, do you know Him?[173]

The video builds on this refrain, all the while listing attributes of the king. The beat and pace of the words infect the crowd, which shouts, “Amen!”

He’s indescribable. He’s incomprehensible. He’s invincible. He’s irresistible. Well, you can’t get Him out of your mind. You can’t get Him off of your hand. You can’t outlive Him and you can’t live without Him. The Pharisees couldn’t stand Him, but they found they couldn’t stop Him. Pilate couldn’t find any fault in Him. Herod couldn’t kill Him. Death couldn’t handle Him, and the grave couldn’t hold Him. That’s my king![174]

It is on this euphoric note that gubernatorial candidate Blackwell rises to speak. He turns to the cheering crowd, now on their feet, and shouts: “He is my King! Do you know Him?”

Blackwell is the only candidate for governor to appear at the rallies. He has posted on his Web site a list of 20 requirements for people of “high character.” He helped make Ohio a “State of Character,” part of a movement within the Christian Right that includes the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia and Oklahoma. There are also more than 160 American cities and towns of “high character,” 36 counties and 47 foreign cities, most of them in the Philippines. Blackwell has put funding and resources aside to train citizens and leaders on how to be people of character. To all potential candidates he sends out forms to fill out to declare they are persons of character and posts the names of those who abide by the request on his Web site.

Woven into Blackwell’s 20-point list, which deftly eschews all religious terminology, is a blueprint for an authoritarian state, one where questioning power is unpatriotic and only those with “high character,” as rigidly defined by Christians like Blackwell, have the right to lead and be heard. Individualism, the right to privacy, the belief that other political viewpoints and moral systems have value—all are attacked as disruptive to social cohesion.

Within the movement there is an open call for a uniform moral code, one that needs to be enforced in the public and private realms. In the section titled “Unity,” followers are told:

High-character people strive to build relationships that foster oneness among others who are bound with them to a common promise, vision, mission or purpose. Ethical organizations seek uniformity in their people’s shared character ethics and unity among their otherwise richly diverse people. Without a persevering commitment to shared character ethics, there is no hope for sustainable unity. (Observable Virtues: reconciler.)[175]

In section 7, titled “Accountability,” followers are told how to enforce this unity:

High-character people scrutinize themselves and welcome the scrutiny of others. They acknowledge that human nature compels us toward independence. Our preference for independence results in isolation from one another. Isolation breeds temptation to unethical conduct. High-character people resist this chain reaction by adopting transparent life- and work-styles that invite inspection. They place themselves in relationships that motivate self-examination and encourage constructive critique from others, particularly those they serve. (Observable Virtues: an open, up-front, disclosing spirit.)[176]

Point 14, titled “Honoring Authority,” is a reminder that without moral guides, people of “high character” can go astray and deviate from the ethical standards imposed from above:

All people are imperfect, requiring boundaries for behavior. High-character people willingly yield to the authority of those who are charged with upholding those boundaries. They help shape and then abide by the legitimate laws, rules and boundaries established by legitimate authorities and strive to live within those boundaries for the betterment of all people. When those given authority violate conscience-convicting character ethics, high-character people take wise action to justly hold them accountable. (Observable Virtues: yieldedness, submission/“aligned with the mission.”)[177]

Toward the end of the list, in point 19, under a heading titled “Our Ability to Change,” there is a section titled “Submission to Truth”:

Truth transforms people only when we submit to it. People who seek truth cannot not transform. Eventually everyone confronts the power of truth. When people of conscience are confronted by what is true, they feel convicted to replace or “put off” their lower character by pursuing and “putting on” high-character ethics. Taking action on this choice can occur overnight or over a long and often painful period.[178]

All the points ask people of “high character” to give over all authority for moral and political decisions to leaders who tell them what is true and what is right. All must, if they have “high character,” invite scrutiny by these leaders, by the organs of the state and by their neighbors. These tenets are the pillars of the police state, the state where all are told to watch for social and political deviants, where there is only one orthodox truth, where all dissent is heresy, where those who are not of “high character,” those who do not submit and do what they are told, are not allowed to contaminate the public domain. Those of “high character,” those who abide by these moral tenets, become servile, afraid, bound to the tasks laid out by their leaders, willing to be punished for failing to achieve the moral standards and goals imposed by the state and ready to denounce those around them.

Rod Parsley, the head of the World Harvest Church, is one of the Christian Right’s shining lights, not least because of his crossover appeal among African Americans, who make up about 45 percent of his 12,000–member congregation. Parsley works crowds like a revival preacher. His spitfire phrases tumble out of his mouth. His face is swiftly covered with sweat, which he periodically swipes clean with a white handkerchief. Often, as he did at a rally at Columbus with former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Parsley orders the secular media to leave. He was instrumental in mobilizing voters to support the gay marriage ban during the 2004 presidential elections in Ohio, an effective tool in getting the religious right to the polls to vote for President Bush.

Parsley represents the new breed of Christian Right leaders. His worship services resemble freewheeling chats between him and the congregation. Traditional hymnals and choreographed, predictable liturgies, as well as suits and dresses, have been replaced by a casual come-as-you-are attitude, electric guitars and dancing in the aisles. But the service revolves around Parsley. He exudes the aura of a rock star and the moral authority of a prophet. Parsley, although white, changes easily into the traditional rhythms and cadences of the black church. He questions the biological basis for homosexuality. He argues that the gay lifestyle is morally and physically damaging to homosexuals. He says that liberals defend homosexuality to erode the moral fiber of the nation. Islam, he says, is “an anti-Christ religion” that intends to use violence to conquer the world. Allah, Parsley contends, is a demon spirit.[179] And Christian America has been mandated by God to do battle and defeat all demons to usher in the reign of Christ. Charismatic and funny, he peppers the language of war and violence into his sermons, which usually rouse his audiences to their feet. I heard him speak in Washington, where, in a naked call to battle, he soon had those in the hall standing and shouting. (Part of his peroration appears above, in Chapter 1.)

Throughout history, countries and kingdoms have been birthed on the battlefield of a revolutionary movement. Such crusades have been championed by soldiers and citizens who have refused to be denied or delayed or detoured in their pursuit to take up a cause they believed deserving of even death itself. Now, the effect of such an upheaval has been the escalation of every religious, political, and social event from Communism to feminism, from Marxism to Nazism, from mayhem to martyrdom, from anarchy to democracy. A moral revolution is dependent upon the moral virtue of the people. It becomes necessary when the vice and ignorance, or virtue and intelligence, of a people demand it. At that point, negotiation and compromise become void and revolution is inevitable….

The church that claims to hold the cause of right, yet condemns confrontation, is little more than a social club. They want rain with no thunder, and rain with no lightning. They long to avoid confrontation by dwelling in what I call the devil’s demilitarized zone, inside the safety of their sanctuary…. in order that they might preserve their little façade of peace at any price. But there are those in this room with pigmentation in their skin a little darker than mine that understand this terminology: power—real power—concedes nothing without demand. Somebody’s got to speak up and be seen and be heard. Somebody’s got to say, “I’m not going to the back of the bus, not one single solitary time more. My father owns the bus line; I will sit where I please.” [Applause]….

I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but we are at a point of crisis. Our culture is in chaos. The moral foundations once constructed by the tenets of our faith are quickly crumbling around us with no sign of a cure. We are at a point of crisis. We are at a strategic inflection point. And we are this morning faced with a choice. Let me share it with you this way: when complacency exceeds your desire and mine for change, the consequence is concession and chaos. But when comfort and contentment no longer pacify the people, the cry “Freedom at any cost” can be heard, and it alone becomes the catalyst which produces confrontation, which gives birth to change.

Such upheaval was apparent in the early church. Men and women became martyrs and misfits. They didn’t fit in. They were mocked and ridiculed by the social, political, and religious leaders of their day. But…they could not bow, and they would not burn. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but I see the embers starting to flicker again. I see a glorious church just about to rise out of the blurs of indistinction. I see a remnant of people here this morning that are glad to give their lives to a cause greater than themselves.

There’s no greater drama than the sight of a few remnant believers gathered for breakfast, scorned by a succession of adversaries, multiplying miraculously from a world that still doesn’t understand where it came from. We’ve multiplied miraculously. The more they afflict us, the more we prosper and grow. I’m here to tell you, if you think 2004 was something, we have not begun to reach critical mass. We are the largest special-interest group in America.

We’re giving order to chaos. We’re fighting the sword with the Word. We’re fighting savagery with hope. We’re rescuing the downtrodden, restoring the disheartened, reviving the life of Christ in the hearts of humanity. Look at them. Look at us. We’re people and we’re battered, but we are not bowing. Why? Because we are propelled—here’s what they don’t get—we’re propelled by a power that is greater than ourselves.

Christians, evangelical Christians, are the original obsessive-compulsive people. We put down one arm and the other goes up. We cover our mouths, and the gaze of our eyes shouts a hallelujah of victory. We’re compelled by a power greater than ourselves, compelled to serve an infallible leader, an irresistible power which is based upon absolute truth.

Listen, when you get hold of truth—I’m not talking about tolerance, that’s what secular humanism has done to the church of Jesus Christ across America. It has turned us into secular humanists, where we try to use the Bible as a tool to make God give us what we want. It’s time to start singing old songs again, like “I Surrender All”: “All to Jesus I surrender./All to him I freely give./I will ever love and trust him./In his presence daily live. I surrender all. Though none go with me, still I will follow.” A thousand men may fall at my left and ten thousand at my right, but it shall not come nigh thee. With God before me, who can be against?

Men and women of such moral stock will not cave in at the sight of first opposition. You don’t need anybody. Just give us somebody. Give us somebody like David in the Valley of Elah, with five smooth stones, crying out, “Is there another cause?” Give us somebody like Moses. They don’t have to have perfect speech. Give us a Moses to stand in front of Pharaoh, saying, “L-l-l-l-l-let my—better let ’em go.”

Give us somebody. Give us somebody like Martin—what poor whites called Dr. King. Give us somebody like Martin to stand over Washington Mall again, and say, “God hasten that day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, may join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.’”

We don’t need everybody. Just give us a Patrick Henry, who at the birth of the American Revolution cried out, “Is life so dear and peace so sweet that it is to be purchased at the price of these chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what cause others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Now, this revolution is not for the temperate. This revolution—that’s what it is—is not for the timid and the weak, but for the brave and strong, who step over the line out of their comfort zone and truly decide to become disciples of Christ. I’m talking about red-blooded men and women who don’t have to be right, recognized, rewarded, or regarded. Something unimaginable happens when names and logos and egos are set aside. [Applause.] I’m talking about people who don’t have to be right, recognized, rewarded, or regarded…don’t need a position at the front table. They’re just happy to be in the battle.

So my admonishment to you this morning is this. Sound the alarm. A spiritual invasion is taking place. The secular media never likes it when I say this, so let me say it twice. Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! They say this rhetoric is so inciting. I came to incite a riot. I came to effect a divine disturbance in the heart and soul of the church.

Man your battle stations. Ready your weapons. Lock and load—for the thirty-forty liberal pastors who filed against our ministry with the Internal Revenue Service. One of their complaints was that they wouldn’t give their names to the media because they “feared retribution.” I asked them, “What do they mean?” One of the newspapermen said, “Well, they’re afraid you’re going to call out the troops.” I said, “I already have. We’ve been in prayer every night for them since they filed.” I don’t think that’s the answer he was looking for.

Spiritual invasion is taking place; if you believe it, say, “Yes.” Let the struggle begin. Let it begin in your heart today with a shout unto Him who has called us to war—not only that, He has empowered you and I to win. I will be silent no more. Our times demand it, our history compels it, our future requires it, but most importantly, God is still watching.

Parsley swings deftly from anger and bellicosity to sentimentality. He is arrogant and self-righteous and then maudlin and ingratiating. He shapes and fashions the moods and emotions of those who stand before him. And he, like many of these preachers, is rich. He collects his millions of dollars by promoting the gospel of prosperity, the promise that if his followers, mostly of modest means, tithe 10 percent of their salaries, God will reward them a hundredfold. This money is in addition to the collections he often solicits two or three times during a service. He has, in the past, urged followers to burn their household bills and give the money to him to be free from debt.[180]

“I just love to talk about money,” Parsley once said. “I just love to talk about your money. Let me be very clear—I want your money. I deserve it. The church deserves it.”[181]

He peddles “covenant swords” and “prayer cloths” that he claims will bring the buyer freedom from financial troubles as well as from physical or emotional ailments. He has written that “one of the first reasons for poverty is a lack of knowledge of God and His Word,” and that “the Bible says that to withhold the tithe is to rob God.” Parsley lives lavishly in a 7,500-square-foot house valued at more than $1 million. He refuses to disclose information about the church’s income or expenditures and has fought off several allegations from former employees charging gross misuses of church funds.[182]

Parsley is one of the masters at peddling this message of greed, hatred and intolerance as gospel truth. The Christian rhetoric, on the surface, is often the same. It is comfortable and predictable. The gestures are familiar. The reverence to God and nation, the deference to the authority of the Bible, do not appear to have changed. But the heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs. Only the shell, the form, remains, its empty carcasss wrapped around these wolves like a cloak. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it.

[eva-knits12]

Veteran's Day

If you know a veteran, thank them! They served in the military so we could live free in this country.

If you know someone who is currently serving, thank them.

My Papa, who passed when I was 35, wouldn't be liking the state of the world today. He didn't fight fascism to let fascism in.

My uncles didn't fight it, only to let it, either.

[eaglesnick]

England’s Hero?

It is 80 years to the day that the Allied invasion of Europe began, a day where tens of thousands gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy fighting Fascism.  As King Charles rightly says,

 "It is our duty to ensure that we and future generations do not forget their service and their sacrifice in replacing tyranny with freedom."

Nigel Farage, once described as being “racist” and  "fascist” by one of his private school teachers, braved his own battle this week when he was attacked by a woman wielding a milky drink.

Oh dear! Poor Nigel. A face full of milkshake: how simply awful!

Right-wing Piers Morgan - a man accused of bullying by over 1000 fellow television workers – was quick to rush to Forage’s defence, claiming the milkshake attack was both “menacing” and "dangerous".

Mercifully, Nigel survived this outrageous attack, despite being "quite frightened”, displaying personal bravery on a par with his good friend Donald Trump, who Forage describes as:

“The single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life"

I don’t know about you but I have met many people braver than Donald Trump. My grandfather, a professional soldier, was recognised for his exceptional bravery during WW1 in attacking enemy machine gun posts. My father fought in WW2, both in North Africa and in the invasion of Italy. I have met survivors of the Holocaust, the tattooed number on their arm a constant reminder of the terror they experienced. I have met people with terminal illnesses and debilitating medical conditions who just get on with life without complaint. We have probably all met D-day veterans who simply don’t mention their own bravery and the horrors they witnessed on that day.  

These are the truly resilient and brave, not the narcissist Donald Trump or the “snowflake" Nigel Farage.

[militarymenrbomb]

10 November 2023

A MESSAGE FROM THE COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS

             For 248 years, Marines have earned a reputation as the most disciplined and lethal warfighters in the world. This legacy of honor, courage, and commitment passed on to us was paid for in sweat, blood, and sacrifice. From Belleau Wood to Inchon and Tarawa to Sangin, Marines have stepped forward to defend our Constitution when others either could not or would not. Our history is filled with heroes like Chief Warrant Officer 4 Hershel "Woody" Williams, Private First Class Hector Cafferata Jr., Sergeant Major Dan Daly, and thousands of others who performed acts of bravery which went unseen in the heat of battle. We stand on the shoulders of these Marines, and we owe it to them to earn our title "Marine" each and every day.

             Marines have given, and have been willing to give, their lives for Country and Corps in every fight our Nation has entered. Our actions turned back the tide of tyranny in Europe during the Great War, defeated fascism in Asia during World War II, fought for democracy in Korea and Vietnam, and offered the hope of self-determination in the Middle East. We go to war whenever our Nation calls, and in the interwar periods we train, we prepare, and we innovate. We have chosen a life of service and sacrifice — an honorable life that has meaning. We sacrifice so our fellow citizens don't have to, and we seek nothing in return but a chance to be first to fight. Most will never understand why we choose to attack when others do not, why we revel in being covered in mud, why we snap to attention when "The Marines' Hymn" is played, or why we say, "Ooh Rah." We understand it, and this message is for us, for the Marines.

             As Marines, we live on a war footing because someone must. This means that we ruthlessly adhere to our standards of excellence — Marine standards — as we know this will best prepare us for the wars of the future. Our high standards are a prerequisite of professional warfighting, and how we keep our honor clean in the cauldron of combat. They prepare us for the most difficult mission there is: fighting from and returning to the sea. Most importantly they shape our unique Marine culture which is respected at home and across the globe.

             Sergeant Major Ruiz and I are proud of all that you have done this past year to protect and enhance our reputation as America's best warriors. We hope you know that we will be with you every step of the way as we prepare for the fights ahead. We ask that every Marine - active, reserve, and veteran - honor the legacy of those who went before us by continuing to uphold our high standards.

             Protect your fellow Marines and our shared legacy. Happy Birthday Marines!



[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 13 June 1960, workers in Genoa, Italy, rose up against a conference of the neo-fascist party, the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which was due to take place in the city the following day. Only 15 years prior, the population of Genoa had launched an uprising, which succeeded in liberating it from fascist rule. Many residents, including former partisans who fought against the fascists and Nazis during World War II, were outraged both by fascists being back in government, as part of a coalition with the right-wing Christian Democrats, and by their attempting to hold a congress in their anti-fascist city. Therefore, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, including large numbers of dockworkers and partisan veterans. Police with armoured cars, on horseback, wielding batons, and backed up by the military-run Carabinieri, attacked the crowd. But the move backfired. The crowd fought back, and local residents in their apartments hurled household objects down on the heads of the police. After hours of fierce fighting, the fascists were forced to admit defeat, cancel their conference and head home. Similar anti-fascist protests then broke out around the country. And despite police killing significant numbers of demonstrators, including former partisans, protests continued and by July, the prime minister was forced to resign and the right-wing coalition government was brought down. Learn more about the partisan resistance to fascism during and after World War II in our podcast miniseries coming soon. Support us on patreon to help us fund work like this, and get early access to all the episodes: https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=653268043513081&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[arachnaem]

Today I woke up thinking about the fact we're gonna go see The Boy and The Heron with a bestie in the evening and that got me thinking about the first Ghibli I ever saw at 11 and what it meant and that got me crying in bed. So.

YOU get a long post about my very personal interpretation of Porco Rosso as a man dealing with survivor's guilt and failing at managing it, because when is it ever not the appropriate time for it? Right? Right.

So right off the bat let's kick the corpse of the one very gross thing in the movie: making Fio, a minor, an ambiguous almost-love-interest for the main dude who is f** 36. Gross. Unforgivable. Kick it dead.

For the sake of writing this without yelling at old man Hayao too much, though, I will say that I choose to this day to see Fio as someone who is halfway between "want to help the sad man" and "maybe puppy love for the hot dad" but that it is never reciprocated. The narrative forces Porco to fight to "win Fio", damn you Ghibli for that, but that's all there is to it. There is no saving Curtiss but at least he is a very straightforward villain.

With that out of the way.

Porco Rosso for me is a movie about guilt, self-loathing and toxic shame. It's also a movie about a dude who loses the fight with himself.

(Ofc there is also the rise of fascism, but I don't have much to say about that. Fascism bad. Don't do it.)

So how is Porco's self image shown in the movie? Well, it's the pig face. Either this is a slightly magical reality in which you can loathe yourself enough to be cursed to look like your self-image, or Marco is never a pig and though the story is told by Fio his face is always as he imagines it, only breaking for a few moments. I like option 2 because it feels like a powerful narrative device, and maybe what other people call his "curse" is his attitude and the solitude that comes with it, not an actual physical manifestation, and sh** I might cry again, but magic is cool! Either way works.

What matters is what it says about the grumpy old boy Marco. He truly doesn't have a lot going for himself: a sexist vet who hates people, lives in the wild and probably doesn't wash very often. This is a man who has put himself on humanity's fringe because living amongst them had become unbearable.

Why does he hate himself so much? Well, plenty of good reasons as a veteran, he's got a body count. His insistence at never shooting anyone dead during the movie shows how much this is a choice. It says never again, no matter what.

He's very closed-off about what happened during the war, but war is about hunting people down in bulk because you think it's the only way to protect your own (or because you've been drafted and used against your will). So it makes sense that the moment that breaks him is the moment he loses his friends to the war. It's not objectively worse that gunning down civilians or whatever else he did, but he participated in war to protect his people and he couldn't even do that. As if the haunting choices he had made were ultimately laughable and completely gratuitous.

This is shown in a delicate way (in the subbed version at least, the dubbed version is well-done but allergic to subtlety and explains everything twice, adding a lot of bulk to the dialog and often changing it entirely). He completely deflects when Fio asks him about the curse, but asking for a story brings up the last time he seems to remember feeling human. He came back alone from there and wishes he had been taken instead. He then checks out of humanity altogether because he thinks he's not worthy of it.

This is outlined in pain throughout the movie. It is i the air, in everything unsaid between Gina and Marco. It's on his face in almost every frame and the more the story insists on talking about seaplane fights and silly pirates, the more the way he treats himself shows through. And that is what I find heartrendingly beautiful. Add the incredible watercolors and the soundtrack and I'm a sobbing mess.

I also love the way it ends. I'm usually not a fan of either tragedies or completely open endings. Here, with the way the story has been guiding us without saying anything, an open end is the only one that brings the necessary nuance. Because I don't think Marco is dead, captured by the fascists or whatever. I think when his curse broke, when he finally accepted that other people's care meant that maybe he was worth something, he ran away.

There is a hurdle between believing you're subhuman so much that it shows on you face, and actually doing something with the feeble hope in yourself you've been given. I think when the time came he walled off his hope and walked out, like the repressed dude he was. I think he couldn't break the habit.

I think Gina and Fio made what happened to Marco their little secret because they had to mourn him in a way that is harsher than if he was dead. In silence so they wouldn't tip off the fascists. Mourning in silence is hard.

And I believe that, with time, they learned to love people who were a little kinder to themselves.

So yeah everytime I rewatch this one I swear it gets worse, I've got a pig-shaped scar somewhere on my heart. And I hope you do too <3

[antifainternational]

REVIEW: WE GO WHERE THEY GO: THE STORY OF ANTI-RACIST ACTION Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier 2023, PM Press Reviewed by K-Dog In February I read the excellent new book WE GO WHERE THEY GO - The Story of Anti-Racist Action written by Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier, with a cool graphic-style Forward by Gord Hill - and published by PM Press. This is the first-ever in-depth history of the influential direct-action anti-fascist youth movement - and the authors do a great job of trying to organize that story into chapters covering the defining struggles and evolutions of the network - including the turf battles between anti-racist skins and nazi boneheads, the protracted struggle against the Ku Klux Klan's organizing efforts, ARA 's innovative and effective work in Canada, and the fierce opposition to both anti-choice fascists and sexism within our movement. The book is driven by interviews with over 50 ARA veterans, fellow travelers or first-hand observers who provide quotes, reflections, and war stories - often with a biting sense of humor.

I spent a good part of my teens and twenties building ARA in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Detroit, Chicago and supporting other chapters across North America. It was my university. So it was fun and sometimes emotional to read stories of fights we were in or see quotes from friends who have put in the work and paid their dues in this movement. I always knew that what we did mattered - even if it wasn't often treated that way by the mainstream left - not to mention broader society. But I have to admit its rewarding to have the history treated as something significant, even crucial. More than giving props to the OG antifas tho - what's really meaningful is that this book will help a new generation, confronting new forms of the fascist threat, find inspiration and lessons in both our successes and failures.

A few things off the top of my head that I thought the book did well was: 1. Quantify the victories against the fash - a surprising number of fascist organizations went out of business after sustained campaigns by ARA - a material contribution to the fight against white supremacy 2. Deal openly and honestly and without hype with the question of political violence - both its efficacy and dangers 3. Emphasize the role of culture (not just the bands - but yes the bands) - the way the movement LIVED and FELT and WORKED 4. Skillfully review the disagreements and controversies within the movement without trying to score points or dismiss points of view 5. Argue for the need for movements that are both militant AND outward facing - radical AND popular 6. Letting the people speak! This isn't a book of academic citations or leftist rhetoric - its the voices of regular, mostly working-class people, mostly without college degrees sharing their thoughtful insights, compelling stories, and clever anecdotes

My criticisms of the book are really more criticisms of ARA. Did we really never articulate a thorough understanding of what fascism is? Or at least establish some solid competing positions? Did we never find a way to talk about strategy beyond the various direct action campaigns we were running? Did we never propose ways to further embed ARA within wider sections of the working-class - and especially relate to communities of color more consistently and systematically? Looking back, some of our short comings are embarrassingly obvious.

For me Anti-Racist Action was a real living example of a genuine "United Front" - the concept of different groups, tendencies, and individuals working together and having each others backs in struggle DESPITE many real and important differences. A United Front does not mean everybody is all happy with each other all the time - quite the opposite, it means we're all often annoyed, angry or arguing with each other - but we don't sulk away when we lose a vote or don't get our way or face some criticism. We do appreciate what other folks are bringing to the table tho, we give them their respect, and we recognize the common goals we are fighting for - because those goals actually fucking matter.

The other thing about ARA I'd like to highlight was the de facto method of leadership - the anarchistic "leadership by example". Instead of a top-down structure where a few intellectuals dictate strategy and tactics on the larger mass - ARA chapters made their arguments by producing real world examples of what they were talking about. Think we should all do Cop-Watch patrols? Show me what that looks like. Convinced we need to make feminism a core part of our culture? Build a crew that exudes that vibe. Want economic demands as part of the program? See how we are doing it in our town, etc. etc. etc.

I have a lot of love for the hundreds of young people who organized and fought for ARA; for the few elders from the 60s/70s generation who embraced ARA, helped build it and make it more sophisticated; and the bands that saw what we were doing and kney they could help by promoting the work on tour and on records. ARA was a militant movement - we took risks and took licks - and gave 'em back too. I remember once calculating how many arrests ARA had taken over the years and by my loose tally we were well into the many hundreds when I gave up counting. Many of us got stitches and casts, relationships got tested and burned, and two of us were murdered by nazis in the desert. Now in my 50s I'm still unsettled and angry about a lot - and I'm still active on a few fronts - will be 'til the day I die. But I have a calmness when I'm around my ARA homies with our jokes, arguments, scars, and PTSD. My people. Virtual book launch of WE GO WHERE THEY GO, hosted by Asheville, NC's Firestorm Books: Tuesday, March 28th @ 7pm. Register here.

[quotesfrommyreading]

Spain is now experiencing the rise of Vox, a far-right political party. If Vox wins in the 2023 national elections, it will likely roll back the Democratic Memory Law—and the government’s initiative to reform historical education and map mass graves.

The Stolpersteine project avoids the argument over who is responsible for remembering Spain’s past. Sticking to objective facts, every plaque contains the essential details of each individual political prisoner’s escape from Spain, journey through war-torn Europe, and survival or death in a Nazi camp. The stone’s placement outside the prisoner’s last known home makes a connection with the street, city and region where they lived.

As Spaniards and tourists snap photos of the bronze squares they encounter and share them on social media, they begin a conversation about who these individuals were, what motivated them to leave Spain and how they ended up in Nazi camps.

One of the people recognized with a memorial stone, Boix, was a Spanish Civil War veteran and Nazi camp survivor. After fighting fascism in two wars, Boix was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria for four years. While in the camp, he worked as an assistant in the photography lab, where he stole negatives from the Nazis and later used them in his testimony at the Nuremberg trials.

Boix, who died in 1951, is one of the best-known concentration camp survivors in Spain. His story illustrates the struggle against fascism, which he and his fellow Spanish Nazi camp prisoners fought on a daily basis.

Stolpersteine memorials in Spain are not only increasing the visibility of these largely unknown victims of Nazi violence. They are also connecting them to the residents and visitors who, decades later, walk along the same sidewalks.

  —  Spain's Oft-Forgotten Nazi Ties