A Statement

Since the rise of the BNP in the mid nineties and early noughties, many decent and able people have rallied around to defend communities and to keep the spirit of community defence and opposition to fascism alive.

This spirit goes way back to the 1930’s in Cable Street in East London, when the Jewish community organised in conjunction with the Communist Party, Independent Socialists and local workers to defend the East End from black-shirted thugs. Cable Street began a tradition of working class men and women fighting fascism. Many of those people from the 1930’s went on to Europe to either fight to emergence of fascism in Spain or were conscripted to fight Nazism in the guise of Adolf Hitler some years later.

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, the BNP and NF were physically confronted and defeated. By the 1990’s a re-emerging C18, the BNP and other state sponsored thugs were driven off the streets too. This was done by the use of intelligence, discipline and forward planning.

Rightfully, we revel in that history. It is one of not just defiance, but one of celebration of a culture that has become diverse, broad and inclusive at the same time.

At times, some have deviated while some have maintained even in the darkest of hours, the will to continue to fight the fascists either by use of justified force or by campaigning on doorsteps in the heart of the electoral beast that fascism temporarily became.

By any means necessary, Anti-fascists have always mounted a response that the conditions dictated. We have not always seen eye to eye with each other, we have often disagreed and not always agreed on the scale or the necessity of strategies. We have been diverse. However, whatever has happened, we have remained dignified and disciplined. Because of this, the fascists have never defeated us.

Even during the 1990’s when fascists took to stalking progressive people and putting their names on websites for attack, our sense of ultimate unity and dignity ensured that not only could we respond, we would not allow ourselves to be victims of fascists in our work places or homes. Our discipline was drawn from not fawning over martyrs, extremists or those who saw our broad movement as a means of promoting their own agenda, even in the moment of our most dark of hours. It was through discipline.

Now, more than at any other time in our recent history, we face a threat that is more dangerous and pernicious than many people would dare to admit or confront.
Socialists, progressives and Trade Unionists who make up the bulk of the Anti-Fascist movement are now regularly attacked and harassed by organised fascists. With the demise of the electoral threat of the far-right our broader numbers have shrunk whilst the broader movement concentrate on fighting the debilitating attacks on the working class by a government and its corporate sponsors who seek to profit by our division.

So it is with some concern that we have had to witness the rise in hot headed talk, words and egotism of one particular individual. Photographs of threatening teenagers, faces covered but not their embarrassment spared, now regularly appear without one iota of discipline or common sense on his own blog, continually driving an agenda that threatens all of us.

This individual is not a Walter Mitty, but perhaps a well meaning but historically challenged individual.

Of late his behaviour has led to decent Trade Unionists’ being attacked at work, on the picket line and at home. He knows he is in the wrong. And yet, he attacks other Anti-Fascists on his blog while crying into his internet forum that he needs police protection and worse still, the support of others whom he has attacked.

We are asking this individual to now desist with his near suicidal egotism and self promotion. Good people are being put at risk. He does not have the support of the wider movement.

In stupid desperation, he has now resorted to the abhorrent behaviour of the fascists themselves: Bravado in public, tears in private.

Militant Anti-Fascism was not born out of self made heroes. Nor is it born out of allowing other individuals to shield you from your own stupid actions.

He knows who he is. He knows he must desist. He should please do so, so that those of us who are capable, organised and disciplined to do so, can respond.

We will support any Anti-Fascist. We will not support inflatable heroes.

Democratic Anti-Fascists.