Anti-Fascism

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Far right outnumbered in Rotherham

Three or four hundred people came to Manvers, near Rotherham, on 18 February 2023 to confront the fascist-organised mobilisation targeting a hotel where refugees are being housed. The far right will have hoped to build on their four hundred-strong crowd which fought police outside a hotel with asylum-seekers in Knowsley, near Liverpool, on 10 February . Only around fifty fascists came, Patriotic Alternative, Yorkshire Rose, and British Bulldog being the known groups among them. They were held by the police on a roundabout on the main road, while the counter-demo was outside the front of the...

Solidarity with Italy's workers and oppressed

Fratelli d'Italia leader Giorgia Meloni Italy’s 25 September general election was won by a “post-fascist” far-right party whose leader – almost certainly the next prime minister – still talks sympathetically about Mussolini’s regime. Italy is not about to become a fascist dictatorship; but this will be the most right-wing Italian government since Mussolini’s fall. It is a boost to the far right across the world and a brutal setback for Italy’s labour movement and oppressed people, who will need the greatest possible solidarity. Fratelli d’Italia (Fd’I, Brothers of Italy) is part of a so-called...

A spectre is haunting Europe

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of fascism. We caught a glimpse of that spectre in Sweden last weekend [11 September] and we are likely to see more of it next weekend [25 September] in Italy. It is not just that right-wing parties are winning elections. That would be bad enough. What we are seeing now happening in some parts of Western Europe is something new and terrifying. Political parties that have their roots in Nazi or fascist movements have emerged as mass organisations — and as parties of government. This is something that should keep democrats awake at night. In the Swedish...

Berlin’s ‘Third Sex’: Magnus Hirschfeld and the first LGBT rights movement

Costume party at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. Magnus Hirschfeld (in glasses) holds hands with his partner, Karl Giese Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was the founder of the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, a pioneer in the field of sexology and an outspoken advocate for the rights of sexual minorities. Gay, feminist, socialist and Jewish, he was anethema to the Nazis, and it’s no coincidence that on 6 May 1933, a bust of Hirschfeld was thrown onto the fire along with his extensive library and archives, at the one of the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings...

Drag queens vs the far right

On 7 August, fascists from Patriotic Alternative turned up in Leeds to protest Drag Queen Story Hour. These storytimes for kids, where stories are read by drag performers, originated in San Francisco in 2016. Author Michelle Tea, who is behind the events, sought to “inspire a love of reading, while teaching deeper lessons on diversity, self-love and an appreciation of others”. The vast majority of people would surely see this as innocuous fun and it has proved to be very popular, spreading across the US and overseas. However, from 2019 onwards, white supremacists and neo-Nazis in America began...

Tories’ "extremism" adviser airbrushes far right

Last year 22% of referrals to the government’s “Prevent” strategy for countering “extremism” concerned Islamist radicalisation; 25% concerned the white nationalist far right. (Larger numbers for “mixed, unstable or unclear ideology”; only a very few referrals for far left ideas.) Seven years ago the Islamist figure was about five times higher than the far right one (and five times higher than it is now). Of “Channel” cases concerning “radicalisation of vulnerable individuals”, 46% concerned far-right ideas and 22% Islamist ones. Some more radical Islamists engage in violence; but there have...

Far right calls off 9 April march

The far-right “For Britain” organisation was forced to cancel a racist demonstration planned for 9 April in Bristol, citing fears of “Antifa… plotting to disrupt”. The organisation, which claims Tommy Robinson as a member, planned a rally in support of slave-trader Edward Colston, and against Black Lives Matter. Many left groups were mobilising to prevent them marching, and the fascists complained that the police had not guaranteed them the support they need. The police have protected fascist protests, kettling anti-fascists, in the recent past, but it looks like this time the numbers willing...

Against far-right anti-vax blockades: labour movement action, not new state powers

The far-right “Freedom Convoy” protests in Canada have come to an end, after police cleared the blockades in Ottawa. The Guardian reports that 76 vehicles have been towed and 191 arrests made, with those arrested facing 389 criminal charges, mainly for violent behaviour. This comes after right-wing truckers and others occupied the Canadian capital for three weeks, with very little police intervention. It’s not even clear that the police used the powers of the Emergencies Act which prime minister Justin Trudeau invoked to clear the blockade. But invoking it - and renewing that , with the...

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