Queers in Palestine

From Palestine to the World.

Sharing this submission sent in and originally published at queersinpalestine.noblogs.org

Language: Unworded by colonial violence, resisting erasure

After a year of an ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, attempts of expansion by the Zionist settler-colonial project, and of our ongoing steadfast global revolt, we are delivering a message from Palestine, to the world, while words cannot convey the depths of our collective trauma or the radical resistance we embody. Words collapse as we bear witness to the destruction of bodies, lands, histories, and futures. Language can no longer hold the weight of our suffering, our rage, our endless grief. It cannot do justice to our feelings and experiences. While capitalism and colonialism’s forces of death and destruction are wounding the world, we are still determined to deliver our voice, we are still moved by the force of life, and will always move with and towards it.

Palestine and Lebanon: One land in grief and struggle

The Zionist colonial entity still exists because colonial and imperialist powers are supporting and funding it. These are the same powers that produced the Sykes-Picot colonial agreement that fragmented Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and other Arab nations in 1916 by enforcing borders on our lands. We live with the implications of these systems. We deeply embody the knowledge of this violence, and have been trying to warn the world that these powers neither see our humanity nor respect our sovereignty. The world’s promises of justice and accountability through colonial international laws and institutions only reproduce violence and harm with no transformation. The very existence of these colonial powers is built on the (social) death and exploitation of others. The same tactics of annihilation that have been used in Gaza since last October are now also used in Lebanon. They are reaching us all––from surveillance tools of political repression, to weapons for direct killings. From corporations to other colonial structures, if we do not dismantle these systems, they will continue to consume us all.

Zionism: Threat against humanity

Zionist settler colonialism has been perpetrated against the land of Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. But it does not stop there: Zionism is a global threat. While Palestine is used as the Zionist entity’s testing-ground to develop technologies of oppression (including cyber invasions and technological warfare) to control the people and suppress resistance worldwide, these Zionist inventions are exported and used for state violence to further colonial, imperial and capitalist expansion. The Zionist entity’s influence extends to geopolitics and resource extraction across Latin America and Africa––from mining projects in Namibia, to diamond extraction in Angola, and ‘Cop City’ in the USA–– and its aggression can only be contained through struggle and abolition.

The myth of individualism and separation

Individualism is an instrument of the systems of (neo)liberalism, racial capitalism and colonialism. It is designed to destroy our collectives and community practices through fragmentation and separation––from each other, the land, the planet and universe, and from ourselves. The illusion of separation denies our autonomy, our sovereignty over our bodies and land. We resist this colonial myth of individualism that serves oppressive systems. We are interdependent and our struggles are interconnected and intersectional––there is no such thing as individual liberation. No one is free, until we are all free.

On the path of abolition and transformation

Our reality, and our queer, feminist, radical truths, cannot be quantified. They cannot be reduced to data, to screens, to consumable images. The genocidal violence we face and resist everyday, is not an event to be documented. This deep rupture is a tearing apart of the fabric of life that demands something more than mere speech. It demands action and transformation. And it necessitates abolition. Abolition not just through the dismantling of prisons and the destruction of all carceral systems—but the refusal of all structures that seek to imprison and kill our bodies, our desires, our lands, our futures. Abolition is a direct confrontation with the forces that seek to erase us on the path towards life-affirming and systemic transformation, it is to radically imagine and build a different future from the present.

Hope as a radical practice

Our bodies ache with exhaustion, our spirits bruised by the relentless weight of oppression. In this land stolen from us, where we live the genocide in our every moment, hope is a radical practice. We are warriors, survivors, rebels. We will not be extinguished. The world’s indifference is a betrayal––we know that. We will not allow our disappointment to consume us. Fuelled by our collective rage and grief, we unite and empower us. Still amidst these difficult times, we channel our hope as a collective force of resistance to the very foundation of these unjust systems, in Palestine and everywhere. We will not only survive this genocide, we will thrive––reclaiming our stolen land and building a future free from the chains of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism and zionism.

Constant transformative struggle towards collective liberation

One year later, we continue to call for the world to:

• Be radical, feminist, queer, intersectional, decolonial, and abolitionist in our resistances: fuelled by rage, love and longing for justice, transformation and collective liberation.
• Resist the hegemonic colonial narrative: do not stop talking about Palestine with your kin, queer siblings, friends and community. Challenge the colonial and Islamophobic framing of Palestinian and racialized voices as antisemitic.
• Escalate all forms of disruption of the colonial and capitalist systems enabling this violence. Rage and strike against the use of your labor and tax money to fund, support, and endorse settler colonialism and genocide. Fight against governments and hold them accountable for their military, diplomatic, economic, and political relations with and support to Israel.
• Rage and grieve as radical forces for change: together we channel our anger and grief towards a world free of Zionism and all other systems of oppression.
• Radically imagine a different world and put this imagination into practice by organizing to fight current systems and build the future from the present.

Always re-membering: honoring those we have lost, and standing steadfast in resistance by all means possible.

From Palestine to the World: October 2024

On September 18th Muhammad Ashiq was detained by Greek police for resisting arrest and property damage. What the media tells us about Muhammad Ashiq are the basic tick box statistics about his life – He was 37 years old. He was a delivery rider born in Pakistan. He’d been in Greece for more than 20 years, he’d arrived as a teenager. The reality of his life – what he loved, what motivated him, what went on in his dreams – the statistics have no interest in. The reason we know his name is because he went down fighting, defending himself constantly over a period of several days until his body could no longer sustain the injuries being inflicted and his spirit escaped to fight on.

Muhammad Ashiq’s body was found in Agios Panteleimonas police station on September 21st and identified on medical records as deceased, in circumstances to be investigated. As news of the circumstances of his passing and photographs of his injuries, evidence of torture spread around Athens, the spirit of resistance has been growing among the masses. Delivery riders unions have gone on strike, the student movement has come out in force and in Exarcheia fires blaze. Muhammad Ashiq went down fighting against a system that has no right or need to exist, through our actions his ability to fight back is carried on.

In July the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture said that during a visit to Greece in 2023, it “again received several credible and consistent allegations of deliberate physical ill-treatment of detained foreign nationals by police officers in certain police stations in Athens”. Agios Panteleimonas police station has a long history of abuse and collaboration with far-right groups.

These accounts, coupled with the European Court of Human Rights’ repeated condemnation of Greece for its failure to address ill-treatment by police underscore the need for action. Across Athens and worldwide resistance to the fascists on the street and the fascists in uniform is spreading like wildfire.

In London comrades from the Anti-Racist Defendants and Prisoners Solidarity Network held a vigil for Muhammad Ashiq and a banner drop outside the Greek Embassy last Saturday. We gathered in support of the uprising in Athens and to demonstrate against police brutality and racism across Greece. But we also gathered in London because the British ruling class hold their share of the responsibility. They dress in suits and keep their hands clean while trying to hide their connections to the police and street fascists who throw the punches, this is what we are exposing and mobilising to resist.

The British government fund Frontex and Fortress Europe in the billions, from paying for tear gas shells fired by the CRS at refugee children in Calais, to push backs by coast guards and drowning of migrants off the shores of Greece. If a wealthy thief was to rob all your wealth that you needed to survive, and take it into his mansion, you would be breaking down his door to take it back, and this is exactly what is happening right now. Money provided by the British government fuels the hostile environment which migrants in Greece face. The fascist street thugs, the police, the border guards and racist politicians work together for the same interests.

As natural resources are extracted and looted and the working class are exploited for profit across the Global South, wealth is drained to centres of finance capital in the Global North. Migrants follow the flow of capital to survive, to support our families and to take back what’s being stolen. Our countries are not poor, our cultures and our eco-systems are rich and the land is rich in natural resources. We are being made financially poor through neo-colonial economic robbery, our migration to the Global North is one way we take back what’s being stolen from us. Reparations aren’t to be asked for or begged for because the ruling class will never let go of their wealth and power freely, reparations must be snatched out of their hands.

The British East India Company and then the British Empire first colonised the countries today known as India and Pakistan. In 1857 the people rose up in rebellion and fought the first war of Independence. Among the leaders were Bahadur Shah and the Rani of Jhansi, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs rose up in unity. Eventually the uprising was defeated with the help of collaborators. In response the British Empire put in place a system of divide and rule, buying the support of selected princes and leaders and turning people against each other on lines of religious faith. This system was modelled on sectarianism stirred up in Ireland and Scotland by the British aristocracy to divide and control the working class.

The British Empire has been overthrown but it’s legacy remains for us to dismantle. Today the British government, City of London corporations and the trilateral commission work closely with Bill Gates to buy up land in Panjab. The agenda here is to replace diverse ecosystems with mono-culture, cash crops, genetic modification and terminator seeds. Short term profit is persued without regard for long term desertification, when the farmers rise up in rebellion they come under attack from police and drones sent by Narendra Modi’s fascist government. The BJP claim to be nationalist, but Hindutva politics represents the continuation of the colonial game of divide and rule, the BJP’s support for the buying up of land stands testament to their role as collaborators in neo-colonialism. Muhammad Ashiq was in Greece because his homeland continues to be impoverished and colonised, responsibility lies with the ruling class in London so we’re taking the resistance to them.

In London we live away from the land, out of touch with nature and in a metropolis built for the sole purpose of sustaining the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the ruling class, exploiting and draining energy from the rest of us in the process. Our location in close proximity to the centre of global capital provides us with the capability to target cracks and weaknesses in the belly of the beast.

Beyond our physical bodies, wherever we are thought about, spoken about or the effects of our actions are felt, how we come to exist in the collective consciousness represent extensions of who we are. Material bodies have a limited time span on this planet, but ideas, memories, legacies and the consequences of actions live forever, we make the spirits of all those whose actions live on in their name immortal.

Anarchist anti-racist comrades are among those calling for a sustained escalation of resistance to accelerate the collapse of capitalism, the dispersal of power and energy from the ruling class and the taking back of land by the people who live off and on the land in harmony with nature.

We need to be using a diversity of tactics to halt the rise of fascism and to bring down the fragile fascist structures already in existence. Fascism is a deadly system of total war, designed to keep the ruling class and the capitalist system alive through it’s dying breaths, breaking the natural bonds that exist between people through race hate and division and infecting minds with false pretences of patriotic glory and anti-globalism.

The planetary eco-system is in crisis, while never ending growth, space colonialism and imagining artificial intelligence and not ourselves to be our saviours, are the fantasies of the super rich. For the rest of us the stars are the realm of our dreams and Mother Earth is the realm of our waking lives to be preserved for future generations. The future isn’t promised but it can be fought for and won, we are all free in every moment we strike.

Comrades from the Anti-Racist Defendants and Prisoners Solidarity Network are calling for abolitionists and anti-racists across London to gather again at the Greek Embassy, this Saturday 5th October 6pm, for a vigil and banner drop.

1A Holland Park

W11 3TP

London, England

On the evening of Sunday 25th August around 400 people gained entry into a massive and beautiful empty building round the back of Sainsbury’s on Camden Road. What then took place, against all the odds, was perhaps the biggest and certainly the best squat party of the summer. Held in collaboration with three different soundsystem crews, the benefit fundraiser ended up turning into a launch party of sorts for Cable Street Beat 2.0

The event was deeply rooted in folk history and held against the backdrop of racist riots and pogroms across Britain and Ireland. Fires started by lost souls, twisted and controlled by misplaced rage, fuelled by the lies of the corporate media, well funded algorithms and the New Labour government were quelled by the love and resistance of the tens of thousands nationwide who took to the streets in defence of our communities and our dreams.

Ravers gathered at the redirection point, Camden Town Station from 10pm and were brought to the building. Within 2 hours of the infoline going out, Around 40 TSG and 20 regular cops mobilised and laid siege to the venue. They quickly attempted to force entry but were unable to gain access, around 400 ravers had already been brought inside and the party continued in full swing.

Around 100 people continued to gather outside and came under attack from truncheons. Yet despite the numbers and brutality of the TSG, people climbed over fences, trees and scaffolds and carried on gaining entry into the venue throughout the night.

For those who made it inside it was a dance of healing and recovery, of the celebration and joy of survival and victory, the tunes and energy played out through massive speakers without concern for licence or legality fuelled strength and unity.

In such moments of collective madness and through the force of our collective will and defiance, the paradigm of the universe shifts a little and the whole world changes.

Out of the original lineup planned only Coby Sey and Nowt made it into the party and onto the decks, holding down rooms one and two through the night. GawdX, Shadobeni, Iyaalu, sadqueersclub, Basura and Jody Simms didn’t cancel, but were unable to get passed the lines of racist pigs and get into the venue. Tash LC & Fat lip weren’t feeling well and couldn’t make it, Mother Nature had other plans for them but we are confident that they will set fire to dubplates at our parties in the future.

DJ Big D from local movements turned up with two USBs in his pocket and was overheard talking about how he’d been looking for an afterparty to DJ at and wished he could play at one like this. It turned out we were in need of a replacement DJ as well, and he ended up headlining on the main rig, playing a legendary set of 90s and Y2K dancehall anthems.

At 2am riot police gained entry into the car park, but it took them another hour to break through multiple levels of barricades and the party carried on. Eventually they made it in and switched the music off leaving the people to party and carry on the celebration in the streets. Police seized half the soundsystem and refused to return it until Tuesday, stating their belief that if they returned the rig we would re-enter the venue and hold another afterparty on Monday night. Their control and repression of our lives and our dreams is slipping away by the day.

Nothing truly belongs to anyone in reality except for our memories and our connections, but in the world of legal fiction and in a time of homelessness crisis, billionaire James Sellar holds claim on paper to own the ghost structure that was taken back as a site of liberation. He also owns the Shard, commonly known by Londoners as Isengard 2.0, previously owned by his deceased dad Irvine Seller. We came across photographic evidence in the building of James and Irvine fraternising with the dead Queen and other cold blooded lizards and billionaire villains. James Sellar intends to knock down the disused dancefloor and build luxury flats and hipster boutique stores as part of the Camden multi-purpose redevelopment initiative. The streets have found better uses for the debris capitalism leaves in its wake. Gentrification tears away at Camden’s character as a refuge for all varieties of subcultures and misfits. Camden’s hipsters are our enemy as much as Camden’s fascists and Camden’s millionaire elite.

Why Carni Afterz?

Kelso Cochrane, a 32 year old carpenter and aspiring lawyer from Antigua was stabbed to death by a gang of racist white youth in Notting Hill in 1959. White gangs known as Teddy Boys ran Notting Hill at the time. They carried out racist attacks while the police sympathised with them and turned a blind eye, as Notting Hill’s Black and Irish populations grew, with many people coming from the Caribbean as part of the Windrush Generation, chasing back the stolen wealth the British Empire was and still is looting from peoples homelands and ancestral lands.

Rhaune Laslett, Claudia Jones and Amy Ashwood Garvey were among the trailblazers who led the establishment of what became the Notting Hill Carnival. They recognised the power of music to bring mass numbers of people together in unity, resistance and celebration. Ultimately the Teddy Boys either started moving to the music and changed their attitude and purpose, or they were run out of the area by the masses the carnival had helped to mobilise.

The mixing of communities and the gathering together of large numbers of Black migrants in particular frightened the establishment, and Notting Hill’s white middle class, and politicians at first declared the carnival to be illegal, sending in riot police who violently tried and failed to shut carnival down. Year after year the people fought back and defended Carnival until eventually the politicians and police were forced to cave in and allow Carnival to happen.

Attempts to take away peoples culture and collective memory by breaking the links of ancestral knowledge passed and sung down from time immemorial, and moulding people’s minds into an inferior image of their masters has always been a central tenant of colonialism. Carnival culture is rooted in the culture of survival and the failure to break peoples spirit, journeys across oceans and journeys of escape, fighting moves hidden into dance moves and ancient stories and knowledge remembered in the position of stars. Lord Shorty first blended Indo-Caribbean folk music with Black calypso to produce Soca, today Soca floats control the road and the movements of people. Static Jamaican Dub soundsystems, rooted in African spirituality smuggled into subverted forms of Christianity blast resistance rhythms and soul healing from strategic locations.

Today Notting Hill Carnival is the biggest street festival in Europe, yet unlike Carnival in Abya Yala and the Caribbean, and the Berlin carnival, Notting Hill Carnival continues to be repressed by the government, who fear the power of people coming together, the strength of global majority cultures and the ability of displaced peoples to take back what’s ours.

Instead of allowing the Carnival Zone to expand north of the Westway and into Kensal Rise and Kilburn, the growing numbers of revellers attending are overcrowded and contained into a limited space not fit for purpose. Under the hot Caribbean sun, carnival is celebrated in the cooler hours of the early morning and the evening. In London, the floats and soundsystems are required to switch off at 7pm, though the soundsystems keep up the tradition of rebellion and play music for a little longer each year.

Disregarding the time limits imposed people continue carnival into the evening by holding after parties. The establishment and police fear the power of resistance and celebration continuing into the shadows of the night. A special squad of TSG and high ranking commanders are sent out every year to shut down after parties as part of the political elite’s strategy of repression. Meeting resistance at the gate, the high ranking commanders left and went to shut down other afterparties before returning to shut down our party last.

Carni Afterz was our response the racist riots this summer, combining carnival culture and free party culture with anti-fascist and abolitionist strategies for social change. We hope to contribute to the expansion of the strength of carnival, that can only ever be fought for and won.

Why Cable Street Beat?

The original Cable Street Beat was established by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) in 1988. Original skinhead culture, rooted in Jamaican ska and working class subculture was being appropriated by braindead neo-nazi boneheads. White Noise records, Blood and Honour and Rock Against Communism spewed out oi punk garbage and propaganda music glamourising racist attacks, genocide and violence against women. Boneheads attacked gigs where Black, Irish and socialist bands were playing, taking the fight to Desmond Dekker, The Pogues and Angelic Upstarts.

Militant Anti-Fascists made the decision that this would no longer go on in the open and Cable Street Beat put on and defended gigs by Angelic Upstarts, Blaggers and The Men They Couldn’t Hang. Unity Carnivals attracted tens of thousands, Freedom of Movement put on CSB raves around the M25 and funds raised paid the court fines for antifascists arrested in clashes with the NF, who had tried to lay wreaths for the Nazis at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day.

Above: Mensi from Angelic Upstarts

Shop fronts on Carnaby Street selling far right merchandise were smashed up, nazi tee shirts were ripped off stalls in Camden Market and Blood and Honour Boneheads were famously routed at the Battle of Waterloo, a victory later replicated by Black Power activists in 2020. CSB and AFAs intervention into the political landscape ultimately sent the bonehead subculture underground and rendered it lifeless. The street fighters of AFA have for the most part hung up their gloves and settled down to raise their families. For those of us in our new crew who are born and raised in London, or who have come and made London our home, Cable Street Beat and the Battle of Cable Street are parts of our heritage we will never allow to die, and look to pick up where those who’ve come before us have left off.

The Battle of Cable Street took place on the 4th October 1936. 6000 policemen tried to escort 3000 uniformed blackshirts from the British Union of Fascists, led by Sir Oswald Mosley into London’s East End. Over 100 000 working class East Londoners came and packed out the streets, built barricades and fought against the police, ensuring the fascists did not pass and enter their community. Excrement was thrown out of buckets onto the policemen while marbles  were rolled under charging horses and policemen were dragged off their horses. The Communist Party of Great Britain, led by Rajani Palme Dutt, played a central role in mobilising the community. Anarchists, trade unions, dockers, East London’s Jewish and Irish communities and many other migrant communities were well represented.

The Battle of Cable Street was the largest pitched battle in a series of street fights which ended in recurring defeat for the fascist blackshirts and put a stop to the rise of their movement. If it hadn’t been for ordinary people taking direct action and refusing to play by the rules set by the ruling class, the fascists may well have continued to rise to power in Britain, as they did in Germany, and the outcome of World War Two and world history would have been very different.

The echos of the Battle of Cable Street are still being heard and fought everyday, among our communities, families, workplaces and circles of friends, in the minds we change, the power structures we help tear down, digitally and on the ground and in the physical battles and street fights that continue to take place.

Why the fundraiser

The British state continues to uphold neo-colonial economic robbery carried out by corporations operating out of the city of London. The fight against fascism and the anti-colonial struggle are intrinsically connected. The police and the criminal justice system responded to the pogroms last month not only by arresting some of the racist rioters but also by putting on trial and in some cases already sentencing people who fought back against the racists. Most of those prosecuted come from Muslim and global majority backgrounds, uprooted and placed here out of the violence and inequality of colonialism and targeted precisely because they defended themselves and their communities from racist violence. The British state apparatus, the police and the courts, and the fascists all act in the interests of the establishment.

Abolitionists look to free ourselves from the illusions of false binaries of citizens and outcasts, criminalised and the free and good and bad people. We recognise the perfections and imperfections of those marked as guilty within ourselves. This doesn’t mean things that have happened in the past can simply be ignored, forgotten or swept under the rug. Through opening up conversations and decentralising power, bringing us closer to nature and the natural bonds that connect us and keeping each other safe instead of relying on those with a monopoly on force who are all too often the culprits, we can move towards psychologically healing and making repairs. A harm free world doesn’t exist but we can reduce harm through the process of tearing down power structures and the social structures that atomise and divide us, working to bring back together what’s been broken where we can. At times the whole system of injustice needs to be turned on it’s head, it’s clear to us here that the police and judiciary are the criminals and the incarcerated anti-racists are the heroes.

Waiting for your trial not knowing what the outcome will be, having your name slandered in the media and difficulties getting jobs and renting afterwards, relying on friends and family financially while inside, the threat of homelessness when deprived of your ability to work and pay rent, being prevented from working to support loved ones who depend on you, and shame in the eyes of your loved ones and community are all part of the prison sentence. Until the time comes for us to tear down the prison walls, there are other bits of prison sentences we can abolish.

At Carni Afterz over £4000 was raised in donations. Some of the donations have gone directly to anti-racist prisoners, to cover material needs and rent and abolish the bits of their sentence that we can. Some of the donations have gone to anti-raids defendants, on trial for sitting in the street and blocking a coach in Peckham from transporting asylum seekers to the Bibby Stockholm prison barge.

The definition of a pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group. Faced with the full strength of community resistance, the fascists failed to massacre or expel a single one of us. The government is now continuing the pogrom where the street fascists have failed, by launching a wave of kidnappings, deportations and immigration raids. Community networks, direct action and knowledge sharing makes it harder for the police and immigration officers, who barely know the law themselves these days. The rich and powerful will never give back what they’ve taken freely so reparations can’t be asked or begged for, they must be snatched straight out of their hands. CSB stand in full support of the anti-raids resistance.

What we aim to do through our parties is redistribute resources and put abolition into action while while having fun in the process. We can’t just sit around waiting for a revolution or the potential of a better afterlife. Change is needed now and is taking place constantly, we all mould the world in little ways in our own minds image. As the capitalist age of history comes to an end, the beauty and chaos of nature and the cosmos, circles, spectrums and multifaceted shapes through to the music of the spheres replaces narrow minded and linear ways of thinking, square blocks, basic rhythms, 2D false simplifications and forms of social stratification. We believe in a future, yet we don’t need to believe in a future because the revolution is taking place as we speak.

In Sudan the people formed neighbourhood resistance committees and launched civil disobedience campaigns which swelled into an uprising and overthrew the dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The military massacred protesters and tried to hold on to power, the transition to civilian democracy began but in 2021 the military seized power again in a coup, alongside the janjaweed militias, so the revolution continues. The Sudanese anarchist gathering emerged from the resistance committees and have been on the frontline of the protests and the fighting. Some of the donations raised have gone to Sudanese anarchist revolutionaries, to show our support and international solidarity.

Constant war remains necessary for the capitalist system to sustain itself through it’s dying breaths. In Palestine the people face genocide but still fight back relentlessly and refuse to allow any more of their land to be stolen. In Kanaky the people riot and burn tyres while they shake off the shackles of the last remnants of French colonialism.

It would be unjust to compare what we’re doing to those who’s material bodies are up against guns and whose spirits are made immortal through the actions their sacrifice inspires. Regardless of the incomparison we can’t watch genocides take place on the news, without recognising the role of the British state, recognising our location in the centre of global capital and recognising our capability to disrupt it. In everyday acts of resistance and disobedience a better world is being created, our present reality is first thought, then spoken or written into existence, then we make it happen. Just like any other binary, Utopia and a total paradise will never exist, it doesn’t need to, rebellion is a state of living taking place in every current moment.

https://chuffed.org/project/113250-help-us-fund-bristol-antifascist

200 fascists descended on George Square Glasgow and were outnumbered 10 to 1 by 2000 antifascists in what can only be described as a bigger victory for the Scottish anti racist movement than Celtic’s 3 nil victory over Rangers at Celtic Park last Sunday.

Antifascists arrived at 11am and took over the square early with fascists starting to arrive from mid day onwards. Fascist conspiracy nuts set up what resembled a protest camp full of badly painted banners with slogans like “No More Brother Wars”, “5g + Chemtrails = Covid 19”, “God Save King Charles III”, “Free Sam Melia”, “Free James Costello”, “Two Tier Kier”, “Stop Anti-White Uniparty” and “Deport Not Support” as well as “No Justice No Peace” which they’ve stolen from us. The man responsible for the display, a white hippy nazi (nippy?) with dreads was non ironically wearing a tin foil hat!

Sam Melia was sent to prison for running a network called the hundred handers which mass produced stickers with racist slogans and slurs and tried to cover the UK with them from Cornwall to the north of Ireland. When police raided his house they found books by Oswald Mosley leader of the blackshirts in his bedroom and a poster of Hitler stuck up in his garage.

James Costello is a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious fascist who calls himself “The reverend”. He was sent to prison for 18 offences of stirring up racial hatred on a website he ran which called for the establishment of a white master race through a purification process as he claims the white race doesn’t currently exist. Stickers were also key to his plans to create a white race and recordings on his website called for the violent subjugation and destruction of Jewish people, black people and people of colour. He also exchanged letters and postcards with his friend the convicted terrorist and national action member Jack Renshaw.

The majority of the fascists were masked up and dressed in black bloc. The fash bloc was a mix of “peaceful hooligans” from the rangers firm Union Bears and bus loads of English fascists including individuals associated with the BNP and networks close to the banned terrorist group National Action, who’s members are starting to get out of prison and back onto the streets. Some of the fascists shouted “We’re not racist! We’re not Nazis” while other fascists sieg hailed. There clearly hadn’t been consensus over whether to be open about their racism or to be in denial about it. Some fascists waved Isreal flags while other fascists got on the megaphone and gave speeches about how the people of Israel weren’t really Jewish and that the Scottish people were the real Jews of the bible, descended from the bloodline of Judah, and that they were reclaiming the Star of David as a Scottish flag.

Celtic’s green brigade were the largest and most active black bloc group on the antifascist side, alongside the newly re-formed Glasgow Antifascists and autonomous anarchists also masked up. SUTR were also present along side a number of socialist groups and trade unions. The vast majority of people on the antifascist side however were politically unaligned and ordinary members of the Glaswegian public there to make clear that Glasgow is an overwhelmingly anti-racist city.

Antifascists brought a huge soundsystem and drowned out all fascist speeches and chants by blasting a set list of Palestinian and Kurdish revolutionary songs, folk music from the International brigades, rebel songs, glaswegian hiphop and donk. People from some of Glasgow’s Muslim communities were teaching everyone dubkeh and Kurdish dancing and there was a mood of celebration at the communities victory and safety in unity, following the racist riots across much of the rest of the UK. The mood of celebration on our side was a sharp contrast to the anger and embarrassment on the fascist side and it was making the fascists depressed and wishing they could switch sides.

At one point hundreds of antifascists were clapping and singing “if you all hate racists clap your hands”. A little girl one of the fascists had brought with him was enjoying the chant and started smiling and clapping her hands with us. Sadly her dad responded by taking her aside, yelling at her and telling her off until she started crying. We can break the chain of generational trauma and hate being handed down and are convinced she will remember the experience and be free and stand on our side of the lines one day.

The police demonstrated their bias and allegiance to the fascists by kettling half of the green brigade for the whole of the demo, while the rangers firm were never kettled and permitted to freely mingle with the rest of the fascist demo. The police escorted the cordoned section of the green brigade right next to the rangers firm so that the rangers firm could throw bottles at them, but all the bottles missed, just like Rangers attempts to score last Sunday. The police tried to march the green brigade away from the square but antifascists blocked the road in front of the police and refused to allow them to move the bhoys away from our demo.

Elders from Glasgow’s Asian communities and trade union leaders came and tried to negotiate and persuade police commanders to let the bhoys out of the kettle and join our demonstration, explaining that they would cause no trouble at all and were much loved members of the community. Clearly the kettling of the green brigade and separating them from our demo was a complete waste of police resources. The excuse the police gave as to why they were kettling the green brigade and not the rangers black bloc was that Celtic were better fighters and that if there was any disorder the rangers would lose and so would need protection. However this excuse seems obsolete as Celtic were peaceful and on top form throughout and the police made no arrests at all when the rangers firm threw bottles.

Antifascists were well organised with free food, water and tea being distributed, first aiders on hand if needed and later waves of people arriving to replace people who’d been there from very early who were ready to leave. Fascists had to pass through the antifascist crowd to get to their demo and many lost placards and Union Jack flags in the process. The conspiracy fash took down their banners before the end of the demo to prevent them being confiscated but were only able to save some of their banners. Some of the Celtic firm were able to escape the kettle despite the police’s best efforts and they had only managed to kettle half the firm. As the fascists were leaving the police let the bhoys out of the kettle without making any arrests. Despite the best efforts of the police it was still a victorious day for Glasgow’s anti-racist public. Antifascists remained in the area throughout the evening filling the central Glasgow pubs while the fascists were escorted out of the area and back to regular fascist pubs in Govan and Bridgeton.

Historically the Irish republican movement were an inspiration and huge support for the Indian revolutionary movement fighting for freedom from the British Empire. These bonds don’t get forgotten, the Asian Youth Movement made links with Irish republicans in the 80s and Desi antifascists are continuing to support Irish republicanism and the Celtic firm through the current era.

In Glasgow the whole of the republican movement, led by the green brigade have come out as anti-racist, and a growing number of rangers fans are starting to come out as anti-racist and anti-fascist. The green brigade have consistently come out to welcome refugees and support Glasgow’s Black and Asian communities, taking a zero tolerance policy to racism as well as reaching out to and looking to build links and win over people from Protestant backgrounds.

Meanwhile in Ireland most republicans are antifascist but a section of the republicans have united with loyalists on the side of the far right to take part in anti-immigration demonstrations and racist riots. While several working class communities have come out and ran fascist mobs out of their areas, some leading republican groups have responded to the riots by refusing to take sides and march with the antifascists, arguing they need to listen to the views of people in their republican base. The success of yesterday and the far rights failure to build the support and momentum they need to riot and carry out racist attacks on a mass scale anywhere in Scotland is a direct consequence of the strategy and attitude of Glasgow’s republicans. Fascism must be smashed in its infancy and appeasing them by giving into and adopting, or failing to challenge the far right’s political lines scapegoating refugees and all people of colour does nothing but provide succour for the fascist movement. Instead we need to respond with working class unity in the fight against our collective enemies.

Some English communists are beginning to copy the mistakes of the right wing minority among Ireland’s republicans. The YCL and CPB have responded to the racist riots by denying the racism of many of the rioters and calling for the neo-liberal British state to increase deportation and state kidnapping of migrants outcasted and deemed as illegal as part of a “nuanced” position on immigration. We need to dismantle colonialism until no one is forced to become a refugee or pressurised to migrate away from poverty and follow the flow of colonised and stolen resources and wealth. Some long-standing people in the anarchist scene and former anarchists such as Russell Brand have also sympathised with the racist rioters while others have tried to both sides the issue in analysis attributing portions of the blame to what they claim is hatred of white people by some people of colour.

Fascism will never be defeated through solely focussing on a reactive strategy of responding to their moves with counter demos. The arguments against racism also need to be put forward and won among our groups of friends, our families and communities and our political scenes. The sections of the white working class targeted by fascists for recruitment need to and will be won round. The left and antifascist movement need to offer them better than what the far right can. Through the music scenes we can offer them better parties while politically our movements need to be directly improving peoples material situations as well as making clear who is responsible for everyday oppression and subjugation and who exactly the elite really is. There are lessons we need to learn from the success of Glasgow’s antifascist movement and keep moving towards replicating throughout Britain and Ireland.

Statement for Running Down The Walls 2024 by Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone:

I’ll be joining the 5km Running Down The Walls event in September that is organised by our comrades across the Atlantic in the United States. This initiative is another date in the calendar that can help build a revolutionary narrative that prisoners and those outside can participate in together. It promotes physical training and fitness with a mindset of solidarity in struggle. These kind of events give us strength and development. A huge shout out to all those taking part. I write this during the International Week of Solidarity for Anarchist Prisoners, in combative memory of the state murders of Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston 1927.

P.S. A greeting also to the rebel prisoners in Italy, I heard of the revolts even here in high security. 

Toby Shone

27/08/2024 

HMP Garth North West UK

21.08.24

A report by Netpol:

While the government response to far-right street violence around the country in August has been to promise more resources for public order policing – Keir Starmer’s so-called “standing army” of riot officers – it is impossible to characterise the shocking wave of racist and anti-migrant attacks as ‘protests’.

Instead, what we have seen is terrorised communities and numerous anti-fascist counter-demonstrations called to defend them. Community and anti-fascist groups have come together to defend homes, businesses and places of worship, sometimes having to offer physical protection against far-right violence.

Netpol has spoken to several frontline legal groups who have been supporting the counter-protests by monitoring the police. Their experiences reveal how policing operations have been far more chaotic than portrayed in the media and have frequently targeted anti-fascists while failing to contain far-right violence.

Legal observers and others told us officers were repeatedly more interested in anti-fascists and in legal observers who were monitoring the use of police powers. They also documented incidents of the police racially profiling Black and brown youth attending anti-fascist protests and aggressive and Islamophobic policing of racialised protesters attempting to defend their own communities.

Testimonies from independent legal observer groups also show how they are currently very stretched and urgently need more volunteers.

On Saturday 3 August, for example, there were three demonstrations in Manchester: a Palestine solidarity protest, a Trans Pride march and an anti-fascist mobilisation. Green and Black Cross (GBC) Manchester had legal observers on the streets for all three, with Greater Manchester Police deploying large numbers of officers with helmets, police dogs and horses in the city centre. Their particular focus, however, was on the anti-fascists, who were allowed to march but eventually kettled. An organiser of the GBC Manchester legal observer team told us:

“Legal observers there were threatened with arrest by a PLO [Police Liaison Officer] for breach of the peace. The same PLO also pushed a legal observer into the road with oncoming traffic. The PLOs were no longer pretending to be nice with us.”

The GBC team organiser added:

“In the afternoon I then travelled over to Liverpool. A legal observer on the ground there had his face covering removed under section 60AA [powers] and was not allowed to get behind police lines. The situation soon escalated, and the police could not control the hundreds of far right who were making their way from the city centre towards the Pier Head.

It was impossible for legal observers to make notes as the situation became violent from the far right who were throwing chairs, bottles and other missiles towards us. Merseyside police completely lost control”.

On the same day in Bristol, hundreds of far-right protesters gathered near Castle Park, opposed by a large counter-demonstration. Later in the evening, a far-right group tried to attack a hotel that houses asylum seekers. A Bristol legal observer told us:

“Avon and Somerset Police were, frankly, completely hopeless. At the initial rally at Castle Park, their attention was more on anti-fascists removing their face coverings than on the far right. Fascist demonstrators had publicly stated their intention to attack a local hotel housing asylum seekers, but there were no police officers stationed at the hotel earlier in the day and other than the one or two that had followed anti-fascists there, none later. As a result, local people had no option but to link arms and physically block the entrance and prevent the far right from storming the building.”

Chris Rossdale wrote on X:

“The only reason a gang of fascists didn’t break into a hotel housing asylum seekers in Bristol last night is because anti-fascists stopped them. Police were nowhere.

Fuck any reporting that talks about ‘rival protests’ rather than making clear those stakes and battle lines.”

When local people gathered again to resist the fascists on the Wednesday [7 August], this time with many of the shops boarded up out of fear of more far-right violence, officers again seemed most interested in trying to enforce a section 60 AA [masking] order against the counter demonstration.

I had a long, pointless argument with an officer because I was wearing a disposable covid mask, which he insisted I should remove because it ‘didn’t provide protection’ from covid’. Eventually I was allowed to keep it on, but officers continued to harass young people from the local community, who had come out to protect their neighbourhood and homes, for wearing face coverings”.

On Sunday 3 August, after providing support to four protests the previous day, GBC Manchester mobilised another team of legal observers, this time in Bolton. Police numbers were again large with horses and dogs, riot shields and batons drawn. The legal observer team organiser there told us:

“I presume this was.. [because] of the Muslim community coming out to join the anti-fascists. Section 60 and 60AA were in place and people were asked to remove face coverings but the police were not enforcing this, possibly due to the number of demonstrators. We had given out bust cards and held a brief Know Your Rights session prior to the demo, so were confident if arrested, protestors would know what to do.

Later in the day, as crowds were dispersing, a small number of about 25 all Muslim anti-fascists were kettled at Bolton University. White people were allowed to disperse without police interference or dispersal notices. Police then tried to insist on protesters giving names and addresses and being filmed as a condition for leaving [the kettle]. A legal observer started to give a quick legal briefing on their rights but was then removed by officers, with a senior officer saying ‘get that fucker out of here’, He was kettled on his own until everyone else had been released.”

Netpol has reported many times on the targeting of Black-led protests in Britain, but the disarray and underlying racist attitudes of policing operations mentioned here have not been widely reported. Instead, the media and politicians have largely praised the effectiveness of the police response and promised further resources to the police.

This is why the presence of independent legal observers matters. Volunteers are actively protecting protesters’ rights to freedom of assembly and documenting what the press often does not cover.

For more on how to train up as a legal observer, visit https://greenandblackcross.org/events/

https://netpol.org/2024/08/21/legal-observers-witness-first-hand-the-chaos-and-racism-of-riot-policing/#:~:text=Netpol%20has%20spoken%20to%20several,to%20contain%20far%2Dright%20violence.

AUTHORITY HAS EVERYONE IN A VICE GRIP.Dealing out crumbs through humiliating charity and robotised slavery. With nothing to guarantee any more, the technicians in power promise only crisis and emergency – and soon war. In the guise of defence against the rabid attacks in recent weeks they have enhanced their arsenal of social control against all of us.

MEANWHILE RACIST ATTACKS TAKE PLACE IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. The perpetrators target ‘immigrants’ (or whoever they classify as such) with abuse, chemical dousing, threats, beatings, fire and bricks. This is the worst kind of cowardice: kneeling in front of bosses and leaders, but leaping up to strike at anyone they fear coming from below them. Without a doubt masses of angry citizens join behind them, perhaps more hesitant to act, but no less lobotomised by fear of the outsider.

What they don’t see is that every inch of space is at the mercy of profit and control. Everyone and everything is molded in the image of an inhuman ‘progress’. The human dream of belonging and co-existence is murdered and re-animated as the zombie of imperiled nationalism.

This disgrace is encouraged by the mass conformity of addiction to politics, media and social media. It is a high-tech attention racket, churning out new things to be terrified of, or furious at – anything to keep you scrolling and clicking.

Now, after the smoke of would-be pogroms has cleared, the state continues to sing its lullaby of ‘safety’ – set in a fairytale kingdom of multicultural unity. But we know its knights in shining armour are cops, judges, screws, snitches, and tech companies selling DIY surveillance. And the unity they defend is only made up of deadly, voluntary obedience – to subhuman housing and rent, life-devouring work, and poisonous consumption.

To let ourselves be lulled by the sham product of ‘security’ comes at a high price – our own living thought and will to act: a nice deal for those with power and privilege, and shameful dispossession for the rest of us, left sitting ducks.

Enough of all that! We won’t help to decorate this exploited wasteland with flags and democratic lies. It’s time to act, face each other, face reality, choose our companions in struggle and confront what is destroying us. In the Harehills neighbourhood of Leeds, the attempt by the cops and social services to abduct several children against their will led to a night of multi-racial rebellion from the combative youth of the area. In Croydon a gathering of 50 people, against a fascist threat that came to nothing, didn’t let the moment go to waste – attacking police and barricading streets.

But we don’t need to wait for the final straw. Let’s form self-organised groups, without flags or leaders, meet, talk, identify the questions that are making our lives unliveable, starving our children, throwing us out into the streets or forcing us to live in urban destitution and humiliation. Without unions or political parties, let’s self-organise the attack on the existent with those we choose and coordinate our struggles, bringing forth quality, solidarity, joy, starting right now to create a world worth living in. Where there is dignity there is revolt!

a few anarchists in South London

Around 300 Antifascists gathered this morning in Dover for a demonstration called by Kent Anti Racism Network and supported by Stand Up To Racism, the Queer and Disabled Block and several crews of autonomous antifascists and anarchists coming from across Kent and well as London and Brighton. 

On Wednesday 7th Anti racists in Dover had been heavily outnumbered by the far right and were targeted by the police, bucking the trend across the country, so if was felt that it was essential to prioritise mobilising in Dover to make sure this couldn’t happen again.

The far right called off their planned demonstration along the sea front at the last minute however around a dozen fascists still showed up. SUTR held a demonstration marching in a circle and avoiding the fascists while the Queer and Disabled Block, supported by movement for justice and autonomous anarchists went out on a separate march to confront the fascists on the sea front. 

Fascists present included a live streamer called Alfie Audits, paper sellers from the Holocaust denying conspiracy rag “The Light”, individuals from GB News, Reform UK, Make Britain Great Again, Paul Golding and a handful of activists from Britain First as well as several local crackheads. A man also drove by and shouted racist abuse in a van belonging to Emmanuel Plumbing & Heating. The fascists were silent when surrounded and outnumbered by antifascists and despite their claims to believe in freedom of speech, refused to answer any questions on what they believed in or why they were there. 

One of the fascists was wearing a tee shirt with a Spitfire logo and when confronted with the fact that spitfires had shot down Nazis in WW2, and if he actually supported the spitfires then he was on the wrong side of police lines, tried to deny this and claimed that the spitfires had never shot down any Nazis. These fascists could potentially benefit from political education and consciousness raising as well as basic history lessons. 

The police attempted to collude with the far right and move on the antifascists but people held our ground and refused to move  until eventually the police were forced to cave in and move away the far right. Dover has historically been an NF stronghold and the EDL splinter group SEA rioted in Dover in 2015 and 2016. More recently Dover has been haunted by Active Patriot and “migrant hunters” looking to boost their online profiles. It is clear that the far right cancelled their “stop the boats” protest due to threat of overwhelming numbers of antifascists, and if people hadn’t got organised and come together the far right may well have rioted in Dover again today.

Antifascists split up and made their way home early in the afternoon believing the far right threat to be over. However as we were on our way home reports started coming in of the Britain First presence, as well as groups of fascists remaining in pubs. People came in on early trains to hold the ground first and it’s understandable that most people don’t have the energy to stay out all day and evening. One learning could be to call for more crews to come out in the late afternoon and evenings to replace earlier groups and help ensure fascists are never able to control the streets unopposed and potentially run riot and carry out racist attacks. 

DES FACHOS ANGLAIS PRÉPARENT DES ATTAQUES SUR LES PLAGES DE CALAIS : APPEL À VIGILANCE ET ACTIONS // ENGLISH FASCISTS ARE PREPARING ATTACKS ON THE BEACHES OF CALAIS: CALL FOR VIGILANCE AND MOBILIZATION