Antifascist combat training is about feeling safe, not tough, writes Tom Tanuki.
WRITING IN Red Flag about why we should carefully consider what tactics we use when mobilising against white supremacists, Socialist Alternative’s (SAlt) Omar Hassan writes:
'Tactics have to have the aim of making the action meaningful to those involved, helping encourage passive sympathisers to get more involved and being defensible to those not already invested in the issue. […] This doesn’t necessarily prevent repression, but it makes the political cost to the authorities much higher.'
I agree that the aftermath of the second March for Australia counter-rally made the ‘cost to the authorities’ of state repression a bit lower. (If the cost of repression can get any lower in this climate at all, when seemingly every rally leads to more anti-democratic legislation.)
After the 19 October anti-fascist counter-rally, there was great scrutiny on the activist left by mainstream media, politicians and the justice system. Certain protesters were observed throwing big rocks at VicPol, who responded by incapacitating randoms with deadly, military-grade munitions.
Amid the resultant media-fomented outcry, the Herald Sun shared a picture of a meme on a pre-rally Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF) presentation slide suggesting that it revealed CARF, the largest group promoting and populating Melbourne’s counter-protests, was scheming to bring the big rocks. VicPol went on to declare the CBD as a "designated area" for six whole months, meaning they can inspect people’s bodies and personal possessions and remove their masks without a warrant for half a year. (I remember the days where one day of "designated areas" was considered anti-democratic!)
The aftermath suggests that the acceptable response is to freak out about rocks, while blithely accepting that weaponry like deadly stinger grenades being fired at random citizens is a reasonable public safety measure.
I dislike that in the absence from the discussion of those who unilaterally elected to throw those rocks, it was groups like CARF – generally seen to the local activist left as reluctant to fall afoul of the law — left holding the bag. But Omar has taken his response to the moment much further, dismissing a variety of anti-fascist tactics he describes as "black bloc".
The black bloc is known for turning up to demonstrations as a distinct contingent wearing uniforms (black outfits, black hoods/helmets etc) designed to hide their identities and shield them from police attack, and with the aim of carrying out anonymous acts of violence.
These activities are justified by black bloc supporters as attacks against authority, fascism, capitalism or whatever the issue of the day may be. And unlike the regular “sheeple” who attend conventional demonstrations, creating “banal spectacles” within the rules, the black bloc sees itself as striking more serious blows against the system. But the truth is they do nothing to challenge the establishment, and often help strengthen it.
"Sheeple" is an odd word to derisively deploy. That’s a (dated) word more in the domain of conspiracists than the typical black bloc proponent. This reaffirms my sense that SAlt people, bless their hearts, don’t get out much (to anything that isn’t a SAlt event).
Similarly, Omar also neglected to weigh up decent reasons to don black bloc, or even measures such as "grey bloc" (anonymous attire that doesn’t necessarily stand out in a uniform-like fashion like black bloc). Protecting one’s privacy against the kind of state that expands in its repression of protest all the time, for example. Or wanting to not get doxxed by fascists.
But it’s a specific set of tactics Omar is fundamentally concerned with, and thus he goes on to lump in rock-throwing with fighting fascists as acts of "feeling tough".
“Bashing a few fascists or throwing stones at police is the very definition of performative. It is pure street theatre, a chance for small groups to feel tough and radical by acting out their pseudo-revolutionary fantasies.”
There has been some intra-left fallout over those rocks and their consequences. Those who whipped them out were said to have done so unilaterally and, I’m told, without the consent of the coalition driving the rallies.
March for Australia organisers and thugs suffered a huge loss of numbers that day (I calculated an 85 per cent reduction). But precisely none of us got to talk about the bottom falling out of the March’s nascent nationalist movement, because we were all too busy getting lectured about ‘our’ rocks.
Cops weren’t the strategic or relevant opponent to target that day, in my view, even if I dislike them and their repressive presence. The white supremacist rally was the target. And in fact, given the astounding loss of numbers at the second March, 19 October would have been an easy win… if certain people had just, in the words of Brown Cardigan, Done Heaps Less.
But Omar’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater, quite intentionally. And I take issue with this "feeling tough" thing as regards physical resistance.
When he dismisses ‘bashing a few fascists’, I believe he’s referring to an attempt by other activists, at the first March for Australia on 31 August, to physically prevent the National Socialist Network (NSN) from entering the space.
They had a fight. The NSN weren’t stopped.
Omar clearly doesn’t see the point of this sort of thing. Allow me to "feel tough" for a moment, then.
If those activists had managed to stop the NSN with their hands that day – and they came closer than anyone else to doing so – then the NSN would not have been able to do what they did on 31 August. They would not have collected all the media propaganda they did, and they couldn’t have used that propaganda to recruit all the new blood they did.
A real reason to attempt stopping the NSN’s activist and propagandising activities, including with physical barriers and defence, is because the more people they recruit now, the more sizeable a fringe there will be later when disillusioned members make a move after the NSN (eventually, and in my view, inevitably) falls apart.
Brenton Tarrant was among the fringe of the late-2010s patriot movement. In 2017, he was arguing that the United Patriots Front (UPF) was a ‘political movement of peace’, as I located evidence of him telling someone on Facebook that year:
By the time that movement had fallen apart, two years later, Tarrant was carrying out the largest ever mass-murder by an Australian citizen.
So we fear that it will be with the fringe of the NSN’s fringe.
That’s one reason an auxiliary movement of permanent anti-fascist activists, however niche and small, needs to exist. Yes, in concert with or in support of a broader mass movement. And, yes, sometimes deploying physical resistance.
Omar wants a mass movement of passive sympathisers to join in the struggle. Me too.
But I note that what he actually said was:
“Only a mass movement of the working class can seriously challenge capitalism.”
No organiser wants to lose new blood after one or two actions. But this line speaks to a regular criticism that leftists have of SAlt, which is the vibe people have that they’re mostly participating in these struggles against Nazis in order to rope people into the next Marxism Conference.
Is that a reduction or an oversimplification of SAlt’s intentions? They’d probably say so. Well, so is dismissing all anti-fascist physical resistance as "purely performative" and "feeling tough".
There are posers around, sure. There are also people trying in earnest to deploy methods that work to stop more Christchurch massacres.
One of this lot has been charged in Canberra after detailed plans to attack a ‘commie meeting or march’ in Canberra were discovered, along with bomb materials and chlorine gas. He could well have been thinking of a SAlt meet. NSN’s professional propaganda materials are explicitly encouraging this kind of violence.
If anti-fascists are undertaking combat training right now, and they are, then Omar’s lot should think about the merits of doing the same to protect their mass movement. I want our new blood to feel safe, not "tough".
Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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