When it comes to standing up to fascism, unity doesn’t mean uniformity

As neo-Nazis train for violence, pretending mass rallies alone will stop them ignores history — and leaves movements dangerously exposed. Tom Tanuki reports.

I'M GLAD TO BE publicly debating anti-fascist tactics with other lefties. Hashing out our tactics in response to organised racism, on platforms a little more permanent than sniping in back-and-forth Instagram stories, isn’t done enough. Debates help determine whether those of us who are committed to try and stop fascists in public are going to do so together, as we ought to, or separately, whittling away to nothing in silos. (Melbourne already excels at this. There are usually three lefty rallies, all called roughly 100 metres and 15 minutes apart from each other.)

But when Omar Hassan of Socialist Alternative (SAlt) took the opportunity to respond, here in Independent Australia, to my reply to his Red Flag article about anti-fascist tactics, the first note I jotted down in response was something like:

I said that Omar "doesn’t get out much". In his reply, he said he's raising a baby, which I took in the light spirit it was intended. But I wasn't trying to accuse him of not going out to enough gigs, to be clear. I was saying that I think a leading SAlt member should be versed enough in the rhetoric of the local political fringe to know that 'sheeple' is a derisive term deployed by cookers, not black bloc anarchist types.

SAlt, whether they like it or not, is in the same milieu of Australian political fringe groups as those other sorts, either in opposition to standing awkwardly alongside. If Omar can’t make this distinction any better than a layperson normie, it suggests to me that he’s shut out from the differences between these groups. Because he takes little interest in them.

It’s hard to take someone’s thoughts seriously on fringe political formations they have little interest in.

But I read that back and it read like petty bickering. So I wasn’t initially game to reply. Besides, I thought, perhaps attempting a right of reply to a right of reply threatens to reduce Independent Australia’s important column space to the publishing equivalent of leftist bickering in some Reddit thread.

Debate over how to fight fascism exposes fault lines on the Left

Amid renewed debate over black bloc activism, Omar Hassan replies to Tom Tanuki’s critique of his article calling for focus and unity on the Left.

But here I am, bickering anyway. (Thanks, IA!) Because I think Omar & SAlt's disconnect from their own fringe politics milieu reaches to the heart of the debate he started. I also think it's crucial to get to the conclusion of these discussions, if it determines our shared tactics.

So, to review:

Omar basically said that black-clad folks throwing rocks at cops on 19 October was bad, but so too was black-clad folks doing anything else — including preparing for fighting and/or actually fighting Nazis. He said that only building a mass movement to stop Nazis is good.

To which I replied:

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Rocks might have been dumb, but someone needs to prepare to fight Nazis now they they're hyper-militant, combat-trained cultist lunatics. Also, as you can combat-train some folk while rustling up your mass movement, it's possible to walk and chew gum.

Omar replied to me in this space to, more or less, reiterate his first statement.

He outlined some political context on the scale of the current far-right threat to underline the urgency of anti-fascist organising. Which I’m with him on. Nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment is on the rise — on the streets and in Parliament, here and across the West.

I’d add that we’re also seeing a moment where Australian neo-Nazis are leading the global push of internationalist grassroots fascism. Nazi movements around the world are replicating the National Socialist Network's (NSN) efforts to some success. They’re also about to launch a realistic political party prospect here. It makes ours a time-critical debate, and not niche Reddit-argument fodder.

Omar thought it was "surprising" that I didn't agree with the rock throwing at cops on 19 October. I’d already explained that I thought it was unstrategic to attack cops at an already-failing anti-nationalist rally, and that I didn’t appreciate the lack of consent gained for the tactic among the coalition driving the counter-rallies. I’m not sure what surprised him about that, then, as I’m not generally known for rock-throwing endorsements.

I assume he thought the people who threw rocks at 19 October’s March for Australia (MFA) were the same people who attempted to physically prevent the NSN from entering the MFA on 31 August?

Making the point "Not everyone in a mask is the same as everyone else in a mask" is a Channel Seven-tier insight, and one I would expect to have to make with laypeople.

To the notion of physical training — the tactic I definitely do defend. The NSN activist cadre now number in their hundreds. They are an extremist cult, and they are fixated on the notion of violence against the left. We need to be prepared for them.

Omar mentions examples of classic or recent notable anti-fascist efforts that involved large numbers, arguing that physical training efforts are a barrier to mass participation in similar pushes locally:

'Anti-fascists have always been at our strongest when we mobilise in large numbers. From Cable Street in the 1930s to the blockade of the AFD youth conference in Germany last week.'

These are bizarre examples to cite by an anti-fascist trying to delegitimise the importance of physical defence — because they all involved violence!

During the Battle of Cable Street, people threw rocks, rotting fruit and vegetables and chamber pots full of piss and shit at fascists. And cops.

There were blues with riot cops at the anti-AfD blockade, too.

These actions were still successful. They still had many people in attendance.

Physical confrontation even helped in Melbourne, in running battles against fascists during the Reclaim movement. People bled in fights against the United Patriot's Front (UPF) to protect spaces like multicultural Coburg. I know Omar was around in this time. Did he not see any of this, and the impact it had back in 2015 and 2016?

In any event, a mass movement is great and I want Omar to build one.

Physical resistance, rocks and how to build a mass movement

Anti-fascist combat training is about feeling safe, not tough.

But when our enemies are combat training all the time, specifically in order to attack the mass movement that Omar wants to build? I will hand over to the singularly-informed slackbastard for his thoughts on the subject, where he already wrote about this discussion with Omar and myself. (If you care about Australian anti-fascism, subscribe to his Patreon.)

He wrote:

On the subject of 'antifascist combat training', I think this obtains particular relevance inre the NSN because a key part of their program is combat training. In other words, neo-Nazis are training for violence. In this context, whether or not somebody is able or willing to train in self-defence, if you're intending to confront the NSN at public events, be advised that they're equipping themselves with the training and organisation to respond effectively — just as innumerable fascist cadres have done in the past.

Omar wrote in response to me:

'Absent a conscious strategy, fighting with police or bashing a few Nazis is not purposeful; rather, it is a form of self-aggrandising theatre.'

Okay. But trying to deny neo-Nazis the right to enter into and dominate a nascent nationalist movement’s founding rally had a conscious – obvious, even – strategy behind it. Saying it was unstrategic simply because it didn’t work is like saying that SAlt going to State Library for an anti-racist rally half a CBD away from the fascists was unstrategic because it also didn’t stop racism in one fell swoop. It’s unfair. All these tactics have a sound strategy underpinning them. A diversity of them being deployed is a good thing.

My view is that SAlt cannot really exit the fringe politics milieu they’re a part of, warts and all. They can’t stem the tide of autonomous groups conducting different parallel actions towards the same goals. Like it or not, a diversity of tactics is what will always be happening. What ought to be protected is the importance of agreement, consent and collaboration among coalitions toward the same goals, even if by different methods.

Call out unstrategic stuff and own-goals, by all means. But saying "no more anything in all-black" is not a reasonable conclusion to the strategic mistakes of 19 October.

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.