Beating the Fascists: The authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You can surely work it out, he's the aged gent in the middle of the lower picture
E2A h mcshane in middle, ap I think out to right with megaphone. Note to self: stop reading threads from the end back
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
Well it looks like my exploratory article on Agent Arthur touched a raw nerve. So much so that Codename Arthur (publication of which was unaccountably delayed 
) has a despicable lie on p.61 that in June 1996 BNP member Paul Ballard “admitted to others that he had supplied information on the far right and possible Searchlight moles in return for O’Hara supplying him with information on the anarchist group Class War”. A claim as outrageous as it is false.
Glad to know you are worried, Nick, and does explain why the book isn’t published by an established company because you know full well I would have contacted them immediately…
Let battle commence!
) has a despicable lie on p.61 that in June 1996 BNP member Paul Ballard “admitted to others that he had supplied information on the far right and possible Searchlight moles in return for O’Hara supplying him with information on the anarchist group Class War”. A claim as outrageous as it is false.Glad to know you are worried, Nick, and does explain why the book isn’t published by an established company because you know full well I would have contacted them immediately…
Let battle commence!
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Apparently there's two separate books about ARA due to be published by PM Press in the near future, one based on the It Did Happen Here podcast about Portland and one about ARA more generally. Only source I can find for this is instagram posts at the moment, though:
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I can't help thinking calling it it did happen here is quite possibly designing obsolescence into the title
Kate Sharpley
Well-Known Member
"Anti-Fascist Action and the Transversal Territorialities of Militant Anti-Fascism in 1990s Britain"
Abstract
This paper explores the significance of unorthodox territorial activisms through the study of Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist organisation in the United Kingdom and Ireland that operated at its height between 1989 and 1996. In the literature on activist territorialities, little has been written on practices that confront other non-state territorialities. Likewise, despite a small but growing geographical literature on far right populism, anti-fascism is under-researched. Through archival materials and interviews with former activists, I argue that geographers can understand AFA’s militant anti-fascism as transversal, following Félix Guattari’s theorisation of the term. AFA operated beyond state-centric modes of territoriality, creating malleable pathways between different operational logics, cross-cutting state and non-state forms. Thinking transversally about territory helps to disembed epistemic and ontological framings from dominant statist logics and assumptions, opening up new ways of understanding how movements operate territorially. The paper concludes with reflections for contemporary antifascisms.
Abstract
This paper explores the significance of unorthodox territorial activisms through the study of Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist organisation in the United Kingdom and Ireland that operated at its height between 1989 and 1996. In the literature on activist territorialities, little has been written on practices that confront other non-state territorialities. Likewise, despite a small but growing geographical literature on far right populism, anti-fascism is under-researched. Through archival materials and interviews with former activists, I argue that geographers can understand AFA’s militant anti-fascism as transversal, following Félix Guattari’s theorisation of the term. AFA operated beyond state-centric modes of territoriality, creating malleable pathways between different operational logics, cross-cutting state and non-state forms. Thinking transversally about territory helps to disembed epistemic and ontological framings from dominant statist logics and assumptions, opening up new ways of understanding how movements operate territorially. The paper concludes with reflections for contemporary antifascisms.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Thanks. Seems to be behind the Wiley paywall though?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
AFA and Guattari - together at last! 
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
The excerpt below is from Paul Mason’s blog. I don’t know what ‘worked as an activist’ with AFA means. I also note that the battle of Waterloo has morphed into an anitfa mobilisation along with others…. In fact Mason describes himself as ‘antifa’.
Most surprising of all I learn that the ANL (and to a lesser extent YRE) were involved in work on the estates and at the football and not just lollipop waving. Revisionist news to me…
This was a period where I worked as an activist in the ANL, Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), Searchlight and occasionally with Anti-Fascist Action (AFA). There was a lot of focus on, and controversy over, the policy of no-platforming fascists.
But the untold story of this period is how these organisations tried to do face-to-face propaganda work, door to door, in the white working class areas the fascists were targeting. We tried to make antifascism a “thing” not just among the Bengali youth, but in the white communities of the East End, and on the football terraces.
One of the strongest memories I have of this time was in 1992, after the murder of black teenager Rolan Adams: we held a march through Thamesmead calling for the BNP HQ to be shut down. A lot of white people stood in their gardens shouting racist abuse at us as we marched past.
As we now know, the police were more obsessed with surveillance and infiltration of the anti-racist movement than of the white supremacist gangs operating there (and, it has been revealed, the far right, organised crime and police corruption were a closely overlapping Venn diagram). It was in that atmosphere that Stephen Lawrence was murdered.
This was a period of spectacular antifa mobilisations, ranging from the “Battle of Waterloo” (station), the takedown of Combat 18 in Hyde Park, a mass picket of Jean Marie Le Pen outside the Charing Cross Hotel, to the mobilisation of maybe 50,000 people (from as far away as Glasgow) in Welling, in another attempt shut down the BNP HQ following Stephen’s murder. There is some classic “impartial” news coverage of it all here.
Welling, 1993
But we failed to stop the BNP. They switched from street mobilisations to electoral politics and by 2004 were able to score 800,000 votes in the European parliamentary elections.
By this time, as a journalist in the business media and then the BBC, my active antifa days were effectively over. I covered the rise of the BNP, Golden Dawn, UKIP and the US far right. During this time numerous ex-fascists and right-wing populists, in several countries, converged on the same strategy – electoral respectability for racism and xenophobia, framed around Islamophobia after 9/11.
Though right-wing populism was distasteful, I heard numerous pollsters, political scientists and senior journalists voice the same thought: at least it’s channelling the energies of the violent racists into an electoral dead end. The BNP vote, for example, collapsed, as it was folded into the much larger UKIP vote in the 2013 European elections, but UKIP could never win power.
Most surprising of all I learn that the ANL (and to a lesser extent YRE) were involved in work on the estates and at the football and not just lollipop waving. Revisionist news to me…
My antifascist journey…
The first time I became aware of fascism’s existence was when my Mum tried to stop me watching a documentary about the liberation of Bergen Belsen. I was five years old. This was around 1965 – so about as far from the event in historical time as we are today from 9/11. One of my […]
www.paulmason.org
This was a period where I worked as an activist in the ANL, Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), Searchlight and occasionally with Anti-Fascist Action (AFA). There was a lot of focus on, and controversy over, the policy of no-platforming fascists.
But the untold story of this period is how these organisations tried to do face-to-face propaganda work, door to door, in the white working class areas the fascists were targeting. We tried to make antifascism a “thing” not just among the Bengali youth, but in the white communities of the East End, and on the football terraces.
One of the strongest memories I have of this time was in 1992, after the murder of black teenager Rolan Adams: we held a march through Thamesmead calling for the BNP HQ to be shut down. A lot of white people stood in their gardens shouting racist abuse at us as we marched past.
As we now know, the police were more obsessed with surveillance and infiltration of the anti-racist movement than of the white supremacist gangs operating there (and, it has been revealed, the far right, organised crime and police corruption were a closely overlapping Venn diagram). It was in that atmosphere that Stephen Lawrence was murdered.
This was a period of spectacular antifa mobilisations, ranging from the “Battle of Waterloo” (station), the takedown of Combat 18 in Hyde Park, a mass picket of Jean Marie Le Pen outside the Charing Cross Hotel, to the mobilisation of maybe 50,000 people (from as far away as Glasgow) in Welling, in another attempt shut down the BNP HQ following Stephen’s murder. There is some classic “impartial” news coverage of it all here.
 |
But we failed to stop the BNP. They switched from street mobilisations to electoral politics and by 2004 were able to score 800,000 votes in the European parliamentary elections.
By this time, as a journalist in the business media and then the BBC, my active antifa days were effectively over. I covered the rise of the BNP, Golden Dawn, UKIP and the US far right. During this time numerous ex-fascists and right-wing populists, in several countries, converged on the same strategy – electoral respectability for racism and xenophobia, framed around Islamophobia after 9/11.
Though right-wing populism was distasteful, I heard numerous pollsters, political scientists and senior journalists voice the same thought: at least it’s channelling the energies of the violent racists into an electoral dead end. The BNP vote, for example, collapsed, as it was folded into the much larger UKIP vote in the 2013 European elections, but UKIP could never win power.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
.
Dom Traynor
Tino Pai
I don't want to defend mad Paul Mason but is he maybe using Antifa as a kind of catch all term for the millieu? Rather than a specific organisation. I mean he wouldn't be the first and it makes slightly more sense than any of the orgs of that name.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Think he was in Manchester AFA very briefly , mate of mine said he was more interested in contacts for his journalism than anything else . As soon as ANL Mark 2 launched Workers Power found a new host so it was a short lived affair .
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Thanks Steps. Did not know he was in AFA (even if was brief and part of the WP lot).
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Yup. Cheers belboid. I’d forgotten WP brief affiliation.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
There were two brothers in Workers Power in the Housing section in Manchester City Council . All sort of general strike now / build workers defence squads types with no backing, they joined AFA and spent a lot of time posing around with one of their members who I had a lot of time for. I asked him after a month or so what they were like to work with and he said 'very needy , they haven't got a clue'. Think he took them on a routing through some fascist's bin operation once and that was about it, there wasn't any mourning about what could have been when they jumped ship for ANL Mark 2.
Of course, there are still the fond memories of them deciding to try and sell their paper at Waterloo Station before it kicked off.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
yes a mere $42 for just a PDF: pity, as looked interesting
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
so what's the excuse for him lying about the ANL working on estates?
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
If these bozos couldn't link up with AFA in Manchester, which was very handy unit, little hope for them...
Dom Traynor
Tino Pai
I don't know or care. I specifically said I don't want to defend him I was just mentioning one point.
Fedayn
Well-Known Member
Rather reminiscent of the RCP member trying to sell The Next Step in Trafalgar Square as it was kicking off on the Poll Tax demo back in 1990....
Fedayn
Well-Known Member
The excerpt below is from Paul Mason’s blog. I don’t know what ‘worked as an activist’ with AFA means. I also note that the battle of Waterloo has morphed into an anitfa mobilisation along with others…. In fact Mason describes himself as ‘antifa’.
Most surprising of all I learn that the ANL (and to a lesser extent YRE) were involved in work on the estates and at the football and not just lollipop waving. Revisionist news to me…
My antifascist journey…
The first time I became aware of fascism’s existence was when my Mum tried to stop me watching a documentary about the liberation of Bergen Belsen. I was five years old. This was around 1965 – so about as far from the event in historical time as we are today from 9/11. One of my […]www.paulmason.org
This was a period where I worked as an activist in the ANL, Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), Searchlight and occasionally with Anti-Fascist Action (AFA). There was a lot of focus on, and controversy over, the policy of no-platforming fascists.
But the untold story of this period is how these organisations tried to do face-to-face propaganda work, door to door, in the white working class areas the fascists were targeting. We tried to make antifascism a “thing” not just among the Bengali youth, but in the white communities of the East End, and on the football terraces.
One of the strongest memories I have of this time was in 1992, after the murder of black teenager Rolan Adams: we held a march through Thamesmead calling for the BNP HQ to be shut down. A lot of white people stood in their gardens shouting racist abuse at us as we marched past.
As we now know, the police were more obsessed with surveillance and infiltration of the anti-racist movement than of the white supremacist gangs operating there (and, it has been revealed, the far right, organised crime and police corruption were a closely overlapping Venn diagram). It was in that atmosphere that Stephen Lawrence was murdered.
This was a period of spectacular antifa mobilisations, ranging from the “Battle of Waterloo” (station), the takedown of Combat 18 in Hyde Park, a mass picket of Jean Marie Le Pen outside the Charing Cross Hotel, to the mobilisation of maybe 50,000 people (from as far away as Glasgow) in Welling, in another attempt shut down the BNP HQ following Stephen’s murder. There is some classic “impartial” news coverage of it all here.
Welling, 1993
But we failed to stop the BNP. They switched from street mobilisations to electoral politics and by 2004 were able to score 800,000 votes in the European parliamentary elections.
By this time, as a journalist in the business media and then the BBC, my active antifa days were effectively over. I covered the rise of the BNP, Golden Dawn, UKIP and the US far right. During this time numerous ex-fascists and right-wing populists, in several countries, converged on the same strategy – electoral respectability for racism and xenophobia, framed around Islamophobia after 9/11.
Though right-wing populism was distasteful, I heard numerous pollsters, political scientists and senior journalists voice the same thought: at least it’s channelling the energies of the violent racists into an electoral dead end. The BNP vote, for example, collapsed, as it was folded into the much larger UKIP vote in the 2013 European elections, but UKIP could never win power.
Whilst it was not perfect YRE was certainly involved in working in and on estates and as a former YRE Away Team chap, I never waved a lollipop in my life. Even going so far as to be condemned as Dads Army by 3 national ANL leaders. at a stewards meeting the night before the big Welling Demo in October 1993.
As an aside, Mason attended Militant Summer Camp in the 90s, a certified revolutionary butterfly at the time....
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Yes, fully aware of the YRE away team track record. My comment was more aimed at Mason’s claim to be ‘working as an activist’ in ANL, YRE, AFA and Searchlight on estates.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
The only sort of person who'd been involved in all those groups would be someone very dodgy
Fedayn
Well-Known Member
I never came across him during that period, 1991 - 1994 other than at Militant Summer Camp. But again, he was not a weel kent face then so I may well have been in his company on this or that wee jaunt,. That said I lived in Coventry at the time and was only in London on certain occasions. Given Mason was from Leigh in Gtr Manchester it is, to be fair, entirely possible he was there or thereabouts. I'm not sure where he lived at the time mind. If dennisr is still about he may know more?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
A surprising omission from the book
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