Antifascism

So, I was at this demo today. A lot didn’t go as planned, but that’s not the point of this post.
While I was there (and afterwards) I was wondering

Is this useful?
Does this help against fascism?
Is it enough?

So I want to take this opportunity to reflect a bit on (anti)fascism and what useful tactics can be.
That is, I’m trying to find tactics against the rising fascism. I’m certainly not the first one to reflect on this, but maybe it’ll help me.¹

Demonstrations

Today I was on a demonstration. What do people think they can achieve with demonstrations?
I think most people just feel a need to do something and a demonstration seems a good place to start. And it is! It raises awareness (there was quite some press there today), it can educate visitors of the demonstration (there were nice speaches), it can annoy the people against whom your demonstrating (I don’t think it did that today, but it can) and perhaps most importantly: It can empower, politicize and radicalize people. There were a lot of Bürgis there, some probably for the first time on a demonstration.

So demonstrations can be a stepstone for further political activity. The problem, I think, is that a lot of people think this is enough.
They go to a few demonstrations and think

Now I’ve done my part, I didn’t stay silent. If fascism rises to power, I can say that I did something against it!

But it’s not. It’s not enough.

Blockades

Blockades are one step further. Trying to stop fascists from doing what they want to do (e.g. entering their event venue or demonstrating) by sitting or standing in their way.

This action form seems to have gotten even more popular with the rise of Widersetzen.
And it’s nice! It can be quite fun, it can be even more empowering and radicalizing than demonstrations and it can raise even more awareness on the topic. Media is typically quite interested in blockades.
Also it can really annoy the fascists.

However, it’s also less accessible (especially for Bürgis) and it can delegitimize our cause in the eyes of people who see passive demonstrations as the only legitimate type of action. That doesn’t mean that it is less legitimate! I think civil disobedience in that form is very important.

The problem, I think, is that a lot of people think this is enough.
Oh, and also that it can actually help the fascists, because they can put themselves in a victim position. I still think that it’s a sensible type of action, but it’s not enough.²

Militancy

One step further would be militant actions against fascism / fascists. An example would be the attacks on fascists by Antifa Ost.

I think this form of action can be useful in two scenarios:

1. If there’s very few but very dangerous fascists around, whom you can thus scare off
2. If the fascists have a very strong bond to very few fascists (e.g. Hitler). A successful assassination of Hitler would’ve certainly helped

In all other situations, militant actions against people aren’t helpful I think.

What about militant actions against property? I think this can raise even more awareness, empower even more and radicalize even more than civil disobedience.
So I think it can make sense! But it also has the potential to delegitimize our cause even more and makes it even easier for the fascists to portray themselves as victims.

Either way, it’s certainly not enough!

What then?

Ok, maybe we need to go back to the roots. Think about what actually causes the current rise of fascism. The millions of people voting for a fascist party (AfD) are only the symptom. All the previous forms of actions aimed at fighting this symptom: Basically stopping the people from voting for fascists by trying to convince them that this would be really bad. But that is, as we saw, not enough! We need to address the reasons people might want to vote for fascists (or become them) in the first place.

Why? Why do pepole do this fascist shit?

I think there are three (main) reasons:

• Fear for their future and safety
• Shame for their thoughts / actions / opinions, modern society exposed as bad
• Community that fascism promises / gives them

All of those are addressable! The fear, I think, comes from missing information / education on current events and a lack of alternative actions people can take to address them. An approach for that is educating people (especially in the countryside) and giving them the chance to influence their situation (= democracy). We need to make the people feel seen.

The shame, I think, comes from a mistake we (the left, but also broader society) made. We moralized too much. The problem is, we need to acknowledge that we were all raised in a violent discriminating society. This can’t just be shaken off by recognizing that it’s shit. So if we tell people that they’re shit for what they think, but they can’t easily get out of those patterns, they get ashamed.
If then another party tells them that it’s ok what they think, that they don’t have to be ashamed about it, that’s an easy way out for them.

I think an approach is again educating people, so that they actually find ways of getting out of those patterns. And at the same time being more gentle with people: Having racist views, for example, doesn’t make you a bad person! It should merely be taken as an invitation to reflect on where that comes from, etc.

I think this is not the whole answer to the question of how to address the shame. It’s a bit trickier than the other two. But maybe I also don’t need to have all the answers yet.

The community, though, is quite easy to address (in theory). The problem currently is that (especially in the countryside) the fascists are the only group that give people a sense of belonging, culture, a community. That seems to be because a lot of young, progressive people move to fancy cities, where people are more emancipated already.
This is understandable, but it also means that the countryside is just by this action shifting to the right. It then gets stronger of course, because if you’re surrounded by rightwing people and they form your community, it’s quite likely you’ll become more like them.

So to address this, more left people need to move to the countryside. We need to build left communities, organize in the countryside, offer cultural alternatives to the fascists.

The problem with (all of) this is that it’s incredibly inefficient and hard at the same time. It feels way better to be on a demonstration in a big city with thousands of others, where you have the feeling that you can change the world. But getting into conversations with individual people and building communities in small cities / villages is different. You only reach very few people and it takes a lot of effort. Sometimes it can also be dangerous, for example when you’re openly queer.

But that doesn’t make it any less important. And I think that’s what we got wrong: We mistook efficiency for importance.

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