What do Anti-Fascists Believe


https://itsgoingdown.org/u-s-antifascists-actually-believe-reply-antifa-critical-notes/

Not all rednecks are Trumpets or Liberal some are Revolutionary


Check out the site for Redneck Revolt: 

http://www.redneckrevolt.org/

A message to the working class in the wake of the 2016 United States Presidential election from the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World

Official Statement - IWW General Executive Board, November 22, 2016

These are difficult times for the working class, times of struggle and hardship. The employing class controls more of the world’s wealth and power than ever before, and the divide between working people and our oppressors grows wider by the day.

It is important to remember that this is nothing new. The ruling class has been waging a war against the working class since the birth of capitalism. We, the workers of the world, continue to be exploited and abused, the value of our labor always falling into the boss’ pockets. While they rake in unprecedented profits, the employing class continues to damage our planet through the unsustainable and irresponsible extraction of natural resources. These vultures tell you that your disappointments, your failures, and your hardships are the fault of other working class people. People of different races, genders, nationalities, and religions. “Blame immigrants,” they say. “Blame blacks and Latinos,” they say. As we fight amongst ourselves, the ruling class celebrates in their gilded halls, making toasts to the disunity of the working class.

Many people in the working class sought out hope in the electoral system this year, confident that reason and compassion would hold the day. Many other people in the working class were motivated by bigotry. The electoral system is designed to disenfranchise all working people, to take their hopes and desires as mere suggestions rather than as concrete demands. Unions, which are supposed to fight for all working people, organized people to put their faith in fighting bigotry at the ballot box - and now they say they are “ready to work with” the representatives of bigotry and division.You are no doubt feeling disillusioned, fearful, and angry, and are ready to consider different ways of fighting back against our oppressors.

We, the Industrial Workers of the World, invite you to work with us in building a new kind of labor movement, one that refuses to play by the rules of the employing class. An approach where we no longer allow them to divide us along artificial lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or religion. From housewives to factory workers to prisoners to office workers, we are all the working class, and it is our labor that creates all wealth. We can challenge the ruling class if we unite with each other, but that unity must start with defending the most oppressed and vulnerable groups among us first, for “an injury to one is an injury to all.” It is clear that there is a strong current of bigotry within the US working class, and we pledge to confront that head on in our organizing. We believe we can win workers away from bigotry if we show that we have a plan to win a better world. We must work towards the creation of a new world in the shell of the old, and the only way to do that is through organizing in our workplaces and in our communities.

The Industrial Workers of the World have been organizing working people for over 110 years, and our future as a revolutionary union is bright. Our approach is one of direct action. Instead of relying on elected officials and other intermediaries, we take the fight directly to our oppressors. We have been trailblazers in the modern labor movement, organizing fast food workers in Oregon, package handlers in Minnesota, entertainers and restaurant workers in New York, and prison laborers throughout the country, to name just a few. Our members have been at the forefront of resistance to police violence and the Dakota access pipeline. We have been working tirelessly to build a genuine and truly representative working class organization that can provide strength to working people, and we need your help.

If you have questions about exactly who we are and what we do, let's talk. If you're ready to organize and resist, join us and we will welcome you as fellow workers and fellow members of the working class. It is time to organize, it is time to fight back. Let's make white supremacists, fascists, and other hate mongers fear our power. Our struggle will be long and it will be difficult, but we will win. Sign up for the One Big Union today, and let’s organize together in our workplaces and communities. Nothing is too good for the working class, and we want all the good things life has to offer.

I really don't like liberal Democrats:



Just being left of the extreme right doesn't make you a leftist, but liberal Dems seem to consider themselves such, painting everyone left of themselves as too "radical" and, thus, dangerous. Dangerous to what? The status quo, presumably.


They're smug, privileged, often educated, are insufferably paternalistic, and they don't understand how anything works. Furthermore, they'd rather pretend that they do and control a debate or protest than concede to someone of inferior social privilege who may have more experience and direct knowledge than they do.


They assume every impoverished, marginalized, minority group belongs to them. They think they represent the interests of the people. They believe in representation, because their constituents don't like to take personal responsibility into the political sphere, and because they believe people are "too stupid" to know what their best interests are -- and, while they try and take ownership of the left while actually picking it apart and shutting out socialists, their arrogance and lack of effectiveness pushes different people toward their conservative Republican allies or even further into the extreme right.


They play by the rules and expect everyone else to, no matter how much harm it causes, probably because they helped write them.


They've largely departed from classical liberalism, which informed the libertarian and libertarian socialist perspective on freedom and the inalienable rights of human beings, and have become the party of neoliberalism, supporting exploitative institutions like the IMF and trade globalization abroad.


They love cops. They'll call the cops when they don't feel safe, even though most people rightly don't feel safe when cops are present. They'll inform the cops of everything going on. They'll hug cops at protests. They'll cry when cops use their state-sanctioned power to beat people, use excessive force, murder people, but they're loudest when opposing the people's self-defense or retaliation against cop violence. This is because they don't respect the people, they only respect law. They can sympathize with beaten, trodden animals, but not with self-respecting people who fight back against injustice.


They're those people who think love is what's going to magically fix everything in the political and economic sphere. Likewise, they'll claim to be pacifists, while overwhelmingly supporting imperialist politicians and regimes.


They believe capitalism is "the best system we have", despite all evidence to the contrary, as well as nonsense like "ethical consumption". Therefore, they support the exploitative state capitalist structure to no good end, and believe that the way to make everything better is to elect more liberal Dems into offices, push social programs into law that they think might make it easier for people to survive, however badly, under a shitty system. They either can't or won't legislate anything that has wide popular support, due to lack of support of such policies from the special interest groups (the wealthy) and lobbyists who finance their campaigns. Thus, any policies and laws they write are convoluted, weak, ineffective, must be approved by officials who generally oppose them, are typically gutted, filled with concessions, can take a lot of time to pass, take even longer to go into effect, and are easily repealed by subsequent administrations. In some cases, these laws penalize or otherwise harm the people they were written to benefit, or are just ignored by enforcers on a state level anyway. In other words, they'll treat the symptoms of gross inequality and injustice, and ignore the causes... and they're hardly even any good at that! Because of liberal Democrats, the suffering of people and constant ecological destruction under hierarchical systems like state capitalism is indefinitely prolonged, until we experience a significant collapse, severe enough to end it -- at which point, few will be prepared or empowered to meet the challenges.


They get involved in a non-committal way to many social struggles, even when asked not to, usually as highly visible "allies". They attempt to police the behavior of groups. They threaten to withhold support if things get "violent", which can mean literally anything to them. They like symbolic protests, not revolutions, and they encourage people to accept how things are or to change things "from within the system" (ie ineffectively) instead of encouraging people to take power into their own hands to effect change. They seem perpetually and willfully ignorant of how political and economic change occurs, both historically and in the present. They don't really want change. They tinker with reforms, so that nothing upsets their privilege. Liberalism supports capitalism, private property, statism, and the various mechanisms and institutions that protect their privilege from the threat of greater equality, which is why they spend so much time decrying anything they feel might lead us into "anarchy" or "communism", sleeping with the enemy while pretending to have your best interests in mind.


They support electioneering, and are the ones who are constantly trotting out all the stupid cliche's that literally everyone has heard a billion times for decades on every single election cycle, about the "lesser of two evils", and "wasted votes" on 3rd parties, and "if you don't vote, you can't complain", and other fucking unintelligent shit. Then, if their candidate wins, they'll disappear for four years, only to resurface just as ignorant as ever.


When you subject them to criticism, they'll ask you what you think would work so much better, but it's a rhetorical question, and they aren't listening.


So, I really just can't work with those people. They are not allies. 

by guest blogger Alex .S.

Springfield MO Anti-Trump Rally

Park Central Square

On 11-20, 2016 our local anarchist group participated in a large for our area protest against Prez-elect Donald Trump. We met up with old friends and new folks who expressed interest in our ideas. And of course, passed out a lot of literature and a leaflet (will post later).

From my count, it appeared to be at least 500-600 folks coming and going over the two hours it lasted at the Square. Across the street, about 15 counter protesters gathered and near the end of the rally one young dude walked on stage and grabbed a speaker and was arrested for resisting arrest. That was the only incident from the rally. 

Tampa IWW statement of intent:

"The condition of the workers movement in the 21st century is a sorry one. With union membership on the decline, wages stagnant, and all manner of legal and extralegal methods at the disposal of the bosses, the need for organization is readily apparent. In Tampa, we find workers of many industries grasping at solutions to the persistent problems of capitalism; unemployment and the threat of it, low wages, unreliable scheduling, and so on. The same lines of division among unionists at the turn of the 20th century persist to today; now the petty fiefdoms of ‘labor statesmen’ but also the domains of many reformist political sects.

Our task, then, is to agitate for united action by workers of this or that trade, this or that union, this or that party, on the picket lines. Divided, the class fails every time. The recognition that “An injury to one is an injury to all” is not simply a moral code, but a practical necessity.

Workers will not spontaneously rise up in an organized fashion and choose socialism. In that way, it is the task of the Tampa IWW to educate the local working class about its own interests; to help determine paths for workers out of their current rut, and to directly aid in organizing workers if need be.

To organize, the working class requires union democracy. This, in turn, requires putting the tools of the struggle in the hands of the workers themselves, in the form of training, education, and planning. Our goal will be to work together with workers in Tampa who are suffering abuses from their employers, and help organize their resistance.

Dispossessed by poverty of any functional means of fighting back ‘within the system’ we workers will be driven to respond with direct action, demonstration, freedom of speech and assembly. We have nothing to lose. We have a world to gain!"

From our Friends in Joplin, MO:

Agitate, Educate, Organize!

This is a common phrase you hear in radical circles, and at a time when the right feels tentatively redeemed and the left feels emphatically confused, we who believe in systemic social change must hit the streets to find commonality with our neighbors and work vigorously to spread a message of autonomy and equality. For many anarchists, we are new to this process; it can be scary, nerve-wracking, and outside of our everyday demeanor to confront dominant social forces. One does not have to jump in and get arrested on day one in order to make a difference. Instead, focus on the following: what is the problem, why are the powers-that-be insufficient to solve that problem, and how can you frame your message of change to suit your particular location. Sometimes, it is difficult to take that first step, to reach out to that first step, or to begin collaboratively planning that first action. Take the plunge and let’s get to work.

What does it mean to agitate?

When most people think of agitation, they probably imagine something being annoying, and this is a pretty good description of the anarchist version as well. Of course, it matters who is being annoyed, and who is actively agitating. Of the three tenets listed above, agitation is the most controversial and miscalculated. On the one hand, agitation could be as simple as having an uncomfortable conversation with an acquaintance, though this alone is not sufficient to creating systemic change (sorry, internet trolls). Agitation as collective action involves directly confronting power structures, ranging from the police or local politicians to a factory farm or corporate headquarter. The theory behind agitation is that due to the imbalance of influence, there is no chance for meaningful dialogue, and it is at this point that agitation becomes a necessary part of any action.

What does it mean to educate?

This one is perhaps the most straight-forward, though I should caution that this includes both an internal and external component. Everyone, from the working-class union member to the academic college student to the unemployed lifestylist must continue to self-educate. This involves praxis, or the fusion of action and theory, and in many ways we continue to struggle with this process. Anarchism must be questioned by its adherents as culture shifts, and reflection should be a daily routine. It comes down to a simple question: “Why are you an anarchist?”

The external component of education is also self-evident: if we want to build a better world, we must find commonalities within our communities. This involves learning about your neighbors, friends, and coworkers, listening to their stories and finding points in which to connect with them. Do not misconstrue this point: these people are not means to an end, they are humans with their own experiences and potential allies. As you integrate yourself into social circles, you can begin to separate community members into three categories: No path forward, situational allies, and close allies. At this point, organizing can begin.

What does it mean to organize?

Organizing for an anarchist comes in many different forms, with a number of short and long-term goals. Remember, you are most affective at the local level; while there are times when state, national, and international issues will be at the forefront, your ability to influence your community is numerically most likely when it involves issues at that level. Find those which you have the most affinity with, as these will be the comrades you rely on most. Look at issues within your city or town, and decide what action is appropriate under the circumstances. If you can find common ground with folks who many not agree with your overall vision, don’t allow your differences to stop an otherwise potentially good change. Most importantly, be prepared for failure! Things will never quite go the way you planned, and there’s a good chance that things may blow up in your face. Embrace the notion of failure and do not be afraid. Be vigilant, plan ahead, and have contingency plans. Learn from your mistakes, and if something doesn’t work, go at it from another angle.

There’s so much more to explore with these topics, but what is most important is that we get started NOW. Another world is possible, and it begins in your neighborhood.

Struggle onward,

Joplin Radical