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Antifa: the Anti-Fascist Handbook

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Antifa: the Anti-Fascist Handbook ter what the Communist Party said.”79 After sustained protest the party leadership agreed to support the anti-fascist blockade.80 On October 4, 1936, several thousand fascists amassed to march through London’s largely Jewish East End. Yet, as one Jewish anti- fascist recalled, “we resolved that under no circumstances would Antifa: the Anti-fascist we allow Fascists and their propaganda, together with their insults Handbook and attacks, to come along to our community where our people were living and working in peace.”81 According to the police, one hundred thousand demonstrators flooded the surrounding streets to prevent the fascists’ advance. Mark Bray Half an hour before the march was scheduled to begin, the police charged the crowd with their batons to clear some space for the BUF. After the crowd retreated, leaving several men injured onthe ground, the barricades went up. The anti-fascists on Cable Street turned over a lorry to block the road, while others raided a nearby construction site for materials to add to a mass of mattresses and furniture. A wide range of anti-fascists “from bearded Orthodox Jews” to “rough-and-ready Irish Catholic dockers” defended the barricades with paving stones that had been dislodged with pick- axes. When the police charged the overturned lorry, anti-fascists threw small boxes of gunpowder fashioned into tiny bombs. As the fascists chanted “The Yids, the Yids, we are going to get ridof the Yids,” the anti-fascists shouted the Spanish slogan: “They Shall Not Pass!”82 Meanwhile the fascists continued to arrive, some of them in cars with nets rather than glass in their windows to mitigate the destruc- tion of anti-fascist stones. Finally, Oswald Mosley arrived half an 79 Ceplair, Under the Shadow of War, 174. 80 Tilles, British Fascist Antisemitism, 147–149; Hodgson, Fighting Fascism, 137; Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, 54–56. 81 Tilles, British Fascist Antisemitism, 95. 82 Ibid., 149; The Western Daily Press and Bristol Mirror, October 5, 1936; The Daily Independent, October 5, 1936; Hann, Physical Resistance, 83–84; Ceplair, August 2017 Under the Shadow of War, 174. 56 Popular Front. Dissident Trotskyists, who had been critical of the Comintern’s “third period” line, instead advocated a pan-socialist united front. Now Trotsky attacked Stalin for going too farin the other direction with this “opportunistic and patriotic turn” that threatened to “dampen the revolutionary struggle.”78 Yet, by the mid-1930s Stalin was eager to abandon the “revolutionary struggle” in favor of fortifying the Soviet Union. In Britain, the already small CPGB had suffered greatly from the heated rhetoric of the “third period.” With the advent of the Pop- ular Front, the party eagerly embraced parliamentary democracy, which until recently had been considered a “counter-revolutionary opiate,” and reached out to the Labour Party. Although Labour de- clined the invitation, the CPGB continued to cultivate an image of respectability and backed away from adversarial anti-fascist ac- tivism. In October 1936, the BUF planned a march through the Jewish East End of London. In response, the Jewish People’s Coun- cil Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism (JPC) and their allies in the EMAF and the Jewish Council of Action distributed a petition to get the march banned that received seventy-seven thousand signa- tures in two days. When the government refused to ban the pro- cession on the grounds of free speech, the JPC decided to mobilize the community to physically block the march route. The CPGB re- fused to endorse their “confrontational” protest and instead urged its members to attend a rally in support of the Spanish Republic at Trafalgar Square at the same time. The party even printed a leaflet arguing for “Dignity, Order, and Discipline” rather than active dis- ruption. The party’s rank and file, particularly its Jewish members, were outraged. They “would oppose Mosley with their bodies, nomat- 78 Ceplair, Under the Shadow of War, 91–92; Hodgson, Fighting Fascism, 13, 146. 55 BUF. And other smaller leftist groups, such as the Socialist League, were equally oppositional.75 Less formally organized forms of resistance also emerged among working-class Jewish youth who engaged in “gang warfare,” to the point where the Evening Standard wrote that “East End Blackshirts are in some real danger Contents of physical violence. There are some streets in Whitechapel … where no Blackshirt could walk at night … without being badly assaulted.”76 Introduction 8 Nevertheless, when it came time to shut down Mosley and the BUF, anti-fascists from a variety of groups (many from none at all) What is Anti-Fascism? 11 turned up en masse. In September 1934, 120,000 protesters utterly overwhelmed a BUF gathering in London’s Hyde Park. Such anti- Antifa 25 fascist opposition was not limited to major cities. In the small town of Tonypandy, 36 people out of a crowd of 2,000 that shut down One: ¡No Pasarán!: Anti-Fascism Through 1945 26 the BUF were arrested on charges of rioting. Legally, the police could only shut down hateful speech if it caused public disorder. Two: “Never Again”: the Development of Modern An- Therefore, when anti-fascists caused a disruption, the police had tifa, 1945–2003 66 a legal excuse to end the BUF event. Overall, 57 of the 117 public meetings that the BUF attempted to organize in 1936 were either Three: the Rise of “Pinstripe Nazis” and Anti-Fascism disrupted or prevented by the action of anti-fascists.77 Today 110 The panorama of international anti-fascism was significantly altered over the summer of 1935 when the Communist Interna- Four: Five Historical Lessons for Anti-Fascists 175 tional made a complete about-face away from its “third period” 1. Fascist Revolutions Have Never Succeeded. Fascists analysis of “social fascists.” The new line called for the adoption Gained Power Legally. 175 of a broad Popular Front to bolster the diplomatic security of the 2. To Varying Degrees, Many Interwar Anti-Fascist U.S.S.R. given the rise of Nazism. Non-Soviet leftists, who months Leaders and Theorists Assumed That Fascism Was before had been nothing more than fascists in disguise, were Simply a Variant of Traditional Counterrevolu- suddenly invited with open arms into the anti-fascist fellowship. tionary Politics. They Did Not Take It Seriously “Bourgeois” liberal parties, which had allegedly been paving the Enough Until It Was Too Late. 178 way for fascism to engulf the globe, became bulwarks of the 75 Hodgson, Fighting Fascism, 109–110, 143. 76 Tilles, British Fascist Antisemitism, 127. 77 Hodgson, Fighting Fascism, 136–137; Tilles, British Fascist Anti semitism, 116–117; Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, 29–35. 54 3 3. For Ideological and Orginizational Reasons, Socialist (TUC) condemned the violence, their rank and file were well rep- and Communist Leadership Was Often Slower resented among the disrupters.71 to Accurately Assess the Threat of Fascism, Mosley’s next organization, the British Union of Fascists, met a and Slower to Advocate Militant Anti-Fascist similar response. When the BUF started to organize in the West Responses, Than Their Parties’ Rank-and-File End of London in 1933, Jews from the East End set out to shut Membership. 183 them down. On April 30, 1933, merely months after Hitler’s rise to 4. Fascism Steals From Left Ideology, Strategy, Imagery, power, a group of a thousand Jews chanting “Down with the Nazis, and Culture. 185 down with the Hitlerites!” set upon BUF members distributing 5. It Doesn’t Take That Many Fascists to Make Fascism. 187 propaganda. Six Jews were arrested, some of whom had “seriously pummeled” the fascists.72 Fearing the rise of fascism, British Jews Five: “So Much For the Tolerant left!”: “No Platform” formed a number of organizations such as the Zionist League of and Free Speech 190 Jewish Youth and the Jewish United Defense Association, purely How Free is “Free Speech”? . 192 dedicated to self-defense. Similarly, in 1936, Jewish veterans Are Anti-Fascists Anti-Free Speech? . 196 formed the Ex-Servicemen’s Movement Against Fascism (EMAF) Do Anti-Fascists Agree That “No Platforming” Fascists, “to attack Fascism in its strongholds,” and then the Legion ofthe That is, Disrupting Their Public Organizing, Vio- Blue and White Shirts, which terrified the fascists so much they lates Their Freedom of Speech? . 197 referred to them as “the storm troops of Jewry.” A generational What About the “Slippery Slope”? . 203 divide characterized responses to anti-fascist violence. Older Jews Mustn’t “Truth” be Confronted by “Error”? . 209 tended to criticize those who were “copying the Nazi violence Doesn’t “No Platforming” Fascists Erode Free Speech in which we loath and detest.” Instead, they believed that the goal a Way That Hurts the Left More Than the Right? . 210 was to “show the world that the Jew can be as good a citizen as Shutting Down Nazis Makes You No Better Than aNazi! . 211 anybody else.” Younger Jews tended to argue that “fists can be put What About Anti-Fascist Principles in the University? . 212 to better service than propelling pens.”73 Other Jews organized against fascism in the Communist Party Six: Strategy, (Non)Violence, and Everyday Anti-Fascism215 of Great Britain (CPGB), even if they didn’t entirely subscribe to Everyday Anti-Fascism . 255 its ideas because the communists were said to be “the only ones attempting to take the fight to the fascists.”74 This wasn’t entirely Conclusion: Good Night White Pride (or Whiteness is true since the Independent Labour Party had shifted toward a Indefensible) 260 combative stance after initially holding joint debates with the Acknowledgments . 263 71 Keith Hodgson, Fighting Fascism: The British Left and the Rise of Fascism, 1919–36 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 106.
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