Anti-Fascism
Apparently 25 or so Nazis faced off with about 30 counter-demonstrators in Wellington on Saturday. I wasn't there, although I had been at the anti-fascist rally last Labour weekend. Apparently the anti-nazis only heard about this a little bit before hand, so it was just 30.
What I find really, really puzzling, is that at least some of the same people demonstrated in the same space as the fascists at the Labour party congress earlier this year. I had to leave that demo because I'm not comfortable being in the same space as the fascists.
I'm very ambivalent about anti-fascist organising. Actually that's not true, I think most of the anti-fascist organising that's happened in Wellington over the last year is at best a complete waste of time, for a number of reasons:
1. The members of the National Front, or the New Right, or whatever they're calling themselves now, are so far down on the list of threats to our lives that they're really not worth bothering with (if there was going to be a rise in fascism it wouldn't come from people with Nazi tattoos, it would come from the crazy religious right, or in the form of 'anti-terrorism').
2. The threat of the nazis is that they are violent thugs. There's nothing the left can do to make them less violent thugs.
3. If there was an increase in interest fascism then the reason for that would be the failure of the Labour government to deliver a real improvement in people's lives, and fascism offers them an analysis of what's going on (that is what I believe is behind the rise in popularity of the Destiny church). Standing up at fascist rallies and going "rah rah you suck" doesn't actually do anything. We need to actively offer an alternative analysis.
4. I think the fascists kind of get off on us opposing them. It validates their tiny group of people, and builds the idea that there's some kind of battle between nazis and anarchists and commies (which I think totally devalues what we're trying to do).
I understand the desire to have an opposition, and make sure that no asian or Jew, or anyone else who the Nazis happen to be hating on, walks past and thinks that this is acceptable. But fundamentally I think protest and organising are best used against people with some kind of power.
