Anarchism
Anarchism and anarchists and anything associated with the thinking, the people, or the history generally get a raw deal from the media and even mainstream historians. It is true that anarchism is profoundly anti-authoritarian, but its popular association with violence (wild-eyed bearded men throwing bombs) is exaggerated, even fictionalized by the very forces threatened by it, namely governments and the media with vested interests in things as they are.
As with any subversive political and economic movement, some proponents became impatient and felt justified in striking out in vengeance or justice. Thus you have Alexander Berkman and his attempted assassination of Pennsylvanian Henry Clay Frick in 1892 and Leon Czolgosz and his successful assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Berkman, however, served his time in jail, wrote a deep and insightful account of his experience and went on to write more worthwhile books on the subject which possessed his life. (Czolgosz did not have that opportunity, being executed forty-five days after the death of his victim.)
Anarchism survived its dramatic beginnings in the 19th Century, however, and interested readers can find its articulate concern with agricultural reform, labor rights, and prophetic worries about the growth of the surveillance state in many excellent books. Here you will find books and a superb documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti (as well as Woody Guthrie's cd of his investigation into the miscarriage of justice). Here you will find histories, biographies, anthologies, memoirs, and fiction. It is a rich tradition, relevant to this day and to the future.
Militant Anti-Fascism: A Hundred Years of Resistance
Militant Anti-Fascism: A Hundred Years of Resistance
Fascism is not a thing of the past. In this era of crisis and austerity, it is growing even stronger. The question is: How do we stop it?
According to M. Testa, the fight against it must be aggressive and unrelenting. Using a mixture of orthodox history, eyewitness accounts, and unflinching analysis, he makes the case for a resolutely militant anti-fascism, one that gives no quarter and tolerates no excuses. Unlike other partisan accounts of contemporary battles against fascism and ultra-nationalism, Militant Anti-Fascism takes us from proto-fascists in nineteenth-century Austria to modern-day street-fights in London, providing a broad context for its arguments and looking at numerous countries over a longer period of time. The result is both a serious historical study and a story of victory and struggle, past and present, designed to inspire and energize militants.
Lay aside, as M. Testa does, your faith in liberal, legislative, and state-approved approaches to today’s fascist threat. Start by reading this provocative and unapologetic overview of militant anti-fascism and the strategies that have successfully confronted the far right when it has reappeared in its many guises.
Read the Introduction here.
M. Testa, undercover anti-fascist blogger, has analyzed the changing fortunes of the British far right since 2009. He has written for the anarchist magazine Freedom and is a member of the Anti-Fascist Network.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Part I
Italy: No Flowers For Mussolini
France: A New Acceptance of Violence
Austria: Fascist Violence Could only Be Met by Violence
Germany: ‘Beat the fascists wherever you meet them’
Spain: ‘The Spanish Anarchist lives for liberty, virtue and dignity’
Hungary, Romania & Poland: ‘To Arms! To Arms!’
Ireland: Blueshirts and Red Scares
Scotland: ‘Six hundred Reds … Led by a Jew’
England: ‘A bloody good hiding’
Part II
43 Group and 62 Group: ‘It’s not possible to legislate fascism out of existence!’
National Front: ‘Under Heavy Manners’
Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism: Mass Mobilization
Red Action and AFA: ‘The day’s action might be rough’
Blood & Honour: Beware Mancunians Bearing Lucozade Bottles
AFA and Ireland: ‘Short, Sharp and Painful’
Combat 18: The Nearly Men
AFA Grows: Fighting Talk
AFA in Scotland: ‘We don’t talk to fascists’
The BNP: Reach For The Gutter!
The EDL: ‘Neither Racist Nor Violent, But Both’
Conclusion
Appendix: Anti-Fascist Recollections by John Penney
Index