Demonstration against SDL (Swedish Defence League) 21 May

[aty]

21th of May SDL will hold its first demonstration in Sweden. They will be protesting against building a mosque in Gothenburg. We know that a lot of EDL will come to Gothenburg and people from Germany, Denmark and Norway. We hope to make it a bigger failure than EDL in Holland.

But Gothenburg have always been a stronghold for socialists and workers in Sweden and so it will remain. There will be two demonstrations, one more "UAF"-style but more confrontational, and the bigger even more confrontative organised by GNMR(Gothenburg network against racism). GNMR are not in favour of mosques but are just against the nazis.
Last week the Swedendemocrats were met by 2000 demonstrators organised by GNMR and this is going to be even bigger. Last year the nazis also demonstrated against the mosque, they were about 250, but this year SDL have taken over. Antifascists were met with teargas and violence by police.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138616336211431&notif_t=event_invite
[email protected]

All socialists are welcome to Gothenburg 21 May. The Danish socialists are already mobilising. This year it was also 10 years ago the famous Gothenburg-riots took place.

Bring your Stone Island-jumper and join the protests!

[Sasha]

if you run into tony ask him if he wants his flag back ;)

[aty]

if you run into tony ask him if he wants his flag back ;)
Will try to get his CP Company jacket... :cool:

[progressive_lefty]

I'm sure there will be plenty of rangers types there.

[aty]

EDL, SDL and NDL in Oslo last month:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Y_8XrPKSc:)

[Anarchist Skinhead]

any more info about this thing from Oslo? We should be publicising things like that :)

[aty]

This will be the biggest police operation in Gothenburg since the riots in 2001. They have put it at a 4 on a 5-grade scale.
The both organisations having demonstrations have been leafletting for weeks in Gothenburg and there will be buses from all over the country. The demonstrations will both have well over 1000 demonstraters each and will join up togheter were the nazis are gathering.

[aty]

Biggest police operation since Gothenburg-riots: http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/storsta-polisinsatsen-sedan-goteborgskravallerna

[aty]

http://cdnstatic.expressen.se/polopoly/bilder/2011/05/20/1.2442267TS1305868915839_slot100slotWide75ArticleF ull.jpg
Blue=nazis
Red and black = socialists

[Sasha]

Good luck, stay save, give them hell

[Buitraker]

Good luck!

[aty]

Went well we were 3500 and the nazis 150. Because of the massive police operation we could not get very close to the nazis so it just ended up in riots against the police trying to reach them. Some got up on a mountain and threw bangers down on the nazis but that was it.

Riots, trying to block the road so the nazis cant leave in the policebuses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2gs97EuTsQ

And we now have "Black Panthers" in Sweden, they are great! They drew a lot of people from the suburbs that wanted to fuck up the nazis.
Black Panthers speach, the video finish with Fred Hampton :): http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=125021037577104&comments
http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/227131_174808155905937_157645790955507_395249_2429 935_n.jpg

[Smyg]

Alright, time for a small clarification.

There were, as previously mentioned, two anti-racist groups participating, Gothenburg against racism (GMR) and Gothenburg's network against racism (GNMR). The former consists mainly of liberals and various ethnic and religious organization, as well as a few Socialist organizations - mainly Stalinists. The latter consists mainly of CWI trotskyists and syndicalists.

I participated with GNMR, who's intent was to stop the nazis (who by the way wasn't all that many Defence League chaps). GMR on the other hand just wanted to stand there and praise peace and understanding. :rolleyes:

Overall, it went pretty good. Less "action" than I would've wanted, but decent enough. Lots of people on our side, and very few nazis showed up.

[Crux]

Went well we were 3500 and the nazis 150. Because of the massive police operation we could not get very close to the nazis so it just ended up in riots against the police trying to reach them. Some got up on a mountain and threw bangers down on the nazis but that was it.

Riots, trying to block the road so the nazis cant leave in the policebuses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2gs97EuTsQ

And we now have "Black Panthers" in Sweden, they are great! They drew a lot of people from the suburbs that wanted to fuck up the nazis.
Black Panthers speach, the video finish with Fred Hampton :): http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=125021037577104&comments
http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/227131_174808155905937_157645790955507_395249_2429 935_n.jpg
Yeah, the Panthers are awesome. I came with their bloc, we, as in the swedish CWI, have very good contacts with them. Some of their leading members are also in the CWI. A very exciting project to be sure.

[Olentzero]

Hadn't heard the Black Panthers were here in Sweden! Great slogan too, about building up the suburbs. I heard a lot of folks switched from the GMR protest to the Network protest when they found out GMR wasn't going to do much of anything besides have a couple speeches; is this true?

[Crux]

Hadn't heard the Black Panthers were here in Sweden! Great slogan too, about building up the suburbs. I heard a lot of folks switched from the GMR protest to the Network protest when they found out GMR wasn't going to do much of anything besides have a couple speeches; is this true?
Indeed, and the GMR stewards and the police tried to keep the demonstrations separated. Their intial plan was to try and kettle us, but we made it to the barricades.

[Olentzero]

Trying to keep the demonstrations separated was stupid. They don't have to agree with confronting the fascists directly, but they don't get to decide for the people in attendance. I also note with some sadness that the IS tendency ended up on the GMR side. Idiots.

[Olentzero]

Oh, and I stole the Panthers photo for Facebook. I got comrades back home in the States who would love to see that.

[Sasha]

Trying to keep the demonstrations separated was stupid. They don't have to agree with confronting the fascists directly, but they don't get to decide for the people in attendance. I also note with some sadness that the IS tendency ended up on the GMR side. Idiots.


sadly this is one of the main reasons many militants piss on the SWP/IS leadership, nothing wrong with the rank and file (hey, when they get burned out in the IS they often join us :D) but it actually happened several times that SWP/IS stewards, on explicit orders of the leadership spreaded false information about fascist threats to events and (physicaly) prevent people from aiding others under attack or even from defending themselfs.
The IS leadership made it crystal clear they don't want militants, they want martyrs and since its not them but the rank and file that will have to suffer from that its an very disgusting tactic, and as history has shown not even an worthwhile tactic at that but an very counterproductive one that only emboldens the fash.

[Olentzero]

Have you got anything to back that up? See, I got 20 years of experience with the ISO, including several demonstrations where we confronted fascists, that directly contradict your assertions. So kindly put your cards on the table, good sir.

[Sasha]

maybe the ISO is better than their dutch or english counterparts but about the dutch IS its direct (15 years worth of) experience trying to work together with them (and yes, that includes the leadership telling me personaly that they reject militant confrontation and to prefer turning the other cheek because of the moral highground and "it looks better on TV when its our side getting beaten"), plus the friendship with many former IS members who left exactly ofer this shit. about the SWP's tactics whole books are written, its an recuring theme in all relevant books on the history of contempary anti-fascism in england "beating the fascist" and "no retreat" to begin with but also the booklet of (revleft member) K. Bullstreet.
"incidents" range from leading demonstrations away from the fash, sending militants away while there is an clear eminent threat to an carnival, forcefully surpressing any reports of an 2 year brutal and bloody campaing of the NF targetting the SWP papersales (its estimated that on an certain point more than 5 papersales a week came under NF attack), sending rally participants away in small groups when even the police say there are dozens of tooled up fash lying in ambush, expelling militants of false charges, even setting them up, the list is endless.

[Olentzero]

Fair enough, actually. I don't know how big the Dutch IS group is; here in Sweden it's between 5 and 10 folks in Göteborg, I believe, and from what I hear of their actions you couldn't pay me to join them. But given that my experiences of the ISO lead me to conclude they're some of the best revolutionaries on the American left, I think painting the whole tendency with one broad brush like that is unsupportable. You can't really dismiss a whole tendency based on the actions of one national grouping (nor, as I've found, can you uncritically side with a tendency on that basis, either).

In short - the Dutch IS may actually suck; I don't know. Doesn't mean the whole IST sucks.

[Sasha]

true, but there is an pattern between the returning criticisms, not only within one country but also between the mother organization and its locals.
and, like its successes (high membership, high profile, ethnically diverse membership, comparatively undogmatic/unsectarian) most of these problems can be retraced to the mold/standard that the SWP have set by making certain tactic choices.
its focus on middle-class students/lack of working class membership, its opportunism/hijacking over other peoples campaigns/organizations, its inability to hang on to their rank and file, its seemingly more being interested in raising its profile and recruiting than the actual topic at hand etc etc are all re-traceable to and logical conclusions of certain tactic choices which i assume more or less apply to every local in the IS tendency.

[Anarchist Skinhead]

I had personal experiences (much more than I would like..) with IS in 3 countries already.. so far everywhere the story was the same. Now everytime I hear IS I am looking for my icepick ;)

[Olentzero]

Now everytime I hear IS I am looking for my icepick ;)Fuck. You.

[Sasha]

Yeah, dude, your not helping. Besides the last thing you can accuse the IST of is having an trotskist position on (anti-)fascism.

[Olentzero]

...what?

[Sasha]

I was talking against anarchistskinhead.

And Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the ISTs position on anti-fascism would be precisely what trotsky described as "flabby pacifism that arouses only disgust and loathing".

[Anarchist Skinhead]

psycho- I am accusing them of being fucking useless, at least as far as my personal experience goes. Icepick was a joking tease, but obviously worked ;)

[Olentzero]

I was talking against anarchistskinhead.I know. The '...what?' was a response to the non-Trotskyist bit. See, I've got copies of Trotsky's Fascism, Stalinism, and the United Front and Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pr/Fascism-What-It-Is-and-How-to-Fight-It) on my bookshelf, the former from SWP's Bookmarks and the latter available from the ISO's Haymarket Books website. I also happen to have a pamphlet entitled Killing the Nazi Menace by Chris Bambery, the final chapter of which is a quick exposition on how fascism can be fought. I hate to quote at length here, but I want to try to summarize his arguments in his own words:
History has shown that the Nazis can only be stopped by confrontation... In combatting this menace we cannot relay on formal bans by government... What counts is activity -- activity by the greatest number of people that can be mobilized... Such mobilization can only be built with open calls to smash the Nazis as a menace to all ordinary people, not just moral appeals against racism... Trotsky also argued for such mobilization to stop Hitler in the 1930s. His strategy centred on the need to build unity against the Nazis -- unity in action.
There is one qualification. We are for confrontation, but only through mobilizing large numbers of people. [A] strategy of isolated confrontation was tragic in Germany in the 1930s; [t]oday it would be farcical. Rather than seeking to mobilize large numbers, such squads become more and more conspiratorial, more and more isolated, and almost exclusively made up of young, white males.
Trotsky was clear on this matter. Writing after the Communist Party employed such tactics in France...
The task is to involve the workers in increasing numbers in the fight against fascism... adventures can only isolate a small, militant minority... We are for active self-defense... This active self-defense can be successful when it is supported and covered by the understanding and sympathy of the great mass of workers, and the Social Democratic workers first of all...It was precisely this perspective that led us in the ISO to build a thousands-strong countermarch against the World Church of the Creator in the late 1990s, and to be part of another thousands-strong rally against the Ku Klux Klan in Maryland around the same time. And, finally, to be part of a counterdemonstration against a rally by neo-Nazis outside the German embassy in DC right around 2000. And it worked - there hasn't been a hint of Nazi activity in DC since.

I'm a little leery of taking your assertions about the Dutch IS at full face value - not for personal reasons, but for the fact that it is essentially word of mouth from one person who's outside looking in. If things are in fact as you say, then the Dutch comrades need to get some reading done and rethink their strategy. But their actions do not stem from the fact that the IS lacks a Trotskyist perspective - if we did, we wouldn't have put out even the three works I cited above - but from members' failure to actively apply it. That in and of itself is a problem, but not for the reasons you assert.

[Sasha]

I know. The '...what?' was a response to the non-Trotskyist bit. See, I've got copies of Trotsky's Fascism, Stalinism, and the United Front and Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pr/Fascism-What-It-Is-and-How-to-Fight-It) on my bookshelf, the former from SWP's Bookmarks and the latter available from the ISO's Haymarket Books website.

they might have published it but ironically they sure as hell disregard most essential bits in their own politics:


To struggle, it is necessary to conserve and strengthen the instrument and the means of struggle -- organizations, the press, meetings, etc. Fascism threatens all of that directly and immediately. It is still too weak for the direct struggle for power, but it is strong enough to attempt to beat down the working-class organizations bit by bit, to temper its bands in its attacks, and to spread dismay and lack of confidence in their forces in the ranks of the workers.
Fascism finds unconscious helpers in all those who say that the "physical struggle" is impermissible or hopeless, and demand of Doumergue the disarmament of his fascist guard. Nothing is so dangerous for the proletariat, especially in the present situation, as the sugared poison of false hopes. Nothing increases the insolence of the fascists so much as "flabby pacificism" on the part of the workers' organizations. Nothing so destroys the confidence of the middle classes in the working-class as temporizing, passivity, and the absence of the will to struggle.

"We need mass self-defense and not the militia," we are often told.
But what is this "mass self-defense" without combat organizations, without specialized cadres, without arms? To give over the defense against fascism to unorganized and unprepared masses left to themselves would be to play a role incomparably lower than the role of Pontius Pilate. To deny the role of the militia is to deny the role of the vanguard. Then why a party? Without the support of the masses, the militia is nothing. But without organized combat detachments, the most heroic masses will be smashed bit by bit by the fascist gangs. It is nonsense to counterpose the militia to self-defense. The militia is an organ of self-defense.
"To call for the organization of a militia," say some opponents who, to be sure, are the least serious and honest, "is to engage in provocation."
This is not an argument but an insult. If the necessity for the defense of the workers' organizations flows from the whole situation, how then can one not call for the creation of the militia? Perhaps they mean to say that the creation of a militia "provokes" fascist attacks and government repression. In that case, this is an absolutely reactionary argument. Liberalism has always said to the workers that by their class struggle they "provoke" the reaction.
The reformists repeated this accusation against the Marxists, the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks. These accusations reduced themselves, in the final analysis, to the profound thought that if the oppressed do not balk, the oppressors will not be obliged to beat them. This is the philosophy of Tolstoy and Gandhi but never that of Marx and Lenin. If l'Humanite wants hereafter to develop the doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violence", it should take for its symbol not the hammer and sickle, emblem of the October Revolution, but the pious goat, which provides Gandhi with his milk.
"But the arming of the workers is only opportune in a revolutionary situation, which does not yet exist."
This profound argument means that the workers must permit themselves to be slaughtered until the situation becomes revolutionary. Those who yesterday preached the "third period" do not want to see what is going on before their eyes. The question of arms itself has come forward only because the "peaceful", "normal", "democratic" situation has given way to a stormy, critical, and unstable situation which can transform itself into a revolutionary, as well as a counter-revolutionary, situation.

It is nonsense to say that, in itself, the organization of the militia leads to adventures, provokes the enemy, replaces the political struggle by physical struggle, etc. In all these phrases, there is nothing but political cowardice.

But how to disarm the fascists? Naturally, it is impossible to do so with newspaper articles alone. Fighting squads must be created. An intelligence service must be established. Thousands of informers and friendly helpers will volunteer from all sides when they realize that the business has been seriously undertaken by us. It requires a will to proletarian action.all from "the workers militia and its opponents" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p9)

i'm not even going to begin to quote his no-holds-barred attack on those who turn to the state, to the politicians in power and their police, to beg for protection of the proletariat against fascist attacks, trotsky is very clear that an united front should be formed with the social-democratic proletariat in armed, streetlevel combat, not with bourgeois politicians that claim to represent them.
its the central theme in "HOW MUSSOLINI TRIUMPHED", "THE FASCIST DANGER LOOMS IN GERMANY" and "THE GERMAN COPS AND ARMY" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p2 and further)

face it, the IST today is nothing more than an reformist NGO to the status quo and like dear leon himself said:

However, it is impossible to arrive at a workers' state with empty hands. Only political invalids [...] can speak of a peaceful, constitutional road to socialism. The constitutional road is cut by trenches held by the fascist bands. There are not a few trenches before us. The bourgeoisie will not hesitate to resort to a dozen coups d'etat. aided by the police and the army, to prevent proletariat from coming to power.

[Anarchist Skinhead]

It is sad to see therefore that IS usually fails to take advice of their ideological leader on that matter- mind you, last year in Poland they surprised me with taking part in confrontational blockades of a big fascist demo so perhaps there is still some hope for them ;) Although we are yet to see their position this year. However UAF/SWP thing is completely another story...

[Sasha]

well like i said, nothing wrong with the ISTs rank and file, they are mostly very worthwhile comrades, its the leadership and their tactical choices that suck, funny thing is that the IS leadership for a while activily tried to recruit in the dutch autonomous movement but the only thing that happend where big groups of IS activists crossing over to our side. they gave up after that and now they shun us in organizing campaigns.

[Olentzero]

Oh come on, psycho, all you did there was throw up a bunch of admittedly good Trotsky quotes and then say "The IST doesn't follow any of this". That's supposed to convince me?

[Anarchist Skinhead]

well, seems like the word of people here about their personal experiences is not convicing enough.. so nothing we can do ;)