Unoffensive Animal

Read below an anonymously sent report back of the counter demonstration against Britain First national march and the writer’s thoughts on antifascism organising in the UK.

“BRITAIN FIRST’S NATIONAL MARCH AND RALLY: THEY FLOPPED, BUT WE NEED TO DO A LOT MORE WORK.

Britain First made no secret of their planned march and rally for St David’s day in Nuneaton. They got council approval to set up a large stage with expensive screen and sound equipment in the ironically named ‘justice centre’ car park. They hired security, Paul Golding begged everyone he could to attend and claimed 10k was spent on the event.

However, I’m sad to say that while there were many ‘Stand up to Racism’ aka ‘Socialist Workers Party’ placards, as to be expected, quite a few communist flags and a Palestinian flag, there wasn’t a single antifascist flag flown…

Trying to get antifascist groups, even the local ones, to attend a fascist event has been like pulling teeth. And while we share the same critiques of SUTR/SWP: they are transphobic, they are misogynistic, there has been a number of fucked up insistences involving them and they insist on not only cooperating with filth like absolute wet wipes but also their stewards will kettle the crowd before the police even start positioning themselves. But a SUTR presence is not an excuse to not oppose fascists. If anything, it makes the need for other groups attendance even greater.

You cannot leave a void that STUR fills and then complain they are occupying all the space.

Only a couple hundred pink-faced nationalists turned up to Nuneaton railway station, where the meet point was. Way too few to carry the thousand union jack and England flags that had been purchased for the event. The much bragged-about coaches from around the country turned out to be mostly empty minibuses. And the march that was due to start at 12 didn’t end up starting till almost 1pm. At that point, despite multiple pleas and warnings given to the crowd by the few antifascists present that they were positioned huddled to the side and would get kettled if they didn’t spread out, the stewards kept everyone in line and trapped. So as predicted, the counter protest was completely kettled by police and their vans while only a dozen antifascists went up against the line of police protecting Britain First as they marched down the street. The police were quick to use violence on the only actual resistance to the march. Vastly outnumbered by cops after awhile antifascists were pushed and dragged away by police who couldn’t hide their excitement at getting to use force. When about 10 antifascists had been pushed to the side to allow the BF march to go past, they ran down a side street in order to cut across and get back in front of the march. A gang of police took chase, pulled out their batons, and started threatening with breach of the peace and section 3. A few of them looked about ready to cum in their pants as they excitedly brandished their little metal rods. The kind of confidence you only see in the filth when they outnumber you and know it.

All this time the SUTR crowd remained in their self-imposed prison doing nothing by the train station, and it wasn’t until BF was safely at their destination and starting the rally that they moved on and did some drum banging from a safe distance.

If there had been an actual turnout of even just a few dozen more antifascists, we could have stopped that rally from taking place. We could have held their march at the train station till they were forced to go home. As has happened in the past. Instead, folks are too busy sitting in armchairs and complaining about how other groups do it badly to actually get to the streets and do it better. We need a presence, we need to recruit, and we need to teach crowds how to keep each other safe.

Just because we’ve got bigger and newer contenders to deal with, like Reform and Patriotic Alternative, that doesn’t mean that the pathetic BF aren’t capable of digging themselves out of the grave. And marches calling for “remigration”, stoking up racist and unfounded fears of a “demographic replacement” should always be opposed no matter how laughable we expect the turn out to be. If history and current events have taught us anything its how fast the political landscape can change and how vulnerable we make ourselves when we don’t organise and resist. And don’t mistake this failure of an event as a sign we don’t need to worry. The far right are organising and as we’ve seen with Reform they are gaining public support as well as opposition.

If you call yourself antifascist then you need to start asking yourself some questions. Where are you when the fascists are organising? Where are you when the fascists are marching? Where are you when they hold their rallies? Paul Golding claimed they have another event in the works, set to take place in Birmingham. So keep your eyes peeled and get your mates together.

Antifascist is not a label you give yourself because you say so. You’re antifascist when you oppose fascism. It requires action. “

[editor’s note, directed at the anonymous senders: Thanks for the submission, keep them coming as often as you wish. Be gay and burn the deathmachine which surrounds you <3 ]

“Sündi is getting cut down, another woodland which capitalism must displace to try and satisfy its insatiable hunger for growth.

Since the 70s, the neighbouring Hambi was already getting logged, until this was halted in 2018. Without the occupation of the Hambacher Forest and the multiform resistance against the evictions, the whole of the Hambi would have been devoured by the mine. Sündi was once part of Hambi, but is now a remaining island of green surrounded by the industrial developments of the Rheinland. In part, this woodland is getting cut so that a yacht harbour can be built in its place, and the gravel which gets removed from the ground, used to construct a beach for tourists.

Contrary to what we expected there was no eviction per se. Instead RWE, who choose to handle the situation themselves – operating as a state within a state, showcasing the power corporations hold and the free reign they are given – went ahead and started clear cutting.

RWE has recruited a private army of security-workers to enable this onslaught, the leaders of which are almost all Nazis or fascist Grey Wolves. Committed to their work-obligations and driven by pure hate against those who think otherwise, these foolish lackeys of the mega-corporations have been driven to destroy their own landbase. This mess is a further indication of the resurgence of facsism in Germany. Let it be a wakeup call for all anti-fascists, that RWE is a harbinger of the nationalistic cancer!

These professional murderers have, with their usual brutality, already crushed most of the Sündi. We watched as tree harvesters and chainsaw teams decimated the majority of the forest in the span of three days. Ground structures were destroyed and at times access to the Sündenwald was completely cut off, with people trying to approach getting attacked and forcibly removed. Trees were being felled whilst forest-defenders were up in structures and traverses protecting what they could. Meanwhile wild animals attempted to flee what was once their home. Even a tree harvester of the company Kettwiger Baumdienst* was decorated with printed insults against the forest-defenders, for example “treekiller 2000” and an image of someone pissing on the Sündenwäldchen. (And this, by a company – who were at the forefront of the ecocide – who drive green trucks with “renewable enegry” written big on the side). Since then, heavy machinery has been used daily here (guarded, since they found out the hard way that this was the only way they could operate) in order to clear the now dead trees, turning what once as an active ecosystem into wood chips on the spot.

People didn’t give up the woodland without a fight and defended it the best they could. Trees were spiked, pumping stations and electricity boxes were sabotaged using a diversity of methods and security were greeted by flaming barricades. The occupation is still standing but the threat of eviction still remains! We are determined to keep what we still have, and fight RWE for every metre of soil they intend to reduce to oblivion. The threat of eviction still remains.

At the same time we feel the need to talk about certain things that have trouble us this far like the coexisted with politicians and NGOs, the use of mainstream media and the notion that the presence of the police might have protected us in this situation (which is especially troubling, as it erases the countless people who have experienced and continue to experience police violence, both within forest occupations and outside of them). All of the above institutions serve as tools of control and coercion that render our strugles toothless, and at worst endanger us and those around us. Alas we understand the need to remain in solidarity with struggles such as this, even if we find ourselves at odds with some of the choices made.

We can’t afford to make any more friendly requests; only open conflict against ecocide and fascism has a chance of success. If we want to survive, if we want nature to live again, then we need to attack with all means the leviathan of “progress” and finally destroy it. Attempting to plunder what natural resources remain, capitalistic progress is leading us to fascism and perpetual war. We call on you, wherever you are, to be in solidarity with the fight against the death grip of RWE. This fight is about so much more than a few trees or a woodland; we fight against the biggest extinction event, since the end of the dinosaurs.

Coordinate yourselves and attack their machines, their underlings and infrastructure. Be gay and burn the deathmachine which surrounds you, unleashing your animalistic vitality. In these cold times, let’s warm ourselves on the fires of our resistance. Defend the forests and the fields, the moors and the marshes, the shores and the mountains. These are the last remaining bastions of hope for life. The assholes complicit in killing the sundi have names and addresses…

P. Meurer – Kaulhausen 57, 41812 Erkenz
also:
Kettwiger Baumdienst – August-Thyssen-Straße 53, 45219 Essen
Forstbetried Corres- Heesweg 16, 41849 Wassenberg
Forst Schauff – Franz-Josef Schauf Widdiger Straße 6, 50389 Wesseling
Beyer Mietservice – Gewerbepark Rother Straße 1, 57539 Roth – Heckenhof

p.s we hate you more than you hate us

some creatures from the Hambacher forest”