In The Area 2 (Winter 2010)

8/7/2019 In The Area 2 (Winter 2010)

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In The AreaA Newsletter from AFA Ireland Issue 2, Winter 2010

AFA take over OConnellStreet!We spoke in Issue 5 of our

magazine No Quarter about

a collaboration with the Dub-

lin St. Pauli Supporters Club.

This now looks like its going to

become a regular event, along

with the involvement of the

Ireland Palestine Solidarity

Campaign, with the creation

of a new, regular Sounds of

Resistance night.

The three organisations cametogether on October 30th forour rst joint effort in Murrays

on OConnell Street. The nightwas our second gig to be billedunder the Sounds of Resistance

name, the rst coming back inJuly, where we had AFA DJs from

Milan, Freiburg and Dublin play

in front of 130 people for a joint

AFA/ St. Pauli Supporters Club

endeavour.

Octobers gig, with The Freeboo-ters and Dropping Bombs taking

to the stage, with backing fromDJs Carax, Ang and GlitterGirl

saw over 200 people pay in at

the door to see ve acts over

four hours, three merch stalls,plenty of dancing and plenty more

discussion. As per the rst gig, we

had an international presence,

and again, information and con-tacts were shared. Amongst many

others in the crowd, we wereprivileged to have a member of

punk legends The Oppressed inattendance.

The largest cheers of the nightundoubtedly went out to The

Freebooters, who were launchingtheir album at the gig and whoseset included the tracks Paddy

Hitler and Stormfront in a Tea-cup, both unashamed attacks on

Irish boneheads.

This is only the beginning for the

Sounds of Resistance nights,there are big plans for the future,

starting with Scottish folkrockers

The Wakes hitting our shores in

December and rumours of a wellknown German Anti- Fascist band

coming our way in January!

Outrage as Italian Fascists launchSidro Sands

A portion of the crowd at Octobers gig

Irish republicans and anti-fascistshave reacted in anger at the newsthat an Italian neo-fascist group is

to launch a brand of cider namedafter IRA volunteer and socialistBobby Sands. Anti-fascists here

have passed on the shocking

news to the Bobby Sands trust

and hope that they will publish a

statement, distancing themselves

completely from the group CasaPound, which can be then trans-lated and spread through left-

wing media outlets in Italy...

...Continued on page 3Check out Sounds of Resistance on Face-book for more info.


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2 / In The Area

International News (3)Members of the Polish neo-Nazi

skinhead band Tormentia were

attacked by a squad of militant

anti-fascists on the day they were

supposed to play an important

neo-Nazi concert.

The planned gig (which was sub-sequently cancelled because of

the ambush) was was organisedin memory of Mariusz Szczerski, a

leading Polish neo-Nazi and mem-ber of the band Honor, whodied in a car crash in 2005. (His

authority in the fascist movement

while alive, the way in which he

died and large memorial concertshas caused many to call him the

Polish Ian Stuart Donaldson.)

The attack on Tormentia left one

band member unconscious andcaused hundreds of euro of dam-age to their equipment.

(2)

A march by the National Social-

ist Movement (NSM) in Phoenix,

Arizona didnt go quite as plan as

hundreds of counter-protesters

blocked their path.

Police used tear gas to disperse

the anti-fascists, two of whomwere arrested for throwing rocks

at the fascists and charged withaggravated assault. The protest

was organised in support of

Arizonas controversial immi-gration law and attracted only

around 30 NSM members, mostly

tattooed men with shaved heads.Some were dressed in uniformand carried shields and swastika

ags. One of the most extraor-dinary of the days events saw a

heavily-built black man, rumoured

to be a born again Christian, actas a bodyguard for one of the

leading NSM members J.T. Ready

claiming that even a Nazi had a

right to speak. Anti-fascists inNorth America once again pre-vented neo-Nazis from having

their way and marching around

town unmolested.

(1)

On Saturday 30 October, a gang

of neo-Nazis from the Swedish

Resistant Movement (SMR) at-tempted to attack a public meet-

ing, organised to start up a new

extra-parliamentary left-wing

group, in the Southern town of

Kristianstad.

The masked Neo-Nazis, who

were armed with shields, sticks

and bottles, did their best tobreak into the meeting but were

repelled by a counter-attack bythe socialists inside.

Eight neo-Nazis required medi-cal attention after the botched

raid while others were chasedfor over a mile through a park-ing lot and forest. The left-winggroup Revolutionary Front issued

a statement afterwards reiterat-

ing that the socialist movementin Sweden will refuse to allow tothe Nazis to disrupt the social-ist development and will use all

means available to stop them.

(4)

Anti-fascists in Russia organised a

vigil to mark the death of Timur

Kacharava who was murdered fve

years ago by a group of neo-Nazis

in Saint Petersburg.

Kacharava, who was only twenty

at the time, was an active anar-chist and guitarist with the punk

band Distress. He is one of doz-ens of left-wing activists and anti-fascists who have been murderedor seriously injured in Russia by

fascists in recent years.In August, a large gang of neo-Na-zis attacked a group of anti-fascist

football fans of the Karelia-Dis-covery Soccer Club at a soccer

match in the town of Pushkin.

Russian anti-fascist Fillip Kostenko

has commented that this attack

has shown that the threat is stillhere from fascists. International

anti-fascists must offer their un-reserved support to the besieged

Russian anti-Nazi movement and

support them in whatever way

they are asked.

An Antifascist Action ag ies over the Tory HQ in London during recent student protests

November

A round up of some international AFA activities in October & November

October


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In The Area / 3

Not that AFA would complain,

but just when it seemed that the

fascists in Ireland couldnt be-

come more disorganised, it has

become apparent that the dispa-rate friends of Adolf have ceased

even to dream of having any kind

of effect on Irish politics.

Having long retreated to the net,Irelands Nazis in recent times

have fallen out with each otherover nationalism and loyalism.

Throughout the island of Irelandboth these traditions have servedboth Irish and British fascists as

a rallying point. As the squabbles

intensied, there were those that

naively believed that the irrational

philosophy of white pride could

serve to replace and placate both.

One US based Nazi website

that had long been used by Irish

fascists, saw its Irish page being

locked down when the petulantexchanges became too embar-rassing. The loss of their websitethen has been another nail inthe sad ineffectual cofn of that

which had thought of itself as theIrish Nazi movement.

While Nazis across Europe attack

ethnic minorities as easy targets,

Downward Spirals

Continued from front page...

Casa Pound are a self-describedthird millennium fascist group

founded in Rome in 2003. They

have turned their back on both

electoral politics and typical

White Power street thuggery and

instead focus on setting up radical

right-wing social centres.

Unfortunately, Italy has a historyof radical right groups adopting

Irish republican imagery and try-ing to identify with their struggle.

fascists in Ireland wallow in self-pity, endlessly complaining about

how they are not allowed to

organise by anti-fascists. However,

given the examples that full-

grown fascist groups in Europe

give us, it is seen by AFA that pull-ing fascist weeds up by the roots

before they can develop is the

only sane course of action. The

success of this policy came tothe surface last year when a large

group of Eastern European Nazis

came to Ireland for a birthday

party where they clashed with

anti-fascists (see No Quarter

4). Signicantly however, these

showed no interest in getting intouch with the local specimen of

fascist here in Ireland.

NationalNews

They irrationally view it as sim-ply a Catholic, Gaelic nationalist

struggle against foreign occupiers.

In doing so, they ignore and dele

the strong anti-fascist, interna-tionalist and socialist strand ofIrish republican politics. Anti-fas-cists in Ireland, Italy and the rest

of Europe must continue to build

links with each other and actagainst neo-fascist groups who

try to latch on to the Irish repub-lican struggle for their own gain.

No alla Sidro Sands!

A report compiled by the Irish

Centre for Human Rights

at NUIG has shown damn-ing evidence of racist policies

amongst the taxi industry

there.

The controversial report says

that no taxi company in Galway

employs black drivers and shows

how companies can operate un-der anti- racist laws by becoming

an organisation akin to a private

club where each driver is a share-holder.

The report continues They vetnewcomers to their businessunder a silent code and practice.

The presumption under which

they operate is that there are no

consequences to their high prob-ability of racist employment prac-

tices in Galway. No taxi companyemploys African drivers.

This exclusion of drivers based

on the colour of their skin de-serves the widespread condem-nation it is getting. At a time ofextreme economic strife, it is

more important than ever for

anti-fascists to get organised as

disputes like this are ready madefor fascists to stand in and manip-ulate the concerns ofthe workingclass.

Fascists have no interest in theconcerns of the working class,

they seek to divide and enslave

this class while daring to speak in

its name. In response to this, AFA

embraces the perspectives of

militant working class resistanceto fascism believing that only

through militant action will fas-cists be put down. Get involved.

Comment


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4 / In The Area

Please be sure to pass on any details of fascist activity in your area.

You can contact us by any of the means listed below. As well as this

newsletter, we produce a magazine, No Quarter which can be pur-chased for 2.50 also by mailing the address below.

Homepage: www.afaireland.yolasite.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/afaireland

E- Mail: [email protected]: Anti- Fascist Action,

PO Box 3355,

Dublin,Ireland,

Feel free to take extra copies and

distribute them in your area.

Punk in Ireland has had strong

links with Anti-Fascism for a long

time. Punks and others involved

in the underground music scene

have contributed to the fght

against the extreme Right through

lyrics, beneft gigs and physical

involvement on the streets for

many years.

Recently AFA have become awareof certain Irish fascists attendingpunk gigs for reasons unknown.

Since learning this, both membersof the punk scene and AFA have

vowed to confront these individu-als, and any others following or

exhibiting racist ideologies, if they

are seen at such events again.

Most of us are lucky enough to

have grown up in a punk scene

relatively unhindered by Fascist

attacks and harassment. However,

if you listen to those who were

involved with Dublin punk in the

80s or punks from all over Eu-rope you will hear countless ac-counts of frustration and violenceas a result of people having to

physically defend their scene from

boneheads and other organized

Fascists.

In these dark times of recession

and rising conservative ideas thiscould become a reality for us too.

Irish Punks- Always Antifascist

It is a position of extreme privi-lege to cry free speech or to

turn a blind eye. Fascism as well

as any other oppressive behav-iour such as sexism, homophobia

and trans-phobia will not be tol-erated at punk gigs or any of our

collective spaces.

To quote the Linton Kwesi

Johnson song Fite Dem Back,

later covered by infamous Dublin

punk band Striknien DC; Fascist

on the attack we gonna counter

attack. Fascist on the attack, we

gonna ght them back.

Contact Information:

The Freebooters onstage

For punk and hardcore news and discussion, check outhttp://www.thumped.com/bbs/forumdisplay.php?14-Eirecore

No Quarter 5

Out Now

No Quarter 5 is available

now. As well as the means

listed, it is available from:

- Connolly Books, 43 East

Sussex Street, Dublin 2

- Books Upstairs, 36 College

Green, Dublin 2- Solidarity Books, Douglas

Street, Cork City

- Sinn Fin Bookshop, 58 Par-

nell Square, Dublin 1

Documents

In The Area 2 (Winter 2010)