¡Heather
Heyer, presente! Socialist
Action condemns the murder of Heather Heyer, age 32, reportedly a
member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), by an
ultra-right terrorist, who plowed a car into a crowd of anti-fascist
protesters during the Aug. 12 counter-mobilization against the
so-called “Unite the Right” rally. More than 30 anti-racist
protesters sustained injuries during the course of the day.Heather had gone to Charlottesville, Va., to demonstrate her love of humanity and her opposition to the racist and fascist thugs that the decaying capitalist system has spewed forth. Her apparent murderer, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, escaped from the scene but was apprehended shortly afterwards. One of his high school instructors in Ohio told ABC News that Fields was “infatuated by the Nazis and Adolph Hitler.”
The call for an ultra-right rally in Charlottesville was intended to bring together “alt-right,” neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, and Ku Klux Klan groups in an action to defend the statue of Robert E. Lee, the general who led the slaveholders’ army during the Civil War of the 1860s. The Charlottesville city council had voted to remove the monument from its site at the former Lee Park—now renamed Emancipation Park. The rally was reported to be the largest gathering of far-right and racist groups in at least a decade.
In an Aug. 11 torchlight march across the University of Virginia campus, the white supremacists and fascists chanted: “white lives matter,” “you will not replace us,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “blood and soil.” Rightists attacked a smaller group of counter-protesters, using sticks and brass knuckles, while police stood by and watched.
On Saturday, Aug. 12, as the fascists gathered for their rally, the counter-protesters outnumbered them two to one. As clashes broke out, the authorities declared a state of emergency and cops ordered the gathering to disperse. Scuffles between fascists and counter-demonstrators continued, injuring at least 15 protesters.
Later, the counter-demonstrators began a march through downtown, chanting “Whose streets? Our Streets!” Without warning, Fields drove his car into a column of marchers, killing Heyer and injuring at least 19 others. Among the injured were members of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the IWW.
Trump’s rise emboldened fascists
Klansman, Holocaust denier, and former Nazi leader David Duke said at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that “we are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. … That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”
Trump ran for president on a reactionary populist appeal to people with economic and racial grievances. During his rise to the White House, he scapegoated immigrants and Muslims while gathering support from overt fascists like David Duke and alt-right founder Richard Spencer, as well as the Ku Klux Klan. Trump supporters physically attacked protesters at campaign rallies as the candidate encouraged their violence.
While Trump is not a fascist, he has surrounded himself with alt-right spokesmen like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller (a college friend of Richard Spencer). His election and rhetoric has emboldened the fascist and racist far right. These groups have grown and mobilized since the election, taking Trump’s rise to power as a signal to come out of the shadows. The Nazi Daily Stormer wrote that Trump “is setting us free.”
Trump has been silent about the large number of racist and anti-Semitic hate crimes that have taken place since he took office. In a rambling and barely-coherent statement following the clashes in Charlottesville, Trump neglected to mention the murder of Heather Heyer. He condemned the violence on “many sides” and refused to condemn the white supremacists and fascists specifically.
David Duke, apparently irritated by Trump’s mild rebuke, tweeted, “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”
But other rightists took Trump’s statement as a victory. “Did Trump just denounce anti-fa?” tweeted Richard Spencer, using a term used to describe anti-fascist protesters. And the Nazi Daily Stormer wrote gleefully that Trump had “outright refused to disavow” the fascists. “He didn’t attack us. … When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good.”
Fascism and how to fight it
Fascism is a symptom of capitalism in its terminal decay. The tactics of fascists were described by Malik Miah in the August 1975 International Socialist Review (“Free Speech and the Fight Against the Ultra-Right”):
“Fascists try to turn the anger of all those threatened with ruin by the capitalist crisis against the oppressed racial minorities and organized labor. In this country, the approach of fascist organizations in the l930s and l940s was to claim to be the representatives of the ‘little man’ against both the big capitalists and the ‘communists,’ directing their fire especially at Blacks, Jews and ‘big labor.’ In his book ‘Fascism and Big Business,’ Daniel Guerin points out that ‘fascism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism.’”
The social base of fascism is the petty bourgeoisie (“middle class”). In the struggle for power, fascism uses anti-capitalist slogans, but their paymasters are the ruling class. They use the petty bourgeoisie as what Trotsky called a “battering ram” against the working class. The regime of fascism is, in the final analysis, the government of finance capital.
Having masked their intent under anti-capitalist rhetoric, the Nazis quickly subordinated all of German society to the needs of the capitalist class. We can’t rely on cops, courts, and capitalist politicians to protect us from fascist goons. Cops often ally themselves directly with the fascists.
Socialists reject the notion that small groups engaging in street fighting can defeat the fascists. We seek to mobilize the largest possible counter-mobilizations of workers and the oppressed against these thugs. We need to build united-front mass-action coalitions that include the trade unions and organizations of oppressed nationalities, women, students and LGBTQI people.
At the same time, we support the right to organized self-defense against racist and fascist attacks. We take to heart the IWW slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
>> The article above was written by Steve Xavier, and is reprinted from Socialist Action.
1 comment:
I'm sorry Steve Xavier but you must be mistaken. Nazi's are in left wing of the political spectrum.
I suggest you learn your history from facts and science instead of deception and revisionism.
Revisionism is the use of the liberal arts to harness the power of creativity to distort the truth and be subversive. One of the greatest examples of this is the book called "A peoples history of the United States"
Chalked full of lies and if you tell a big enough lie long enough it becomes the truth.
Marxists use the fact that the Nazi's murdered communists as a way to invoke historical revisionism and make it seem like the Nazi's are from the right.
The reality is that communists and Nazi's fought because they were factions of the same ideology which was socialism. Communists and Nazi's were two sides of the same coin and that's why they didn't get along.
Not because of Left VS. Right but because of Left VS. Left
The Nazi ideology was called National Socialism and their party was called the National Socialist Party A.K.A the National Socialist German Worker's Party
The fascist group Antifa is so called and themed as "anti-fascist" as a subversive tactic (think Saul Alinsky).
Non of these "protest" movements are actually organic. For the most part they are bought and paid for. Most of them are either state and local government employees, or else they are professional students who are in college for 10 years like it's a profession. They also give money to bums on the street to do their dirty work.
I would suggest that all of these Bolsheviks best keep out of the streets because we are passing legislation all over this great country that will allow us to Legally run you idiots over in the street when you people descend into your lawlessness and block our right to drive on public road ways.
It has now become truly self defense to plow you morons over. If we feel our well being is threatened by Bolsheviks in the streets of the U.S.A then we will defend ourselves. We have the right to make it home peacefully.
You guys have taken things too far. I would not be enthusiastic about marching in the streets anymore.
Stay in the house all you Bolsheviks!
Don't doubt me folks!
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