I have said before that just because I post an article here that should
not be construed as that I agree with it. I post what I happen to be
reading and that I think might be of interest to the rest of the list.
For this article I think that bears repeating. I cannot abide the
position in the below article that freedom of speech should be defended
for some people and denied for other people.
http://socialistviewpoint.org/sepoct_17/sepoct_17_03.html
Fascists Defeated
Left overtakes the fascists and their fronts in San Francisco and Berkeley
By Chris Kinder
August 27, 2017—Anti-fascist demonstrators in huge numbers overwhelmed
the conservative, Christian-prayer and pro-Trump cover operations for
the alt-right/white-supremacist/fascist mobilizations scheduled for the
San Francisco Bay Area yesterday and today. Media outlets tilted their
coverage of these events against the left, blaming black bloc and others
for what little violence there was. But the huge numbers of
counter-demonstrators sent the needed message: fascism must be crushed
and not allowed to grow into a new level of threat against immigrants,
Black and Brown people, other minorities and the working class generally.
In San Francisco on Saturday the 26th, the reactionaries’ cover
group—“Patriot Prayer”—chickened out at the last minute from their plan
to assemble at Crissy Field, and planned instead to have a “press
conference” (with the same speakers!) in a smaller park nearby. But that
plan was swamped by thousands of counter protesters, while the
fenced-off park was left empty. A tiny handful of these rightist creeps
were left to wander around town, and out of town, to no avail.
Mass mobilization is what dissuaded these fascist enablers from going
forward, and that included a resolution by the ILWU longshore workers
Local 10 to shut down the port that day and march to Crissy Field to
show the resolve of the anti-racist working class to oppose fascism.
This resolution to shut down the port in protest of a racist event, on
the part of a union, which has opposed apartheid in South Africa, the
police murder of Oscar Grant, and the imprisonment of innocent former
Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal with similar actions, gave a big boost to
the anti-fascist mobilization. The fact that this workers’ action turned
out not to be necessary—due to the event’s cancellation—is a credit to
all those who came out. The message received from the ILWU was “we’re
there when you need us.”
In Berkeley, where we were today, the “hundreds” or “thousands” of
counter-demonstrators to the “No Marxism In America” rightist rally—as
it was reported in the media—could easily have been 10,000 or more. They
filled the streets for many blocks around the downtown area, and soon
took over MLK Jr. Park, where the rightists’ rally was to have been
held. Their numbers included many individuals and organizations, perhaps
as many as 100 organizations. Some arguments and fights occurred between
anti-fascist demonstrators and the handful of rightists who showed up,
allegedly to defend their “free speech.” And herein lies a problem to be
addressed.
Rightists were shown the door
The rightists who showed up and who were shown the door—chased out of
the park and in one case beaten to the ground—mostly portrayed
themselves as “Trump supporters.” And the media—as in NBC Local Bay Area
(www.nbcbayarea.com), and SFGate (www.sfgate.com)—both underestimated
the size of the protestors’ demonstration in my opinion; and also blamed
the leftists for restricting the “free speech” of these rightists, and
for causing the violence. NBC blamed the leftists—black bloc
included—for “assaulting” “at least three people.” KPFA News, however,
reported that at least one of these so-called Trump supporters had on an
Islamophobic T-shirt. This “Trump supporter” reportedly said to his
leftist opponent in argument, “When is the last time you saw a
lynching?” And his opponent said, “What about Charlottesville?” (KPFA.org)
In Charlottesville, a “Unite the Right” rally claimed free speech rights
as well. They did this as a Black man was beaten nearly to death by a
pack of Nazis in a local garage near the rally; and a protestor, Heather
Heyer, was killed by a Hitler-lover participant of the rally who drove
his car into a crowd of protestors, also wounding many others!
We won’t forget Babi Yar!
One sign seen among the marchers in Berkeley today, hand written and
barely legible from a distance, referred to some deep background about
Nazis that must never be forgotten. It spoke of a person’s grandparent
who had been killed by German Nazis at Babi Yar in Ukraine when they
invaded that country (then part of the USSR) in 1941. Their plan was to
kill all the Jews, along with others, and enslave the rest of the
population. Nearly 34,000 Jews were shot down and dumped into the ravine
at Babi Yar on that day, September 19, 1941.
And this is not some irrelevant story that you can dismiss as ancient
history! The local Ukrainian Nazi organizations that aided the Germans
that day still exist; and they were key players in the U.S.-orchestrated
coup in Ukraine in 2014, which was a major anti-Russian aggressive move.
(Ukraine has never conducted any war crimes investigations against its
Nazi sympathizers!) And now Trump, the idiot-in-chief of American
imperialism, has (whether intentionally or not) unleashed the rotting
corpses of Nazism and KKK in the U.S., like so many living dead. Their
threat against minorities and all working people digs up the pogroms,
Babi Yar, the Holocaust, and the brutal lynchings over many decades in
the U.S., the nooses of which still swing sometimes today (including in
the port of Oakland!) Their threat to humanity remains alive.
Support free speech, but not for fascists
Free speech is important, and the left must oppose all official state
legal controls on speech, whether of the left or right. And while free
speech should be extended to non-fascist speakers that some of us on the
left may disagree with (such as Richard Dawkins, for instance), the left
should not extend this to actual fascists, or to groups which cover for
them, like the Alt-Right, or these “Christians” or “Anti-Marxists” in
San Francisco and Berkeley this weekend. For these people, “free speech”
means let us continue the KKK-enforced racism of the South after
Reconstruction, the murderous thuggery of the Greensboro Massacre of
1979, and Charlottesville today.
So what about it? “Free speech” for these groups and their alleged
“Trump supporters” who, in the wake of Charlottesville, wanted to repeat
the same thing in the Bay Area? I don’t think so. Today, the left did
its job pretty well.
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