Читать книгу Militant Anti-Fascism - M. Testa - Страница 5

The aim of this book is to give an overview of anti-fascist activity in mainland Europe from the late-nineteenth century to 1945, and in the UK from the 1920s to 2014. The book is for contemporary anti-fascists who want to increase their knowledge of the subject, those who may not be aware of the long history of resistance that they are part of, and especially the new generation of anti-fascists who have mobilised against the English Defence League and their splinter groupuscules. It is also for those studying the subject in an academic context as well as those who have been active against fascism for some time. We hope that the victories and struggles of anti-fascists past and present can inspire and energise militants.

The book aims to show the how the racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, gangsterism, homophobia, militarism and essentially anti-working-class nature of fascist and ultra-nationalist organizations, are adapted by different organizations, as well as their opportunist collaborations with bourgeois democrats.

Unlike some of the (all too few) books on militant anti-fascism in the UK, such as Beating The Fascists (both versions), No Retreat, Physical Resistance, and Anti-Fascist, this book offers a broader historical context for militant anti-fascists by initially looking to other countries outside the UK and over a longer period of time.

We have admittedly given a ‘subjective overview’ of militant working-class opposition to fascism. Martha Gellhorn, an anti-fascist who wrote about her experiences during the Spanish Civil War as well as the Second World War, once stated that she had no time for ‘all that objectivity shit’. There is no point in denying our bias here: how can we be objective about fascism and what it ultimately leads to?

Militants are often criticised by liberal anti-fascists for ‘being as bad as the fascists’, and we do not deny our support for the use of violence, but only when necessary and as a tactic along with the dissemination of information, organization inside the workplace and outside, and the defence of our communities from the divisive actions of the far right.

Militant anti-fascism is often a defensive strategy, although it can quickly mobilise numbers to take the initiative, denying political space for fascists. In the times when fascism is in temporary abeyance, as Red Action once said, ‘instead of being wound up, it was more pragmatic to wind [militant anti-fascism] down to a level appropriate to the nature of the challenge now being offered by the far right’.1 Something that the sudden emergence of the English Defence League and the relatively slow organization of militant anti-fascists demonstrated all too well. We learn from our histories.

Finally, we are hoping that this book will be augmented by a second volume on anti-fascism post-1945 in the USA and Canada, as well as on mainland Europe, especially in Greece, Hungary and Russia where militant opposition to fascism can become a matter of life and death.

M. Testa, 2014.

Endnotes:

1 Sean Birchall, Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action (London: Freedom Press, 2010), 88.