BOTH THE “CENTRE” AND THE COBWEB LEFT WALLOWED IN FAILURE, WHILE THE FAR RIGHT EASILY HAD ITS BEST YEAR ~ Rob Ray ~ Reform UK has consistently topped national polls in 2025 as the “anything but LabCon” choice, with its predictable and often ridiculous incompetence in local government barely making a dent on numbers. Barring a minor miracle, it will win big in May’s local elections. Meanwhile its street wing, in the form of Tommy Robinson’s mob, managed to pull out a record crowd for Unite The Kingdom and litter every lamp-post from Kent to Yorkshire with the butcher’s apron. KEIR? HARDLY Much of the blame for this must be laid at the feet of former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer, whose journey from McLibel activism to implacable opponent of left dissent went supernova when his government proscribed a non-violent direct action group, Palestine Action, as a terror organisation. A monumentally stupid decision on all counts, not least for his own political future, as for many, it stripped away their last illusions of Labour as a progressive force. The impact of Labour’s attitude to the left, its abandonment of promised policies, and its seething hatred for protest can’t be overestimated in terms of where it finds itself entering 2026. Starmer’s wing of the party, its eminence thoroughly greased by Morgan McSweeney, never did understand that over the long term, if you have no tame corporate media you need grassroots activity. Not for the election-time door knocking, but for the shield it provides online. When no-one wants to defend you, because you make it clear you despise them, all that gets heard is the negative voice. The impact of this choice, to deliberately insult and alienate its own base, can be seen in the wake of the Autumn Budget, which did have a few vaguely centre-left ideas in it, and the Employment Rights Act, which (even watered down) genuinely does introduce a handful of protections for working people. Nobody cared. No-one has been jumping in on socials to pat Labour on the back, not even the old guard of (lower case r) reformists who previously would have been saying “see, this is better than the Tories”. And as a result, it all goes one way. As many predicted when Starmer first started purging Labour’s ranks of anti-Zionist Jews and rolling back on his leadership promises before the general election, a total reliance on public exhaustion with the Tories was never going to hold up, and so it has proven. With a grassroots shattered by its own hubris, an implacably hostile corporate media, and a public refusing to trust a word said by party or government, how Labour might pull out of the nosedive is anyone’s guess. All of which, in tandem with the Tories’ own self-immolation, has opened the void through which Nigel Farage sauntered. YOU’RE KIDDING ME … To his left, meanwhile, all has been chaos embodied by the extraordinary saga of Your Party. What were they thinking? Freedom has never made many bones about its position on Corbyn and the ultimate uselessness of the cobweb left, but even we weren’t predicting such an immediate and comprehensive proof. It’s hard to think of a critique, sneer, or bald-faced insult that could do justice to the absolute fucking shambles of it all. Amidst perhaps the most dangerous political situation of the postwar era, we watched a handful of inflated egos take all the potential energy created by Labour’s desertion and explode it into little pieces. The people I feel most sorry for are those who genuinely, for just a little while, believed it could go somewhere. Not in a patronising way, but in the comradely sense of knowing how it feels to have hope in a project and see it dashed. That is what the likes of good ol’ Corbs, Zara Sultana, and the various “revolutionary” parties should feel ashamed of: they took the energy and hope of hundreds of thousands of people and stamped it into the mud, unnoticed amidst the squabbling and scrabbling for position. There can be no better example of why we don’t need parties, but to turn outwards and organise the working class directly — place the horse firmly in front of the cart. Leave that pack of blithering idiots behind and give up on their decades of abject, piteous failure. SAVED BY THE (GREEN) BELL? The beneficiaries on the left from these twin towers of dung were, of course, the Greens under their affable, well-meaning and occasionally analytically shallow new leader Zack Polanski. No word of a lie, it’s been nice hearing someone be direct and relatively uncompromising in his language while taking on the press this year. His absolute refusal to play the “how many rights can we take away from trans people this week” game, in particular, is the sort of confidence many on the left could stand to learn from. But, even setting aside obvious anarchist critiques of the inchoate core and systemic shortfalls of the Green Party project, there are plenty of limitations on its surge, which already seems to have peaked. The Greens have no friendly media. Not the Independent, not the Guardian, not even the Morning Star, which (in the absence of a functional Communist Party offering) has broadly plumped for Your Party as the home of a more Proper socialist politic. And the Star is probably correct there — pathetic though Corbs and co. may be, their platform is at heart red economics, while the Greens are, well, green, with social democracy largely tacked on as an often uncomfortable coalition-building exercise. Much like the Lib Dems, green parties are notorious for opportunism, most notably in Germany where they frequently enter coalitions with the conservatives. So it remains to be seen how deep its commitments will run when placed under pressure. WHAT ABOUT US? Perhaps I’m being Mr Bias of Cheerleader City, but I think the direct action movement, particularly that wing of it which refused to simply roll over on Palestine and proscription, deserves a great deal of praise this year. It’s been a hard one, in which it became clear long sentences for non-violent dissent are here to stay, surveillance and repression are on the rise, and money has poured in to fuel our opponents. But thousands of people stood up to be counted, knowing they could face prison terms, knowing they would be mocked and mistreated. There has been a great deal of bravery on display throughout the year, and everyone involved should be proud of themselves. Always under the cosh, always few and underfunded, facing up to a State that increasingly has done away with even the slightest respect for privacy and human rights — the fact you keep going is frankly incredible. If 2025 has shown one thing, though, it’s that we’re right. The “practical” cobweb left and their electoral obsessions won’t save us; they can’t even save themselves. They’ve been given chance after chance, and shown that even if they could win power they probably shouldn’t. We need grassroots strength. We need the force of unified working class communities who can disrupt business as usual and make those in power sit up. It was direct action this year which, time and again, rattled the government where the conferences of electoral leftists produced only a distant gale of laughter. As we head towards the spectre of a far-right government which will show us no more mercy than this one, I can only say: keep going. Because they sneer at you. Because they seek to silence you. There is no greater proof of a government’s fear than a law designed to stop you from doing what you’re doing. You’re right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Images: Radical Graffiti The post 2025: A gilded year for the right, hubris fulfilled on the left appeared first on Freedom News.

AMID A CHORUS OF GREAT JOY AT THE ELECTION OF A SELF-DESCRIBED SOCIALIST IN NEW YORK, IT FALLS TO THE ANARCHISTS, AS EVER, TO SOUND A DISCORDANT NOTE OF CAUTION ~ Andy and Simon discuss Zohran Mamdani’s victory, which has energised much of the left even in Britain—but at regional level the purse is much tighter and vulnerable to the interference of greater power. This side of the pond, we’re seeing Reform UK implosions in Kent, Cornwall and Lancashire well before Nigel Farage gets a sniff of national power. Over in the activist scene meanwhile we’ve had a pair of sentences handed down for Just Stop Oil members, with two being found not guilty of criminal damage to Stonehenge after a cornflour and orange dye incident, and six being convicted for climbing a gantry on the M25—notably, having been denied the right to offer their reasoning to the jury. And we round off with a bit of chat about Freedom stories of the week, including the targeting of Elbit Systems insurer Allianz in Europe, the conviction of ten students in Leicester for protesting the university’s complicity in arms trading, and the infamous, lethal police raid on a favela in Rio. The post Anarchist News Review: Mamdani’s win, Reform’s travails and JSO jailings appeared first on Freedom News.

ANDY, SAM AND SIMON TAKE A SLIGHTLY LONGER LOOK AT THE FAR-RIGHT PROTESTS WHICH HAVE DOMINATED SILLY SEASON’S NEWS AGENDA, ALONG WITH THE REACTIONS OF THE POLITICAL CLASS. Flags being put up around the country, roundabouts and shop walls daubed with paint, and not only are many councils treating this differently from say, Palestine solidarity slogans we have senior councillors and MPs welcoming. Meanwhile Reform have launched a send-em-back manifesto, of sorts, getting blanket coverage, and Labour are completely unable to push back. Why is Labour being so rubbish? Well obviously the usual reasons, but there’s a specific corner it’s painted itself into this time, and it’ll struggle to get out. The post Anarchist News Review: Racists are cross and politicians are licking jackboot appeared first on Freedom News.

IT COMES TO SOMETHING WHEN EVEN VOICING SUPPORT FOR A NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION GROUP RISKS BEING DESIGNATED AS CROSSING THE LINE, BUT LABOUR IS NO DEFENDER OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PROTEST. Tabitha and Andy join us to discuss the decision of former defender of principled dissent Keir Starmer to ban an organisation that he might once have protected, that same MP’s determination to rob billions off the poorest to spend on pointless nuclear bomber aircraft, and self-titled “real opposition” leader Nigel Farage’s bung to rich foreigners. The post Anarchist News Review: Palestine Action Ban, Welfare Rebellion and Israel-Iran-US appeared first on Freedom News.

THE SLIPPAGE FROM CONTAINING WMDS TO CALLS FOR REGIME CHANGE RINGS ALL TO FAMILIAR — BUT WARS’ MAIN FUNCTION IS STILL TO PRESERVE REGIMES ~ Simon, Andy and Uri discuss this weeks headlines, including the scorching weather, the mountain-to-molehill cheapening of terrorism charges, direct action in Germany, and ruling-class realignment in Britain and the USA The post Anarchist News Review: Israel-Iran war, Kneecap and attacks on Amazon appeared first on Freedom News.

AS REFORM UK SPLITS OVER A STALE DEBATE, MUSLIM WOMEN’S VOICES REMAIN CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT ~ James Horton ~ Many had thought very little about Sarah Pochin upon her tight win in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election on May 1st. They know what they think of her now. Upon her first ever question in PMQs on June 4th, the new Reform UK MP seems to have split her party’s small collective of big-names, for the second time this year. And whilst the tiresome tumult of high-politics squabbling and fallouts have ensnared media attention, a much more important point has gone unnoticed: discussions about banning the headscarf used by some Muslim women is now swirling in even “respectable” right-wing circles.  Not even 24 hours passed and the Daily Express released a poll to their readership on the issue of a Burqa ban. Other outlets sent their swarm of reporters after Richard Tice to get a firmer grasp on Reform’s stance on the Burqa just a day following.  Since the question was posed, Zia Yusuf, party Chairman of Reform UK, has resigned and then rejoined, choosing not to explicitly state the reason for his momentary departure. Following PMQs, he called the choice to ask the question “dumb” because it “wasn’t policy”. Yusuf’s choice to dump and rekindle Reform has entirely swallowed the British media, as article after article is milked from a situation which has been largely kept close to Reform’s chest.  Actually, it is a wonder the topic of Burkas hasn’t had this much traction earlier, given how malignant it’s been on the European continent. One is made aware, as Pochin pointed out in her question, that in France the ban on full-face coverings was implemented in April of 2011, with Belgium and Denmark following suit in 2011 and 2018 respectively. Muslim women’s clothing has been an issue on which the liberal and conservative centre has frequently aligned with the far right. The political furor it caused amongst Labour cabinet members in the mid-2000s is a landmark in the history of British social policy, whereas Boris Johnson’s now-infamous Daily Telegraph article comparing Muslim women wearing the Burqa to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” did not seem to hinder his ascension to Number 10 one year later. The argument put forward by advocates of a ban is multi-pronged. On the one hand, these commentators and politicians raise “security concerns” about the Burqa’s potential to conceal identity—implying the constant threat of the Muslim person in British society. This was indeed the line of questioning that Pochin chose in PMQs, proposing the ban “in the interest of public safety”. On the other hand, they attribute to Muslim women a lack of agency in their own homes and communities regarding the decision what to wear, alleging their subservience to tyrannical men who govern their lives. This line of argument was seen in Reform UK depute leader Richard Tice’s comment yesterday: “Let’s ask women who wear the burka, is that genuinely their choice?”—implying, of course, that it was not. It seems Tice is willing to discuss patriarchy only when it is a marginalised community that is subject to scrutiny. In “A Dying Colonialism” Frantz Fanon discusses the European mindset and attitude towards the Muslim community and women’s place within it: “It described the immense possibilities of woman, unfortunately transformed by the Algerian man into an inert, demonetized, indeed dehumanized object. The behavior of the Algerian was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric”. This notion, that the Muslim man is not only an external threat to the non-Muslim world but is an internal oppressor of Muslim women, is rife at moments like this. Far from a discussion about the nature of religious institutions and their role in female oppression, this is a blatant attack on the Muslim community, given a liberal lick of paint.  Notably absent from the conversation is the voice of Muslim women. There is no point denying that feminist movements in predominantly-Muslim parts of the world are facing more setbacks than those in much of contemporary Europe. But no current discussion in Britain seems to account for the agency of those individuals who for religion and/or social reasons choose to wear the Burqa, or another type of veil, or just a head covering. It seems evident from recent events in Iran and Kurdistan that Muslim women are very well capable of speaking for themselves on the issue. They certainly do not need posh white people in positions of exalted power and privilege to speak for them.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: VintageKat on Flickr The post Not again with the Burqa Ban? appeared first on Freedom News.

ANDY MEINKE JOINS US FOR THE WEEKLY WAFFLE, LOOKING THIS WEEK AT LABOUR’S THRASHING ABOUT AS IT TRIES TO SIMULTANEOUSLY BACKTRACK ON WILDLY UNPOPULAR CUTS, PUFF UP ITS CAPITAL AND DEFENCE SPENDING CREDENTIALS, AND MAINTAIN AN AIR OF PARSIMONIOUS PENNY PINCHING. As billions are set to be put aside for yet more BAE subsidies, the question arises as to whether the anti-war campaigning on Palestine will energise broader peace activism, while at a lower level the newly-installed Reform councils are bracing for inspections of their coffers. Is that going anywhere? Probably not. The post Anarchist News Review: Budgets, Palestine organising and Reform Doge’ing repsonsibility appeared first on Freedom News.

A COUNTER-DEMO BY CORNWALL RESISTS FACED OFF AGAINST THE FAR-RIGHT IN TRURO FOR SEVERAL HOURS ~ Scott Harris ~ Mylor Councillor, Peter Lawrence, was caught on film yesterday (24th May) delivering a blatantly antisemitic, holocaust denying rant at the far-right Great British Strike event in Truro, Cornwall. Lawrence represents the British Democrats on Mylor Council after he took the seat unopposed earlier this year. Video footage shows Lawrence answering “technically no” when asked whether antisemitism exists. It then captures him saying: “World Jewry declared war on Germany in the Second World War. They were bankrupting them from the Treaty of Versailles, they were blockading the food and everything. They were  starving them. The Jews, who are communist, were responsible for a lot of  problems in the Weimar Republic, were frustrating the efforts of the restoration of the German people to have self-determination…Hitler didn’t have a beef with the Jews. He just didn’t want them to disrupt what was going on.” When asked whether “Hitler was right to kill so many Jews”, Lawrence replied: “I – and from what I’ve read and the revisionist historians I have read cannot find a single order from Adolf Hitler calling for the execution of the Jews”. Lawrence was then asked whether he believed in the Holocaust. He replied: “The Holocaust has been massively over-exaggerated”. While Lawrence himself represents the British Democrats, the crowd was chanting “Reform UK” just moments before. An unannounced counter demo, co-ordinated by Cornwall Resists, faced off against the far-right for several hours, standing their ground and outlasting the fascist presence in Truro, whilst doing successful outreach with shoppers out in town.  The Great British Strike participants, meanwhile, did nothing other than shout at counter protesters. They didn’t have any placards, any leaflets, they didn’t make any speeches and they didn’t march. Had they not draped themselves in Union Jacks, no-one in Truro would have known why they were there. A spokesperson for Cornwall Resists said: “The mask is off. This is the true face of Reform supporters. This is the ugly and dangerous racist hatred that was on display in Truro today. No-one in the crowd challenged or disagreed with Lawrence’s antisemitism. It was truly sickening and it was particularly sickening for the Jewish members of our group.  This is fascism on our streets. The Great British Strike has tried to co-opt the language of working class solidarity for a racist, far-right agenda”.  The post Councillor’s blatant antisemitic rant at “Great British Strike” event appeared first on Freedom News.

“OH GARÇON? I’D LIKE ENOCH-WAS-RIGHT TORYISM WITH EVEN MORE GRIFTING, PLEASE. YES OF COURSE I’LL HAVE THE SIDE OF SELF-SABOTAGING INCOMPETENCE AND UNHINGED SHOUTING AT CLOUDS, THAT’S THE FLAVOUR RIGHT THERE.” ~ Rob Ray~ Jordan Tarrant-Short, a man in his 30s who has somehow never quite managed to throw off that Young Tory look, won an unremarkable by-election on May 2nd in a quite striking way.  For the last five years Tarrant-Short has been standing in Rochdale by-elections as a Tory and losing, handily, to Labour candidates. Despite a couple of second places, it’s never been close. Something about his self-satisfied, smirking, oleaginous Conservative chops just couldn’t cut through in a red seat.  Yesterday however he won in the Balderstone & Kirkholt ward by-election, tearing down a 31-point gap established in 2021. All he had done was switch parties to Reform.  As with most council by-elections, we’re talking small numbers of voters – 2,362 people turned out. But the way they split is notable:  Reform UKJordan Tarrant-Short (Elected)76632.55%LabourLeanne Greenwood62426.51%Workers Party of BritainLaura Pugh39816.91%ConservativeMudassar Razzaq2129.01%IndependentBilly Howarth1807.65%Liberal DemocratsChariss Laura Peacock1094.63%GreenMartyn David Savin652.76% Compare this to the 2021/2024 elections: Labour 1473/108660%/53%Conservative and Unionist710/29829%/7%Greens186/1508%/7%Freedom Alliance. No lockdowns. No curfews88/–4%/–Workers Party of Britain–/395–/19%Liberal Democrats–/122–/6% As I say, striking. While a large chunk of the people who still care to vote – barely 28% of the electorate – moved over to Reform, they did so to back a longtime Tory candidate who had repeatedly failed, and badly, in previous outings. But the stolen votes from Labour, and nearly as much so from the Tories, aren’t just going there. The Workers Party picked up nearly 400, while their former candidate, the far-right activist (and Reform sympathiser) Billy Howarth picked up 180, and the Lib Dems grabbed 109.  Why am I talking about this somewhat obscure bit of voting drama in the wake of Reform’s general surge? Because I think this microcosm speaks a great deal about the abject state of electoral politics, at the tail end of decades of centrist neoliberalism telling us There Is No Alternative if you don’t want worse to get in. This turn away from the status quo is not a sudden collapse, but a natural conclusion of a spiral decades in the making. In this thumping embarrassment for centrism – and even of classic hard-right politics as Labour increasingly hangs out in spaces previously reserved for the likes of the BNP – we have the public’s ultimate reply. There’s no credible left grouping, and the status quo is an ongoing slide into impoverishment. So for the loyal election-goer, what remains is varying formats of nationalist who promise they care about you even if they don’t care about the lives of refugees, and who haven’t had a chance to screw things up yet..  Much is being made of these gains essentially being a protest vote, along the lines of Nigel Farage’s most successful-ever political vehicle, Brexit.  But there’s a fair bit overlooked in that sentiment, depending on who you talk to. For some, this party led by a multi-millionaire, public funds-robbing, tweed-toting chinless stockbroker’s son, a multi-millionaire property baron and a millionaire Goldman Sachs alumni is genuinely seen as the honest voice of the common man. For others it’s a means to an end on immigration (even though the party offers very little that Labour isn’t already doing ). And for some, it’s a simple fuck you to the status quo, even though this is a party led by the rich with policies like “cut waste” and “fill potholes” – truly revolutionary.  A significant difficulty for the status quo parties is that (entirely warranted) criticisms of Reform as bought and paid for by the offshore rich, infested with corruption and fascists, led by a proven liar, is in large part simple hypocrisy. With the exception of that last (clearly not the dealbreaker at local level that you’d hope) they can all be Spiderman memed. Especially, in Starmer’s case, the constant, bald-faced lying and breaking of pledges alongside a rapidity of decline into anti-working class barbarism that has shocked even those of us who knew from the start where it was headed. As the Novara Media crew noted in their coverage, the consensus of opinion when you talk to people is “they’re all as bad as each other” and when you mix that with the sense that Reform are at least getting up the right noses, it’s (clearly) a potent mix. One which exposes the complete stupidity of Labour’s strategies in all kinds of areas, most particularly migration – it doesn’t matter how nasty government policy is, it can never “address concerns” that aren’t based in policy but in feelings and habit. The left, specifically the Greens, meanwhile have made modest gains but nothing like the breakthrough needed in an era so open to shift that both the major parties lost two thirds of their seats. Some of this is beyond their control: Worthies are less inclined to sink money into opening a fully-funded propaganda network (like GB News) to pump out Green talking points than far-right billionaires who see direct value in shifting culture rightwards. And The likes of the Mail, Sun, Times etc are less likely to give them a break if they get mentioned at all. Other elements are more the Greens’ own fault – lackluster leaderships who haven’t the media chops of a Farage, difficulties in the coalition of left and right, and a failure to cut through with head-turning policies or a sense of, for want of a better word, prickishness against the powers that be. They’re nice, well-meaning. And in the world of politics that translates as useless. So in this sense it’s not always a protest vote, as such. It’s a “what else am I going to do” vote. Reform’s approach is tailored for a particular strain of “everything’s shit especially London” British miserablism, but other than a particularly indulgent line on barely-concealed racism it’s really quite remarkable how unremarkable this London SW1-based party is. What it has is the same lack of tarnish from time and power that Corbynism had, in its early days. For non-politicos it’s a brand, for the most part they didn’t know or care who Darren Grimes was beyond some faff or other on GB News – though they will now he’s head of Durham Council. The jabber about a Tory-Reform pact being pretty laughable, the next couple of years are about Reform trying to manage the places it now controls, expand its voter base beyond an enthusiastic core and come up with some policies which sound good enough for government (as opposed to nonsensical stuff about taxing solar panels or swapping income taxes for sales taxes). That will be much harder, and there will be lots of opportunity for them to stuff it up. But in that vein, should anarchists care? We aren’t part of the vaunted (and largely obsolete) “ground game”, many of us don’t even vote. Well yes, of course. Mainly because where Reform leads, news agendas follow. Social culture follows in large part from the debates those news agendas produce. And social culture is where the battle lies for helping working class people of every stripe, under any party. We don’t need to be Labour supporters to go after Farage’s merry band of posh far-right grifters – they already stink up our communities with their mean-spirited whining. The Tarrant-Shorts of this world, before they were Reform, were knocking about in blue rosettes saying the same crap. It’s on us to make clear that when politics is a pile of bullshit the solution is not to find another cowpat and call it caviar. The vaccuum in party poltics is filled by Reform mostly because “who else” – and our anser to that is simple. There’s no-one else, especially not Reform. It’s just us, all of us, versus them. Voting has never been more useless, government never so unhelpful, capitalism never so greedy. It’s time for working people to take matters – the future – into our own hands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pic: Nigel Farage, from Wikipedia The post All change in the councils: Except it isn’t appeared first on Freedom News.

AS EUROPE’S RULING CLASS RESPONDS TO THE POST-PAX AMERICANA WORLD WITH ANGUISH AND ARMAMENTS, HERE ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS FACING BRITISH ANARCHISTS ~ Rob Ray ~ Part one of this article, covering strengths and weaknesses, is here. OPPORTUNITIES Putting a cynical hat on, in many ways there has never been a more opportune time to be an anarchist. We are watching the collapse of the liberal capitalist dream happen in real time as Starmerism discards any semblance of velvet glove for the working class. The cobweb left is in utter disarray and even the new wave left of Corbynism has zero ideas. Re-capture Labour? Dead. New/radical party? Don’t make me laugh. Capture the Greens? You’ll kill them by trying—the project is already an uncomfortable balance of red-greens and liberal shire Tories talking round their very different reasons for being there. The need for a confident, radical base building its own resources towards the goal of acquiring leverage that can actually threaten government policy once in a while, could not be clearer to see. We have an ample example both from our own recent history and from across the pond of what happens to a progressive movement that puts all its eggs in the basket of electoralism and then loses. It’s also important to consider that both the current Labour squeeze on working class life and the oncoming wave of nationalistic, military first, sod-the-environment politics set to dominate the 2020s sits in both the Threats and Opportunities column. Watching this happen will be a focussing, radicalising factor for a great many people. We have not had a serious military drive in this country for quite some time, and it will be a culture shock. On top of all the other economic beefs the working class have right now, many leaning leftwards but with nowhere to express it, we do have some open doors to push at, if we’re canny about doing so and avoid alienating potential allies. Reform’s dangerous position too will have elements of both threat and opportunity. The former will see the usual There Is No Alternative merchants telling us the only way to stop fascism is to get out and vote, keep things nice and calm and disciplined, the usual twaddle that’s manifestly provided not protection against but breathing room for fascism to develop Europe-wide. The latter is our ability to say this. That the post-Thatcher consensus, with its flood-upwards economics and retreat of State support is the problem. That the solution is not tying ourselves to that disintegrating status quo, giving up our agency and confidence to suited corporate goons, but taking personal responsibility and action. One of our strengths being mutual aid fits perfectly into this grim scenario. Our politics encourage self-starting, do it yourself solidarity which is often undercut by State assumption of welfare mediation, the smothering apolitical liberal kindnesses of Big Charity and economic alienation. But the State is in retreat from these zones, charity is not going to pick up all that slack and the days of cheap goods are coming to an end. Community solidarity is what’s left, structured as solidarity rather than the often-mistaken process of a half-dozen worthies providing a service with radical trappings  to people who still think and act like consumers. THREATS There’s almost too many to list, but to pluck from the more obvious … I was having a drink with Phil Ruff once, talking about direct action campaigns of the 1970s—the Angry Brigade, bank robberies to raise funds and such. He, as with several people from the time, was in forgiving mood about the modern movement’s lack of similarly forceful street-level activism, in part because the situation then was so different. As he noted, CCTV was not a thing. And it’s not just CCTV. Vast, automated, easily-searched databasing and biometrics were not a thing. Social media and sousveillance were not a thing. And increasingly we don’t just have ever-present eyes watching us. It’s AI-fed, and can steal wholesale from every corner of the internet. If you walk through the centre of London on a rally today you will be filed away and in the event that you forget to mask up for an action, years later, it’ll be used. For the careful—those who know to mask up early and often, and stay out of reach of cops looking to expose faces, this may be manageable. For those less experienced it will be a potent means for the State to identify, categorise, and heavily repress those it deems troublemakers, present or future. A pre-crime punishment system arresting people simply for having public meetings, bolstered by an experienced (and now, shamefully, legally-immune) undercover policing operation and an extraordinarily powerful media machine gives the ruling class more powers than ever before to disrupt and destroy putative movements. Our preferred methods thus become more dangerous and difficult in a situation of rising military culture, allied with such potent tools of police and State repression. With laws now tightened around even basic protest to the point where we need police permission just to have one in the first place, our options can look limited. The city centres are increasingly zones where we cannot be effective in the absence of massive crowds and operational security that’s considerably more serious than that of the US military. Which is not to say activities can’t take place, but our strategies will have to change to reflect this reality. One great saving grace of the Tories’ fall last year was the collapse of a bill banning masks, but we can’t rely on that even under Starmer, let alone whatever comes next. Another is that it seems unlikely Labour will have much better luck with fixing prison overcrowding than the Tories did, meaning they are unlikely to deepen the use of imprisonment against protesters (though it seems equally unlikely, short of a major crisis, that they’ll dial it back to previous norms). Culturally, Britain seems to be headed at full speed into a dark place. On the one hand we have, similarly to elsewhere, the rejuvenation of old misogynistic ideals as part of the marrying of hustle culture to alienation in young men. On another, we will have the next great military recruitment drive promoting the nationalistic impulse. While the rampant individualism of the former does not necessarily gel all that well with the die-for-your-country ethos of the latter, machismo and guns certainly do, leading to the dangerous likelihood of a new generation of far-right young men entering the services en masse. What that might mean for the future of fascist street thuggery is anyone’s guess. What had seemed the far-removed possibility of a Reform-led government meanwhile, stymied for many years by first past the post, is increasingly looming. Their prospects seem much improved in recent months (largely through Labour’s efforts) but the conversion of this into real power is perhaps a way off yet. It’s pretty certain their direction of travel will focus more on courting the “anyone but” vote alongside anti-migrant sentiment but from an anarchist perspective their positioning and message is at its most potent in changing the tenor of the national conversation. With the likes of GB News, social media, and increasingly the right-wing broadsheets behind them they are performing in like fashion to other groups of their type on the continent such as National Rally in France and AfD in Germany.  In the nationalist sense it’s hard to see whether Reform’s isolationism with Atlanticist aspects or Labour and Conservative tendencies of European rapprochement in the cause of solidifying the EU-Russian borderline will be more influential, but neither of them herald much good for the anarchist cause. In either direction expanded defence spending is certain (either to appease the US or fall in with European norms) and nothing in Reform’s policy slate suggests any interest in rolling back the neoliberalism that Labour and the Tories are so hopelessly addicted to. As noted above, this ties into both opportunity and threat, with an economy already in hoc to more powerful blocs leading to impoverishment but not necessarily the mobilisation of counter-power. IN SUM Anarchism has for some time acted as a fringe of the broader left, albeit one which regularly denounces and rejects that role, thanks to our lack of size and in-house resources. Suffering from both our lack of a solid class base and a public view of our activities as poorly-organised teenage rebellion at best, mindless destroyers at worst, we’ve struggled to grow beyond the role for many reasons. Some factors I’ve already mentioned, another might be the perennial problem that we’ve been poor at converting rapid growth into an improved long-term position. We have repeatedly failed to deal with the “crisis of success” where an influx of people leads to challenges to the status quo, arguments, burnout and splits.  These are things we will need to consider how to work past (in the former case) or through (in the latter) if we are to take best advantage of the opportunities to come and, perhaps more importantly, work out ways to counter the threats. We know we absolutely cannot count on politicians be they centrist or “radical”, and the left seems barely aware of what’s coming let alone preparing to aggressively fight it. The response to far-right mass demonstrations has been to call out the same doughty anoraks as ever, increasingly outnumbered outside a few heartland zones, while few ideas have been forthcoming to counter Reform or even Andrew Tate. Changes to the law are met with the same trade union and NGO faces writing columns as ever with precisely the same minimal impact on government policy. Small as we are, if the anarchist movement can build something of that energy and creativity we’ve seen rise to the surface repeatedly over the last couple of decades we have every opportunity, like Reform with the Tories, to grab the flag of resistance that a large section of the population still hopes to see raised. But we then have to hold it, knowing the State will be rather more interested in us than it would ever be in the amblings of loyal oppositions. Which requires discipline, forward thinking and structures that are rather more robust than we have at the moment. We’ve relied for a long time on a churn of young people coming in, burning themselves out, then heading off to have families and make homes which has left us with precious little of what State and corporations love to call “institutional memory”. We need to find a way to break that cycle, to not just encourage youth action but give it tangible links and knowledge and a sense of continuity, rather than having 20-somethings, a bunch of people in their 50s-plus, and a gap between. And that requires a struggle to reverse the alienation we’ve fallen prey to. An expansion of physical interaction within communities and in our own spaces. A break with social media and a re-engagement with anarchist led, anarchist-controlled media which doesn’t simply get siloed within directly-engaged circles and then disappear when the campaign is done. A re-establishing of the principle of human engagement at workshops, festivals and co-ops.  The field is, in fact, wide open for those anarchist seeds beneath the snow to start growing. And there is no more important a time to get gardening. The post Anarchism and the New Military Wave (pt. 2) appeared first on Freedom News.