TWO YEARS OF ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT ORGANISING AROUND COLLECTIVE STRUGGLES ~ Antti Rautiainen ~ The current government of Finland has been called the most right-wing administration in the country’s political history. It formed in 2023 through a coalition of the centre-right National Coalition Party, the far-right populist party Perussuomalaiset (The Finn’s), the Swedish People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats. The integration of dissenting parties into unorthodox coalitions has been a long tradition in Finnish politics. Under the current government Finland has become a testing ground for the incorporation of anti-immigrant, right-wing populism into national politics. Since the election, anarchists and radical left organisations formed coalitions around common struggles heightened by the new government. In 2025 anarchists have made attempts to resume the anti-government protests however, but have failed to reach beyond anarchist and radical left circles. The question raised across the two years of organising is, how to struggle together against conditions of economic stagnation and decline? The context of Finnish politics is an economy hit by several crises at once. Finland’s economy has not recovered since the 2010’s which brought the Eurocrisis and the collapse of Nokia, a company which generated up to 5% of GDP. There is also a continuous decline in traditional exporting industry, made worse by the full-scale war in Russia, and a population aging faster than average. In 2023 the centre-left coalition was defeated by a narrow margin and the neoliberal National Coalition Party quickly found a common language with far-right populists, offering term of ‘you are free to bash migrants as long as we may bash the trade unions.’ The four-party coalition has set up a government program of austerity. This includes budget cuts to every sector except defence, tax cuts for the rich, and various anti-migrant policies to appease the right-wing populists. Within weeks of the new government forming, two of the biggest anti-government street demonstrations erupted. Nazi jokes made by the Minister of Economic Affairs, Vilhelm Junnila, alongside his speech at a fascist demonstration was reported by the national media. This scandal and the general shock at the inclusion of the far-right populists into the government sparked the ‘Zero Tolerance Against Fascism’ demonstration, attended by 10,000 people on 19 July 2023. In September 15,000 people gathered for the ‘We Won’t Be Silent’ demonstration, demanding the resignation of racists and fascists from the government. Although Junnila resigned, the vague demand of opposing racism was neatly resolved by the government promising to create a position paper on the topic. Already by mid-September 2023, vast majority of the liberal contingent of the anti-racist protest disappeared from the streets and has not been seen since. However, the anti-government movement was far from over. At the September demonstration anarchists joined with a banner stating ‘If something is to be cut, let’s cut the head of Petteri and Riikka’ referring to the austerity cuts by premier Petteri Orpo and state treasurer, and chairperson of Perussuomalaiset, Riikka Purra. The slogan, originally an adaptation of the UK newspaper Class War cover ‘The Best Cut Of All’ protesting Thatcher’s cuts, provoked media uproar. The backlash successfully sidelined the anti-racists agenda of the demonstration, and protest organisers publicly distanced themselves from the anarchist collectives. No other groups made much effort to introduce wider social issues into the liberal anti-racist mood of the movement. We Won’t Be Silent demonstration, 3rd September 2023 The summer of 2023 also saw a coalition between five Helsinki-based ultra-left groups swiftly created. This included A-ryhmä (a local anarchist groups since 2006), Extinction Rebellion, and three groups inspired by autonomous Marxism. Extinction Rebellion, established a week after the original UK group, brought more activists than the others combined. Together they organised the ‘Hands off!’ demonstration timed to match the government’s budget negotiations on 19 September 2023. The four major demands were to halt budget cuts, defend right to asylum, defend the right to strike, and the protection of biodiversity. Hands off! Demonstration, 19 September 2023 The demonstration drew 600 participants and was considered unsuccessful. The most likely reasons it failed to draw similar sized crowds as the ‘We Won’t Be Silent’ demonstration a week earlier was an inconsistent promise to blockade a government building, to narrow a coalition, horrible weather, and lack of widespread promotion. It is also representative of the fragmentation of anti-government protest. The day for ‘Hands Off!’ was also the launch date for students occupying Helsinki University’s main building, opposing the cuts to education and student welfare. The movement eventually spread to 16 higher education institutions and 10 high schools/trade schools. They failed to raise demands wider than their immediate self-interest, and the occupation failed to achieve their goals. Additionally, the Palestinian solidarity movement has been a major focus for anti-government protest. Although the Christian Zionist movement has traditionally been stronger in Finland than support for Palestine, this is no longer the case. In 2023 demonstration against the genocide in Gaza occurred almost weekly and have not dwindled in the two years of the right-wing government. The protests created a government crisis to recognise Palestinian statehood, however under pressure from the Christian Democrats and Perussuomalaiset the prime minister could not pursue it. With so many mobilisations, participants spread thin, unity was elusive. Meanwhile, the government pressed on with its agenda. One of the biggest challenges to the right-wing government came from the trade unions. In December 2023 the unions launched the direct-action campaign, ‘Painava SYY’ (Serious Cause) which rejected many of the government’s reforms including: cuts to unemployment and benefits, restricting political strikes to one day, and changes to contracts which would limit pay rises and weaken employment security. From the three central unions, SAK, STTK, and Akava, only SAK undertook serious strikes action, organising rolling-one day strikes across industries. This culminated in a one-month port strike between March-April 2024. This was expected to halt foreign trade and result in serious disruption, however there no major industry shutdowns. Due to decreasing opinion polls in support of strike action, or the lack of willingness to really rock the boat, SKA ended the campaign before imposing a general strike and won slightly less strict changes to employee’s contracts. As the unions chickened out, anarchists continued to call for a general strike. The ‘Hands-Off!’ coalition organised an event to discuss the history of a general strike in Finland and gathered 400 people in a general strike bloc at the Mayday marches of the unions and left-wing parties. This reached further than the usual anarchist circles, but failed to instigate a general strike. Throughout 2023-2024, ultra-left coalitions remained active in anti-government and anti-fascist organising. A coalition between A-ryhmä, anti-fascist Varis network, and Left Youth created in 2016, continued its annual counter demonstration against the far right ‘612’ march on 6 December 2023.  The march was created by Nazi organisation Nordic Resistance Movement and other Finnish far-right groups. In 2023 right-wing populists deserted the march, leaving it for fascists alone. For several hours, 1,500 counter-protestors occupied the square, delaying the march, and demoralising the fascists. In 2024, right-wing populist MP Teemu Keskisarja attended the march, however, despite the backing from parliament, fascist numbers were again decreasing. Also in 2024, the fascist ‘Blue-Black Movement’ party attempted to organise reading circles in public libraries, using a legal loophole designating libraries as free public spaces for any groups use. In Helsinki, reading circles were organised and the library administration was first adamant to permit the fascist gatherings. Due to loud anti-fascist protests inside the library, the library reconsidered the interpretation of law and the fascist gatherings were pushed out from public libraries nationwide. Additionally, in April, the ‘Hands Off!’ coalition organised the ‘Unruly Street Party’ where 400 people gathered and was continued with a squatting in a former manor house close to government officials’ residences. The house was evicted after 7 weeks; however, another former manor house was occupied further from the centre of the city, and remained occupied until December. Kaaoskartano (Chaos mansion), squatted 19 April 2024. Active demonstrations and protests against the right-wing government diminished through 2024.  The trade unions rounded up their direct-action campaign and the ‘Hands Off!’ coalition collapsed as Extinction rebellion moved forwards with a campaign to propose more ‘environmentally friendly’ cuts. The Left party won the EU parliament elections of June 2024, gaining 17% of the vote.  After this, most leftists seem to be happy to wait for the next parliamentary elections. In April 2025 anarchists resumed anti-government protests by forming a queue for bread to the prime minister’s residence in Helsinki. The protest failed to reach beyond the anarchist and radical left circles with around 300 demonstrators attending the event. Despite two years of efforts from anarchists and the radical left to form coalitions around common struggles, it is clear that different organisations and groups pursued their own agenda without attempting to unite on common struggles. Despite this, there are positives from the anarchist, anti-fascists coalitions, and wider anti-government protests of 2023-2024. Fascists were successfully marginalised and pushed out of public libraries, unions showed their strength and gained minor concessions, and Palestine solidarity showed endurance and provoked a government crisis. Yet, some big questions remain as the Finnish economy stagnates and the right-wing coalition remains in power. In 2024, the Finnish economy was the worst in Europe, and currently the unemployment rate of 9.9% is behind only Spain. How can growing number of unemployed people be organised? How can anarchists intervene in trade union struggles when they are hostile to outside intervention? How to united anti-racist and social struggles, and stop the fragmentation of struggles? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article has been adapted from a lecture given at anarchist days, Dresden, 21st September 2024. It has been updated with recent developments. The lecture is available on YouTube and Spotify. The post Finland: Struggles against the right-wing government appeared first on Freedom News.

THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH ANTIFASCISTS COLLECTIVE RECENTLY PUT ON A FUNDRAISER GIG IN SOUTH LONDON IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANTI-DICTATORSHIP, ANTI-FASCIST STRUGGLE IN MYANMAR ~ Members of ISAC ~ The conflict in Myanmar is often called the “forgotten war” due to the lack of international attention it receives. To raise awareness, we organised the gig and have also made a zine of interviews with local militants and members of the AIF about revolutionary struggle in Myanmar. The conflict between free peoples and ethnic groups against assimilation and supremacy, currently a struggle against the fascist “State Administration Council”, has existed since Myanmar’s colonial borders were drawn up in 1948. Since then, various indigenous groups have struggled for their independence from the nation state—not without their own complex ethnic tensions. Four years ago, however, in 2021 Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup after detaining democratically elected leaders, sparking an unprecedented level of armed resistance.  What started out as peaceful protests rapidly turned into self organised groups of people using sticks, hard hats and sling-shots to fight the regime, and with the pre-existing infrastructures for armed struggle and sheer innovation, transformed into a full scale revolution. A revolution which is closer than ever to toppling the historic power of the military, a power that has been present ever since the British colonisation of Burma in the 1800s. If the movement for freedom wins in Myanmar, we can use it as the inspiration in the fight across the whole world against rapidly intensifying fascism. The Juntas brutal tactics include sexual violence, mass killings and torture, as well as the relentless bombing of civilian sites. Recently, the Junta carried out air strikes in villages just hours after they were decimated by the recent 7.7 scale earthquake even after resistance groups declared a ceasefire to focus on helping the people, and has interfered with aid distribution and rescue attempts in the aftermath of the earthquake. There are estimated to be over 21,000 political prisoners in Myanmar including more than 4000 women; as prisoners they face abuse, solitary confinement and sexual violence; some are pregnant and raising newborns behind bars, and some are sentenced to the death penalty. Reports have come in of captured revolutionaries being tortured to death in horrific ways only expanding the state’s regime of fear. Despite the Junta’s violent repression, the armed revolution which comprises various armed indigenous and ethnic groups and factions including the AIF have made significant victories including most recently last week taking back the city of Falam, the historic capital of Chin State in western Myanmar, where the AIF have been positioned for the majority of the last year.  The creation of the Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front last year follows a long tradition of anti-fascist internationalism from Spain to Rojava. Upon seeing the people’s war in Myanmar, internationalists took it upon themselves to form an front against the fascist government just as they did in 1936 and 2014. Since then, the revolution has brought together all sectors of society, urban and rural, Burmese majority and ethnic minorities, old and young. This revolution has been started, maintained and soon may be won entirely by normal people, most who had never fired a gun and many who’d barely left school.  The revolution is being fought ruthlessly by the fascist regime, in the battle for Falam over 1,500 bombs were dropped on the town as the battle took place up both land-mined, forested mountainside and urban streets for 6 months. A member of the AIF told us the bombing from the sky was relentless with airstrikes crashing down to earth within 50 metres of AIF positions on multiple occasions.Such a struggle is both a hope to peoples everywhere as well as putting fear in the hearts of fascists and dictators. Most notably the largest ally of the dictatorship in Myanmar is Russia, much of the ammunition used in the invasion of Ukraine was manufactured in factories in Myanmar and the Russian military actively sends technicians to teach and support the air forces’ bombing campaigns across the country. The AIF is openly Anti-fascist and has been welcomed with open arms by the revolution in Myanmar, anarchist patches are seen fighting side by side on the frontline with the patches of the People’s Defence Force, Chin Brotherhood and a variety of revolutionary militias. It’s important Anarchists in Europe view this revolution as a real chance for liberatory victory and support just as we would a revolution in Europe or the “west”. Although the politics of the revolution is not rooted in a clear anti-capitalist worldview, the aim of many fighting is to wrestle back control of their life from the oligarchs that have run their lives since birth and to return power directly to communities who often view village councils as far more important in their day to day lives than governments, police or politicians. The post Supporting peoples’ resistance in Myanmar appeared first on Freedom News.

“THERE’S A STRONG TRADITION OF FAR-RIGHT ACTIVISM IN UNIVERSITIES, ANTI-FASCISTS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO COMBAT THAT AND THEY’VE BEEN DEMONISED FOR IT” ~ Mike Finn joins us to talk about Austria’s targeting of anti-fascists barely a month after being forced into a three-party coalition to shut out the far-right, and how “liberal order” governments across Europe often still seem to think of the left as the greater threat. We also talk about the chaos of tariff imposition and its ideological underpinnings, especially in the context of a globalisation project we have never been huge fans of. Back at home, an attempt is being made to pile pressure on Israel-supporting companies with a revived boycott campaign alongside direct action from Youth Demand, and the government has unveiled its latest dystopian brain fart … The post Anarchist News Review: Anti-fascist crackdown, Stock market falls, new BDS and predicting murder appeared first on Freedom News.

WE’RE JOINED BY LEGAL EAGLE ANDY MEINKE TO TALK ABOUT THE NEWS OF THE WEEK, AND MUSE UPON WHAT WORK THE ANARCHIST MOVEMENT CAN BE DOING TO REBUILD OUR STRENGTH IN THE FACE OF DOWNHEARTENING EVENTS. Derry Radical Bookfair having recently had a successful outing, we talk about the state of radical bookfairs more generally, before moving on to the limits of legalism in moving things greenwards, how AfD is gaining ground in Germany, Saturday’s Tommy Robinson march, plus the collapse of USAID and the future for imperial soft power. The post Anarchist News Review: Bookfairs, Climate protest, Far right in Germany and UK appeared first on Freedom News.

Rather than rely on the instinctive anti-fascism of many radicals who might prefer not to discuss what fascism actually looks like today, and therefore what the fight against it should look like, the essays collected here outline what being against 21st century fascism — both as it exists inside and outside the State — can and should mean. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism Ed. Xtn Alexander and Matthew N Lyons (PM Press, 2024) ISBN: 9798887440415 416 pp -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The selections from eponymous website threewayfight.org are arranged chronologically rather than thematically, which is a fair enough editorial decision. But it was frustrating to have to wait for more than 50 pages until any concrete attempt to define contemporary fascism is presented. Significantly for the essays collected here, this came from a 2017 document, while the Marxist organisation whose former members contribute the bulk of the material (Sojourner Truth Organization, STO) was founded in 1969 and remained active through the 1980s. The shortcomings of movement theoreticians who fail to offer more than a few obvious authoritarian characteristics of what gets called “fascism” (with or without hyperbole) are scattered throughout some of the more thoughtful essays and transcribed interviews. In addition, there is an implicit understanding that the simplistic labeling as “fascist” of any and all opponents of communism and/or anarchism is unhelpful. The other simplistic position that’s rejected is the binary opposition of “the West” — the cartoonish stance of official anti-imperialism which embraces any resistance to Euro-American economic and political hegemony as revolutionary, even when those resistance movements are clearly reactionary. As the editors say in their introduction, “The project’s … supporters rejected the conventional liberal model that portrayed authoritarian extremists threatening a democratic center, but they also challenged the standard leftist binary that saw fascism and liberalism as arrayed together in defense of capitalism against the working-class left.” The existence of an insurgent, anti-law enforcement and sometimes anti-war reactionary fascist movement (or rather, movements) completely escapes the logic of liberal antifascism. Beginning from their experiences from STO and continuing with activities in Anti-Racist Action, many of the people who contribute to Three Way Fight clearly grew frustrated with the lack of an analytical perspective among American antifascists. And it paid off; reading through the selections was far more interesting and enjoyable than reading an endless catalog of self-congratulatory action reports. That said, there is an unfortunate corollary that comes along with striving for analytical and theoretical rigour: the tendency toward centralisation and hierarchy. As self-conscious Marxists, STO already took these organisational characteristics for granted, would never have considered them to be a problem, and many such assumptions are scattered throughout the collection. Sadly, self-described anarchists are not immune to this tendency, as can be seen with various uncritical mentions of Love and Rage (1990/91-98); Bring the Ruckus (1997-2002?); the Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives (FRAC, 2001-06) and the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC, 2000-08). Each of these cross-pollinated organisations suffered from the usual drifts toward hierarchy and conformism. One essay, from members of the IWW union’s Atlanta General Defense Committee exhibit this without any hint of irony: “A mass approach requires a higher level of coordination. If we’re serious about confronting fascism … then we’ll need to get serious about group cohesion, group discipline, and accountability …The movement that we need now has to move beyond … individual, unaccountable behavior.” Perhaps if I didn’t know the history of the above organisations, I might not find this quotation from the IWW to be troubling. But the history is known, and it features loss of members due to organisational inertia, attrition from simple burn out, interpersonal conflicts that leadership either deny or deem trivial, all the way to public (often acrimonious) resignations and splits. And judging from the rhetoric still being produced by the current crop of groups deriving — both ideologically and with some of the same people — from the aforementioned outfits, virtually no lessons have been learned from previous failures to create, let alone maintain, formal cadre-based membership mass organisations. Anarchists are not against organisation, but some ask more questions about it than others. My own experiences as part of both formal and informal organisations has made me sceptical, especially of anarchist organisations that aim for a mass base. Nevertheless, leaving aside the various challenges of how many of the contributors — Marxist and anarchist alike — have decided to organise themselves, Three Way Fight contains plenty to think about and discuss. As such, it’s a valuable addition to the ongoing struggle. ~ Jay Arachnid -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article first appeared in the Winter 2024/25 issue of Freedom Anarchist Journal The post Book review: Three Way Fight appeared first on Freedom News.

A WINDING DISCUSSION STARTS WITH CHINA’S DEEPSEEK AND ITS IMPACT ON US DOMINANCE IN THE SPHERE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. We then move on to Belarus, the Hungarian pursuit of anti-fascists, and the ineffectiveness of liberal governments in holding back fascism (again) before rounding off with some discussion on the fight against high speed rail in France. The post Anarchist News Review: Cheap AI panic, Extremism (un)defined and Water palavers appeared first on Freedom News.

URI GORDON INTERVIEWS GRZEGORZ PIOTROWSKI The far right agenda has never been so powerful since the end of the second World War. After decades of the political centre shifting steadily to the right, ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist forces are now in open alliance with populist and conservative parties around the world, or setting the tone within them. In Israel they have taken over the country and launched a regional war following the genocide in Gaza. In the USA they remain poised to stage a coup whatever the election results, but in either case far right ascendance is far from over. Repelled for now in France, in Austria they recently became the largest parliamentary party. To talk about far right power and its international networking and funding, we spoke to Grzegorz Piotrowski, a sociologist at the university of Gdansk and the European Solidarity Centre. The answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. While the political and business elites, and especially the right wing press in Britain, are busy spreading xenophobia and calling for tighter borders, those same elites and their attack dogs have no problem working across borders. We talk about our internationalism, but what about theirs? I mean that’s nothing new, right? Even before World War II they were quite international. But if 15 years ago extreme right groups were deeply rooted in their local context, now they have gained very powerful allies, especially allies that have a lot of money. At the CPAC conference in Budapest you can actually see this ‘far right International’ — Tucker Carlson, Viktor Orban, Russians cannot travel that much anymore but you have people from all over the world, even European Parliament members. But then you can observe the flow of cash and there are a lot of far-right groups that are financed by Western millionaires or the Kremlin. In Poland there are a lot of Twitter accounts that everybody knows are financed by Russia, they were sponsoring the far right in in Austria and Italy, and with groups fighting against reproductive rights you can trace cash flows from Brazil. So are ‘gender ideology’ and ‘cultural Marxism’ coming instead of open racial hatred, or just ideological covers? I think the base layer is a kind of simulacrum of white male Christian identity, so Islamophobia or antisemitism is a big part of that but it doesn’t work out the same way in all countries. The same with homophobia, I mean in Poland and Hungary it’s quite effective but in the UK not really, but this then allows them to play the ‘crusades and conquerors’ card. In addition to the welfare chauvinism card. But this is all about how you create the ‘other’ that doesn’t match, ethnically, culturally, to your homeland, the ‘sacred homeland’ that is supposed to contain the formative values of the nation. Recently it was exposed that American neo-nazis had helped start a chain of ‘brown gyms’ far right training clubs in England called Active Club. Are there other cross-border connections, say with the European continent? I know there was the English Defence League — Polish Division and then there was the Polish Defence League — English Division, that created a lot of confusion. The Football Lads Alliance try to use their networks to see who is now in the UK, etc., but these are really really marginalised groups. But in general what is helping the far right internationalise is they all moved to social media, especially now that platforms like X are weaponising ‘freedom of speech’. This was very evident with the Capitol Hill uprising, this scare that was created online translated into real action. So I don’t know how conscious people from the Trump camp actually were of how it might end up, I think they underestimated the power of social media in this case, but you could see that vast array of groups like the QAnon, the identitarians, the Proud Boys \and so on, they all met at the Capitol Hill because of this scare that was created by Trump’s acolytes online. Let’s go back to the contrast between their ‘internationalism’ and their racism. Are leaders like Orban in Hungary or Meloni in Italy really motivated by hatred of this ‘other’ that they stoke up? This is actually a very convenient tool to seize power, because it plays on the really low instincts of this society, and in a globalising world there are more and more people coming in. But the interesting thing is that you don’t really need to have refugees or migrants coming in to stoke xenophobia, you just create the image. People read that there are big movements of people from areas of civil war or poverty etc., and you can easily make a scarecrow out of that in order to seize power. I think this is a very cynical play. I think many leaders or at least their close supporters are not actually ideological about it, they’re just using these tropes because they think they work. And what happens after a couple of years is that you see they’re trying to use this power not for some ideological purposes but that it’s basically a kleptocracy. You see that in Hungary, most of the businesses are now owned or run by friends of Viktor Orban, in Poland every day there is a new scandal around stealing money from the state budget, if Bolsonaro were in power longer that would be obviously the case, also in Argentina. I’m pretty sure that lot of people from the immediate surroundings of the leaders are there only for the money and power. As for the leaders themselves, I don’t know to be honest, some of them might really feel they have a mission, but it’s quite often just to to seize power and whatever comes with it, usually money. But that still causes the mainstreaming of ideas and attitudes that used to be associated only with the far right, and we’re seeing how dangerous that can be. That’s actually something that I’ve noticed recently when I was talking to parents at my children’s school, and it’s sometimes in form of a joke or something like that, but you can see the spread of this xenophobic agenda in very ‘moderate’ terms throughout the middle class. You know, they were making jokes about lots of engineers and doctors coming on boats from North Africa to Europe, and this always comes with a small wink and so on. This is actually a ‘light’ version of what the far right is saying, and this scare about migrants and refugees is being extrapolated throughout the societies. So far I haven’t seen any tool to combat this, to highlight things like the fact that the only rise in crime that happens after refugees come is in the crimes committed by the far right against the refugees, or against people who help the refugees. This is a challenge I actually think will need to be addressed in the next couple of years both by the movement but also I think by the policymakers to start pushing the anti-fascist agenda to middle class people. Do you think anti-fascist groups are maybe less internationally networked than the far right? Are people absorbed in local struggles? It’s a question, how actively interested people are in what’s happening in other countries, because in some cases there are so many things going on in your home country that you don’t even have time to look around at what is happening in the region or the continent, right? I mean we had that in Poland for eight years where the Polish government was quite annoying, especially to activists, and there were a lot of protest campaigns and a lot of people in the street. But there’s so many things happening locally that people didn’t have time to look at what’s happening in Germany or beyond our eastern border because people were so busy dealing with these things on their own. So what can you say about resisting the far-right internationally? When you look at attempts to combat those initiatives they’re very much locally based, it is about people protecting their own communities. For example in the US, for many years anti-fascist politics was really scarce after Anti-Racist Action kind of slowed down, there was no militant anti-fascism. Trump comes to power and you have people like Richard Spencer and others, and suddenly you have a revival of militant antifa. Nowadays, a lot of the American anti-fascist movement is community based, and it actually appeals to the communities saying that these people are a threat to our community which is diverse, migrant based, LGBT friendly or whatever other issue the far right is targeting. And I think that is actually a big power. The second thing is that the far right is picking up on economic and social agendas that the left abandoned, protecting working families, a safer job environment, or restoring dignity by raising the minimum wage. These are leftist claims but the social democratic and liberal parties have embraced neoliberalism. I think today the mainstream parties’ language is incomprehensible to the younger generation of activists, they want to push their own agenda which is a leftist agenda and they see threats to their agenda coming from the far right, so that’s why they are becoming anti-right or even anti-fascist. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article first appeared in the Winter 2024/25 issue of Freedom Anarchist Journal The post The far-right and their new internationalism appeared first on Freedom News.

THE ANTI-FASCIST COMBAT SPORTS TOURNAMENT TOOK PLACE IN POZNAŃ, POLAND ~ Czech Anarchist Federation members ~ “You give a front, back, shovel hook to the liver and then a strong low-kick” was one of the basic combinations that we drilled together with our comrades until we were completely crazy — the goal was to memorise it so much that if we woke each other up in the middle of the night , we would handle it completely automatically. It’s been more than a year since my friends and I have been regularly going to the gym several times a week. Some just wanted to get moving, some to gain strength or lose weight, all determined to fully immerse themselves in martial arts training and be ready for physical confrontation while defending both themselves and our community. During this time, we went through several different workshops and training boot camps and exchanged experiences and contacts with other friendly gyms. Then in March word came that we could participate in the 16th annual Freedom Fighters anti-fascist combat sports tournament in Poznań, Poland, and the three of us decided it was time for the first match. Although we practice muay thai en masse, we decided to occupy as many categories as possible – my brother in muay thai, me in K1, and since the last of us not only trains with us in stance combat sports, but also grappling and MMA. Unfortunately for him, there was no MMA fighter in his weight category, so he finally decided at the last minute to accept a match with a 10 kg heavier opponent in classic boxing. Our wrestling group left on Friday already, so that we could settle in quietly and enjoy a long sleep. Before noon, we set out for Rozbrat, where we were greeted by friends who arrived on Saturday morning and started accompanying us. Kamil, one of the main organisers of Freedom Fighters, welcomed us right at the gate. We exchanged a few words and then he brought us to the scale — it was time for the official weigh-in. While my brother and our friend was not worried, I preferred to strip down to my underwear, as I weighed exactly 82 kg to the gram before leaving the house, and I did not want to risk gaining more weight and losing the match. Fortunately, we all passed the weigh-in successfully and Kamil wished us good luck. He used to go to our gym to do seminars and already in the past there was a camaraderie between our circles, which we will certainly continue in the future. We went through the main gate, past the gym and found ourselves on a wider patch that served as an imaginary intersection. In front of us are the kitchen, toilets, free shop and smaller quarters. On the right hand side we had a concert hall, where a concert of crust punk bands was held the day after the match, and a library, but for now we were heading to the area next door. This part was once bought by the Rozbrat squatter collective to ensure that they would be able to continue to occupy the premises — they are still paying the amount, which is why all the money raised by organising Freedom Fighters goes to this purpose. Around the tents our friends had set up, the members of the collective pushed a giant DIY tribune, which they brought to the ring. Compared to previous years, it looked more professional and due to concerns about the weather, it was covered with a large tarpaulin along with the grandstand. It rained twice before the match itself, but the course of the matches was not affected in any way. We already changed into wrestling shorts and went to browse the library. Those of us who knew Polish read for a while, the rest ran hungrily to the oven where the Mamma Mia Anarchia collective was baking vegan pizzas. The matches started at one in the afternoon. After reading all the rules, it was time for a ceremonial match between two professional fighters from the same gym. Although most of the matches were amateur, it was not the only professional match of the day. The primary difference between professional and amateur fights is, in addition to the length of each round, mainly the use of protective elements such as helmets, shin guards and, in the case of muay thai, elbows. From our team, we all wrestled in the amateur division. A total of 16 matches took place, three of which were professional. Our friend had the only boxing match, who fought until the last round against a wrestler who was 10 kg heavier. He fought bravely –- his opponent knocked him down twice and he got up twice. However, on the third knock down, he wisely decided it would be unwise to continue and ended the match. The second match for our expedition was fought by a brother who fought in muay thai. Despite a slightly chaotic start caused by the language barrier during the preparation of the protective elements, he quickly calmed down and dominated the entire match with his elbows. He secured the win with a successful sweep, when he caught the opponent’s kick and chopped his legs — he was the only one to do that all day. I led the last match for our gym. The opponent set a high pace, and after two even rounds full of shootouts, we reached the last one, where only physicality decided – unfortunately for me, he had the better of it, so he secured the win on points. At the end we hugged each other, had pizza together and went to watch more matches. All the wrestlers performed amazingly, both from the perspective of the wrestlers and the audience, who constantly chanted and supported their favourites throughout the day. The post Report from Freedom Fighters 16 appeared first on Freedom News.