anti-fascism – Page 2 – The Hungover Pundit

An Open Reply

As promised, I’m trying to get back to a regular schedule of writing after a couple of weeks that have included a family emergency, doctors appointments, coordinating multiple travel plans over hundreds of kilometres and varying levels of mobility, a heavier-than-usual round of threats and harassment from the far right… and an increasingly bleak online search for news of the whereabouts and well-being of a friend in Rojava. (I’m not going to touch too much on that last in this blog post, but it’s been a constant source of low-grade anxiety for the last several days.)

Since the Mohawk College protest the alt-right’s online hate machine has been working overtime. I’ve caught some of the splash, having been identified by the Proud Boys as someone who one of their members punched and therefore as someone who has to be slagged in order to justify a coward’s criminal assault on a protester. Far worse, though, is the harassment that was (and still is) directed at Soufi’s restaurant in Toronto because one of their family was identified as a protester; the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion has also been the subject of a number of threats, many of which seem to be instigated and coordinated by the same group of co-conspirators.

The Mohawk College Protest

I’m only publishing one blog post this week. I was hoping to do a detailed reportback of the events of the weekend — all the protests and counter protests and the 2019 Toronto Anarchist Bookfair — but in truth, I’ve been having trouble writing it. After a frustrating couple of days of starting and stopping, I’ve come to realize why: It’s difficult to write a summary when the events feel like they’re still ongoing.

Three Arrows

Four days ago, shortly after I published my previous blog post, we got word that a political event of considerable importance — and one which is dear to my heart — occurred. No, not that one, but rather that Major League Soccer had lifted the ban on the emblem of the Iron Front.

Look, the President getting impeached is important. I get that. But a ban on whether you can publicly display anti-fascist symbols? That hits me very close to home. And somewhat to my surprise I’ve become a rabid Timbers and Thorns fan and, over the course of the summer, have genuinely come to care about the struggle against creeping fascism in a city in another country on the other side of the continent which I have never visited. Perhaps it’s because I recognize and can sympathize with the challenges they face.

Working In Solidarity

It was another chaotic weekend in Hamilton as hate groups once again took over the forecourt at Hamilton City Hall. This time it wasn’t the Yellow Vests, whose dwindling numbers have scattered around the city in increasingly ill-attended and ineffective demonstrations, but instead the Soldiers of Odin & their co-nouns the Wolves of Odin.

At around eleven on Saturday morning word came out over various social media platforms that a large group of Nouns of Odin had showed up in their branded leather BDSM bottoming-vests, and were acting aggressively toward the small number of No Hate in the Hammer counter-protesters, including women and children. Officers from Hamilton Police Service were present, of course, but multiple reports state they concentrated more on herding the No Hate crowd into a corner than actually policing aggressive and violent neo-Nazis, who were allowed to freely move among the anti-hate counter-protesters, to the detriment of order and safety.

The social media callout included an urgent request for more counter-protesters to make their way to City Hall and the community began to turn out almost immediately, including, and very much to her credit, Ward 1 councillor Maureen Wilson, who left a family event on Locke Street in order to attend at the forecourt. (My spouse and I considered driving into the city, but it’s an almost hour-long trip each way and we assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that we’d not have been able to make it in time to contribute.)

ACAB

It’s been a very busy Labour Day weekend in Ontario, especially on the anti-hate activism front. The ARC collective has put together an excellent summary, so I’ll just link to it here rather than re-cap it, but there is one thing that isn’t listed in that summary because the news just came out this morning: Hamilton is permitting infamous white nationalist and Holocaust-denier Paul Fromm to address city council on the issue of “free speech.”

Fromm, you may remember, has been repeatedly banned from Parliament Hill in order to — and this is a direct quote — “to preserve the dignity and integrity of the House.” And yet, Hamilton City Council sees fit to grant this literal Nazi the privilege of addressing council complaining that racists and homophobes might be denied their free speech.

That’s Fromm on the right, in the White Pride World Wide t-shirt. Charming.

That’s right. A neo-Nazi gets to address council to complain that a plan to prevent violent hate groups from using city space is a “Free Speech issue.” Hell, it’s not even a plan yet, city council has been dragging it’s damn feet on the whole issue all summer while the Yellow Vests and the Whichever-Nouns-of-Odin have been demonstrating, threatening and occasionally assaulting counter-protesters… often with the apparent support and assistance of the Hamilton Police Service.