anti-fascism – Page 3 – The Hungover Pundit

Activism, Tactics and… Football?

Rather than go down to Hamilton’s City Hall this past weekend, my spouse and I took the weekend off. At a certain point you’ve got to take a breath and get some self care in… and it’s peach season here in the Niagara. There’s a narrow window when the peaches are perfect and I’ll be goddamned if Justin Long and his little coterie of fascist dipshits costs me a years’ worth of my spouse’s famous spiced peach jam.

As it turns out it, it was just as well that we didn’t go down to City Hall because the Yellow Vests weren’t there. On the advice of Duke Willis, white nationalist vlogger, they’ve apparently decided to start a series of protests around the city rather than staying at City Hall, trying to avoid the counter-protesters who by now are consistently outnumbering them. This week’s “demonstration” was at the corner of Ottawa St N and Cannon Street E, just outside the Ottawa Street Farmers’ Market.

Creeping Fascism

It’s been a busy week in Canada for those of us who keep track of far right and fascist groups in this country. On the 19th a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press, Ryan Thorpe, broke a story following weeks of effort to infiltrate an organization calling itself “The Base”; a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi terror network. In that story, he revealed that one of the Winnipeg-area members of The Base was Canadian Armed Forces Reserve Master Corporal Patrik Mathews.

That The Base is operating in Canada is not a surprise, if you follow far-right monitoring groups like The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, The ARC Collective or Yellow Vests Canada Exposed. There’s been indications that Mathews has been postering and trying to recruit for this network for months. The Base’s presence in Canada, for all it wasn’t on the mainstream media’s radar, has been tracked for months online, especially by Vice reporters Mack Lemoureux and Ben Makuch. In their coverage, they reveal that The Base has been steadily ramping up their recruiting and planning “hate camps” to provide paramilitary training for their members. That one of their recruiters has turned out to be a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, though… that was a bit of a shock.

No Hate In the Hammer Reportback, Part II

In Part I of this post, I gave a detailed reportback (as the activists parlance puts it) on the No Hate In the Hammer rally at Hamilton City Hall last Saturday, August 10th 2019. In this part I’m going to do some analysis of both the rally and its position within the larger crisis in Hamilton.

To start with, a quick update: Six days after the rally and its violent, chaotic climax (or nadir, if you prefer) there’s been a lot of ongoing discussion in the community following last Saturday’s rally. Unfortunately, very little of that discussion has been optimistic. There was a suggestion, early in the week, that since so many people supporting the “No Hate” crowd have kids, that perhaps a kid’s area should be created at the counter-protest; one person even volunteered to host a “Drag Queen Story Hour”, which I consider an absolutely charming idea.

Sadly, though, the discussion quickly morphed from creating a child-friendly space to whether it would be a child-safe space… which then shifted to whether City Hall can be considered a safe place to bring children at all. And in light of previous threats and attacks against counter-protesters’ children, the fact that a disturbed white supremacist drove a bus up onto the curb to intimidate protesters, and the utter failure (or perhaps refusal) of the Hamilton Police Service to cordon off or contain the Yellow Vesters, I’m sorry to say that the general consensus is that no, the forecourt of City Hall is not currently a safe environment for children.

No Hate In the Hammer Reportback, Part I

Alright, it’s been three days since the No Hate In the Hammer counter-rally (and the Tower’s legal-support tattoo fundraiser) and frankly, it’s taken me this long to process the day. Or rather, to begin to process, because goddamn. This has also turned out to be a super-long post, so I’m going to split it into two parts for this week. Today’s post will be my account of the day, warts and all. The analysis of events will come later.

As I wrote last Friday, I’d intended to go down to Hamilton and participate in The Tower‘s tattoo fundraiser: I had an idea on what new ink I wanted and it was for a cause I supported; fundraising for the Pride Defenders who’ve been arrested by the Hamilton cops who’d rather go after anarchists and anti-fascists than their hate-group buddies. We arrived about fifteen minutes before the door was scheduled to open (and about thirty minutes before it actually did) and the lineup literally stretched around the corner. Before I even got in the door one of the artists was booked solid for the day. I was fortunate enough to get a 14:30 appointment time with Kevin from Community Ink Tattoos, who’d made the long trip up from London in order to help with the charity event. Shortly after I made my appointment, the other two artists were booked solid and the organizers started putting people on the wait-list. (Note to The Tower: Do more of these. Inexpensive, high-quality ink from amazing artists? It’ll take an awful lot of these events to saturate the activist market.)

With a few hours to kill, my spouse and I realized we’d be able to attend the No Hate In The Hammer counter-rally against the Yellow Vest hate group after all.

Keeping up with Current Events

Another Niagara morning, sitting on my back deck with a cup of coffee… and I’m not sure what to write about. I wanted to write about activism, socialist theory and how direct action works, but once again I’m being overwhelmed by current events in Hamilton.

It’s been a rough week, truth be told — I woke up yesterday to find my Twitter feed showing two different accounts of homo- and transphobic harassment (later in the day a third incident was added to that total), an extended thread on neo-nazi postering and stickering across the lower city, another friend talking about the best self-defence knife to carry for when (not if, but when) they get jumped by neo-Nazis, and another friend sending me direct messages looking for emotional support because the thought of leaving their house and walking down a Hamilton street triggered a severe anxiety attack.

As I tweeted yesterday… this is what a crisis looks like.