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“Your borders kill” is a slogan tailor-made for the lethal border policies of Fortress Europe. As of 2018, over 34,000 refugees have lost their lives trying to make their way through Europe’s militarized borders ; today the number of dead migrants has exceeded the 40,000 mark .
Refugees feeling dangerous conditions at home shouldn’t be forced to risk their lives during their journey to safety, but that is precisely the situation Frontex’s miliarization of Europe’s borders has created. This deadly arrangement is precisely what activists from Stop The War On Migrants were demonstrating against when they blocked the entrance to a Frontex training facility on a military police base in Schipol, Netherlands by chaining themselves to the main gate in December 2021.
Apparently in Fortress Europe, establishing blockades that effectively become death traps that kill tens of thousands of refugees is not a crime, but protesting this atrocity is a crime, which is why ten of the Stop The War On Migrants activists were charged and now have to defend themselves in court after defending the lives of migrants. They need help with their legal costs and the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund was able to send some support to them. If you’d like to also help these activists who are now bearing the costs of defending the very lives of migrants, you can also contribute to their legal defence here .
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antifascist graffiti in West Attica, Greece
During the rise and fall of the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece, the stakes were very high for antifascists. This was made clear for the whole country when Golden Dawn thugs murdered antifascist MC Pavlos “Killah P” Fyssas – an act that ultimately led to the downfall of Golden Dawn itself.
Even though most Greeks came to understand the necessity and urgency of resisting Golden Dawn’s fascist violence, doing so came with consequences, including legal consequences (which was to be expected, given the high level of support for Golden Dawn among Greek police ). Recently, friends in West Attica asked for some help paying off the legal fines and costs of ten antifascists who have been on the frontlines of the fight against Golden Dawn. We were happy to provide them with direct support with this, for which our friends there expressed their gratitude, telling us that “the money was a huge relief for our comrades who are financially struggle to cover their legal expenses.”
You can help them pay off the legal expenses by contributing to this crowdfunder ; likewise, you can help make sure the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund is always there for antifascists wherever they may be by making a contribution to the Fund .
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Our hero with the orange gloves, trying to stop from being assaulted or run over.
Formerly known as the United States’ more-reasonable neighbour to the north, 2022 has shown the world that even Canada is not immune to far-right quackery, as full-on white supremacists & Islamophobes organized & led thousands of COVID vaccine conspiracy theorists and people opposed to public health measure in a truck convoy and occupation of that country’s capital. For three weeks, the country’s 6th-largest city was paralyzed as the #FluTruxKlan convoy loudly aired their myriad grievances, s hutting down local businesses , threatening and assaulting residents , and in one case, nearly burning down an apartment building while the residents slept .
Meanwhile, 300kms away in Peterborough, Ontario, local chuds decide to copy this and hold a truck convoy of their own. Except the residents of Peterborough were not having it and at least one brave individual stood in front of the lead truck, blocking the convoy’s progress. The #FluTruxClan truckers were not pleased and very aggressively forced him out of the way of the convoy before police intervened – to charge both of them! Our friend is now facing an intimidation charge which, as plainly illustrated by video of the incident , will be a stretch for a prosecutor to explain in court.
That said, our friend won’t be going to court alone, as The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund has stepped in to ensure that he has enough to pay for a good defence lawyer to represent him in this matter by making a contribution to his crowdfunder.
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April 21, 2018: Police in Newnan, Georgia respond to the dangerous threat of non-violent, unarmed people wearing masks by pointing assault rifles at them before assaulting and arresting them.
Back in April 2018, full-on nazis from the National Socialist Movement held a rally in Newnan, GA. Anti-fascists showed up to defend the community from that threat and were attacked – by Georgia police . 400 cops pointed assault rifles at, beat, and arrested anti-fascists – ten people were arrested in all.
The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund stepped u p at the time to help out – paying a big chunk of the legal defense costs for two anti-fascists and helping one in his constitutional challenge of Georgia’s anti-mask ordinance , which he was on the wrong end of when he was charged under it at this action. Our help, along with the support of groups like The Atlanta Solidarity Fund , helped get these antifa out of jail and made sure they had good lawyers representing them when the time came.
It’s been a minute but the ASF posted a recent update, so we thought this would be a good time to fill y’all in on some of the things that have happened since then:
Unfortunately, the challenge to the anti-mask ordinance did not succeed on appeal. We still think challenging that law – and its selective application – was absolutely the right thing to do.
Then over the last few days, a second anti-fascist arrested at this action who also sued the police won an award of $40,000!
It’s important to push back on police repression of anti-fascism with every tool available. We are proud to have been able to help the anti-fascists who defended Newnan in 2018 to defend themselves in court and to aggressively go after the police for blatantly violating their rights.
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RASH Bogotá crew on the streets.
The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund have dealt with two requests for support so far in 2022. The first one was a request to support Dr. Nathan Jun – a philosophy professor subjected to an intense harassment campaign by far-right trolls that ultimately led to his forced resignation from his teaching position – of of which appeared to be triggered by his appearance at a rally memorializing Breonna Taylor while wearing an anti-fascist t-shirt + (of all things) a post on a friend’s facebook page where he referenced a 150-year-old quote from a French priest. Happily, Dr. Jun managed to raise more than 2x his goal on a crowdfunder and since the Defence Fund has a guideline about saving our resources when a crowdfunder meets or exceeds its initial fundraising goal, we declined to provide additional support so we could put those resources to better use for anti-fascists that aren’t as fortunate.
Case-in-point: Rojos y Anarquistas Skinheads Bogotá . Being openly leftist in a country where right-wing paramilitaries murdered over 100 activists last year takes a special kind of courage but also comes with consequences. When one of these groups sent out a death threat naming a RASH crew member in Bogotá, Colombia as a target, he was forced to take extreme precautions to protect himself and his family. We will not get into more detail than this for obvious reasons, but we will say this: we have done what we can to make sure he can keep himself and his family safe.
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Statement from The Colston Four after their acquittal today
A few hours ago, the Colston Four were acquitted of all charges by a Bristol jury ! Back in June we sent money to defend these four Bristolians who were charged after 10,000+ people spontaneously tore down the statue of genocidal slave merchant Edward Colston and threw it off a pier. Their stellar legal team put forth a compelling moral argument that convinced the jury to find the four not guilty – a legal team paid for in no small part by the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund .
This result is a nice hat trick after both Scottie Tripn and Paul from Permanent Revolution both avoided prison sentences just last month . It’s also testament to the results of international anti-fascist solidarity. If you’ve contributed to the Defence Fund in the past, these victories are because of you. If you haven’t contributed, it’s not too late!
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Alissa Azar (photo credit: Alex Wittwer)
When you’re an independent journalist trying to cover the myriad of fascist violence in Oregon, and when you’re also a decent human being, that means you’re going to be putting out a lot of things that make fascists look like the violent goons they are. That also means they’re going to make you a target for some of that violence. Especially if you’re a woman; even more so if you’re a Syrian woman.
Alissa Azar can tell you all about that. She’s provided coverage and footage of much of the violence perpetuated by the Piss Boys* and other violent fascist gangs in Oregon. Over last year, that led to physical attacks by fascists against her, most notably in September when armed Piss Boys carrying riot shields chased her down a street before pinning her against a wall, bear-macing her, then beating her to the ground . The assault would have continued if not for the patrons of a nearby bar pulling Alissa to safety.
But it was from an earlier confrontation in June, where the Piss Boys again bear-maced, tackled, and knocked her unconscious that the police decided, months later, to press charges – against Alissa!
Now, on top of the injuries Alissa received that day (including a possible traumatic brain injury), she has to come up with the resources to defend herself against a bullshit case put together by the Piss Boys’ personal bodyguards – the police. To make matters worse, fascist troll Andy Ngo has targeted Alissa, and his minions have been trying to knock out every avenue she has to raise funds to hire a lawyer to defend her in court.
The good news is that Andy Ngo hasn’t knocked the Defence Fund out yet and we were happy to send Alissa a chunk of change that will hopefully be a great help to getting a lawyer lined up.
(*we prefer the more-apt descriptor “Piss Boys” to their original name, “Proud Boys”)
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Few of us are likely to remember what we were doing in January of 2014, but Roddi certainly does. He took part in a massive anti-fascist action in Wien, where thousands of anti-fascists from several different countries massed to try to shut down a high-level fascist networking event in Wien sponsored by Austria’s notoriously extremist FPÖ party. There are two reasons Roddi will always remember that action: one is the 5cm scar the police left on his face after viciously assaulting him and other anti-fascists gathered at the action.
The other reason is that for seven years the Austrian authorities pursued legal action against Roddi! From 2014-2021 authorities in both Austria and Germany threatened to railroad Roddi, finally cobbling together a laughable cobweb of lies and distortions that they used to charge him in 2021 for the events of 2014!
As you might imagine, trying any case after seven years creates a prosecutorial burden, time-and-memory-wise and as luck would have it, Roddi’s prosecutors were not up to the challenge, failing to convict him on any serious charges. In the end, Roddi left court with a probationary/conditional sentence of just seven months, so as long as he keeps his nose clean into 2022, he will not see the inside of a jail cell.
Why, you might be wondering, would the state insist on pursuing charges they must have known they could not prove in court against an anti-fascist for events that took place seven years ago? We believe that they wanted to make an example out of Roddi and knew that, even if they were unsuccessful in court, they would still have seriously disrupted his life for seven years.
Not to mention saddle him with seven years’ worth of lawyer’s bills! As you can imagine, that adds up to an extraordinary sum, so when Rote Hilfe München put out a call to help pay those bills, the Defence Fund happily responded. If you’d like to help Roddi with those bills directly, you can send a bank transfer here:
Rote Hilfe eV OG München
IBAN: DE61 4306 0967 4007 2383 06
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
GLS Bank
Keyword: WKR 2014
If you’d like to ensure that the Defence Fund is around and able to help people like Roddi in the furture, you can make a contribution to it here.
theinternationalantifascistdefencefund
When this van’s a-rockin’ cops better not come a-knockin’!
Adopting the adage “go big or go home” to “go loud or go home,” anti-fascists in Copenhagen, Denmark turned out for May Day festivities this year with a specially-done up NO ONE IS ILLEGAL sound truck, blasting tunes! They + the van + the tunes managed to occupy the Queen Louis bridge for a spell, which the police did not appreciate!
The lazy cops decided that the easiest person to charge was the driver/owner of the van, which is exactly what they did. The case slowly wound its way through the Danish courts and, in the end, the driver/owner was left with 36,000kr in court costs to pay off. Well, now that bill is paid in full, thanks partially to The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund which stepped in to pay off the remainder of those court costs.
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It’s unlikely that Paul and Scottie know each other or have even heard of each other. Paul is an anti-racist skinhead in Brisbane, Australia; Scottie is a hip-hop MC and Black Lives Matter activist in Los Angeles, USA. But what brings them together here in this update is that they both physically stood up to violent fascists in their communities; got arrested by the police for doing so; and are free today thanks in part to the intervention of The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund.
Paul, fronting his oi! band Permanent Revolution
We didn’t report on Paul’s situation previously (for reasons explained below). Paul is a SHARP skinhead in Brisbane, Australia and the front man for Permanent Revolution . A while back, a few of the local SHARPs were having a quiet beer at a local venue when a concerned staff member told them that a pack of Proud Boys (yes, they’ve spread down there, too!) were outside. The venue had banned Proud Boys and other hate groups and staff had been assaulted by members of the far right in the past. Paul and his mates wentout to have a, um, honest and frank discussion with the Piss Boys, which ended in Paul being done up on assault charges.
Around that point, the Defence Fund stepped in to make sure Paul could afford a decent lawyer to represent him in court (we didn’t post about at the time because we didn’t want our support to interfere negatively in the outcome of his case). Unfortunately, Paul was forced to plead guilty to some of the assault charges but in his sentencing earlier this month, Paul got off with a community service sentence instead of jail time (and tbh, Paul probably would’ve volunteered to do community service anyways!).
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles:
Scottie Tripin
Scottie Tripn is a well-known and well-respected Black Lives Matter supporter and antifascist activist. On January 6 of this year, MAGA chuds in LA decided to attack people downtown while their friends went to DC to try to overthrow the democratically-elected US government. Scottie was there to help protect the people the chuds were trying to target and in the fracas, one chud fucked around by spraying him with bear mace and found out. Scottie came out of that on top only to have LAPD clowns hit him up with bullshit charges after the fray.
Scottie needed thousands to hire decent defense lawyers and the Defence Fund were among the first to step up and do what we could to make sure that happened. This week, that support & solidarity paid off!
Scottie walks! All charges dropped!
Paul and Scottie are anti-fascists #9 & #10 who’ve avoided a prison sentence this year thanks in part to receiving funds from us to hire good legal counsel. We haven’t kept track but off-hand we could probably point to a dozen others over the years that could say the same thing! What’s the lesson here? Our project of international anti-fascist solidarity keeps anti-fascists in their communities – where they belong – instead of rotting in prison! That’s as good a reason as any for you to make a contribution to the Defence Fund today!
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