Inside the anti-racist movement that brings the fight to white supremacists
Editor’s Note: In a recent article in Mother Jones about the US anti-fascist movement, a young man spoke about his flexible ideology: “I wasn’t sure if I was racist or anti-racist,” recalls Alex Stuck. “I just knew I was pissed off … thank God that [HARM] got to me first. I could have easily went the opposite direction.” Related: Years ago, I heard some Hells Angels being interviewed on the radio. One said, “Many of us used to be cops.” Something deeper than ideology is going on here. What is it? A thirst for violence driven by testosterone?
From Mother Jones: “Inside the anti-racist movement that brings the fight to white supremacists”
“At lunchtime on May 19, 2012, 18 masked men and women shouldered through the front door of the Ashford House restaurant in Tinley Park, Illinois, a working-class suburb of Chicago. Some diners mistook the mob for armed robbers. Others thought they might be playing a practical joke. But Steven Speers, a stalactite-bearded 33-year-old who had just sat down for appetizers at a white nationalist meet and greet, had a hunch who they were. The gang filing in with baseball bats, police batons, hammers, and nunchucks were members of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) and the Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM), two groups dedicated to violently confronting white supremacists.
“Hey, bitches!” one of the anti-racists shouted before charging Speers’ table. “ARA is going to fuck this place up!”
“Speers stood up and warned his seven companions to prepare to fight. His girlfriend, Beckie Williams, who had organized the lunchtime gathering on the white supremacist website Stormfront, grabbed a butter knife. Francis Gilroy, a homeless man who had driven up from Florida to find “work for whites,” as an online ad for the meeting promised, tried to pull the attackers off his companions. Williams was clubbed on the arm. Speers was hit on the head so hard he vomited.
“An 80-year-old woman celebrating her granddaughter’s high school graduation at a nearby table was also pushed to the floor. A retired cop who believed he was witnessing a terrorist attack used a chair to knock out one of the masked intruders. That’s when they ran off, dragging their dazed companion.
“In less than two minutes, the anti-racists had unleashed a flurry of destruction. A mosaic of smashed glass covered the floor. Blood polka-dotted the ceiling. Three people required medical care.”
Read the full article here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/anti-racist-antifa-tinley-park-five/
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FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
“In antifa circles, the theme of hypermasculine bravado is often right out front, and unsurprisingly, a large majority of the antifa camp are men. Muscularity is prized. After last weekend, one anarchist from Charlottesville described himself as “a blue-collar person, with a job, family, and responsibilities” who “did not behave peacefully when I saw a thousand Nazis occupy a sizable American city. I fought them with the most persuasive instruments at hand, the way both my grandfathers did. I was maced, punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks, but I gave as good as I got, and usually better.”
“Who’s Afraid of Antifa?“