errorBarricada April Out Now - Excerpt from April issue of Barricada

Barricada April Now Available
20 pages and with full color glossy 11 x 17” Poster cover

The April issue of Barricada, the monthly magazine of the Barricada Collective, is now available. The Barricada Collective is a non-sectarian organization of anti-authoritarian revolutionaries, open to tendencies
ranging from simple anarchist, to anarcho-syndicalist, to autonomist, to council-communist and everything in between. This month's issue includes...

Editorial:
-Six Months of Barricada

News:
-Police Riot in Cancun
-March 15th International Day Against Police Brutality
-Italian Revolutionaries Clash with Police in Naples
-RNC Defendants Acquitted of Felony Charges
-Radio Free Cascadia Raided by FCC
-Thousands Resist Nuclear Waste Transports
-ACORN Workers on Strike, Show Your Support!
-Matt Hale Injured by Anti-Fascists in Peoria, IL
-WCOTC Met with Boots and Fists in Wallingford, CT

Commentary:
-Revolutionary Anti-Fascism: A Necessity and an Obligation
-Peru: The Fujimori Era and a Look Ahead
-Readers Write Back: A Response to Barricada Regarding “Anarchism and Struggles of National Liberation” and “Anarchism, Green Anarchism, and the Left.”

Political Prisoners:
-Anti-Fascist Arrested in Wallingford
-Nikos Maziotis is Free!
-Revolutionary Cells Trial has Begun
-Four Arrested in Connection with ELF Action

Mobilization:
-Guide to Quebec City, Part 2
-Call for a Vast Anarchist Participation in the Quebec Mobilization Against the FTAA
-RACO Call and April 1rst Statement


We can unfortunately, or fortunately, no longer offer back issues as we have sold out of every issue.

Barricada can be ordered by writing to

Barricada
PO Box 73
Boston, MA 02133
USA

Or by emailing us at
barricadacollective@hotmail.com

We are now more than ever in need of economic contributions as we no longer have a free hookup for the color covers. This has greatly increased our printing costs and forced us to raise the price of the magazine. However, we intend to lower the cost once more as soon as we can, but we can only do so with your help. If we do not cover costs this month, we will be forced to return to the black and white format.

Despite these difficulties, we still offer free sample issues for those interested. Therefore, if you would like to check out Barricada before ordering a copy, please do not hesitate to contact us.

However, if you do wish to make a financial contribution please send either a money order (Preferred), concealed cash, or a check with "Pay to the order of..." blank to our PO Box address.

Subscriptions to Barricada are 15$ for 6 issues (US and
Canada), 20$ Western Europe, or _$ for a supporters subscription. We strongly encourage supporter subscriptions as we barely break even with regular subscriptions given our low price.
(For all other countries subscription please enquire by mail or email)

Individual copies by mail in the US and Canada are 3$.

Finally, we would like to ask for your help in expanding our currently rather inadequate distribution network. Barricada is North America’s only monthly revolutionary anti-authoritarian publication, and we would like your help in order to reach as many people as possible. Therefore, if you know of somebody who you think would enjoy Barricada, why not arrange for them to receive a free sample issue. Likewise, if you know of a distributor or bookstore who might be interested in carrying Barricada, please let us know and we will send them a free sample issue.

Revolutionary Greetings,
The Barricada Collective
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Revolutionary Anti-Fascism: A Necessity and an Obligation

To many of us, the concept of militant resistance to fascism and racism comes almost naturally. Essentially all currents of revolutionary anarchism or Marxism agree on at least this simple principle: Fascists cannot be allowed to speak, organize, march, or have a platform in any way shape or form. It is a matter of basic safety, for ourselves as revolutionaries, and for all of those who, because they for some reason, be it the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their nationality, or what have you, do not fit the norm of a proper “Aryan,” and therefore become targets for fascist aggression every time they leave their homes.

Anti-authoritarians are, needless to say, as a general rule opposed to censoring people. We believe that your freedom extends to where that of the next begins, and as long as you do not attempt to impose your will on others through coercive means, you are within your rights to say and do as you please. Yet this of course has limits, and one of those limits is preaching racial hatred and justifying genocide, which is essentially what groups such as the WCOTC do. Because although they may claim that they do not condone violence (at least we at Barricada are honest about our beliefs), one has only to take a look at some of the WCOTC graphics and links, which include sites titled “Better than Auschwitz” which gives tips on how to bait “niggers and spics” in order to assault them safely and graphics depicting WCOTC members squeezing to death a Jewish person (or at least what they believe a Jewish person looks like). Needless to say, most revolutionaries interpret this as overstepping the boundaries of tolerable free speech.

Yet, some people in our movement don’t seem to agree with this, and believe that being an anti-authoritarian somehow means placing no restrictions whatsoever on what people are allowed to say. This seems to be primarily a US phenomenon, where even revolutionaries in some cases are still to a certain extent influenced by the “constitutional right to free speech” propaganda. However the fact remains that, as many have already learned firsthand, fascism is not an issue of free speech. It is a dangerous and violent ideology, and when the proponents of that ideology are allowed to take to the podiums unopposed, we need only to look at history to see what the results are.

Fascists understand that, if they rule the streets, it marks the end of all grass roots level organizing and action for revolutionaries, and thus leaves the terrain open for them to present themselves as the only serious alternative to capitalism in a community. This is because they, through attacks, fire bombings, beatings, harassment, and whatever else it takes, ensure that it is unsafe for revolutionaries to take to the streets. It is for this precise reason that we cannot treat fascist and racist ideologies as issues of free speech, but rather a physical threat. Most class oriented anarchist and Marxist organizations throughout history have understood this, and pretty much every organization of significance today agrees as well that there can be no discussion with fascism, only battle. Furthermore, they realize that Fascists and racists have repeatedly and openly declared war upon us, and violate the freedom of others on a daily basis through intimidation and direct violence, thus any actions which are taken against them must therefore be seen primarily as acts of self-defense. This is why groups like the CNT (both in France and in Spain), Anti Fascist Action (England, composed mainly of anarchists), Autonome Antifa (Germany, anarchists and Marxists of all extra-parliamentary stripes), the USI (Italian anarcho-syndicalists), the Francophone Anarchist Federation, the Italian Federation of Anarcho-Communists, the FAI Spain, SCALP (France), ARA here in North America, Love and Rage when it was around, the FORA in Argentina, the Anarchist Federation (England), and many, many smaller organizations which it is not necessary to list all routinely organize to stop fascist demonstrations, shut down their meetings, etc.

It is also important to note that fascism has historically, from Mussolini to the present day, utilized almost the exact same organizing strategy, based on a double-edged approach of violence on one hand, and respectability on the other. When fascists groups or organizations grow they first seek to establish a street presence, as described above. Meanwhile, their more “respectable” advocates, such as Matt Hale, attempt to appeal to the “responsible” citizen. This fools people into believing that they are actually not what the “leftists” make them out to be, but respectable and concerned citizens maligned by “the Jewish press” and other such nonsense. The aim here is to develop a supporter base of “normal” people and give the revolutionary left a bad image by portraying us as the violent ones. Yet, does this mean that we should not combat them? No, it simply means that we need to not only physically oppose them, but work to expose them at every turn and allow people to make the necessary connection between the suit and tie fascist, and the street-level Nazi thug.

The fact is, that sitting around arguing that combating fascism is “being as bad as them” is unjustifiable. Groups such as the World Church of the Creator and the National Alliance, to name only a couple of the many in existence, are openly racist organizations with a history of violence. For example, Benjamin Smith, a "Creator of the Month," went on a rampage killing two and wounding nine, while "Skinheads of the Racial Holy War" (the WCOTC shock troops, not real skinheads, boneheads) are among the most violent racist gangs in the US today.

To those who tell us that we shouldn’t work to shut down groups like the WCOTC, we should ask if they would be willing to tell the relatives of the people Benjamin Smith killed that the WCOTC shouldn't be stopped, or tell the man of North African descent who was thrown into a freezing river by fascists after a National Front march in Paris that they should be allowed to march, or tell the Turkish shopkeeper in Germany that the Nazis who beat him to a pulp and set fire to his store after their concert had a right to be there, or tell the thousands and thousands who have died or gone to jail fighting fascism that they are wrong and "behaving as badly as them."

The truth is, it is unacceptable. So is fascism, which needs to be outlawed, but not by any government and its laws, because this only allows them to paint themselves as the victims, while setting a precedent for silencing of opposition which could very well backfire on us. Fascism needs to be outlawed, but by people, being in the streets and by demonstrating, both through education and direct confrontation, that it is simply not tolerable and will be fought by any means necessary wherever it arises.

Nicolas
Barricada Collective

>Essentially all currents of revolutionary anarchism or >Marxism agree on at least this simple principle: Fascists >cannot be allowed to speak, organize, march, or have a >platform in any way shape or form.

Boy, I can't wait until you start setting up the "re-education centers".

Scary sh*t.

PK