Anarchic update news all over the world - 10.02.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  wsm.ie: Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland): turkey
      invades afrin of the riojava-revolution (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  Wales, Cardiff, South Wales Anarchist Federation: Solidarity
      with Mapuche People, part of IFA action week. 
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #279 - Trade unionism:
      Lynchage for an internship (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  France, Alternative Libertaire - AL withdrawal from the
      collective With the Syrian revolution (fr, it, pt) [machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Projection-debate:
      police violence, February 5 in Clermont-Ferrand by AL Auvergne
      (fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  US, black rose fed: CAMPUS FASCISM: TURNING POINT USA AND
      ITS LINKS TO THE FAR-RIGHT By Kristina Khan and Shane Burley,
      Truth Out (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
7.  Britain, afed - WHAT THE SUFFRAGETTES DID FOR US (HINT: IT
      WAS MORE THAN THE VOTE) by Ether (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





The Turkish invasion of revolutionary Rojava has now entered its 17th day. NATO's 2nd 
largest army has failed to achieve any significant breakthrough against the defenders of 
Afrin despite deploying some of the most advanced tanks, helicopters, artillery and jet 
bombers. On our graphic the small map at top centre shows Turkey in orange, the tiny blue 
area under Turkey is the canton of Afrin, the target of this invasion and one of the 3 
original cantons of the Rojava revolution. These cantons are where the experiment in 
direct democracy, gender equality, and sustainability began in 2012 in the most impossible 
conditions of the Syrian civil war and the ISIS invasion of two of the cantons. ---- The 
invading force is made up of elite Turkish army units with state of the art equipment 
often supplied by Germany and other NATO countries who command and control a much larger 
force of militia formed from the various pro-Turkey factions of the Free Syrian Army 
including jihadi units. A detailed report from the ‘Democratic Self-Administration' on the 
invasion even includes a listing of 16 or so unit commanders who have previously fought as 
part of ISIS. https://anfenglishmobile.com/.../report-on-turkish-state-s-wa.... Several 
atrocity videos are in circulation which were recorded and posted by either members of 
these units or by the Turkish army accompanying them which show the torture of civilians 
and in the worst case the mutilation of the body of a fallen YPJ fighter which included 
cutting off the breasts of the dead woman. Reports say she, Barin Kobanie, was killed with 
3 other women of the YPJ when they were surrounded while defending Qarnah village on Jan. 
30 https://www.nytimes.com/.../world/midd.../syria-video-kurds.html Again remember this 
operation is being ran by the 2nd largest army in NATO with weaponry supplied by other 
NATO members.

Up to this point in time Afrin was largely untouched by the war on ISIS and the rest of 
the Syrian Civil War. So its both home to the last of the untouched Yazidi communities 
(some 25,000 people) but also became home to many of the internally displaced refugees in 
Syria. Some of these have tried to flee over the Turkish border where some have been shot 
dead while others have frozen to death. Much of the fighting has been in the mountains 
that fringe the border with Turkey but in particular if the fighting reached the city of 
Afrin civilian casualties would rapidly escalate, hundreds have already died, many in 
Turkish airstrikes and artillery.

In the aftermath of the 2016 coup Turkish president Erdogan escalated his purges of the 
officer core. This alongside the furious resistance of the defenders of Afrin may be why 
the invasion has made little progress to date beyond the pockets on the border. Key 
mountain tops were announced to be captured by day only to be lost again that night. Even 
pro-government Turkish media has admitted to the loss of at least 3 Leopard 2A4 main 
battle tanks, the German equivalent to the M1 Abrams alongside perhaps a dozen lesser 
armoured vehicles. From the same sources and video posted by the SDF these have been taken 
out by a variety of anti-tank missile systems of various origins but mostly of Russian 
manufacture.

The source is of some importance as Erdogan was keen to blame the US for having armed the 
SDF for their fight with ISIS. In reality US supplies to the SDF seldom if ever included 
ATGM systems except where they were supervised and recovered afterwards by US Special 
forces. And despite the presence of ISIS and Al Qaeda figures among the Turkish proxy army 
the US has not lifted a military finger to support the SDF forces who were and continue to 
be the only effective ground force fighting ISIS elsewhere in Syria. This was entirely 
predictable, as the Kurds would often say ‘We have no friends but the mountains,' and 
echos past betrayals like that during WWII when the Allies handed the names of anarchists 
from Spain who had fought in their armies over to Franco at the end of the war. Many were 
later imprisoned or executed when they tried to liberate the Spanish state from the hand 
of fascism.

Kurdish communities across Europe have been mobilising in protest and in several cases 
attacked by Turkish mobs associated with the fascist ‘Grey Wolves'. In Rome and London 
they have also been attacked by the police, even in Dublin there were scuffles with 
Turkish embassy ‘security' staff. The Turkish state has arrested over 500 people in Turkey 
for opposing the invasion, many of these have been arrested for simply tweeting 
opposition. Alongside this the Turkish state has escalated its demands that Twitter remove 
pro-Kurdish accounts and/or make their tweets unavailable in Turkey. This includes many 
tweets that mention civilian casualties and its reported that 100 or more accounts have 
been shut down. Much of this censorship is actually being implemented in the Dublin 
headquarters of Twitter and other social media outlets, the companies have long conceded 
an overwhelming censorship power to the Turkish state. Even Irish pages have had their 
accounts suspended for simply using the image of Ocalan, the ideological leader of the 
revolution who has been in jail in Turkey for over 20 years.

The coming days are going to either see the Turkish offensive being quietly brought to a 
halt in recognition that its stalemated or a massive escalation of the violence to try and 
overcome the defenders. If - as is likely - Erdogan takes the second route than the 
civilian death toll was soar into the thousands and tens of thousands. With the SDF forced 
to redeploy their forces to Afrin to fight the invasion a major resurgence of ISIS becomes 
quite likely. ISIS have already moved onto the offensive after two years of being driven 
back and into the desert by the SDF, even losing their capital city Raqqa. In both cases 
while the Turkish state bears the direct responsibility so to do the rest of the NATO 
powers who have reacted to the invasion by staring at their shoes and hoping it ends 
before public pressure forces them to some measure of action. That pressure is greatest in 
Germany because of the major and very visible role played by German manufactured tanks in 
the invasion, Germany had agreed to upgrade the Leopard tanks it had already sold but 
outrage at the invasion has forced Berlin to suspend that deal.

We will continue to provide occasional summaries like this one but for more timely news 
follow our Twitter account https://twitter.com/wsmireland where we will be retweeting 
reports from what we consider to be reliable sources. For those who might be concerned 
although we ourselves view some of the more gruesome videos and images coming from Afrin 
for verification purposes our standard practise is not to retweet such graphic footage, 
although as above we may describe it.

For our background material describing the Rojava revolution see https://www.wsm.ie/rojava

https://wsm.ie/c/turkey-invades-afrin-riojava-revolution

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Message: 2






Yesterday, as part of international awareness raising of the situation the Mapuche peoples 
face in Argentina and Chile, we organised a distro action outside House of Fraser in 
Cardiff. House of Fraser stocks United Colors of Benetton products, who are themselves 
involved in a brutal act of land theft. This land grab have seen the police murder people 
and we took to the streets in the memory of our fallen comrades Rafael Nahuel and Santiago 
Maldonado who were murdered last year. ---- It was part of a week of action was called but 
the IFA membership at short notice and we little time to prep, However with comrades 
standing up across the world and elsewhere in the Uk, we felt it was important to do 
something and raising up the challenge we organised the media and roused the troops.We're 
only a fresh group in AF and due to peoples various commitments could only field a couple 
of people - who as it happened were forced into being rather late due to a flat battery in 
the car! - However the intention with the action was to raise awareness of the situation 
and in that we were reasonably successful. No one we spoke to had any idea of what was 
going on, and hopefully, even if in a small way we have helped to change that. We handed 
out some 150/200 leaflets and have seen a spike on our social media, which would seem to 
indicate that people were responding.

This is really all thanks to the folk from Bristol Anarchist Federation held the fort 
until we arrived and saved the day. They were joined in part by some comrades from Cardiff 
Reds Choir and other folk who came along. When we did eventually rock up it had got a 
little quieter so we unfurled the flags, turned on the music, got out the pretty flyers 
and made the best of it.

Static actions and distribution of leaflets is one of the harder tasks for your average 
Anarchist-Communist... we're expected to have a little more "edge" and often it's for a 
reason, however given the context of the cause and delay in half of the folk getting there 
this remained an exercise in casual engagement with minimal disruption, now wasn't the 
time for living up to the renegade reputation.

The development of the action has seen the Anarchist Federation begin to form ties with 
the Emigre Mapuche community here in the UK and discussions on the day suggest that we 
will be forming a strong, cohesive boycott Benetton campaign.

There will be similar action next week in Bristol, which members of South Wales AF hope to 
attend and we will share the details when they become available.

Learning lessons, we need a grow our capacity to promote actions and encourage people to 
engage, we need to check car batteries before it is to late and we need to not organise 
demos when it's the Rugby and our fellow Activists are in London fighting for the NHS 
(much love to all who attended!), with each action we organise, we are building up our 
resources and manner.

Expect more.

We have so many thanks to those who stopped and spoke with us, especially those who were 
suitably pissed when they heard what was happening! Much love to the Cardiff Socialist 
Choir who spent time with Bristol before we turned up and to all of those people who just 
out and about, bumped into us and made the choice to stay for a while and talk about how 
we can make the world a better place.

Rest in Power Rafael Nahuel and Santiago Maldonado and solidarity with the Mapuche People!

Verceremos!
SOUTH WALES AF

p.s Many thanks to Graham for the photos, hope you don't mind we used a "in action shot" 
and took out the faces;p

*Edit* One of the members has let me know they did in fact talk to a few folk who knew 
about the situation already which is awesome!

Addendum.

One particular incident worth a note was when a older gentleman who claimed himself a 
socialist activist who "tossed cobblestones at cops in Paris in '68" accosted a couple of 
members and started barraging them with arguments dismissing the notion of Anarchism ( 
which he falsely believed meant no rules and a dog eat dog society ), when another member 
got his attention to deflect his increasingly hostile patter he said "You need to take 
these ladies away and re-educate them!", without knowing he was misgendering a South Wales 
AF member and upon being corrected he responding "oh.. these tarts then". He was readily 
instructed firmly to "Leave now, you have crossed the line, go." to which he scuttled away 
at full pace.

The reason we mention this is because it is something of a horrible reminder of the 
lingering misogyny and aggressiveness you find in a certain portion of the activist 
community. He approached people he felt he could belittle due to their appearance and 
didn't like being talked back to, in a moment of honesty he spoke what he actually felt, 
and it was poison. This stuff happens across the board... not just from socialists and it 
completely undermines to "left scene", a sad reminder of how far we have to go.

South Wales AF and indeed the Anarchist Federation will hold no truck with casual bigotry 
of any form. Whether it comes from the bosses or fellow workers, although the tactics of 
response are contextual, we aim to help build a network of activists of diverse character 
to reflect the society we live in. We will never tolerate this kind of hate filled 
language at any action or event, whether we organised it or not.

Together we have to make political action a better place, open to all.

Britain, surrey anarchist-communist group: Bristol Radical History Group

Check this excellent website by the Bristol Radical History Group www.brh.org.uk. As they 
say themselves: "Since 2006 BRHG have organised over 250 events; staging walks, talks, 
gigs, recreations, films, exhibitions, trips through the archives and fireside story 
telling. We have several active research projects, publish a range of books and pamphlets 
and host an archive on this website. ---- BRHG projects and events are organised by local 
people from Bristol and are NOT funded by universities, political parties, business or 
local government. To break even we rely on members giving their labour for free, donations 
from the audiences and the sale of publications. ---- BRHG are associated with several 
other history groups in Bristol including Remembering the Real World War One, Eastville 
Workhouse Memorial Group and the Counter-Colston Group. BRHG have also recently become a 
member of the International History From Below Network."

Bristol Radical History Group

https://surreyanarchistcommunistgroup.blogspot.co.il/2018/02/bristol-radical-history-group.html

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Message: 3





The controversy launched around the trade union training course of SUD-Education 93, 
relayed from the fachosphere to Minister Blanquer, shows us the road that remains to be 
traveled for the trade unions to fully grasp the fight against racial discrimination. and 
clarify their anti-racist strategies. ---- An excerpt from the blog "  To those who 
struggle and resist  " held by Theo Roumier on Mediapart. ---- Almost all of the National 
Assembly rises to applaud a minister who has announced wanting to lodge a complaint 
against a union, SUD-Education 93, which is wrong to denounce a "  state racism  ". It is 
both new and very serious. ---- In a symptomatic reversal of extreme right-wing 
strategies, the very clearly antiracist course of SUD Education 93 became for some ... a " 
  racist  " course that had to be denounced or that needed to be distinguished ! In spite 
of that, support has been shown, particularly by trade unions and unions.[...]What did not 
go without internal exchanges, sometimes tense, reflecting the tensions unfortunately very 
real when one questions the articulation between antiracism and syndicalism.

School, a "  republican sanctuary  " ?

The anti-racist struggle is, however, a trade union issue that must be fully addressed. In 
a sort of proletarian declension of republican universalism, some people think they can 
settle the question with an affirmation of principle: "  Before being black, Arab, Asian 
or white, we are all workers  ."[...]It is indeed to take back what was advanced against 
the union SOUTH Education 93: no, the school, "  republican sanctuary  ", can not be a 
place of discrimination, and therefore it is not it. Move along, nothing to see. It is 
ultimately, in the name of an antiracism that is somewhat magical thinking, erase the 
reality of racism today. To affirm that one is equal and equal would suffice to make it " 
true  ".

Yet - and even if this does not prevent us from constantly recalling the common interests 
of the exploited - if we consider that discriminations divide us then we must fight them 
explicitly and for that a prerequisite is to recognize them and to name them.

There is no shortage of examples of the existence of a racism that is not only of the 
order of private remarks.[...]In the tribune "  Trade unionists, we will march on March 19 
  ", published on the occasion of the March for Justice and Dignity, he was rightly 
reminded that "  if the discriminations are not reduced to social domination, they are 
articulated to this one to reinforce it. Social and anti-racist fights, far from being 
antagonistic, must feed each other.  " This is precisely where we must go.

This means first of all privileging the self-organization of the first targets of racism, 
supporting the affirmation of an autonomous antiracist movement to which the trade union 
and political organizations do not have to take the place, even if they can stand beside 
it. .[...]This is one of the preconditions for the emergence of an "  antiracist and 
social front  ", supported by concrete mobilizations, as imagined by the trade unionists 
who signed the 19 March tribune and who could also be found in the call and then the 
forums "  Let's take the initiative  ".

This being the case, as long as one is in favor of the autonomy of the social and trade 
union movement (including in its political sense), it also implies that the trade unions 
double this approach by developing their own questions and anti-racist strategies. 
Especially since we do not start from nothing. From the fight against the abusive 
withdrawal of badges in the air sector to that for the rights of West Indian, Guyanese and 
Reunion workers in the PTT, as well as strikes and support for undocumented workers ... 
can not say that trade unionism is sluggish. And that's good.

Tools for collective action

We must also continue to produce anti-racist speeches and arguments aimed at employees, 
such as here to denounce the fantasy of the "  great replacement  ", and to make room for 
the horrors that almost every day Eric Zemmour and Alain Finkielkraut assumes.

But it is still possible to go further, and for that to take into account structural 
aspects of racism at work. It is known that with an identical CV, the mention or the index 
of an "  origin  " other than European (or deemed such), will make the application will be 
less considered in many companies, which established several campaigns of testing. In 
addition, some discrimination in the division of labor may be obvious. Remains that the 
difficulties to establish statistics called "  ethnic "Prevent them from being fully 
measured as if they were crossed to other factors. While it would be useful in many 
workplaces, facing the employer and management, to help union teams build anti-racism 
strategies.

[...]How else, for example, can we determine whether racial discrimination creates 
long-term and systemic wage gaps, as is the case for women ? If we have managed to find 
the tools needed to highlight gender inequalities, even within our organizations, why not 
also mobilize them to fight against racial mischief and discrimination ? This question 
arises for the non-mixed, we saw it with the stage of SUD Education 93, and raises debates 
which one should not be afraid to lead.

Also because being unionized is not a "  status  " that miraculously spares 
representations present in society, even if we would like it to be the case. It is not 
necessarily a question of "  tracing  " what has been done about gender issues, and made 
it possible to advance on this subject (even if there is still much to be done), but it 
would be a great pity to to deprive oneself of the experiences of the feminist movement. 
The challenge remains, whatever the case may be, to put in place the most relevant 
mobilization tools to create collective action and fight against discrimination. Simply 
because unionism can not stay out of the fight for equality, all the struggles for equality.

Théo Roumier (unionist SUD, Orléans)

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Syndicalisme-Lynchage-pour-un-stage

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Message: 4





On January 24, 2018, Libertarian Alternative chose to withdraw from the collective With 
the Syrian Revolution, and explained it in a letter to the animators of the collective. 
---- Dear comrades, ---- We inform you wish Libertarian alternative to withdraw from the 
collective With the Syrian revolution. ---- The primary cause of this withdrawal is 
practical: AL no longer manages to seriously follow the activities of the collective. ---- 
In 2011-2012, Alternative Libertaire took part in the support demonstrations that, in 
Paris, Marseille and elsewhere, brought together hundreds of Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians 
and Libyans in support of Arab Spring. The organization had also provided part of the 
order service at a meeting of the Syrian left in exile at the Paris Labor Exchange, to 
dissuade the thugs of Bachar from coming to attack these comrades.

It is therefore quite natural that in 2013 Alternative Libertaire joined the collective 
With the Syrian Revolution (ARS) alongside Cedetim, the union trend Emancipation, 
Together, the Palestine Citizenship Forum, the NPA, the UJFP and the Union syndicale 
Solidaires.

This collective is doing useful work: it continues, worthwhile, to shed light on the 
revolutionary dynamics or, at least, citizens, which persist in Syria, in spite of the 
degeneration of the ASL and the confiscation of the revolution by groups of far-right 
Islamists, often unguided by foreign powers.

We must not believe that the critical support that AL has brought to the Kurdish left in 
the Syrian civil war since the end of 2014 leads us to disregard these citizen dynamics.

But we must recognize that for many months, for lack of time, we have not followed the 
news of ARS in dotted line.

We therefore prefer to have the honesty to withdraw, while assuring the ARS comrades of 
our availability to pass on their initiatives on a case-by-case basis.

Regards,

The AL Federal Secretariat, January 24, 2018

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Retrait-d-AL-du-collectif-Avec-la-revolution-syrienne

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Message: 5





It is February 5 at the Popular Citizen PDD, 3 rue Gaultier-de-Biauzat, Clermont-Ferrand.
Each month the Coordination of Anarchist Groups and Libertarian Alternative organize an 
evening on a theme related to our struggles. This month we will discuss police abuse. On 
the program: a screening of the film "Les coups de vos liens", an intervention by the 
"Justice et Vérité for Wissam El Yamni" collective and debates of course
Come many and many !
The Facebook event https://www.facebook.com/events/1633507160061650/

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Projection-debat-les-violences-policieres-le-5-fevrier-a-Clermont-Ferrand

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Message: 6





On November 22, 2017, Joel Valdez and Blair Nelson, two members of Turning Point USA 
(TPUSA) and both students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), joined 
Gavin McInnes on his program, "Get Off My Lawn." The young "conservatives" excitedly 
promoted their appearance on his show earlier in the week. McInnes, who is founder of the 
Proud Boys, has been thoroughly investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center and 
describes himself as a "Western Chauvinist." He has become a leader in the "civic 
nationalist" contingent encircling the "alt-right." McInnis interviewed Valdez and Nelson 
about their encounter with a fellow student on campus on November 16, asking Nelson, "Why 
did you not punch him in the face?" ---- TPUSA, famous for its aggressive tactics against 
leftist professors across US campuses, was founded in 2012 by a disgruntled Charlie Kirk, 
who failed to get into the United States Military Academy at West Point. Kirk hardly built 
TPUSA into the organization it is today, however; the nonprofit is funded largely by 
Republican mega-donors and is a source of controversy for allegedly funding student 
government campaigns on several campuses.

McInnes asked them about an alleged "wild attack by an antifa professor" who supposedly 
confronted Nelson and Valdez "just for being conservatives." The instructor they were 
referring to was Tariq Khan, a US Air Force veteran and graduate student at the 
university. Khan challenged this characterization, saying he confronted the two after they 
made what he felt was a veiled threat against his children. Khan, his wife (one of the 
authors of this piece) and one of his children had been filmed by right-wing, anti-Muslim 
student activists in the same spot on campus two years earlier, and UIUC's chapter of 
TPUSA had already attempted to push two campaigns against two different women of color 
associated with UIUC this past fall: an undergraduate student and a staff member. After 
the confrontation between Valdez and Khan, TPUSA members and allies created a campaign of 
threats and intimidation across media platforms.

Targeting Campuses

According to TPUSA's website, they have chapters at around 350 college campuses and 
approximately 64 chapters in high schools around the country. TPUSA is the home of the 
"Professor Watchlist," a McCarthy-style blacklist of "biased" professors. On Comedy 
Central's show, "The Opposition," Kirk described the "Professor Watchlist" as "an 
awareness tool," but if a professor makes the list, they then "coincidentally" become the 
target of malicious campaigns.

Amanda Gailey, an English professor at the University of Nebraska (UN), is one of now 
hundreds of professors across the country who were targeted by the group, receiving 
threats in her inbox after they launched a campaign against her and UN graduate student 
Courtney Lawton. These campaigns nearly all roll out the same way: TPUSA self publishes a 
story on their site, Campus Reform, of alleged "abuse" or bias from the left; the victim 
of the story starts getting threats; and universities find themselves dealing with outside 
pressure to get rid of the professor or student in question. Kirk said to CNN in December 
2017 about his "Professor Watchlist,"

We do not call for any of that sort of harassment. We don't condone it. We don't try to 
facilitate any sort of cyber bullying or harassment. And just because you put up the 
words, or another article that's been written about a professor in an aggregated format, 
does not mean we should be held responsible for what other people do.

But it's not just anonymous virtual trolls that are intimidating professors. TPUSA's 
tactics are shady, to say the least. Across the country, TPUSA members film leftists 
without their consent, both on and off campus. They have tried to infiltrate leftist 
meetings and spaces. They stalk leftists online, documenting their lives and doxxing them. 
Intimidation and infiltration strategies like these border on being illegal, and TPUSA 
knows it. Their members walk a carefully directed line to avoid negative publicity, and 
should any arise, they do massive amounts of damage control through their own media outlets.

The New Yorker published its own exposé on TPUSA, citing anti-Blackness and illegal 
election funding, which shed a bit more light on the practices of this nonprofit. But 
what's yet to be thoroughly investigated but beginning to be uncovered in central Illinois 
and Nebraska are TPUSA's connections to neo-fascist organizations and individuals.

Despite Valdez' claims on "Get Off My Lawn" of being present for the anti-Trump rally 
because of an "interest in civil discourse," TPUSA members harassed and filmed many of 
that day's attendees and speakers, including Khan. One member, Andrew Minik, then posted 
the video they took on the Campus Reform site, along with the erroneous story about Khan. 
Andrew Minik is one of many TPUSA members paid to write for Campus Reform, which is a 
joint project of the National Leadership Institute. The Institute provides an online forum 
for students to "report liberal abuse" and to even "get paid to hold their school 
accountable."

Joel Valdez, Blair Nelson and Andrew Minik aren't doing anything other TPUSA members 
haven't done. Lying about their interactions with their fellow students and their 
professors on campus is how TPUSA operates as an organization. Administrators at UIUC 
"knew it would be trouble," when they became aware that there would be a TPUSA chapter on 
campus. But what makes the UIUC chapter seem unique is their happy interaction with the 
notorious McInnes.

 From Trolling to Threats

The culture of "exposure" that TPUSA intends to bring to college campuses is patterned 
after identifying specific people, often students or adjunct faculty, and then spurring 
them on with erroneous claims that leave them personally and professionally vulnerable.

After Minik published his erroneous article about Khan on Campus Reform, the death threats 
started pouring in. Threats from Neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Islamophobes came from 
all over the country to Khan's inbox. Khan, who is partially of Pakistani descent, 
appeared to be singled out in part because of his ethnicity, leaning to their heavy focus 
on Muslim immigration. His academic department and the Graduate Employees Union office 
received threats and phone calls demanding Khan be expelled. As the story exploded, it was 
picked up by sites like InfoWars and shared by Ben Shapiro, Lou Dobbs, Charlie Kirk and 
former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.

While Khan's department refused to cave to the threats, university administrators in the 
Office of Conflict Resolution are punishing Khan for pushing back against Valdez's threat. 
Khan was called in and an administrator assigned to the complaint filed by Valdez asked 
why Khan "didn't just walk away."

"We've been reporting the actions of these white supremacists to the administration for 
the last three years and they have done absolutely nothing to protect students, staff and 
faculty of color from white-supremacist threats," said Khan. "So when a fascist made a 
veiled threat against my children, I had no choice but to confront them myself, because 
the administration won't confront them."

Khan was not allowed to read his entire defense statement in a meeting with administration 
and was told that if he appealed the university's decision, he would have to pay more 
money for the punishment process - a threat of sorts to a graduate student father of three 
making poverty wages.

Campus Wars

Unfortunately, Khan's situation of not finding support from his university is becoming 
terrifyingly common. On December 28, George Ciccariello-Maher announced his resignation 
from his tenured position at Drexel University. "After nearly a year of harassment by 
right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and 
threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become 
unsustainable," said Ciccariello-Maher in a public statement. Academics like Mark Bray, 
Mike Isaacson and others have become targets of an increasingly hostile set of far-right 
student and media organizations, targeting them for casual statements or left-wing views 
in their private lives. While conservative organizations have always made an effort to 
confront what they see as left-wing bias on college campuses, the tenor of that activism 
has changed since Donald Trump and the trolls of the "alt-right" came on the scene, 
creating a cloud of potential violence and serious career implications.

Sitting under Minik's Campus Reform article about Khan, comments such as "Chuck Neely's" 
were reported by Khan's department to police. "Expelled? No. We need to deal with this as 
white men in a white nation," wrote "Neely."

"This garbage dares to assault us? We physically remove him from this plane of existence. 
He has zero right to exist in our nation, he is made to leave one way or another." Other 
TPUSA members joined in the threats, promising to pay the legal fees for any attacker.

Like his fellow TPUSA members, Valdez claims to simply be a "conservative" who believes in 
capitalism and the free market, yet he proudly shares on social media accounts the now 
infamous "alt-right" symbol Pepe the Frog, work by rape-apologist Mike Cernovich, and 
graciously thanks extremist "Infowars" conspiracy peddler Alex Jones for any retweets. 
Nelson has argued genocide is merely a leftist construct, an opinion that he disagrees with.

These patterns of racism make their way to the top of Turning Point's leadership. As The 
New Yorker reported, Crystal Clayton, one of TPUSA's most prominent members for five 
years, said, "I hate Black people. Like fuck them all.... I hate Blacks. End of story." 
TPUSA also posted and then hastily removed a blatantly anti-Semitic tweet last November.

UIUC released a statement in the fall restating their commitment to "defending free 
speech" on campus. Despite extremely racist chalking, white supremacist 
"It's-okay-to-be-white" fliers, ongoing stalking incidents, harassment and filming of 
students of color by "conservative" students, and even physically violent incidents 
against people of color, it would seem that for now, the University of Illinois is 
choosing to uphold white supremacist values on campus. As the Traditionalist Worker Party 
and Vanguard America prepare to launch propaganda campaigns aimed at Midwestern 
universities this spring, some student activists of color at UIUC aren't hopeful their 
campus will protect them.


More Than Conservative

While much of Turning Point's public media argues that its members have no association 
with the white nationalists of the "alt-right" or the street violence of the Proud Boys, 
their short track-record has proven that rhetoric to be a mirage. Kirk's relationship to 
the University of Illinois might help provide insight on how TPUSA doesn't just condone 
this behavior, but was in fact founded on it.

In 2015, UIUC made national headlines over a newly established "white student union" on 
campus. White supremacists created it on Facebook directly after Black student activists 
held a rally on campus the same day. The page, reported by many people to police, asked 
for identification of Black activists who, the page's owners claimed, were "terrorizing" 
the campus. The page also posted videos by Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist 
American Renaissance, and told people to "check out" Richard Spencer's own National Policy 
Institute. With a lack of active support by the university to its students of color, 
students and community members met with campus police to try to educate them about these 
groups, yet the administration and the police failed to follow up on those concerns.

Other white student union pages started popping up around the country in response to the 
national attention, and it was rumored that most weren't run by actual students. UIUC's 
Illinois "White Student Union" page, however, was run by a group of UIUC students. In 
anonymously submitted screenshots of text messages, former Traditionalist Worker Party 
member Michelle Kapelski told Debbie Bernal, the current president of UIUC's Turning Point 
chapter, that she helped start the page "as a joke."

One of the first people who interacted with the page positively (liking and sharing its 
posts) was a student by the name of Artur Sak. Sak, a young man whose parents emigrated 
from Poland, has since graduated, but served on the first-ever national student board of 
TPUSA while at UIUC. When the story about the white student union blew up in the national 
news, Sak stopped interacting with the page entirely. As of last fall, both Sak and the 
page are gone from UIUC's campus, yet Turning Point remains. In Sak's bio for TPUSA he 
says he was with the organization from the beginning, an association that seems to echo 
TPUSA's current membership.

While the extent to which TPUSA works with self-identified white nationalists and 
neo-fascists is not wholly clear, it is obvious that their conservative branding centered 
on "free-speech and free-markets" is misleading. Their roots are planted in racist 
ideologies and handed to enthusiastic young people unrestrained by a fear of consequences. 
At UIUC's campus, for example, rather than seeing TPUSA members holding "civil 
discussions" on fiscal conservatism, one is more likely to see TPUSA members on the quad 
trying to convince passersby to sign a petition calling on the administration to reinstate 
"Chief Illiniwek," a racist sports mascot that the National Collegiate Athletic 
Association forced UIUC to retire years ago.

Kaitlyn Mullen, a TPUSA campus coordinator at the University of Nebraska, was only one of 
three dissenting voices against a resolution by the City of Lincoln committing to standing 
up against hate speech in the wake of Charlottesville's nightmare. The other two 
dissenting voices came from members of Patriot Front - otherwise known as "Blood and Soil" 
- one of whom had himself marched in Charlottesville the day Heather Heyer was murdered. 
All three voiced feeling victimized along with having a love of free markets. The city's 
resolution against hate speech passed 5-0.

The "alt-right" targets universities because most are unable or unwilling to prohibit 
white nationalist and white supremacist ideas without serious legal battles. "Free speech" 
becomes the sound bite of university administrations and fascists alike in defending the 
presence of Turning Point USA, Richard Spencer and others like them. It has become so 
common for racist and fascist groups to plot on campuses that the Southern Poverty Law 
Center released a student resource guide for dealing with the "alt-right." But as Khan's 
case shows, these debates are hardly debates and they are hardly contained on university 
grounds.

This article was originally published with Truth Out as "Young Fascists on Campus: Turning 
Point USA and Its Far-Right Connections."

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of 
Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press) and articles with numerous left 
publication. Follow him on Twitter: @shane_burley1.

Kristina Khan is a mother, reproductive justice educator, board member of the Channing 
Murray Foundation and organizer with Build Programs Not Jails in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

To read more about Turning Point USA's harassment campaign against our member, Tariq Khan 
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), we recommend reading "Campus 
Anti-Fascist Network Statement in Support of Tariq Khan."

http://blackrosefed.org/campus-fascism-turning-point-usa-links-far-right/

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Message: 7





Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 
receiving royal ascent. It was the state finally accepting that women were as capable of 
making decisions as men. Well, nearly, women still had to be nine years older in order to 
vote at the time. ---- It has meant that a lot has been written, said and broadcast about 
the Suffragettes this week. Some of it great, much of it either a little lazy or 
deliberately misleading. There's been a notable upturn in media reporting on the more 
militant tactics the women used in their campaigning than in the past, so it's certainly 
an improvement. As our contribution we're republishing an article from Organise 84, 
written on the eve of a general election and with the Suffragettes firmly in mind.

Nearly all children in the UK are told at some point, by some well-meaning adult: "You 
must eat all the food on your plate, because there are children starving in Africa." 
Around half of us are subjected to a second, similarly inane cliché. This one goes: "When 
you grow up, you must vote in every election, because women died to get you the vote."

The connection, you might have noticed, is that they're both wrong-headed appeals to a 
sense of moral duty towards somebody who will be entirely unaffected by the action we're 
told we must take. They're also massive over-simplifications of complex issues. They 
concern problems that are created by a vast, tangled network of systems of power, and 
promote solutions that look, on the surface, like a personal response to those systems, 
but which don't question or disrupt them in any way.

Most of us are soon able to point out that starving children in specific regions within 
Africa or anywhere else are unlikely to know or care whether we finished our second scoop 
of over-salted instant mashed potato, though they might appreciate fairer global economic 
systems governing food production and distribution1.

It took me a lot longer to untangle the second fallacy. It was a lot longer before it 
occurred to me to try. In fact, there are several fallacies underlying this one, and it's 
worth going through them in detail.

Fallacy no. 1: The Suffragettes would have cared about whether or not I vote.

Similar to the starving children in Africa, the suffragettes didn't know me and had 
pressing problems of their own. What they wanted was not that every woman in perpetuity 
should be guilt-tripped into participating in any political system that used the ballot 
box to legitimise itself, but that wherever men were balloted, women would be too. As far 
as that goes, they got what they wanted, and those future women's decisions on how to use 
that enfranchisement weren't a major concern. In fact, the whole point was that they 
trusted future women to make their own decisions. Sylvia Pankhurst, for one, lived to 
reject parliamentary democracy as an out of date machine band refused to cast a vote or 
stand for election herself. I daresay that should she be haunting polling stations on May

7th, she would be far more appalled by the cuts to essential women's services that every 
option on the ballot would continue to implement, than at women who spoiled their ballots 
or stayed away. I like to think she'll give me an approving nod as I substitute my ballot 
paper for a sheet of folded bog roll, but honestly, if I believed in an afterlife I'd be 
sure that Sylvia Pankhurst, of all people, would be doing something better with it than 
haunting polling booths. She's probably swanning round Europe with the spectre of communism.

Fallacy no. 2: The vote was the sole legacy of the suffragettes, and using it the only way 
to respect their memory.

Here's the thing: the suffragettes never intended it to stop with the vote. They weren't 
satisfied, and they didn't intend us to be. We respect their memory by continuing their 
work, not by being content with it. We also need to remember that "suffragettes" was a 
blanket term for a diverse women's movement.

The vote might have been the only demand of the more privileged groups, especially those 
in the US who refused membership to black, working class and

‘fallen women' and were happy for the vote to be extended only to a married and propertied 
respectable few, but who'd want to honour their memory? For the Women's Social and 
Political Union in the UK, at least at the beginning, there was a lot more to it than the 
vote itself.

Being denied the vote was an infantilisation, an insult to women as intelligent, rational 
human beings, regardless of how much use the vote itself would or wouldn't be. Using the 
vote was almost beside the point compared to what it would mean for women to have the 
vote, to not be designated as mere extensions of their husbands but decision-making adults 
in their own right.

Getting the vote was a victory largely because of what women achieved through the process 
of fighting for it. The speeches, the publications, the meetings, the direct actions, the 
smashed windows, the battles with police, the martial arts training in preparation for 
those battles, the imprisonments, the hunger strikes, the resistance to force-feeding and 
refusal to give in: these did more to raise the status and confidence of women, the 
possibilities and opportunities for women as public, professional and political people, 
than the vote itself ever has, and a

shed load more than a woman Prime Minister and all the other careerists who've cynically 
used women's struggles to promote themselves while throwing working class women under the bus.

Fallacy no. 3: Gratitude for the end of their disenfranchisement should put a particular 
obligation on women to involve themselves in the system that kept them disenfranchised.

"Do you see what mummy gave you? Now, say thank you very nicely, and stop complaining." 
Because, frankly, fuck that condescending, paternalistic shit right there. Working class 
men also fought for the right to vote, but do they get that cooed at them every time they 
suggest that there are more effective means of change than the ballot box? This attitude 
turns women's votes into an issue of conformity rather than conscience, in direct 
opposition to who the suffragettes were and what they fought for.

It was about women's solidarity, women's ability to work together and stand up and fight 
together, to write and speak from their own experience to each other and to the world, not 
just on the vote but sexual, social and vocational freedoms, including fair pay and 
reproductive rights.

The partial information we get fed at school paints the suffragettes as a peaceful 
campaigning lobby, who were awarded the vote because they made their case well and proved 
their economic worth while the men were being fed into the slaughter of the first world 
war. The truth is, the suffragettes achieved their aims because they were a radical, 
inspirational and effective direct action movement. They achieved incredible things for 
themselves and for future generations of women, and yes, they deserve our respect and our 
gratitude. But more than that, they deserve our study and our effort to comprehend the 
full enormity and complexity of their struggle. They deserve better than to be reduced to 
a single-issue soundbyte, their courage and militancy twisted into a liberal message of 
support for the system many of them never stopped fighting when their leaders were 
co-opted. They deserve so much better than to be used manipulatively, as bogey-women to 
shame us into a tokenistic legitimisation of the very systems they opposed.

So this polling day, whether you vote or organise or both, consider honouring the 
suffragettes' memory by not using them as a stick to beat women with when they treat their 
vote exactly as the suffragettes fought to allow them to: as their own, to use or not, on 
their own terms.

1 Well, eventually. Most of us start by suggesting a parcel of leftovers

http://afed.org.uk/what-the-suffragettes-did-for-us-hint-it-was-more-than-the-vote-2/

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