Anti Fascist Action Thanks very much to Anti Fascist Action, Ireland for this interview. No point in doing as introduction the interview explains all. First off could you give a brief history of the AFA in Dublin/Ireland? Anti Fascist Action was founded in Ireland in 1992 as a sister organisation to AFA in Britain which had itself arisen from the re-organisation of the anti-fascist 'squads' of the late 70's/early '80’s that were originally linked to the Anti Nazi League but were expelled by that group's parent organisation, the Socialist Workers Party for being too militant. Some of our own members had been active around this time also, both here and in Britain. The situation faced by the founding members in AFA here in Dublin in deciding to establish a group had at least some of its beginnings in the emergence of a gang of 'Blood and Honour'-linked skinheads who had attached themselves to the punk scene in the late 80’s/early 90's. This had resulted in some incidents of anti-racist and SHARP skins being attacked at gigs and it was decided by our people, then involved in the punk scene, that a strong response was necessary. Numerous confrontations followed, with the boneheads always coming off second best despite often having numeric advantage. Some of these same skinheads also attempted to form a hooligan mob among Dublin GAA supporters but thanks to the efforts of AFA this never really took off. Confrontations did take place as many of our members being Dublin football fans also, regularly encountered the fash at games. A funny incident that comes to mind is the time that the fascists showered themselves in glory by jumping into the canal after a match in Croke Park in order to escape any further attention from AFA! On other fronts, some of the more widely publicised activities that AFA either organised or participated in were stopping holocaust revisionist David Irving from speaking at an event in UCC in 1999; and along with other anti-fascists from the south and mid-west disrupting the launch of the Immigration Control Platform in Ennis in 1998. This was important in that a serious setback was dealt to this anti-immigration group who never recovered enough to follow through with their promised launch in the capital at a time when the public were becoming receptive to the scareongering of racist politicians. In fact, they now operate almost exclusively in 'Letters to the Editor' mode and as the 'token loons' on radio phone-ins thanks to their eccentric leader, Aine Ni Chonaill. In October '04 we organised opposition to a debate at UCD where Ni Chonaill and known fascist sympathiser Justin Barrett were to debate the immigration issue and succeeded in shutting it down. Bonus points were scored by us on the night with the appearance of two boneheads that AFA had been monitoring and who are members of the band Ketzer- "Ireland’s premier National Socialist black metal band" (their words, not mine!). Introductions made, one of these was last seen falling down some steps and pleading with college security for protection! I know in the past you have been involved in the local community around inner city Dublin, leafleting etc. Has it been a positive response? I know that the political landscape in Ireland has changed since AFA started so how has this influenced the direction of the organisation? The impression might be formed from the answer given to the above question that AFA is some sort of violence-obsessed organisation that somehow replicates the tactics of the militant far-right. This is an argument that AFA constantly finds itself having to counter from it’s critics. I will deal with the issue of using violence to oppose fascism later but to answer this question it has to be pointed out that probably 95% of the work that AFA engages in is in the arena of the hard slog of political campaigning. For this reason, you can treat this answer as part two of the "brief" history of AFA, Sean! Up until the mid-1990’s, the occasional skirmishes with boneheads were just that. Here you had a bunch of individuals with no real targets to focus their attention, on unlike their Blood and Honour and other "comrades" in Britain and Europe. The monocultural make-up of Ireland began to change drastically from the mid-1990’s onwards. With the sudden arrival of relatively large numbers of immigrants to the country, the political landscape lent itself to the possibility of racist and right-wing ideas taking root. AFA’s analysis of the situation at the time was obviously an awareness of the prize that the fallout from immigration could potentially hand to those individuals and organisations of a far-right bent, so I guess you could say that we tried to cut off their supply of recruits to these ideas at the source. This of course meant intensive work in those working class areas, already under-resourced and neglected, where it quickly became apparent would be expected to take their unfair share of the new arrivals. Of course, the problem worsened rapidly when certain politicians and parties began to make political capital from a situation that, although of their own making, did not serve them especially well with the electorate. Keen to distance themselves from the hostilities directed at them from a public rightly pissed off with the running down of public services among other things, the politicians adopted a "blame the immigrants" position if not directly then through willing partners in certain sections of the media. Throw enough shit and some of it is bound to stick. Stories of immigrants and asylum seekers receiving free mobile phones, prams, cars, lifetime supply of chocolate (!!) from the state became common currency in the papers. Incidents of racist graffiti and open hostility and actual violence against 'foreign-looking' people were not far behind. The real work of AFA had thus really begun. Far from the occasional routing of small groups of boneheads, AFA now recognised the opening front in the battleground faced by opponents of the far-right throughout the 20th century in Europe. That is, the sudden arrival of immigrant communities and how the reaction of the host community can be manipulated to suit the ends of both those in power and those disposed to gaining political ground at their expense. This ultimately leads to both the immigrant community and the working class community being on the same losing side. For AFA, as anti-fascists and not just anti-racists, the class dimension is important here. For the fascists, racism is merely a means to an end, not its raison d’etre. Fascists use the tactic of racism in as much as they realise its destructive and divisive influence within our class. The real target of fascism is working class self-organisation and expression. Stoking up racial tension is intended to divide the working class against itself because of fascism’s hatred for that class and the desire to see it suppressed in order to best serve its interests. For that reason, I would personally argue that the primary task of AFA is the fight for our own interests (ie, that of our class) over and above the interests of the victims of racism (of whatever class), but obviously to tackle racism head-on because it is intended to cause class antagonism. To employ a medical analogy, racism is symptomatic of the disease that is fascism. AFA intends to provide the cure. Because the vast majority of AFA members are themselves working class, and some of our more active members known in their communities for their community work, the message that we have carried down the years when we leaflet working class areas carries more weight. This makes it somewhat easier (but not entirely) to convince people that immigrants and asylum-seekers have more in common with the Irish working class than the ruling class- given our own history of emigration, anti-Irish racism abroad, and experience of poverty. Compare this with the tried and failed liberal left tactic of going into working class areas and declaring: "Refugees are welcome here!", when it should be clear to all but the most fatally deluded that they are not! It takes a lot more than liberal appeals to "be nice to each other" to convince those who have had to endure decades of government corruption and mismanagement of public finances to re-direct the focus of their anger to where it belongs. In concrete terms, one example of where AFA's recognition in the community paid off was a case a few years back in the Ballybough area of Dublin where a march was planned by the community on the home of an African suspected of dealing drugs. Understandably, with emotions running high at open dealing taking place in the area anyway, the fact that the person in question was African was adding grist to the mill (at a time of heightened racial tension), and could well have sparked a racist rather than a strictly anti-drugs response from residents. The fact that AFA members were also long-standing and trusted community activists in the area meant that we were in a position to calm the situation and promote a reasoned response to the situation. I think its fair to say that none of the rest of the left would have been in a position to exert the same influence, as they would have been coming in from the outside and seen to be lecturing the community on the most appropriate action to take and, at best, would have been laughed out of the area. Again, this is just one example that serves to illustrate that tokenistic liberal responses to racism are no substitute for dedicated and consistent hard work that emphasises class solidarity. I have noticed in the punk messageboard Eirecore that people have said that you can’t fight fascism with a fist, (I know it’s a regularly asked question). What would be your response to this? I would first respond by saying that you can’t fight fascism only with a fist. As far as AFA is concerned, the use of political violence is only a tactic and as I've already said is episodinal and comprises only a small percentage of our overall work. This is not to say that we shy away from or apologise for the use of violence when it comes to opposing fascists. In fact, at the core of AFA's founding statement is the commitment to provide 'physical and ideological opposition to fascism'. This is what differentiates us from the rest of the anti-fascist/racist groups. Ultimately, of course, utilising strictly violent means can in no way defeat the ideas that the fascists propagate. Yes, it instills fear in them but it won't prove a winner longer term in the battle for hearts and minds. That being said, it has to be acknowledged that the fascists feed on fear. Where successful in history, fascism has based this success on instilling fear into its opponents and on physical superiority. We believe that confronting fascism on its own terms, then, is key to its defeat. In preying on the concerns of working class communities (whether that be on issues such as housing, health, immigration), and using them in furthering their own ends, the fascists like to believe that the working class is their natural constituency. When they suffer a physical defeat at the hands of the progressive element of that class, not only is it a humiliation physically but it takes from the momentum of their political ambitions. People who might have been partly impressed with their playing of the ‘class card’ begin to doubt their credibility. But, receiving a few slaps is only a small part of the overall picture. The question of how to outflank and replace their influence in working class areas in the political sense remains an issue. Anti-fascist politics are not sustainable in a vacuum. Once the door has been opened, the question of who is best qualified to fight for working class issues is up for grabs. Now, obviously, with AFA being a single-issue organization, comprising members and supporters from across the broadly left spectrum, this is not for us to decide. We see our role more as offering encouragement for potential opposition to emerge. Luckily, for the present, the fascist groups in this country remain miniscule and disorganised. Unfortunately for us in AFA, we find ourselves under sustained attack from the rest of the left for our defence of the use of tactical violence and denial of free speech for fascists to the extent that they don't want to debate with us on the real political issues. Rarely does their argument extend beyond taunts that we use bully-boy tactics, have no serious politics, are just as bad as the fascists etc etc. I think I've sufficiently explained above the justification for employing violent tactics so I'd just say to those who are uncomfortable with the use of violence under the circumstances in which we find ourselves, that it’s their problem. We'll get on with our job, they should get on with theirs. My own position in this regard would resemble that of an AFA member from across the water when he wrote: "If you argue that you should be allowed the freedom of speech to promote policies that deny that very same right to people purely on the basis of skin colour or nationality, then actually no, we don’t believe that you have a legitimate complaint when someone hits you over the head with your megaphone". I think it's very important to point out at this juncture, lest people are turning the page with all this glorification of violence (!!), that AFA is not comprised solely of street fighters. I think I've made it abundantly clear at this stage that all methods are equally important in the work that we do, whether it's leafleting, organising or attending demos, intelligence gathering, writing, hosting music events etc. For this reason, we welcome as members people of different capabilities. It is only natural that not everybody feels the same level of comfort with their abilities in physical confrontations. There is a mountain of work to be done and no AFA member is expected to engage in activities that they don’t feel comfortable with. As well as being potentially dangerous for the individual involved, it can also endanger the work of those engaged in more 'robust' activity. What we do insist on, however, is that members agree to our policy of ‘No Platform' and philosophy of 'physical and ideological opposition to fascism'. Again, everybody has his/her part to play. I seem to remember that the debate about 'No Platform' that took place on the Eirecore forum was in the context of AFA closing down the immigration 'debate' that was to take place in UCD. Again, most of the arguments I think centred around whether or not the speakers should have been allowed a platform to air their views. I’ve given my opinions already about AFA’s position in relation to the rights and wrongs on the substantive issue in relation to this. But what was most interesting about the UCD debate, I feel, was the liberal righteous indignation displayed by some on both sides of that argument towards the presence of "outside agitators" (ie AFA) as they perceived it. I’m not talking exclusively about some of the contributors to Eirecore here but the UCD students for the most part. They couldn’t get over the brass neck of the 'great unwashed' descending on them and then having the affront not to abide by their "points of order". It was of course of little consequence to them, even when made aware of the situation afterwards, that there were two known fascist boneheads sitting in the audience, failing to make the connection that in inviting Barrett and Ni Chonaill that like attracts like. The cosseted middle class students that make up these debating societies show little concern for the possible knock-on effects of giving a forum to racists and fascists simply because they will never have to face them. When is the next issue of your great magazine coming out? It’s been a while I know but we're currently working on Issue 2 of No Quarter and expect to have it out in November. It should be available in most progressive bookshops and also from us. See the website (address given below) for details of outlets. Anything you would like to add? Thanks a lot for the interview, Sean, and for allowing us the opportunity to get our message across. Hope I haven't rambled on for too long! I’d just like to repeat that there's lots of work to be done so if any of this resonates with your readers and they feel that they'd like to get involved in the fight against fascism, they should get in contact. Our website can be found at: http://www.oocities.org/irishafa Continued success with Protest!