eppesen sta sherka mou to periodiko rolling thunder to opio lalei gia tous fasistes:
an den sas volefki opos en grammena parakatw chekkarete--->
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/rt9/rt9_free_speech_faq.pdfStopping fascists from speaking makes you just
as bad as them.You could just as easily say that not stopping
fascists from speaking—giving them the opportunity
to organize to impose their agenda
on the rest of us—makes you as bad as them.
If you care about freedom, don’t stand idly by
while people mobilize to take it away.
Shouldn’t we just ignore them? They want attention,
and if we give it to them we’re letting them win.Actually, fascists usually don’t want to draw
attention to their organizing; they do most
of it in secret for fear that an outraged public
will shut them down. They only organize
public events to show potential recruits that
they have power, and to try to legitimize their
views as part of the political spectrum. By
publicly opposing fascists, we make it clear to
them—and more importantly, to anyone else
interested in joining them—that they will not
be able to consolidate power over us without
a fight. Ignoring fascists only allows them to
organize unhindered, and history shows that
this can be very dangerous. Better we shut
them down once and for all.
The best way to defeat fascism is to let them
express their views so that everyone can see how
ignorant they are. We can refute them more
e!ectively with ideas than force.People don’t become fascists because they
find their ideas persuasive; they become fascists
for the same reason others become police
o!cers or politicians: to wield power over
other people. It’s up to us to show that fascist
organizing will not enable them to obtain this
power, but will only result in public humiliation.
That is the only way to cut o" their source
of potential recruits.
History has shown over and over that fascism
is not defeated by ideas alone, but by
popular self-defense. We’re told that if all ideas
are debated openly, the best one will win out,
but this fails to account for the reality of unequal
power. Fascists can be very useful to
those with power and privilege, who often
supply them with copious resources; if they
can secure more airtime and visibility for their
ideas than we can, we would be fools to limit
ourselves to that playing field. We can debate
their ideas all day long, but if we don’t prevent
them from building the capacity to make them
reality, it won’t matter.
Neo-Nazis are irrelevant; institutionalized racism
poses the real threat today, not the extremists
at the fringe.The bulk of racism takes place in subtle,
everyday forms. But fascist visibility enables
other right-wing groups to frame themselves
as moderates, helping to legitimize the racist
and xenophobic assumptions underlying
their positions and the systems of power and
privilege they defend. Taking a stand against
fascists is an essential step toward discrediting
the structures and values at the root of
institutionalized racism.
Here and worldwide, fascists still terrorize
and murder people because of racial, religious,
and sexual di"erence. It’s both naïve and disrespectful
to their victims to gloss over the
past and present realities of fascist violence.
Because fascists believe in acting directly to
carry out their agenda rather than limiting
themselves to the apparatus of representative
democracy, they can be more dangerous
proportionate to their numbers than other
bigots. This makes it an especially high priority
to deal with them swiftly.
Free speech means protecting everyone’s right to
speak, including people you don’t agree with. How
would you like it if you had an unpopular opinion
and other people were trying to silence you?We oppose fascists because of what they
do, not what they say. We’re not opposed to
free speech; we’re opposed to the fact that
they advance an agenda of hate and terror.
We have no power to censor them; thanks to
the “neutrality” of the capitalist market, they
continue to publish hate literature in print and
the internet. But we will not let them come
into our communities to build the power they
need to enact their hatred.
The government and the police have never
protected everyone’s free speech equally, and
never will. It is in their self-interest to repress
views and actions that challenge existing power
inequalities. They will spend hundreds of
thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on riot police,
helicopters, and sharpshooters to defend a KKK
rally, but if there’s an anarchist rally the same
police will be there to stop it, not to protect it.
Anarchists don’t like being silenced by the
state—but we don’t want the state to define
and manage our freedom, either. Unlike the
ACLU, whose supposed defense of “freedom”
leads them to support the KKK and others
like them, we support self-defense and selfdetermination
above all. What’s the purpose of
free speech, if not to foster a world free from
oppression? Fascists oppose this vision; thus
we oppose fascism by any means necessary.
If fascists don’t have a platform to express their
views peacefully, it will drive them to increasingly
violent means of expression.
Fascists are only attempting to express
their views “peacefully” in order to lay the
groundwork for violent activity. Because fascists
require a veneer of social legitimacy to be
able to carry out their program, giving them a
platform to speak opens the door to their being
able to do physical harm to people. Public
speech promoting ideologies of hate, whether
or not you consider it violent on its own, always
complements and correlates with violent
actions. By a!liating themselves with movements
and ideologies based on oppression and
genocide, fascists show their intention to carry
on these legacies of violence—but only if they
can develop a base of support.
Trying to suppress their voices will backfire by
generating interest in them.Resistance to fascism doesn’t increase interest
in fascist views. If anything, liberals mobilizing
to defend fascists on free speech grounds
increases interest in their views by conferring
legitimacy on them. This plays directly into their
organizing goals, allowing them to drive a wedge
between their opponents using free speech as a
smokescreen. By tolerating racism, homophobia,
anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, so-called free
speech advocates are complicit in the acts of
terror fascist organizing makes possible.
They have rights like everybody else.No one has the right to threaten our community
with violence. Likewise, we reject the
“right” of the government and police—who
have more in common with fascists than they
do with us—to decide for us when fascists
have crossed the line from merely expressing
themselves into posing an immediate threat.
We will not abdicate our freedom to judge
when and how to defend ourselves.