Anti-Racist Action

Anti-Racist Action originated from the hardcore punk subculture in the United States at Minneapolis, Minnesota, among suburban mostly White American teenagers during the late 1980s. The wider punk subculture itself had flirted with extreme political symbolism, as a form of "shock value" from its early days, including anarchist, communist and nazi symbols, though many did not take this seriously. Eventually some bands such as Crass in the United Kingdom began to more seriously integrate an anarcho-communist political ideology into their music and associated anarcho-punk subculture. This spread to the United States and had a strong influence on the Minneapolis hardcore scene. Some of the people involved in this scene created a skinhead street gang, inspired by Nick Knight's book Skinhead, known as the Minneapolis Baldies[4][5] which was formed in 1986. The Baldies, who regarded themselves as on the left and anti-racist skinheads, were frequently engaged in political violence with rival far-right skinheads in Uptown.[6][7] The Baldies were associated with bands such as Blind Approach, while their rivals from the East Side, the White Knights, were associated with Mass Corruption.[8][9] According to Mic Crenshaw, the Baldies were allied to Black and Latino organized crime gangs in the area.[10] According to Knutson, they were also strongly allied to the University of Minnesota Black Law Student Association, including Keith Ellison who later became the Democratic Party's Attorney General of Minnesota.[6]

It was while following a band on tour to Chicago that the Baldies, along with Skinheads On Chicago (SKOC), formally founded Anti-Racist Action in around 1987. Another early name for the network was "the Syndicate."[11] Early members in Chicago included Corky Fields, Marty Williams and Mike Johnson and they engaged in violence with the neo-Nazi skinheads of Chicago Area SkinHeads (CASH).[11] SKOC consisted mostly of black skinheads and adhered to far-left and black power politics; some of them featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1989, opposing CASH who were guests.[12] ARA was inspired by a similar militant network in the United Kingdom, known as the Anti-Fascist Action.[1]

People in the hardcore punk scene became more widely aware of ARA across America due to a nationwide magazine called Maximum Rock and Roll (MRR), edited by the counter-culture infuencer Tim Yohannan who worked at University of California, Berkeley, which started to promote them from 1987 onwards.[13] They developed a network with other anti-racist skinheads and at a meeting in Minneapolis on January 14, 1989, where 150 members attended founded "the Syndicate", also known as Anti-Racist Action.[14] Other chapters in attendence included the Brew City Skins from Milwaukee, the North Side Crew also in Chicago, as well as groups in Cincinnati (people associated with SHARP), Indianapolis, Lawrence and elsewhere.[7][15][16]

From the late 1980s into the 1990s, the network began to grow. One of their main rallying points was in relation to the trials of Tom Metzger, a neo-Nazi activist associated then with a group calling itself the White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Metzger, though originally a "suit-and-tie" far-right talkshow show host, had begun to play a significant role in the creation of a neo-Nazi skinhead subculture in the United States, inspired in part by Ian Stuart Donaldson of Skrewdriver (many of the British skinheads has joined groups such as the British Movement). This growing network of neo-Nazi skinheads in the United States were in conflict with the far-left leaning skinheads associated with Anti-Racist Action for control of the "scence. Some of Metzger's skinhead followers in Portland belonging to East Side White Pride killed an Ethiopian student, Mulugeta Seraw, in 1988 and were subsequently charged, while Metzger himself was sued and ordered to pay extensive financial damages to Seraw's family. Mic Crenshaw and some other Minneapolis ARA members relocated to Portland and founded the Portland ARA chapter there in response.[17] Public attention given to this case caused a growth in networks affiliated with ARA, other new sections sprung up around the issue, including in Los Angeles (where it was also known as "People Against Racist Terror," led by Michael Novick)[18][19][20] as well as branches in San Diego, Vancouver (moving into Canada) and elsewhere.

Marty Williams of Chicago ARA stated that by 1992, the network had expanded beyond its original subcultural base in the skinhead scene to include also students, workers, anarchist punks and older left-wing activists.[21] Anti-Racist Action built up connections to black power groups in places like Chicago, and integrated aspects of third-wave feminism and, as part of this, mobilized against Christian groups opposed to abortion. According to Bray, ARA was "predominantly anarchist and antiauthoritarian, as reflected in the influential role of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation"[22] an unorthodox anarchist group with Trotskyist and New Left aspects, with whom they worked closely.[23] From the early Baldies days onwards, what would become Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis had been affiliated with an anarchist group calling itself the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League (RABL).[24][25][nb 1] In 1989, the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League had merged with a number of defectors from the Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialist League, who published The Torch, to form the Love and Rage Network.

Anti-Racist Action chapters in the Midwest began to organize an annual conference under the banner of the Midwest Anti-Fascist Network, starting in October 15, 1994; the first took place in Columbus, Ohio.[26] These annual conferences had guest speakers at each event. The first featured Signe Waller, the widow of Michael Waller, a Communist Workers' Party member killed during the Greensboro massacre in 1979.[26] The following year Chip Berlet was the guest speaker, along with Rita "Bo" Brown of the George Jackson Brigade and Signe Waller returning again.[27][nb 2]

The network expanded into Canada, particularly Toronto. In 1992, the neo-Nazi hate group Heritage Front marched on Toronto's courthouse; organising against this catalysed the formation of a local ARA chapter.[28] The Heritage Front supported the German-born Holocaust denier and apologist for the Third Reich, Ernst Zündel, who was the subject of a significant political controversy with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the organised Canadian Jewish community. According to a 1997 article in The Ottowa Times, Anti-Racist Action's Toronto branch built up a close working relationship with B'nai B'rith Canada, a major Jewish advocacy group. In 1996, B'nai B'rith Canada attempted to secure state funding for Anti-Racist Action, through Sam Title who stated at the time that B'nai B'rith had "worked with them before." Karen Mock, the National Director of B'nai B'rith was pictured at an ARA conference in 1997. After Mock attended the meeting the relationship was subject to the feature in The Ottowa News in 1997, which courted controversy for B'nai B'rith due to ARA's links to violence and "extremism". One of the more notorious events involving ARA in Toronto was the trashing of the home of a Heritage Front member in 1994: ARA activists implicated in this and subseqently arrested, according to the Toronto Sun included Ajith Aluthwatta, Katrin Clouse, Ainsworth Weir, Elena Lonero and Peter Ricards. Ernst Zündel has claimed that ARA Toronto were involved in the firebombing of his home, a year later, with Aluthwatta on the scene soon after (Zündel was in any case deported from Canada that year).

ARA Minneapolis and ARA Toronto attended a conference in London in October 1997 which brought together twenty-two delegates from the emerging international (mostly European) militant anti-fascist movements. There was a significant disagreement between two of the major groups: the Autonome Antifa (M), a German Antifa delegation based in Göttingen, and Anti-Fascist Action from Britain (who had partly inspired the creation of ARA in the first place).[29] The British-delegation were mostly working-class and argued for a class basis for anti-fascist struggle as well as for physical force against those it defined as fascists, while AA (M), who were more based in the middle-class intelligentsia argued that the movement should be based primarily on a "feminist and anti-imperialist" analysis and downgrade "squadism".[29] At the end of the conference, nine groups followed Anti-Fascist Action into the Militant Anti-Fascist Network, including the North American Anti-Racist Action branches, as well as the German groups Antifaschistische Aktion Hannover and Aktivisten-Gruppe ROTKÄPPCHEN, as well as a group from Zaragoza.[29] The international itself collapsed in 1999 as Anti-Fascist Action in Britain became essentially defunct.

As part of their wider anti-police sentiment activity, including involvement with Cop Watch, members of ARA were involved in supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook), who was convicted for the 1981 murder of PPD officer Daniel Faulkner.[30] In September 1999 in Baltimore, ARA activists organised a seven-car caravan with a loudspeaker in each, voicing slogans in favour of Mumia Abu-Jamal and handing out leaflets to the general public.[30]

Daryle Lamont Jenkins, ARA gained an early internet foothold with his "doxxing" website One People's Project.

Two members of ARA from Las Vegas, Daniel Shersty and Lin Newborn, were killed by fascists in 1998.[31] A year prior the network combined had reached a high of 1,500 members; however, the deaths had shocked many and caused a significant drop off in the membership.

With the rise of the internet, the new millennium saw a switch to a more information based "warfare" between ARA and their enemies active within the far-right groups.[13] The white nationalist far-right most circulated around Stormfront, while one of the more prominent website projects associated with ARA at the time was the One People's Project, which was also allied to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Founded in 2000 by Daryle Lamont Jenkins and Joshua David Belser (under the pseudonym "Josh Hoyt"), the One People's Project was a pioneer in the "doxxing" of alleged far-right group activists; as part of their campaign against these individuals, on their website they posted personal information of them, including their full names, dates and place of birth, home address, their place of work, the names of their close family members/partners and any other contact information such as phone numbers. This was subsequently spread among other websites, forums and blogs associated with whichever ARA branch was local to the alleged far-rightist profiled.

Anti-Racist Action's Columbus, Ohio branch, including Jerry or Gerry Bello[32] (also a prominent figure within ARA's Cop Watch),[33] were among several groups (including the Black Bloc, a coalition of anarchist organizations, including the Boston-based Barricada Collective) were involved in a street fight with far-right activists which led to the arrest of 25 people in York County, Pennsylvania on January 12, 2002.[34] The groups were protesting a speech by Matthew F. Hale's World Church of the Creator at a local library; several other white nationalist groups were also in the area, such as the National Alliance and the Aryan Nations.[34]

According to the Washington Post, on May 11, 2002 around 250 members of the National Alliance, a leading neo-Nazi group, arranged a protest at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. under Billy Roper, distributing anti-Israel flyers with pictures of the 9/11 attacks and Osama bin Laden with the words "Let's Stop Being Human Shields for Israel" and demanding to cut off US aid to Israel.[35][36] Their protest was attacked by around 150 opponents including ARA members, as well as some members of the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists and Labor/Community Committee in Solidarity with the People of Palestine.[36][37] Later in the year, on August 24, 2002, the National Alliance returned to Washington D.C. for their "Rock Against Israel" protest; this time however, their opponents, under the banner of the East Coast Anti-Fascist Network (including ARA branches from Baltimore, Philadelphila, New Jersey, Toronto, Columbus and Auora)[38] were better organised in attacking their opponents. However, 28 ARA members were arrested and then when they returned to Baltimore, were subsequently called up on charges of rioting, aggravated assault, possession of a deadly weapon and others. They became known as the "Baltimore Anti-Racist 28" and were eventually released without charge.[39][40][41] With the decline of the Creativity movement (due to the arrest of Hale) and the National Alliance (since the death of William Luther Pierce), other groups on the white nationalist scene attempted to fill the vaccum that this had left, this included the National Socialist Movement (NSM), who organised a rally to "protest black crime" on October 15, 2005 in Toledo, Ohio. Here they were met by members of Anti-Racist Action and the International Socialist Organization, upon which the 2005 Toledo riot ensued.[42]

The first group in the United States to use the term "Antifa" in its title was the Anti-Racist Action Portland branch, known as Rose City Antifa, which was refounded in 2007, according to Alexander Reid Ross, author of Against the Fascist Creep, from Portland State University.[43][44] This was inspired by the German anarcho-communist autonomists, who engaged in black bloc tactics that year in a mass protest at the 33rd G8 summit (many of the autonomists are associated with Germany's Antifa).[43] Luke Querner, a member of Rose City Antifa and Red and Anarchist Skinheads, was shot in the stomach in 2010 leaving him paralyzed from the waist down (ARA blamed neo-Nazis for the shooting).[45] Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, former Weather Underground members, spoke at the 17th Annual Anti-Racist Action Network Conference held at Chicago in 2011.[46][47]

During the time that Barack Obama was President of the United States, groups on the hard right began to grow and consequently groups emerged to engage in violence with them. Some of these were officially outside the Anti-Racist Action network, such as NYC Antifa (founded in 2010), but others, such as the Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM), also known as Indiana Antifa (2011), were officially chapters of ARA.[48] HARM were involved in a sigificant criminal incident in Tinley Park, Cook County, Illinois on May 19, 2012, when a group of 18 ARA members with hoods and masks on, carrying hammers and baseball bats, broke into the Ashford House restaurant where members of the Illinos European Heritage Association,affiliated with White News Now and Stormfront (including individuals asssociated with the Council of Conservative Citizens)[48] were having a meal, and began attacking them with weapons.[49][50][51] An 80-year old woman at a nearby table was pushed to the floor.[50] Five of the ARA members involved were arrested and subsequently charged for their part in the attack with felony mob action, aggravated battery and criminal property damage charges and were sentenced from between 3 ½ to 6 years: Jason Sutherlin, Cody Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin, Alex Stuck and John Tucker.[49][52]

Anti-Racist Action changed its name to The Torch Network in 2013, in an attempt to deal with the new realities of the digital age and changing tactics.[53] The Torch Network held the 1st Annual Torch Network Conference in 2014 at Chitown Futbol, Chicago.[48] This was attended by South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action (the hosts), Philly Antifa, Central Texas Anti-Racist Action, Milwaukee Antifa, Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM) and Los Angeles People Against Racist Terror.[48] The event was sponsored by the Chicago May First Anarchist Alliance and Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. There were two speakers at the event: Matthew Nemiroff Lyons and Michael Staudenmaier. Indeed, Lyons, an author based in Philadelphia who previously wrote Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (2000) with Chip Berlet, became a prominent intellectual in defining the ideology of Torch Antifa with his Three Way Fight theory. Lyons' central thesis is that there is a three way fight between global capitalism (conservative and liberal democracy), an insurgent right and a revolutionary left and that anti-fascists must oppose the former two, while confronting complexities in the dynamics between the three (warning against both an establishment-left alliance and also a red-brown alliance over issues such as Israel and anti-globalisation).[54]

In the run up to the 2016 United States presidential election and in its aftermath, with the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, there was a further growth in both far-right and far-left groups.[55] This manifested in an explosion of the numbers of "Antifa" groups. A large number of these cells developed outside of The Torch Network; however, some of these groups were officially affiliated, such as Antifa Sacramento.

Antifa Sacramento members were among hundreds of ant-fascists who attacked a rally held by the Traditionalist Worker Party, a neo-Nazi group, in the 2016 Sacramento riot, in which between five and seven people were stabbed and three hospitalised.[56][57] The California Highway Patrol stated that counter-protestors were the instigating party in the confrontation.[57] Teacher Yvette Felarca of another anti-fascist group, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), was charged with felony assault and misdemeanor rioting but convicted only of unlawful assembly, along with two others, while one neo-Nazi was sentenced to four years for his role in the violence.[58][59]

Another group founded in 2016 as an official chapter of the Torch Network was the Atlanta Antifascists (a refoundation of the earlier Atlanta ARA).[48] This was founded by Keith Allen Mercer, also known as "Iggy",[60] a long time anarchist activist and member of the Atlanta IWW General Defense Committee, along with Jeremy Galloway and Lily Lago; the group is mainly focused on opposing the public events of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group.[48]

Awareness of "Antifa" among the general public grew in the aftermath of the "freedom of speech on campus" disputes, particularly at University of California, Berkeley in 2017 as the Berkeley College Republicans twice invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the institution as part of his "Dangerous Faggot Tour". Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NoCARA),[61] part of the Torch Network, was one of several groups, also including By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), involved in the 2017 Berkeley protests and clashed with groups such as the Proud Boys.[62][63] Targeting of events associated with the main figurehead of the self-styled "alt-right", Richard B. Spencer, by Torch Network and other Antifa activists also led to a general heightening of violence on both sides, starting with Spencer being punched in the head on live television at the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump (this was by an anonymous Antifa activist whose identity and affiliations remain unconfirmed), leading to "punch a Nazi" internet memes. The most notorious incident associated with this conflict was the mass riots at the Unite the Right Rally in August 2017 at Charlottesville, Virginia between alt-rightists and antifa (including Torch members).

On their official website, The Torch Network openly lists nine current official chapters as being part of its network. The chapters are all autonomous, under devolved local leadership (there is no overall official leader of the Torch Network) and each chapter agrees to abide by the "five principles" of Torch Antifa.[55] These nine chapters currently include; Antifa Sacramento, Western North Carolina Antifa, Rocky Mountain Antifa (based in Denver, Colorado), Rose City Antifa (based in Portland, Oregon), Atlanta Antifascists, Pacific Northwest Antifascist Workers Collective (based in Oregon and Washington), Antifa Seven Hills (based in Richmond, Virginia), Central Texas Anti-Racist Action and Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NoCARA).

A number of online publications are allied to the website, including the doxxing website It's Going Down, Matthew Lyons' Three Way Fight and Michael Novick's (leader of Los Angeles People Against Racist Terror) Turning The Tide.

There is a large crossover between membership in the Torch Network and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) General Defense Committee (this includes ARA founder Kieran Knutson[64] and other anti-fascist activists including Josh Dukes, also known as "Hex", who was shot in the stomach at a protest against Milo Yiannopoulos at Seattle in 2017).[65][66]

Since 2014, representatives of all of the chapters who are able to travel to the area meet at the Annual Torch Network Conference, usually held on Labour Day in September.[48] The location of the Annual Conference rotates between different chapters. The conference is usually held over two days, on the first day it is a private event, only directly affiliated or closely trusted groups are allowed to attend. On the second day, a semi-public, more open conference is held where various people who identify as anti-fascists are permitted to attend. This part is more social and usually includes various speeches, mostly hardcore punk bands playing music and the selling of literature and merchandise related to the movement and its ideology.