Tag: anarchists

Europe
Maksym

Ukrainian anti-fascist sentenced to prison in Russia

An appeals court in Moscow upheld the 13-year sentence imposed on Ukrainian human rights defender Maksym Butkevych, in what Amnesty International called “a grave miscarriage of justice.” Butkevych had been convicted in a “sham trial” by a de facto court in the Russian-occupied “Luhansk People’s Republic” in Ukraine, which Moscow has unilaterally declared annexed territory. A platoon leader in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Butkevych was taken captive in March and charged with war crimes. Amnesty dismisses the case as “a reprisal by Russia for his civic activism and his prominent human rights work.” Before the invasion, Butkevych led a Ukrainian NGO helping refugees find asylum in the country, and had long been a frontline opponent of the militant right in both Ukraine and Russia. (Image: Ukraine Solidarity Campaign)

Europe
Azat

Solidarity with imprisoned anti-fascists in Russia

In Episode 190 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the cases of Azat Miftakhov, Darya Polyudova, Aleksandra Skochilenko, Yelena Milashina, Larysa Schchyrakova, Maksym Butkevych and other Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian anti-fascist activists imprisoned by the dictatorships of Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko. These courageous women and men recognize these twin allied regimes as now actually having crossed the line into fascism—despite the paradoxical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of their propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: caseazatmiftakhov.org)

Europe
Azat Miftakhov

Russian anti-fascist released from prison, promptly re-arrested

Russian anti-fascist activist Azat Miftakhov was arrested by FSB agents immediately upon his release from a prison colony in Omutninsk. Azat had been in detention since February 2019, convicted in connection with the breaking of a window at a Moscow protest outside an office of the ruling United Russia party. At that time of that arrest Miftakhov was a mathematics graduate student at Moscow State University. Miftakhov endured torture, threats, and other mistreatment at the hands of authorities while imprisoned. After a trial marked by widespread judicial abuses and the use of “secret witnesses,” in January 2021 he was convicted of “hooliganism” and sentenced to five years. He was released on parole two days after an International Day for the Liberation of Azat Miftakhov was held in cities around the world. But just as he exited the prison to meet his family, he was taken into custody again—this time on charges of “publicly justifying terrorism.” (Photo: caseazatmiftakhov.org)

Europe
Ukrainian anarchists

Podcast: Ukraine and anarchist internationalism

In Episode 187, the CounterVortex podcast presents audio from the panel “Ukraine and Anarchist Internationalism” at the Los Angeles Anarchist Book Fair. Bill Weinberg urges solidarity with the Ukrainian anarchist units fighting the Russians—and calls out the American left for essentially supporting the wrong side in the war. For instance, the perennially problematic Democracy Now ignores the heroic Russian left-dissidents who have sacrificed their freedom or even lives to resist Putin’s war effort, such as Darya Polyudova, Aleksandra Skochilenko and Dmitry Petrov. But it gives splashy coverage to Yurii Sheliazhenko, the Ukrainian pacifist just arrested in Kyiv for “justifying Russian aggression.” Also: Yevgeny Lerner speaks on the national liberation struggle of the Crimean Tatars. Introduction by Javier Sethness, author of Eros & Revolution: The Critical Philosophy of Herbert Marcuse and the upcoming Queer Tolstoy. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Ukrainian anarchist football hooligan militia via The Resistance Committee)

Europe
Darya Polyudova

Solitary confinement for Russian anti-war dissident

Imprisoned Russian anti-war activist Darya Polyudova has been placed in punitive solitary confinement after guards said they found a razor-blade in her belongings, which is considered a major violation at the penal colony in the North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria where she is incarcerated. Polyudova’s mother told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty  that her daughter said guards had planted the blade in her belongings to frame her, adding that the activist is starting a hunger strike to protest the move. Polyudova, affiliated with the Left Resistance dissident network, was sentenced to nine years in prison in December on “extremism” charges related to her nonviolent opposition to the Russian war in Ukraine. (Photo: Polyudova with sign calling for release of Ukrainians detained by Russia, including filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and Crimean anarchist Oleksandr Kolchenko. Via RFE/RL)

Europe
Nahel

France: far-right parties invoke ‘civil war’

French police have arrested more than 3,000 protesters in unrest that has spread since the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old delivery worker Nahel Merzouk, the son of North African immigrants, during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The Ministry of the Interior has mobilized some 45,000 police troops and gendarmes, as fierce clashes with police have spread across the country. The French far right is meanwhile baiting President Emmanuel Macron for what they portray as a weak response to the uprising. Marine Le Pen issued an inflammatory video statement warning of “anarchy” and calling for a state of emergency to be declared. Marion MarĂ©chal, Le Pen’s niece and a former National Front parliamentarian, has called for armed vigilantism and repeatedly invoked “civil war.” (Photo via Crimethinc)

Europe
Belgorod

Podcast: ‘Bad facts’ and the Belgorod incursion

As Russian propaganda portrays Ukraine as a “Nazi state,” exemplifying fascist pseudo-anti-fascism, actual far-right links among forces backed by Kyiv constitute “bad facts” for the Ukrainian cause. In Episode 175 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the self-declared Freedom of Russia Legion and other forces involved in the armed incursion into Belgorod oblast. The incursion force seems to have constituted a strange liberal-fascist alliance, joining fighters seeking a democratic revolution and those seeking an even more totalitarian state. Meanwhile, anti-fascist forces, including Russian anarchist defectors, are also fighting for Ukraine. And an armed resistance has emerged in Belarus—with no indication that its politics are anything other than pro-democratic. Is there hope for a new Russian revolution? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe
Galizien Division

Ukraine and the weaponization of history —again

In Episode 169 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the move by the Kyiv City Council to name a street after Nazi collaborator Volodymyr Kubiyovych, who was instrumental in forming the SS Galizien Division. The plan was quashed by Kyiv’s mayor following protests from the Israeli ambassador—but not before internet tankies exploited the affair to portray Ukraine as a “Nazi state.” Ironically, this came the same week that President Volodymyr Zelensky honored victims of the Holocaust at the Babi Yar memorial in Kyiv. The unseemly nostalgia for Nazi collaborators who fought the Soviets in World War II is opposed by the leadership of Ukraine’s Jewish community—who also vigorously repudiate efforts by Kremlin propagandists to launder Putin’s war of aggression as “denazification.” Russia’s fascist pseudo-anti-fascism is likewise repudiated by Ukraine’s own bona fide left-wing anti-fascists, in groups such as the Solidarity Collectives, who now support the Ukrainian war effort against the Russian aggression. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of the Galizien Division: Polish National Digital Archive via Lviv Interactive)

Mexico
Bad Mexicans

Podcast: Magonismo hits the mainstream

In Episode 162 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reviews Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández. It is definitely a very hopeful sign that a briskly selling book from a mainstream publisher not only concerns anarchists, but actually treats them with seriousness and presents them as the good guys—even heroes. The eponymous “bad Mexicans” of the sarcastic title are the Magonistas—followers of the notorious MagĂłn brothers, early progenitors of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, who first raised a cry for the overthrow of the decades-long, ultra-oppressive dictatorship of Porfirio DĂ­az. “Bad Mexicans” was the epithet used by both Mexican and US authorities for this network of subversives who organized on both sides of the border. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

North America
Tortuguita

Outrage after police slaying of Atlanta forest defender

Protests and vigils have been held across the US following the police slaying of environmental activist Manuel Teran, 26, also known as Tortuguita, in Georgia’s Dekalb County. A protest over the killing turned violent in downtown Atlanta, with a police car burned, windows smashed, and several arrested. Tortuguita was shot in a police raid on an encampment in the Weelaunee Forest, a threatened woodland within the South River Forest conservation area. The Atlanta Police Foundation seeks to clear a large area of the forest in order to build a $90 million Public Safety Training Center, referred to as “Cop City” by local residents. Authorities say a Georgia state trooper was also shot and injured in the raid. (Image: It’s Going Down)

Iraq
Sinjar

The Yezidis, ‘esotericism’ and the global struggle

In Episode 156 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses Peter Lamborn Wilson‘s last book, Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis. One of the persecuted minorities of Iraq, the Yezidis are related to the indigenous Gnostics of the Middle East such as the Mandeans. But Wilson interprets the “esoteric” tradition of the Yezidis as an antinomian form of Adawiyya sufism with roots in pre-Islamic “paganism.” Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, the divine being revered by the Yezidis as Lord of This World, is foremost among a pantheon that ultimately traces back to the Indo-European gods. Wilson conceives this as a conscious resistance to authoritarianism, orthodoxy and monotheism—which has won the Yezidis harsh persecution over the centuries. They were targeted for genocide along with the Armenians by Ottoman authorities in World War I—and more recently at the hands of ISIS. They are still fighting for cultural survival and facing the threat of extinction today. Weinberg elaborates on the paradox of militant mysticism and what it means for the contemporary world, with examples of “heretical” Gnostic sects from the Balkan labyrinth. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Kurdistan Source)